The Waterbury Democrat., 1945-05-23

1 For 1000 men of all nations who have slowly frozen and starved all winter in this limbo of dead hopes it is really a day of resurrection, at least spiritual if it cannot yet be physical.
 We did not have the services here that we did at Berlin for Christmas but we have something else-the hope that 1t will soon be over.
 For Christmas in our prison camp in Berlin, Italian priests conducted a really beautiful midnight Mass which handful of the prisoners attended.
 They had constructed a big cradle out of bits of colored paper, cello phane. grass and brush, and even managed to light it effectively with a couple of candles and weak electric light.
 A couple of tables were convert ed into an altar. Ragged German blankets hid the dismal mass of the big wooden hunks. Everyone, even the choir, wore his best uni form.
 AS the choir sang "Adeste Eide lis' 8 lone German soldier slided into the room and remained quiet ly in a corner. He seemed pretty forlorn.
 The temperature is below zero now and we spent most of the day l ct,,ffirn r1c in, yryol1c trritn old sacks which a kitchen worker found for us. He likes Americans now that he discovered his son, who was captured, has been well treated in the United States-a damn sight better than we are.
 On New Years Eve the city had a free fireworks display. It was supplied by Sir Arthur Harris bombers-at least several hundred of them-who gave Berlin's sub urbs a fine old plastering with plenty of blockbusters and smaller bombs. It cheered up no end.
 One of the guards standing in the darkness on the lip Of a slit trench with me said and that starts the darkest year in German history
 left Berlin on January 25, and German morale was at low point thus far.
 Forlorn Volkssturm Graybeards, carrying knapsacks, spades and bot ties of Ersatz coffee, were gathered on the subway platform about to set off for the eastern front to dig trenches, or if necessary fight.
 Berlin's railway stations were damned with half-frozen refugees from the east begging for soup and bread clamoring for place on the trains and openly reviling the gov- ernment
 The Nazi leadership and the Ger man people themselves know that their fighting has now been reduced to one last desperate furry.
 Apparently the Nazis blindly hope to get compromise from the vest ern powers, failing which they will have prolonged their own miserable lives for few weeks at the expense of the German people.
 But the morale which held up for five and one-half years has now col- lapsed and the German no longer even pays lip service to the Nazis- although he hasn't the spirit left to do much about them.
 The German people deserve better from their leaders for the steadfast- ness with which they stuck under conditions which no nation had ever been asked to face before.
 For two and one-half years now the nation has kept faith through one debacle after another, with no relief from the steady pounding of aid raids, bad food and bad news expect the brief phony furry over the Vi and V-2 weapons.
 Chiefly it was patriotism and the sheer nerve of highly developed people which could get no promise Of clemency from its enemies and which somehow contrived to adapt itself to each new calamity.