The Waterbury Democrat., 1945-05-07

brought 1t along we might have been able to make a quick turn and get away from the Germans. But the road was too narrow.
 We were bowling along without a worry when we came to a road block. Schwab stopped our jeep and for about two minutes we dis cussed what we should do. The Germans made up our minds for us.
 There was a burst of firing which sounded like an entire regiment was shooting at us. We tumbled out of the jeep looking for cover. I tried to get under the rear of the jeep and Bryan crowded in beside me Mecklin dived for a ditch. Schwab ran back to the tow bar and kept trying to get the trailer unhitched so we could turn the jeep on the road and flee. He was saying plenty of things about the Germans that I can't reproduce here.
 The firing continued for three minutes. Suddenly Bryan turned his head and said: "I'm hit"
 "Is it bad?" asked.
 "No, it's just my leg and I didn't feel it hit a bone"
 We lighted a couple of cigarets.
 Mecklin was trying to crawl along the ditch away from the German lines and he might have escaped if another American jeep hadn't come down the road just then. I stretched out from under our jsep anl tried to wave the other one back. It turned, bust just then a German buleet put it's motor out of commission. The six occupants of the jeep jumped out and dived for the ditch, but just then Germans came sWarming out of the woods, firing as they ran. Three of the six men in the other jeep were wounded. The other three joined us as prisoners of the Germans.
 We never did find out what hap pened to the three wounded men from the other jeep. Bryan was taken to a hospital and the rest of us were put in room in the old French barracks at Chaumont- Sur Marne.
 The three men from the other jeep who had not been wounded were Sgt. Ralph Harris of Screven, Ga, Sgt Forrest Eadler of Rich mond, Ind, and Charles Padgett of Washington, Ind All of them were angry, not so much because they had been captured as because their company, which was a few miles to the north, had been promised steaks for dinner. Instead of steaks we got a piece of dry bread, a chunk of margarine and a portion of hard cheese.
 AS we ate our dinner we talked about the way the French acted when the Germans led us through Chaumont to our prison. They way ed at us. They smiled and they didn't seem to care whether the Germans noticed it or not. Appar- ently they thought the American army would be in town soon.
 The room in which we were held had a few mattresses and some old blankets on the floor. After dinner our guards found that the door would not lock from the outside. I speak German, so I suggested to the chief guard:
 Give me the key and I will lock the door from the inside and then pass the key out through the win dow barS tO vOI1 V
 He seemed to think that would be equlivanent. to destroying an en- tire division of the Wehdmacht and rejected it instantly. Instead he or dered new lock made.
 I got to wondering what would happen when they began question ing us. l was particularly interest ed in what they would do to me when they found out I had been a newspaper correspondent in Berlin for several years.
 It was dark now and we could hear throbbing sound from the sky. It was made by a large force of Royal Air Force heavy bombers going out on their nightly mission to Blast Germany. All of us wished them the best of luck.
 TOMORROW: The Nazi Colonel Begins ASkiOp O1Ieetjope