A dear friend who was a POW for over a year in WW11 died recently. I often thought how terrible it must have been for his parents and sweetheart to get that telegram from the government that he was MIA. For months they didn't know anything, could only hope.
He had been captured by Germans just before the Battle of the Bulge and spent his captivity being marched from one camp to another to keep ahead of the Allied armies. When they were finally released by the Russian army they were emaciated and weak. The Russians fed them up and then took them roundabout back west to meet the Americans, and they were sent home as soon as possible.
He told a story of one German clerk who was recording the soldiers names etc. when they were first captured. When the clerk saw by my friend's dogtags that he was Jewish, the clerk told him to lose the tags and say that he was Protestant, which he did. He doesn't know if he would have survived or not had his captors known the truth, but he always credited that clerk with saving his life.
There were other stories he told, but not often. It was a time he preferred to forget.
