German POWs

A lot of the prisoners that we took later on were, they were either very old or very young, you know. They were down to the bottom of the barrel when it came to their troops. I don’t know how well they were trained but they were, they weren’t young fit men like we were, no. The ones we saw accepted it was over for them. Yeah, I think they were relieved, you know. I saw one occasion we were sitting on the side of a bank and a truck load of prisoners came up. There was a British in the back of about 30 prisoners and, he went to get out of the truck and it was too far to reach so he gave his rifle to a prisoner and he got down the rifle, prisoner gave him his rifle back. You know it was done, they were quite content. There was this one prisoner I often wondered too, he was a German officer, a very, I don’t know what rank he was. I didn’t know their insignia but he had polished leather boots and a shiny uniform and a leather belt and everything. And he had a, he had a bright, all wrapped in bright colored ribbons, it looked to me like one of their potato, those grenades that they carried, on a stick grenade, you know, they could throw it a long way, attached to his belt. And he was coming along and we were advancing across a field and everybody that he came to, they would try to get him to take this off and he was terrified but he wouldn’t, he wouldn’t. One fellow actually, I don’t know if he actually put it in but he put a bayonet into his chest fairly firm and he still, he wouldn’t take it off, wouldn’t allow him to take it off. I wondered if that was a grenade that somebody had tied on him or he had bragged he was going to blow somebody up or what. As soon as it came off it went off, I don’t know. I often wondered about that. That’s one of those things you’ll never know.