The Wilmington morning star. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1909-1990, 1945-05-08
BY KENNETH L. DIXON

| 1911 AAAG ALI LIN GER
MANY, May T. Delayed)- Up =
Aside to kids attending Horace
Mann school for boys in New York
City-do you guys remember how
you raised enough dough to buy
an ambulance for use on the wal
fronts overseas?
Well, you ought to feel pretty
good about it today. This morn
ing long cavalcade of ambu.
lances, trucks and jeeps rolled
across the combat line, over nd
mans land some 20 miles into Ger
man territory. Flying flags of a
temporary truce it was bound for
Antengrabow prison to get more
than 1000 captured American SOL
diers as well as thousands of other
Allied prisoners.
Ambulances of the 308th medi-
cal battalion were along to bring
out the wounded. They needed
those ambulances badly-but even
so it was slightly unnerving to sit
in them and wonder what would
happen if the Germans decided to
double cross us.
But they didn't - and lot of
men were brought out.
The point is that the first am
bulance, driven by Pfc. Willie Cop
per, Danvi1le, Va, carried a lit
tie metal tag saying it had been
donated by you boys of Horace
Mann.
@You might write something
about that" said Sgt. Phil Pinnis,
of Foxcroft, Maine. Those kids
probably will be glad to know
their ambulance is doing some
good"
yeah - tell them we really
needed it, said Opt. John Ling,
of Madison, Ind" The last one we
got was shot up"
There is probably a moral OF
some kind in the antics of those Ii,
berated Yanks as they rode the
trucks of the motor cavalcade
back through miles of German ter
ritory to freedom.
Some who had been prisoners
for nearly two and half years
leaned out and tossed cigarettes
to German kids. Others threw
them pieces of candy out OF the
first K rations they had seen IN
year.
At the same time they shouted
nrofanitv at almost all German
adults, whether civilians or SOL
diers. 1t didn't seem to make
sense.
"It's probably the first TIME in
years they have been able to feel
like they are top dog again" SAID
one CT truck driver. Il guess they
gotta do something to show how
good they feel"
Maybe that was part of it-but
it went deeper than that.
During one pause a German SOL
der came up and tried to surren-
der One erstwhile American prl-
soner who had been kicked around
considerably in the German prl-
son camp hoped off the truck ana
knocked the German down. linen
he got back on the truck.
From half dozen nearby
trucks-from men who had also
been kicked around plenty by the
Germans for endless months
came angry mutters.
s'What the hell did you do that
fo,,o,, eo;J o,oo
"Cut it out, Jack. He didn't do
nothing to you," said another.
"That was cheap trick-leave
the guy alone. He's through" was
another.
You probably could get any kind
of a moral you wanted to out OF
that incident. All I know IS that
it left us with. a warm 1eellng.
We had expected bitter viciousness
out of these who had been under
the German heel. Maybe they
should have been that way-maybe
not. But that is what happened:
You folks back home who found
out about your boys being hberat-
ed from Altengrabow incidentally
can give Pfc. Carl T. Weber. OF
Rochester, N. Y. and Pic: John
L. Ma1oney, Of Dunkirk, N. w.
credit for big assist.
It was impossible to get the
names Of all 1000 Americans for
the simple reason that they were
promptly loaded into trucks and
moved. It was necessary to climb
into truck and get all the names
~oesib1a as it rolled along and then
lump into another. One correspon-
dent could have gotten tenth OF
the names following this proce-