WALTER W. MARTIN (1925-2012)
In the space on one year, Army private Walter W. Martin went from basic training, to the Battle of the Bulge and then spent six months as a prisoner in Germany.
He died Jan. 17th at age 86.
Born in New York, he was drafted into the Army in 1944. On December 19th of that year, he and some 7,000 others of the 106th Infantry Division were captured by German forces in southeastern Belgium in Germany's final offensive at the Battle of the Bulge.
He and the others spent the next two weeks being herded to a POW camp in eastern Germany. They walked single file down a road for three days. Once across the German border, they were crammed into unheated box cars, 60 to a car and traveled that way for ten days to Stalag 4B in Muhlberg, near Dresden.
Just once they got off that train in Limburg on Christmas Eve on the night British forces bombed the city. The next morning they were ordered to collect the dead bodies.
In a 1994 Tribune article, Mr. Martin recalled, "A few times during the trip we were given bread and water. I never found out how many survived."
He and the others were freed by Societ forces in May 1945.
This is sure a far cry from the conditions German POWs faced in the United States.
The Greatest Generation. --GreGen
From the Feb. 1st Chicago Tribune.
The USS North Carolina (BB-55) My all-time favorite warship. As an elementary school student in North Carolina, I donated nickels and dimes to save this ship back in the early sixties.
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