It was just
enough to keep you from starving. I got so hungry that when eating the
bread I would put my jacket over my lap, eat over it then lick the
bread crumbs off the back of the jacket. I tried to keep track of the
days by taking a stick of straw out of the mattress and putting a one
inch piece on the board at the head of the bed each morning. With
nothing to do all day you would soon begin to wonder if you had
counted the day or not. I would sometimes spend several hours
worrying: did I or didn't I do it? The bathroom was down the hall so
when you needed to go you banged on the door until the guard came.
There was no paper and no water so we couldn't keep clean.
I spent eleven days living like this with no one to talk to. All you
could do was think and look at the pieces of straw on the board. I
would walk back and forth for exercise then sit and think. About the
third day a guard took me into a room where a German officer sat
behind a desk. He asked me questions about the mission I was on, the
others in our outfit, all about the planes and our base in England. We
had been told to give nothing but our name, rank and serial number and
that is all I did. After about an hour I was taken back to my room. A
few days later I was returned to the officer and he began telling me
all the information he already had about me. He knew my hometown (even
about the lake), when I graduated from flying school and all my
training bases, and who I was flying with the day I was shot down.
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