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Newspaper recounts man's story of days as POW

      Robert (Bob) Burns was taken prisoner of war during the Battle of the Bulge.   He was a Sergeant with the Army serving with the 104th Division (Timberwolfs) Co. B. 

     The following comes from a newspaper account of the day: 

     "Sgt. Robert Burns related his experiences as a German prisoner of war stressing the lack of food as one of the worst features of prison life. 

     "Burns said he dropped from 215 to 130 pounds before he was back in American hands.  Food consisted largely of soup with occasional meat and a loaf of bread for five to 10 men per day.  That was about two slices for each man. 

     "He said he thought the Germans probably couldn't increase the quality of the food given the prisoners but he felt they could have increased the quantity. 

     "Red Cross boxes did much to keep the men alive, he said, but disrupted transportation often prevented arrival of the boxes.

       "Sgt. Burns was with a 14-man patrol in western Germany in November 1944, when he was captured.  The group had gone into a basement to plot maps when the Germans trapped them, hurling grenades.  Only two men, Burns and another, could walk out when the fight ended. 

     "Burns suffered a leg wound but it would not have been serious except that it became infected on a five-day march to a prison camp.  He also sprained his ankle on that march and he spent much of his life as a prisoner in bed thereafter. In fact it was not until he was liberated and in American hands that he recovered. 

     "Hospital and medical facilities were poor, he said, and disease caused much trouble but few deaths.  The barracks in the prison camp were heated with a weekly coal ration that lasted about an hour.  Beds were wood with straw-filled ticks and many lice. 

     "During his stay in camp near Berlin he could see the fleets of bombers pounding that capital city. 

     "One camp he was in had no chaplain, but American soldiers conducted services regularly.  The morale of the men was good all the time, he said. 

     "Liberation came during the night.  The Americans didn't know the Russians had captured the camp until morning.   Not a shot was fired.  After two weeks under Russian administration, American trucks and ambulances arrived to start the prisoners on their way home. 

     "I just couldn't describe the feeling when those American trucks and their American flags arrived," he said." 

     Burns was known around Flat River as Bob Burns.  He worked at Krogers as a butcher before the war.  He is now deceased. 

     Sgt. Burns recuperated at the O'Reilly General Hospital in Springfield and was discharged on Sept. 5, 1945.  He joined the Army on Sept. 8, 1942.

 The DAILY JOURNAL, St. Francois County., Wednesday, April 26, 1995.

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