The Waterbury Democrat., 1945-05-24
By EDWARD w. REATTIE, JR.

LuckenWalde- we are free.
 Our guards have deserted, officers and men alike. in cars, on bicycles, in carts or in the ragged little col umn of tail enderS who pulled out at noon after dismally handing the camp over to Allied prisoners.
 It is April 2l. and although there is a German SS detachment camp ed in the woods near here who threaten to shoot us if we show a light, make any demonstration. or interfere in any way with the Ger man war effort we know we are free.
 Gone is the prison camp Of 17,000 men of all EationalitieS that sprout- ed from the bleak Juterbog Heath as a by-product of German chaos.
 This camp was composed of Rus sians, French. Poles, Norwegians, Serbs. Italians, Greeks. Americans and men from all parts of the Bri- tlsh Empire.
 These men were herded across the WindsWept plains of East Germany in zero weather. without food or shelter or at best were nailed into unheated box cars or damned into fiat cars for trips up to a week or 1 ten days.
 They were full of vermin and the hunks were full of lice and bedbugs. Nobody has had bath since arrival and some not even then.
 Our diet here was so miserable even self respecting pig back home would have refused it. We didn't stop, though, we wolfed it down - bugs, putrid meat, rotten potatoes and all
 The arrival of Red Cross pack ages enabled the issuance of one each week to each prisoner and checked the steady decline in health and morale but Allied doc tors are still confronted with an ap- palling variety of dysentery, pneu- monia and other pulmonary disease. frostbite and mental ailments.
 This day of liberation has eli maXed three weeks Of mounting eX- citement-a sort of emotional cres- cendo who could only be experi- enced in a time like this among men who have been prisoners for up to five and one-half years.
 Now they can watch their enemy collapse around them.
 This has been an unforgettable series ol days There was the day of President Roosevelt'S death when hundreds of prisoners of all nation alities broke down and Wept. and any German who had made a Wise- crack would have been torn apart.
 There was the day the Americans smashed across the Elbe and we all thought liberation would be mat ter of hours. But they stopped near Wittenberg, about 25 miles away. and we know now that it must have been agreed to let the Russians take Berlin.
 And then there was the night the eastern horizon fiickered and nut tered for hours and we know the Russian offensive had started
 There was the night when 17.0O0 prisoners, including veterans of the RAF, who watched in open mouthed fascination the raid of several hundred heavy bombers on PotSdam in a concentrated satura- ton raid.
 It was the most evilly beautiful spectacle I have even seen and the most frightening I ever hope to see.
 Then there was the moment when the Germans herded 1900 RAF off, cers and non cons down to the station with the intention of sending them in boxcars to the camp at Moosburg. Fortunately this turned out to be just another Ger man farce. The men eamped out in the boxcars for two days-and then the Germans Sheepishly ad- mitted they couldn't find locomo- tive.
 We got out every available instru- ment to play the RAF veterans back to camp with Hail, Hail the Gangs All Here"'
 Then one day the colonel sent word for all senior Allied officers Only It. Col. Walter M. Oakes. of (39l4 West SalianS St. San An tonic, Tex. was available With me ss interpreter he accepted the camp just outside the main gate.
 When the German Col Lutter demanded to know whether we were able to keep order, Oakes pointed out the GI columns with white arm- bands already moving smartly out of the gate to take over patrol.
 Oakes told him that all nation- alities long had been organized for just such duty. Lutter was shocked.