My father was in the Army Air Corp and served in Europe. He was a navigator on a bomber flying from Italy to bomb the city of Dresden, Germany. On his last mission in November 1944, his plane was shot down over Czechoslovakia. A farmer picked him up and brought him to a village office. The Germans sent SS officers to transport him to Berlin for interrogation. All of the soldiers on his plane made it home safely from the war though my father did not see any of them until many years later, in the 1990's in Florida (he had a ME FORMER POW license plate.
When my father arrived in Berlin, he was questioned many times and then placed in solitary confinement for about 2 months. He said that this was the most difficult time, little human contact. Then he was moved to several concentration camps in Germany and Poland. This was near the end of the war and there was very little food or fuel to keep warm. But he said life was better being with other soldiers. Also, he commended the German people who worked in the camps "as good people just like us". My Dad did not talk about most of his experience until the last decade of his life. He said to me, "War is awful and confusing". He described the bombing of Dresden as horrific, "the sky was black with bombers flying under radar, then blasting the city in clouds of smoke."
At the end of the war, Hitler ordered that all prisoners of war be killed. He was then in a camp with several thousand prisoners and only a few hundred Germans working there. The prisoners told the guards that they were out numbered and that the prisoners would revolt and kill the guards if necessary. It was not necessary.
When World War II ended, my dad's camp had still not been liberated. It was in a location such that the Russians would be liberating them. My dad did not like that idea so he just walked out of the camp with the German workers and no one stopped him. Before he left he had the foresight to tear his detailed prison record from the official records so he could prove that he had been imprisoned.
Next, he tried to find Americans and hid in several Polish manor housed. He said that he observed Russian troops coming to liberate the prison camp. Eventually he met up with some allied soldiers just as they were liberating Bergen Belsen death camp. He saw the survivors being removed in wagon. He said that they looked like death, like skeletons yet they were alive. This was indeed the most horror that he witnessed. He could not understand how this could have happened and why God, if there was one, let it happen. From that moment on, he did not believe in a God. I did not know this until 1997 about a year before his death of chronic leukemia.
My father was a man who returned from the war damaged in ways we never knew. He would never lock his cars or the places where we lived. He enjoyed life to the fullest and never focused on the negative, often to the point of self-centered behavior. He was a gifted athlete and was nicknamed "moose" when in Army training because he would carry the guts packs when they could not.
He was very active before and after the war, up until his death in August 1998. He played golf in Florida and at Sugarloaf until 3 weeks before his death. He loved downhill skiing and we skied together when he was 75. He loved playing football in high school (Madison HS), at MCI and at the University of Maine after the war. In high school he was the goalie on the state champion team for Madison. He was a great tennis player and was on Madison's team when it won the state championship. He was a school teacher in Madison for many years and a ski instructor at Sugarloaf for 20+ years. One of his first trips after the war in the winter of 1946, was to camp out at the bottom of Sugarloaf mountain and climb several miles to the summit with skins on his skis to ski down the Winter's Way trail.
He loved to fish at Moose Head and at Chesuncook Lake, canoe in the Allagash and climbed Mount Kathadin many times. He taught many Madison Junior High School students to ski when he was a gym teacher. He encouraged me and those around him to be active, to be the best at whatever you do, and to enjoy life to the fullest everyday. He was and is my hero.