A Christmas Eve like no other: Horseheads man was German POW during WWII.

A Christmas Eve like no other: Horseheads man was German POW during WWII | stargazette.com | Star-Gazette

A Christmas Eve like no other: Horseheads man was German POW during WWII



Warren Miller was just 21 years old, a prisoner in Germany, hearing that the war was almost over but not knowing if that was good news or bad: if he would be freed or killed.
He had left his young, pregnant wife back home in upstate New York when he went off to fight in World War II, and she had since delivered a son -- but he didn't know that yet.
His right forearm had healed from where a fragment of shell -- or maybe it was a piece of his own airplane -- had torn through it before continuing up and behind him and slicing into the leg of the co-pilot of their B-24 bomber. The gangrene that had developed was gone, and now he just felt numbness in a couple of his fingers.
All of that was weighing on Warren's mind 66 years ago today. He didn't give much thought to the date, doesn't remember now that anybody made a big deal of it, not until later that day.
"At evening roll call on Dec. 24, the men were waiting for dismissal when sleigh bells and general clatter announced the arrival of a small wagon carrying Santa Claus, resplendent in a red and white suit, and an assistant," a fellow prisoner wrote in his recollections about the camp.
He wrote that the wagon was pulled by two men dressed as reindeer. Mail had been allowed to accumulate, he wrote, and now Santa tossed out bundles of letters and packages to each group he passed.
"Faces were a little brighter as the men returned to the barracks," the man wrote. "Santa had brought the Spirit of Christmas to this lonely camp in the wilderness where the ever-burning light of hope at times grew dim."
And Christmas Day "proved to be much happier than any homesick kriegie had reason to hope for," he wrote, using the Americans' version of the German word for prisoner of war, "kriegsgefangener."
Warren, now 87 and living in the Town of Horseheads, is a native of Callicoon, in Sullivan County. He joined the Army Air Corps and was a second lieutenant when he graduated from bombardier school.
On April 25, 1944, he was part of a 10-man crew aboard a B-24, one of 29 bombers that took off early that morning from southern Italy, bound for an aircraft factory in the north. It was Warren's 29th mission.

 

Nice story Ray.
Merry Christmas mate

regards John

 

Many thanks john, I pm'd you...

 

Thank you for this WW2 Christmas story.
Greetings.