We have identified 242 Montanans who fought in the Battle of the Bulge. From available information 77 of them could have fought in any of the battle’s four stages: defending against the initial attack, which involved at least 67 indicated by Blue-in place, Green-rapid reinforcing, Pink-KIA, and Orange-captured dots on the attached map, holding out inside the Siege of Bastogne, which involved at least 35, forced marching in contact under Patton against four defending Divisions to relieve Bastogne, which involved at least 33, or mounting the counteroffensive to clear the Bulge, which involved at least 39 more Montanans. After taking our little book to Montana’s towns, we concluded the number of Montanan’s involved was probably larger than we’ll ever know.

Our tour got us thinking about the fates of the nine Montanans who were captured. As already mentioned Mel Mellinger and Kenny Newton of Glasgow were with the 106th Infantry Division’s 423rd Regiment when it was surrounded and forced to surrender at the village of Schoenberg, as were James Dew of Missoula, Keith Ginter of Richey, Howard Akey of Whitefish, and Tom Lawler. Howard Brecktell of Butte, serving with the 110th Regiment of 28th Division on Skyline Drive near the 106th, was captured with them. Mark Osweller of Lewistown serving with the 80th Infantry Division was later captured during the relief of Bastogne and sent to Stalag17B. We know that Helena’s LT Bob Harrison with the 501st PIR was captured when wounded at Wardin near Bastogne but do not know which Stalag he was trying to escape when he was killed. We know Lawler died in Stalag 4B at Muhlberg, Germany on February 2, 1945, and Brecktell died in Stalag 9B at Bad Orb, Germany, on February 6, 1945. We also know that Ginter was sent to Stalag 4B, while Akey was sent to Stalag IIIA.

In Kalispell we met Howard Akey’s two sons and a grandson. Akey was captured in the Bulge with 2800 men of the 106th Infantry Division. They were being held in seven circus tents in Stalag-IIIA, 35 miles south of Berlin at Luchenwald when he met another Montanan. Steve Warner was from Browning on the other side of Glacier National Park. Warner, a member of the Blackfeet Tribe and the 9th Infantry Division had been captured at Kasserine Pass two years earlier. Another Blackfeet soldier, Fred D. DeRoche, was with the 9th Infantry in the 39th Regiments. He enlisted with his cousin Billy Wolftail and made it as far as the Bulge before being Killed in Action on December 21, 1944. Anyhow, Akey’s sons and grandson said their father and grandfather never spoke much of WWII except once in 1980 at family dinner. One of the sons, watching the Iran Hostage Crisis unfold on television, made some suggestion about sending in the US. Marines to rescue diplomatic personnel. Their father surprised them by saying, “Be quiet! You know nothing of war.”

Their father left behind the notes of a story he’d written, titled Time out of Time. He starts by telling about an SS officer nearly shooting him. His lines include: “The lack of food seems to eliminate any problems that could arise from 2800 men condensed without women.” About being bombed by allied planes he wrote, “The talk naturally is of the air raid the night before. The prison camp is located right on the edge of the rail yard outside of Limberg. An American officer’s barracks suffered a direct hit killing sixty-five men and the entire camp is in utter confusion, There had been air raids before but this is the first hit on the camp, I try to rationalize the absurdity of being killed by our own bombs, and from the receiving end it makes no sense. These men have given their lives and it has gained nothing. The ditches where we had taken refuge beside the road have a light cover of new snow this morning, as does the quarry. The route I had taken through the pit looks impossible to negotiate in the daylight. The area is badly pock-marked with bomb craters. I feel very lucky to have survived. As we near the train I can see our car has made it through the air raid without being touched, Some of the others have been damaged but the train is still on the track and appears to be movable. Near the tracks the Germans have gathered the frozen bodies of the men killed by the bombs and stacked them like a woodpile. As we file past this depressing mound I try not to look at the nearly blue faces. I don’t want to recognize anyone. We climbed back into the car from which we had fled in such terror.”

Akey gradually hardened to all the death. During his first days walking behind enemy lines, he passed a burned American personnel carrier. There were two charred bodies in the back, one slumped over a wooden seat that was nearly burned away, the other hanging with his head down over the tailgate. The upside-down American’s hands couldn’t quite reach the ground laid bare by the fire’s heat. There was another body, unburned ten feet away from the truck’s open cab. He’d probably been shot trying to escape the burning. A little farther on the road he saw a German staff car turned upside down in the ditch with wheels in the air. There was a soldier pinned underneath, with the top half of his body nearly face up in the cold water. Akey remembered, “I am becoming more aware of how permanent death is and how fragile life is” He talked about how survival would not have been possible without a friend.

“Lee and I have been together through this whole ordeal. As a matter of act we have been close friends since I joined the outfit in September of 1943 at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, through maneuvers in Tennessee, a summer of training at Camp Atterbury, Indiana and then overseas. It isn’t surprising that we are now sharing every discomfort and every scrap of food or cigarette butt we can find. Our backgrounds are entirely different. Lee comes from a fairly affluent family in New Jersey and attended a private school in New England until the draft caught up with him. He has never hiked in the mountains or fished, hunted or skied while my knowledge of his lifestyle is equally limited. We tolerate each other’s shortcomings and share a deep desire to get back to our own ways of life. We are a team joined by the basic need to share.”

The Whitefish soldier wrote that Russian POWs in Stalag-IIIA faired poorly. “The only nationality in the camp that does not receive Red Cross food parcels is the Russian. They are not members of the International Red Cross Organization. Very often we see a grave detail carrying another victim of starvation out of the Russian compound. There are stories about the Russians back at Stalag-IIIB on the Oder that when the guards turn the dogs into the barracks to get the POW’s out for roll call, as they do if we don’t get out fast enough, the only thing that comes out are the dog hides hung on the fence. “The Rooskies had soup!”

As bad as this might seem, clearly at least one Nazi political prisoner had it worse:

“Most of the near three thousand men walking along the road are doing so on recently frozen feet. Our route takes us by a political prison camp. These prisoners wear loose fitting pants and shirts and they look like they’ve been starving for months. Most of them are behind the barbed wire but some are outside the camp cleaning up the area around the fences and in the ditches by the road They are very weak looking and move slowly. As we pass close by one man cleaning the edge of the road steps into our group in an attempt to escape. His move goes unnoticed by both his and our guards. His clothes are light weight black and white striped cotton resembling summer weight pajamas the kind my mother use to buy for me and I never wore. His bony ankles show between his too-short pants and his too-large shoes which he wears without stockings. His shirt is soaked by the rain and it clings to his gaunt shoulders and shows his skinny arms and ribs. His backbone makes a knobby line down one of the dirty white stripes. His face shows no emotion. His cheeks are hollow and his eyes are sunken in dark sockets.

We keep him in the center of our ranks and rub mud and dirt on his clothes trying to cover his stripes. He can speak no English and none of us can understand what I believe is the Polish he speaks, but it is evident he is a very desperate man. The two or three hours we walk with this man in our midst has my stomach in a knot. I don’t know if I am frightened for him or for what will happen to us when he is recognized.

The guards are turning us off the road into a large farm-yard. The wooden double gate to the farm-yard is hung from stone and cement pillars in each side of the drive. Only the gate on the right side is open and our column narrows down to two abreast to go through the opening. A guard just inside the closed side of the gate recognizes the striped clothes of our infiltrator, grabs the runaway by his scrawny deck and throws him to the ground. With his heavy boot on the back of the striped shirt he holds the man flat in the mud until another guard runs over and together they drag the prisoner off to, God knows what fate. I dislike myself for doing nothing to stop this abuse, but am too terrified about my own safety to do anything but walk on by as though nothing was happening. I ask, ‘Christ, Lee, what do you think they’ll do to him?’ Lee looks sick and answers, ‘I don’t know; I don’t even what to think about it.’

As the Russians liberated Stalag-IIIA, Akey was able to observe, “The Russian Army, as I see it, doesn’t appear to have any organization. They come in hordes….men, women, children….old and young…some in uniform, some not, carrying every make of weapons I’ve ever seen.” Then, after they arrived, “Shortly after, they run the guards down the street and out the other end of town, three Russians come around a building, two of them holding a third between them. We thought he was drunk but as they got closer he appears to be having a fit of some kind. He is drooling and foaming at the mouth and making odd sounds in his throat. His eyes are rolled back in hushed. They take him into an alley, shoot him and leave him there. We have become adept at blending into the scenery and moving away from apparent danger. I will never be able to understand these peoples’ disregard for human life. We decide to be very careful around the Russians. It looks like we will be around them for a few days before we get back to American control.”

Then Akey spoke for all the American POWs who made it home. “The morning of May 28th, 1945, I am awakened early by men shouting and running up the metal steps to the deck above. We are home. I also run out on the deck to see the New York skyline looming out of the morning mist. There she is, Miss Liberty, just as I had seen her in so many pictures. I stand at the rail for more than an hour thrilled with the sight of America and still not quite able to believe I have made it back. We dock at Staten Island and take a ferry to the mainland. The ferry is an old-timer the army leases just to ferry troops across the bay. The entire crew is the captain and the engineer. There are about 200 POWs on board. Out in the middle of the bay a fire starts where the smokestack comes through to the top deck. The smoke is billowing up and other ferries pull up close to help. The captain stops the boat and he and his crew of one get out the fire hose, but every time they turn on the water someone shuts it off or kinks the hose. Everyone feels it would be great climax to our adventure to sink in New York Harbor, after all there are boats standing all around to take us off. Some of the officer on board, however, get the men under control and we help extinguish the fire. We are definitely back under military control. I walk off the ferry and climb on the waiting troop train. Compared to the German boxcars this is sheer luxury. I stow my bag in the luggage rack and sit in the window seat of the old coach. Looking down at my watch, still not running, I know now it will just be a short time till I am walking downtown to get it repaired. My time will start running again. My war is over….My country is free….I have paid my dues.”

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