Traveling Through Time With the Shelby County Historical Society
    Feature Article on German POW Camp. Topic: WAR
Written by Ed Fridley with Betty Fridley in May, 2000

ANNA RESIDENT REMEMBERS GERMAN
POW CAMP

bettyandedfridley.jpg (18871 bytes)  Betty & Ed Fridley

John Edwin Fridley, Anna, was in the 70th Infantry Division, 275th Regiment, 3rd Battalion, Company I, assigned to the left flank of the 7th U.S. Army. His unit fought in the Vosges Mountains, the foothills of the mountains of Alsace Lorraine. The Vosges had never before been fought across, not even by Napoleon. Fridley was captured, between Philipsbourg, Alsace Lorraine (France), and Bitche (Germany). Co. I was involved in the Nordwind Campaign, started by the Germans to take the pressure off the Germans at the Battle of the Bulge by making the Allies spread their forces thinner.  Following are excerpts taken from material Ed dictated to his mother and father, Archie and Vesta Fridley, when he returned to Anna in the latter part of June 1945. He had been held prisoner for 135 days.

It was New Year's Eve in 1945, and our Company had moved up the hills by trucks to Saarbrucken, Germany, having come from Strasburg, France. It was cold, snowy, and disagreeable. We climbed out of the trucks and marched about five miles on up the hills where we dug in. We were ambushed and we retreated; several men were wounded. Then we came under artillery fire. A bunch of greenhorn soldiers had their first taste of the real war.

Two of us and our squad leader went back in a Jeep to Philipsbourg to get orders. The Germans found us and took us prisoner. The Germans were so excited to find a carton of K-rations in the jeep they almost got into a fight over them. We were taken by Jeep, under guard, back into the hills where Company I had been fighting. Many of our Company were taken prisoner.  We stopped to pick up two of our wounded men and took them to their headquarters. The Germans loaded the wounded into a horse-drawn wagon and took them to a German hospital nearby. This was typical of the type of equipment the Germans had remaining. They were considerate of the wounded men.

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