German POW`s

Interviewer: Tell me Mr. Cromwell, during that period of time did you see German prisoners of war? Oh yah when we would go up there they had captured a bunch of prisoners then and when we were going back to the base with the empty truck, we’d load, we’d take a load of prisoners back. Interviewer: What was your impression of those German POW’s? Well, the ordinary soldiers were, you know, you know a lot of them could speak English and talk to them like that and so on. Most of the officers were kind of stubborn, you know, they were, they didn’t like riding on the back of a truck. You know, we were kind of mean too because we would load as many on the truck as we could get and they were all standing up and you’d squeeze the tailgate and close it and we’d be driving along and then you’d jam on the brakes and all that stuff, kind of mean. But that’s what we had to do, you know, taking the prisoners back and load them off. The Provost, the military police, they had the authority to stop you and we were a supply column, we had priority. On the front of our truck, was Supply Column, and you didn’t drive over forty miles an hour, most of the time you were only driving thirty miles an hour because the roads and stuff were, everything was messy and you’re dumping in the holes and banging. They come up and say, “Where are you going? ” and they see a supply truck, they’d just make signs for you to go, and you know they stop all traffic