Early training
Willard and Wilbur Diefenthaler trained at Camp Phillips, Kan., and both were assigned to the 106th Infantry. Willard recalls how mistaken identity almost denied him his first meal at the mess hall. He describes his chemical warfare training and recalls witnessing British ingenuity in Oxford, England.
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The Bulge
Willard Diefenthaler chronicles the early hours of the Battle of the Bulge. Surviving those first hours was the first of many "lucky" moments.
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Surviving Bad Orb
Diefenthaler describes his capture during the Battle of the Bulge. Prisoners marched and dragged each other through the rain and sleet to a railhead, where they were packed into boxcars for prison camps. While waiting outside Lindberg Prison Camp, Diefenthaler narrowly escaped strafing from an Allied plane. He recalls a moment of kindness from a German civilian and describes the grim living conditions at Stalag 9B in Bad Orb, Germany.
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Wilbur
The Germans moved Diefenthaler to Stalag 9A on Jan. 25, 1945. He describes his last memories of his brother, Wilbur, who was too ill to move. Decades later, Diefenthaler received his brother's final letter and met the American medic who took care of Wilbur during his final days.
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Liberation
The Allies liberated Stalag 9A on Good Friday, 1945. Diefenthaler describes how several prisoners exacted revenge against "The Man of Confidence," the sergeant formerly in charge of the camp. The next staging ground was Camp Lucky Strike in LaHavre, France, where some former POWs died from overeating.
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Reunions
Diefenthaler reflects on the importance of attending veterans' reunions. He notes that POWs suffered during and after the war, and he commends supportive POW wives.
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Liberation
The Allies liberated Stalag 9A on Good Friday, 1945. Diefenthaler describes how several prisoners exacted revenge against "The Man of Confidence," the sergeant formerly in charge of the camp. The next staging ground was Camp Lucky Strike in LaHavre, France, where some former POWs died from overeating.
audio clip (3:17)

Mark Van Ells: So you were liberated Good Friday of 1945.

Willard Diefenthaler: '45, 3:10 in the afternoon.

Van Ells: To be precise.

Diefenthaler: Yeah.

Van Ells: What happened after that?

Diefenthaler: So they unloaded their whole supplies on us. They had cigarettes and candy bars and everything else. So then Chaplain Neal came in — he was one of the chaplains that we had always been with — and he held service for Easter for whatever was left of Good Friday and for Easter. … They brought in a bunch of German prisoners. … The "Man of Confidence" [was] there, this big tech sergeant. He says to come in and his name is Haupman Fitzbach. "If you ever get the chance, kill him." So they put —some of the guards had left. They had parked a tank in the corner of the field and they left, so we thought that there'd be a fight, but there was no fight. And some of our guys come and they just stomped this Fitzbach and another officer to death; they just stomped on his head and everything. So they put the MPs, our MPs, on, to keep us out. So then we had to stay in the barracks for a couple of days and the German, some of the soldiers come in and scrubbed the floor.

Van Ells: I would imagine they were feeding you by this time.

Diefenthaler: They hadn't fed us yet except what the tank guys had in their store. Then they come, and they must have had a storeroom full of potatoes, so then we got some potatoes. And then a couple of days later the truck that was in the — I don't know if it was a red-ball or white-ball highway. They were a bunch of black soldiers with the worst looking trucks, but they run like a clock. And they trucked us in to Giessen airport. …

We landed on C-47s that were climbed in, and they flew us in to Camp Lucky Strike at LeHavre. I remember one of the guys asked if he could, if they would fly over the Eiffel Tower 'cause he wanted to see that. So this pilot flew us over the Eiffel Tower and banked just so we could see it out of these little windows. And when I got home, quite a few years after that, we had a veterinarian that was a pilot and he flew C-47s. His name was Dr. Edgar Zorb, and I talked with him. He says, "Well, there was somebody asked me to fly over the Eiffel Tower." So I don't know if he was the guy that was piloting us or not. But anyhow, we got into this Camp Lucky Strike. It was a tent city. And the French were cooks, and they couldn't understand English and we couldn't understand French. So a lot of the guys ordered pancakes and a couple of them died from exploded stomachs because they just ate too many pancakes. My buddy and I ate cereal. We had powdered milk, and we had a vanilla pill to stick in it so it would taste like something, and we made up our mind that we're going to get sick on ice cream and Twinkies when we get home. [Laughter]

Van Ells: And did you?

Diefenthaler: Yeah. But he was in Iowa and I was in Wisconsin.