top of page
PA-ETO-Marburger: Visit Us
The_Daily_Item_2000_07_02_4 (1).jpg

Corporal Ralph I. Ammon Jr.

Assistant BAR Gunner

G Company, 141st Infantry Regiment

141st_edited.png
36th_Infantry_Division_SSI.png

     Ralph I. Ammon Jr. was born the oldest of four siblings to a working-class family in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. His father, a machinist and truck driver for a nearby sawmill in the city, was the primary provider as he grew up. Ralph graduated from Lewisburg High School, where he played soccer, in 1942 and began a job as a manager of the green goods department at Weis Pure Food Store in Lewisburg. With war ongoing, however, the need for soldiers outweighed that of grocers and, in early 1943, Ralph was drafted. He enlisted in the U.S. Army on March 8, 1943, and was sent to basic training at Camp Wheeler, Georgia. By October, he traveled to Camp Meade, Maryland for preparation to ship overseas. He did so on November 13, arriving in North Africa two weeks later. By late December he left North Africa from a replacement depot destined for a combat unit in Italy.

     On January 8, 1944, Ralph was assigned to G Company, 2nd Battalion, 141st Infantry Regiment, 36th Infantry Division. The 36th had been fighting in Italy for over four months at this point and suffered heavy casualties in the process. As the spearhead for American forces on the subcontinent, the division required new men like Ralph to maintain its combat efficiency. Ralph’s assignment was to serve as an assistant BAR gunner in G Company, meaning he would pack extra ammunition, tools, and equipment to maintain the firepower of his platoon’s automatic rifle. On January 12, Ralph first moved to the front line with his company by taking over positions of the 1st Armored Division on Monte Porchia, lying between the important positions of Monte Maggiore and Monte Trocchio along the German winter line. Holding this strategic vantage point, it was not long before Ralph experienced his first combat.

​

     Around 0630 on January 15, the 2nd and 3rd Battalions of the 141st Infantry attacked towards German positions along the eastern slope of Monte  Trocchio down past La Pieta. G Company remained in reserve for the majority of the assault while the rest of 2nd Battalion made steady progress knocking out defensive positions. The Germans put up some resistance, but largely fell back to their defensive lines across the Rapido River. The 141st, alternatively, set up occupying the opposite side of the river for an inevitable crossing. Later in the day, Ralph was part of two recon patrols sent to cross the Rapido and observe the German defenses. The first went well, but the second was unable to cross because mines and counter-artillery fire had damaged their boats beyond usability. The Rapido, at this time, was roughly forty to fifty feet wide and eight to twelve feet deep with a swift current making it impossible to swim across. Returning to his foxhole on Monte Trocchio, Ralph remained on regimental guard with his company for several more days before the time came for the entire division to try and cross the Rapido once and for all.

​

     On the night of January 20, the 1st and 3rd Battalions attempted a crossing of the river near an S-Bend. The results were devastating. Many boats prepped for the crossing had been destroyed by enemy artillery, some groups became lost and ran into minefields, others tried using footbridges which quickly fell prey to artillery, and some men who managed to get across were quickly pinned down and forced back by further concentrations of enemy fire. Around 2100 on January 21, Ralph’s battalion was selected to replace the 1st Battalion for another (their first) attempt to cross the fast-moving river. In the darkness the men moved quickly carrying boats to aid their crossing. Scattered artillery fire, however, peppered them with holes. As Ralph and his company reached the river, they just as quickly had to call back for engineers to come and build an improvised footbridge. Throughout the early morning hours the engineers worked, making a small single-man bridge six inches under the water to hide it from German artillery. Ralph and his comrades began crossing one at a time on their hands and feet to keep their balance. The company commander even told the men to leave their rifles empty, as a single accidental round could ruin their cover and invite German artillery fire. By around 0530, most of the men were across and taking up positions in irrigation ditches just on the other side of the river, the only cover available on the flattened terrain. Another G Company man, Robert Abrahamson, recalled hearing a German call out “Ist das du Heinrich?” when he heard the commotion. Not long after, all hell broke loose.

     As the Germans realized the T-Patchers were now along the shore, they opened up with everything they had. Artillery fire rained down on the crossing point, destroying the feeble bridge which had brought them across, while machine guns, 88s, and Nebelwerfers blasted into their positions. The battlefield was filled with smoke from 36th Division smokepots and smoke shells, attempting to cover the infantry, but the Germans had them well in focus. Throughout the day men tried to advance but were unsuccessful in the face of the incredible wall of fire. Abrahamson recalled one friend peeking out of his ditch to call him over, only to be immediately cut down by a machine gun as soon as his head appeared. Other accounts describe men hiding under the bodies of the dead, firing scattered shots as they could, but largely sitting stuck along the bloody riverbank. “There are things that you don’t remember,” Ralph later recalled, “I don’t remember from the 20th to the 21st of January in 1944.”

​

     By the next day, January 22, Ralph and the other survivors from G Company were running low on ammunition, food, and water. By the evening, only one officer was left alive in the entire attacking force. With no bridge or boats to retreat across, an entire German defensive line pouring into their positions, and groups of German infantry slowly surrounding them, the officer made the decision that surrender was inevitable. As evening came, he took a white t-shirt from an enlisted man and slowly stood up from his foxhole, waving it around as German soldiers began making their way toward the group of Americans. Ralph believed there were around thirty-five to forty men with him at that time, joining him as he officially became a prisoner of war less than three weeks after arriving on the front line.

​

     In total, around 114 men were listed as missing in action from G Company after the disastrous crossing of the Rapido, Ralph among them. Once the group was deprived of their weapons, the Germans walked them roughly five miles back to a barn behind the lines and shortly thereafter threw them onto trucks to head towards Rome. While en route, American fighters strafed the column, but no casualties were taken. The men arrived on the 23rd to a transit camp in the mountains north of Rome where they were processed and kept for several days. It was here that Ralph received his German identification tags, designating him as prisoner # 270879. After a few days of waiting, the prisoners, most from the 36th captured at the Rapido, loaded into the infamous forty-and-eight boxcars, destined for camps deep in Germany. The cars were cramped, shoved full of sixty to seventy men each with only a single bucket left for relieving themselves and rampant fleas infesting their clothes. Each man in the car was given a quart of a loaf of sawdust-infused bread and a small tuna can meant to last the entire trip. There was not enough room to sit so every had to remain standing. With no sanitary facilities or food, many of the men became wretchedly ill, suffering from dysentery with an unbearable stench filling the railcar as men defecated into their helmets out of desperation. The train only took two stops during the entire trip, once in Austria and the other in Berlin, where the entire train of prisoners was left alone on the track while an American bombing raid rained down on targets within the city. Shortly thereafter the train was rerouted to the south to Muhlberg Stalag IV-B. 

     At Muhlberg, Ralph and his compatriots were ordered to strip for delousing and given a cold shower with a little turnip soup. After a week of sorting and milling about, he was loaded up with a number of other T-Patchers and sent northeast to Stalag II-B in Hammerstein. Stalag II-B was largely a work camp which oversaw countless smaller work camps across the Polish and German countryside. When the men stepped off of the train, they were told that anyone lower than a corporal was required to go and work on an Arbeitskommando, a manual labor group. With a few other clever prisoners, Ralph told the Germans that he was a farmer in hopes that he would be given the option to work on a farm outside of the dreary conditions of the main camp. Luckily, he was selected for exactly that. He and thirty-eight other men, many of them other T-Patchers captured at the Rapido, were loaded onto a train and then horse-drawn wagons as they made their way to their long-term residence: Burzen Kommando 1637.

​

The Thirty-Nine Prisoners included :

Robert Abrahamson (G Co/141 IR/36 ID), Ralph I. Ammon Jr. (G Co/141 IR/36 ID), James F. Arsenault (A Co/30 IR/3 ID), Walter J. Broderick (G Co/141 IR/36 ID), Leonard F. Butcher (L Co/141 IR/36 ID), James K. Carey (HQ Bty/10 FA/3 ID), Frank R. Chapman (G Co/141 IR/36 ID), Hazell Clapp (F Co/143 IR/36 ID), Joseph Denov (F Co/143 IR/36 ID), William H. Derrick (H Co/143 IR/36 ID), Harold D. Diamond (A Co/141 IR/36 ID), Vincent S Dulle (C Co/3 Rng Btn), Dean F. Fenton (G Co/141 IR/36 ID), Roy Head (NA/36 ID), William R. Hepner (NA/36 ID), Glenn N. Hoke (G Co/141 IR/36 ID), Ernest R. Iacovelli (E Co/143 IR/36 ID), George B. Martin (F Co/142 IR/36 ID), Ted Maslowski (F Co/143 IR/36 ID), Fidel L. Mendoza (K Co/141 IR/36 ID), Wilbert M. Myers (I Co/143 IR/36 ID), Jack R. Pangburn (A Co/141 IR/36 ID), Elmer Rasch (B Co/1 Rng Btn), Curtis S. Rinde (K Co/141 IR/36 ID), John J Robinson (NA/36 ID), Joseph F. Ruggiero (G Co/141 IR/36 ID), Thomas W. Sansoucie (G Co/141 IR/36 ID), Walter J. Silay (HJ Co/141 IR/36 ID), Maurice Silva (K Co/143 IR/36 ID), Alva J. Smith (F Co/141 IR/36 ID), Clemens J. Thennes (E Co/141 IR/36 ID), Aristides Stamulis (F Co/141 IR/36 ID), Menelaos Theodorou (G Co/141 IR/36 ID), Harold L. Thompson (G Co/141 IR/36 ID), George Torline (G Co/141 IR/36 ID), John A. Toth (H Co/141 IR/36 ID), James W. Waggoner (G Co/141 IR/36 ID), Joseph Warrum (H Co/141 IR/36 ID), and Alexander Zmuda (K Co/141 IR/36 ID).

​

     The men arrived on March 4, 1944, at Burzen Kommando 1637, located in the small farming community of Burzen, Poland. The facility was, in reality, just a built-up farm. The actual camp consisted of a large barn used as a barracks, a separate outbuilding which acted as a latrine, barbed wire fences, and three gates. It was located in northern Pomerania and was once part of a large estate owned by Prince Oscar, nephew of Kaiser Wilhelm, an ardent member of the Nazi Party. The estate included the entire village of Burzen, several smaller villages, a post office, train station, and around seven-hundred civilians. Most locals were women, since the men were off at war, and their day-to-day existence was quite quaint.

     After being shepherded into the barn, the men first picked their bunks. Two beds were stacked in each, and the men separated into pairs with their closest buddy to bunk with. Ralph ended up bunking with George Torline, a friend from G Company that had been captured with him. Next, they decided to elect a leader/representative for any interactions with the Germans. Alex Zmuda, who knew German and Polish, was the natural choice. That night, as they all went to bed, a voice rang out in the darkness, “Goodnight Grace, where you are.” The voice was that of Ernest Iacovelli, calling out to his girlfriend thousands of miles away. This little phrase was uttered by Ernest every night for the rest of their captivity, and it quickly became a ritual for every man in the camp to repeat after him in wishing her a goodnight. According to Aristides Stamulis, “that nightly salvation by one of our own bolstered our spirits, and brought a sense of sanity to our lives.”

​

     The next morning the men were all lined up in front of the camp and given a lecture by a German colonel. He ordered them to behave and cooperate and that in return they would be taken care of. Critical in the minds of the men, however, was his discouragement from any attempted escape. While he admitted that it would be easy to run off from the farm, he made sure that every man knew that for each escapee, two of those remaining would be shot. It was a grim pill to swallow for the thirty-nine men of Kommando 1637, but one they never forgot. Later that day, after the formation, all men agreed that no one would try to escape. Their number one goal was to survive incarceration, and no one would do anything to compromise the chances of someone else to do so. This was also the first opportunity for the men to write home and let their families know that they were alive and in the custody of the Germans. Ralph sent a letter home that day, but it did not arrive until April 19 after going through the Red Cross via Switzerland. According to a local newspaper article, it arrived at the post office and everyone in the small town became excited to tell Ralph’s parents. Rather than do so by phone, the postman decided to let them know personally. Arriving at Ralph’s home to see his mother standing outside, the mailman stated “I have some good news for you.” She replied, “I suppose more of my letters to my boy are coming back?” “No indeed,” the mailman answered, “It’s a card from him.” This was the first that Ralph’s family learned of his captivity. Ralph told them that he was in good health, was working on a farm with food, and was happy to have a job to keep him busy.

 

     As the men settled into their new situation, farm work became their norm. The farm was run by a superintendent who lived in a big house on a hill overlooking many of the fields, which was attended to by his housekeeper and her daughter. The superintendent was a party member, but was often very tolerant of the GIs and any mischief they caused because he loved anything American. Still, he would make sure they worked long and hard, often riding around on his tall white horse to check on them. The men fittingly dubbed him the “Lone Ranger.” Daily work was overseen by foremen who supervised the men in their regular duties. The most feared among them was a German civilian named Herman Prellip. He walked with a steel-tipped cane and at every infraction was ready and willing to cruelly lash out. The Americans looked the other way when he was around and local villagers similarly despised him for his treatment.

     German military presence was somewhat loose. Only six guards would ever be assigned to the group, usually under the orders of a sergeant. Most men were eastern front veterans sent home to recuperate on furlough. Eventually, this whittled down to three primary guards who became their long-term representatives of the Wehrmacht, nicknamed Ike, Mike, and Mustard. Ike was the head guard and did everything by the book. Mustard had a mumbling voice and was rarely understood.  Mike was a good, older man drafted into the service who hated Hitler. He was an expert woodsman who often enjoyed tagging along on any detail to the forest, giving them plenty of breaks and letting them work at a more casual pace. Mike was also a source of information for the prisoners, giving information on the war and what was happening in the outside world. Generally, the Americans had a good relationship with the guards and, after their Red Cross packages began to arrive a few months into captivity, often bartered cigarettes for bread, flea powder, canned food, and other goods that the Germans could get their hands on. Ralph stated that, overall, “[t]he guards on the farm took care of us,” but that at times “[y]ou didn’t know what to expect… [some guards] were weird. You didn’t know whether they were going to shoot you or not.”

​

     Unlike many prisoners of war, Ralph and the other men kept themselves busy with work. “I did all kinds of work on the farm,” he explained, including threshing wheat, milking cows, loading manure, harvesting and planting crops, grading potatoes, cutting ice, driving oxen, going into the forest for wood, putting drainage tile in a field to prevent flooding, and countless other activities thrusted upon the prisoners to maintain productivity in the fields. Each man typically had his own job. Torline was the designated oxen driver/plower, although Ralph filled in whenever he was sick or needed elsewhere. Work days began at 0600 with a bowl of barley soup, working until noon with a brief break of no food. They then continued to work until the foremen wanted to let them go, often between 1700 and 1900. Supper typically consisted of boiled potatoes and a quarter of a loaf of bread meant to last the duration of the week. Fed by the superintendent’s housekeeper, other occasional meals included pumpernickel mixed with sawdust, ersatz coffee, lard as jam, potatoes, and homemade cigarettes. Early on in the work the men became quite depressed about their situation. Zmuda, taking up his role as their leader, noticed the mood. While walking back to the barracks, he ordered the men to look smart and march in formation. Typically, their marches were met with stones thrown by local Hitler Youth or discouragements from locals who first believed all Americans were gangsters or cowboys. Surprised by the candid command, however, Ralph and the others listened, falling in line and even singing a song. This was one of their early moments of brotherhood, coming together to push through their miserable circumstances as a unit. Whereas the Germans first marched the men through the town to keep their spirits down, after two of these happy marches, the practice ceased.

​

     One of the most common bonding activities which men got through their incarceration was sabotage. Although they had agreed early on to not do anything which would harm another prisoner, they did agree to passively resist as much as they possibly could in hopes of doing their small part of stalling the German war machine. At times, this meant breaking tools or spoiling batches of potatoes by urinating or defecating on them while loading for shipment. Other times, it was setting fire to a nearby building. Sometimes it was as simple as breaking from work to run over to Joe Warrum, who would keep track of who could let out the longest fart. 

     Ralph remembered several times when the men dropped pitchforks, pieces of metal, or other scrap into hay bales and loaded them into the thrashing machine, jamming it up and putting it out of commission until repairs could be made. In one instance, Robert Thompson told the Germans he used to work for Caterpillar and could get it working again. Not only did his “repairs” take an absurd amount of time, but he threw away random parts until it required a complete replacement. Another time, Stamulis was throwing bales into the machine the wrong way (causing a malfunction and delay of several hours). Prellip caught him in the act, however, and beat him with his steel-tipped cane, causing him to bleed and be in great pain. Stamulis raised his pitchfork to attack the foreman, but the other prisoners, remembering their oath, talked him down to prevent any regrettable decisions. Instead, they carried him back to the barracks and spent several days recovering. Afterward, Prellip assigned him to the manure pile and other dirty jobs. Stamulis later had another bad run-in while shoveling coal. In the summer heat, he threw his shovel out the window to take a break but inadvertently hit a guard in the head. Accusing him of doing it deliberately, the guards quickly shoved him against a wall and prepared to shoot him. Thankfully, the men were able to defuse the situation with the help of the superintendent. One particularly violent encounter occurred during potato picking season. The group was working slowly, knowing that the food was for the German army, and the civilian workers quickly outpaced them. A German officer nearby noticed and began screaming orders at the men, demanding Zmuda explain why they were performing so poorly. Zmuda iterated how under the Geneva Convention they could not be required to assist the opposing military by picking food for them. The officer grabbed a rifle from a nearby guard, kicked Zmuda on his knees, and buried the muzzle against Zmuda’s head. After some cursing and shouting at the officer, the prisoners decided their best bet was to simply go back to work, which, after a few minutes, caused the officer to throw the rifle down and storm off. 

​

     While working in the fields, the prisoners came across a host of other characters. One of the most common was the forester, a very proud and regal man who paraded around in a green uniform on his motorbike with a pistol, carbine, and feather in his hat. He was some sort of government warden for the nearby forests, and was quite proud of his job despite not being an official military or party man. He was nicknamed “Robin Hood,” and would guide the prisoners to trees which could be harvested. Sometimes the prisoners worked alongside a couple of Russian and French POWs from another nearby camp. These prisoners were less talkative due to the language barrier, but at times were able to trade information they heard about the war to keep up the spirits of the GIs. Women were a source of scorn and relief for the Americans. Young girls, the daughters of villagers and volunteers from the big cities, at times worked in the fields with them. They, however, loved to tease the Americans “unmercifully.” Rubbing their breasts, squatting down, flashing underwear, and performing a myriad of other seductive activities meant to torture the men, who had been told they would be shot if they were ever caught touching one of them, the women took joy in taunting the prisoners. At times, the teasing was so miserable that the guards would laugh and tell the girls to stop. Two women provided a different sort of experience. Stefania Markowska, the daughter of the superintendent’s housekeeper, roamed the farms freely and sometimes came down to talk with the Americans. She was mostly sweet to them, sneaking extra food and rations or other goods when she could. The superintendent’s wife proved a source of amusement, as the men believed she could not speak any English. As a result, the prisoners would say horrible things to her, shouting curses and horrendous sexual acts to her in a way that sounded sweet or complimentary as she went by. 

​

     When the drudgery of work was over, the barracks provided a home for the men where some of their most meaningful experiences occurred. The barracks itself was a rather poor place; it was drafty, flea-ridden, and full of mice which snuggled up to you in the winter. It also lacked any sanitary facilities.  There were no showers or bathrooms except for the separated outhouse which was locked up at night, forcing those who got sick to make due with buckets inside the barn. Wilbert Myers was the group’s cook, taking their combined rations and whatever goods they could steal to make somewhat tolerable meals that would grant them strength. Letter writing while lounging around the barracks was an extremely uplifting activity. The thirty-nine men shared a single pencil, but every person among them wrote letters often, even though they knew it would take many months to get back to the United States. It was their own connection to home, and something each man looked forward to hearing back from. Humor and conversation were other common ways the men kept their spirits up. Besides the recitation of “Goodnight Grace” each evening, they played games of “last look,” to see who would be the last to look at someone before the rest fell asleep. Joseph Ruggiero perfected a Hitler imitation, using his comb as a mustache and randomly shouting “Sieg Heil” when out and about. Sometimes, the men would give a “Heil Roosevelt,” confusing the guards until the Americans explained that they too used it to honor their president. Fidel Mendoza was known for his “soulful voice” which he used to sing out traditional Mexican ballads. Sometimes, though, the best medicine was simple conversation between the men that reminded them of the lives, homes, and loved ones they had to go back to. Even with all this to keep the men strong, several suffered from mental illness and strain during their imprisonment, requiring the gentle hands of all to make sure they made it through alongside everyone else 

     Life in the camp also allowed the men to showcase their ingenuity. To clean up their barracks, the men first made a trough that could be used for shaving, drinking, taking baths, and storing water. Other early additions included chess and checker sets they carved which were then combined with cards they got from guards using cigarettes. Word games and philosophical debates on complex topics were other tools to keep their minds fresh and focused. More tangibly, and to aid in their musical talents, Joseph Denov learned how to make instruments. At first the group were able to borrow some, like harmonicas or guitars, from a rotation system shared by other camps. Denov, the group’s carpenter, at one point built an entire xylophone bar by bar, using the musically-inclined ear of Jack Smith to slowly carve and tune each bar to the correct pitch. By  the time it was complete, Smith was a master player. During the Christmas of 1944, they had stolen a small Christmas tree and made decorations from scrap materials. For Christmas dinner, several chickens were stolen, stripped, and hidden. Around 0700 on Christmas morning the guards came by and forced them to stand outside in formation without any of their clothes on while a two-hour inspection searched high and low for signs of the chickens. Finding no evidence, the Germans moved on and the men enjoyed their holiday meal. Later, Mike, their favorite guard, came in. He was greeted with leftover chicken and stolen schnapps.

​

     One of their most meaningful creations was their very own American flag. After saving scraps of cloth and paper for some time, the men were able to faithfully recreate the stars and stripes. It hung proudly in the barn with them until a guard came in one day and tore it down while on inspection, shouting “I won’t see that flag in here anymore, or someone will die!” The men, too proud of their flag and all it represented, instead put it up every night when people were all tucked inside, leaving it up until they went to bed. It was a small beacon of hope and home in a dark place.

​

     By the end of January 1945, as the snows and cold of winter filled the landscape, excitement began to arise among the guards and locals. Russian soldiers were only a matter of miles away and it looked more and more likely that their farm would be overrun. The guards told the men to be ready to move at a moment’s notice for a march, so the men built two wooden sleds to carry supplies and made field packs out of any leftover material. On January 29, their three guards received orders to take the men to northern Germany by foot. Another group of soldiers passing through, however, wanted to simply shoot the Americans to save the trouble. Thankfully, the superintendent’s wife came out to advocate for “her boys,” and resolved the situation.

     The forced march began on foot on January 29, 1945, leaving in the dark amidst a swirling blizzard maybe about ten degrees above zero. The prisoners promised each other that everyone was going to make it or no one would. That first night they stayed in a German army barracks but for the rest of the march mostly stayed in abandoned barns and other buildings that had not been burned down by retreating German forces. Food was scarce during the trek. Given none before the trip, the prisoners were largely left to scrounge for themselves wherever they passed through. Their guards often had to go ahead of the group to try and find shelter, asking farmers for food and accommodations. In one instance, they were all lying in an old barn when an SS officer approached the guards and demanded that they all immediately clear out of the building so that his men could sleep there. The head guard quickly rebutted by explaining how the group had been marching all day and needed rest. The officer did not seem to care. Pulling out his pistol and putting it to the guard's head, he slowly growled “Don’t you think they should get out when I want them to?” It was not long after they left to find somewhere new to sleep. Over the course of the journey, several men simply dropped from exhaustion and hunger, but the boys picked them up and continued on, refusing to leave anyone behind. Despite their best efforts, however, one man was lost, suffering from trench foot and gangrene due to the weather. He was left with other Germans, who took him to a doctor and amputated his feet, although this was not learned by the others until much later after the war. 

​

     After forty days and 475 miles, the march came to a halt near Schwerin, Germany, around March 10, 1945. The thirty-nine were now split apart after over a year in captivity. Separating the lot into three groups, Ralph, James Arsenault, Maurice Silva, and a few others were assigned to group “Zopel,” which was lodged at a sawmill and tasked with cutting down trees in a nearby forest. For several weeks this was the majority of their work, the men watching passively as thousands of German soldiers and vehicles passed by. In April, two sights burned into the memories of the men. First was a formation of over 1,500 American bombers passing overhead. While the guards got mad at their cheering, the boys took this as a sign that the end was near. They only had to survive a little while longer. The second sight was much more grim. Around April 20, 1945, the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp, located only a few miles away, was emptied as its near 33,000 prisoners were put onto their own forced death march. This column passed through Schwerin and in front of the Americans, who had never seen the dreaded realities of the Holocaust. “You could swear they were all walking dead,” Robert Abrahamson later recounted.

​

     A few days later, those in the “Zopel” group figured out why they were cutting trees: to make tank traps that the Germans were putting up around the area to stop the Russian advance. One day after learning this revelation, Ralph and the other sixteen prisoners of the group decided to confront their single armed guard about the matter. They threw down their tools and told the guard that they would no longer work on the project. The guard threatened to shoot them if they did not get back to work, but they replied that he only had one rifle, and that the sixteen of them that he did not shoot at first would quickly overtake him should he decide to enforce his order. The German decided that they could simply cut firewood thereafter.

     On May 3, 1945, Ralph’s group knew that the Russians were extremely close. Many of the German soldiers had left the area and rumor was that the Russians were just down the road in nearby Crivitz. Taking their luck, a few of the men, Ralph included, decided to pack their bags and head into town. Their gamble paid off. Sure enough, in the middle of the city was a Russian roadblock. They approached and explained their situation to the Russian guard, who told them that American forces were still about twenty miles to the west and that they were not allowed to pass through the Russian lines. The men grew angry at the news, but before a fight could break out an American jeep was spotted towards the end of the road. Shouting out to the driver, their pleas were unanswered. They then switched to their secondary method of communication, cursing, swearing, and calling dirty names at the GI in the jeep. At that point, he got out and walked down to see “what the hell was going on.” “We are POWs,” they answered. “Oh my God!” the soldier exclaimed, running back to his jeep and phoning for an officer, who came to meet them with cigarettes and PX supplies. They were finally free.

​

     The American soldiers turned out to be from the 8th Infantry Division. After this initial meeting, they walked Ralph and the others through no man’s land and back towards American lines, passing dead people, horses, abandoned wagons, trucks, and tanks: symbols of their now utterly defeated captors. They arrived in Schwerin proper and were given food and new clothes before being brought to a theater to wait for further orders. POWs, they were told, had second dibs on transports back to the United States, with only the wounded having higher priority. The next morning they were trucked to a nearby German air base and loaded aboard a C-47 which brought them to Camp Lucky Strike. Here Ralph received some personal belongings, including his first and only “Ike” jacket, and as much food as he could eat. After two nights in Lucky Strike, the group was moved to LeHavre, France, where they were resting on May 8, 1945, when the news dropped that the war in Europe was over. 

​

     On June 3, Ralph boarded the USS Monticello with thousands of other POWs for home. He arrived in Jersey City around ten days later and was immediately given a sixty-day furlough to return home and visit his family after one year, three months, and eleven days in captivity. It was a joyous homecoming. Unlike many GIs, however, Ralph did not come home with any souvenirs or medals for his bravery. Instead, all he recalled having was his set of summer khakis and the Ike jacket on his back. He wore these clothes for a photo in his parent’s backyard during the furlough. After the furlough, he was sent back to Camp Croft, South Carolina where he served as an instructor for a few months before finally receiving his discharge from the Army in November 1945. At last, his service was at its end.

     Life went on for Ralph, but his experiences as a prisoner of war never left him. He married his lifelong bride, Edna, in 1947 and spent a career as the meat manager for Weis Markets in Lewisburg. In 1979, he helped to plan the very first reunion for the thirty-nine survivors of Arbeitskommando 1637. A group which had experienced so much together that so few could truly understand or relate to, Ralph wanted to bring the men back together so that they could bond once more over that formative year of their lives. At one reunion, they even met Grace, the now wife of Iacovelli whom they had wished goodnight to from their bunks so many years before. The reunions managed to find all but two of the men, and brought with them a wave of intense emotions. “It’s more like we were brothers,” than fellow prisoners, Ralph explained. The reunion became a yearly occurrence for the next several decades, Ralph attending each and every one. 

​

     The reunions also helped Ralph grapple with his own experiences, which he then put to use in his own community. “When we get together for our reunions we all talk about being prisoners of war,” Ralph explained, “There are some things I just block out of my mind. It was an experience that I’ll never forget.” This mental block slowly unraveled as the men shared their stories and feelings with each other. Ralph detailed how “[o]ne fellow will mention a little something and then another will add to it or remember the same thing later.” “It took a long, long time before anyone would talk about it other than among ourselves,” he told one reporter. Eventually, Ralph did open up to others about his story. He first took an active role writing stories for his local newspaper about international events involving POWs, particularly during the Gulf War. Some of his most active and impactful efforts, though, were his visits to local high schools. For many years he attended events at the schools to “reconstruct” his experiences as a prisoner and share this oft-forgotten side of war with the next generation. It was only after many years of reunions, however, that this was possible. 

​

     The culmination of Ralph’s grappling with his wartime imprisonment came in 1994 when he and some of the other thirty-nine decided to make the trip back to Poland to find their former camp. “The first thing I saw was the lake I helped cut ice off of that winter,” he exclaimed as their train pulled into the rural farmscape near Burzen, now known as Borocino. Unfortunately, the Germans had burned the farm buildings after the prisoners had left, but he, Ernest Iacovelli, James Arsenault, and Robert Abrahamson were able to travel around the area and find numerous landmarks from their time in captivity. “The area was the same,” Ralph said, “[but] the farm was scorched… there are two buildings still standing.” A local Polish Priest led them during the trip and shared stories about the village since they had left. Apparently, Stefania had stayed in the village for six years after the war before leaving, and several structures, such as the church and main farm building, were still being used by locals. It was a very moving experience for Ralph and the others. “I missed being there on the 50th anniversary by one month to the day,” he related to a local paper when he returned home, “I spent my 20th birthday there.”

     Ralph kept up his work advocating for POWs and other veterans in the media, to children, and to anyone else who would listen, for two more decades before he passed away in 2011. He was an extremely active and beloved member of his community, and was one of the final surviving members of Burzen Kommando 1637. Shortly before his death, Ralph got together with James Arsenault and the few other survivors to finally memorialize the story of Arbeitskommando 1637. Published shortly after Ralph passed, “Brothers of War” compiled the recollections and memories of Ralph and his “brothers” who survived imprisonment by Nazi Germany nearly seventy years prior. Today, all the brothers have passed. Thanks to the efforts of Ralph and his comrades, however, their legacy lives on. The story of the thirty-nine heroic Americans who survived, thrived, and fought back through their year of imprisonment by Nazi Germany will not be forgotten.

PA-ETO-Marburger: Pro Gallery

Copyright © 2025 by The T-Patch Archive. All Rights Reserved. No content can be used from this site unless consent has been given by 36thDivisionArchive.com. 

bottom of page