Pte. Raymond Thomas Noon
US Army 84th Infantry Division
from:Pittsburgh, Pa.
Two Hundred Days
The cattle cars rattled along the rails. It was cold and congested in the cars and each held eighty men in a space that was intended for forty men or eight horses. They had been there for what seemed like an eternity. Ray looked to his right where one man was keeping track of the days. Four lines indicated four days. All the men were sorely disheartened in this place that was not much more than a shipping crate. It was cramped, with no food and only several buckets of water. With no other place to relieve themselves, the soldiers were forced to do so in the cattle car with all eyes on them.
What seemed like an endless trip finally did end with the screeching of the cold, steel wheels on frozen tracks. They arrived in a camp that appeared to be as disheartened and lonely as the souls that occupied it. The sun was shining bright however, and the wind was not as cold as the inside of the cattle cars. They lined up and marched to a cement block where their photos were taken with a tag around their necks that stated in white block letters, “Stalag 2A” and contained their identification number. They were in the city of Neubrandenburg, about thirty miles north of Berlin. It was November, 1944.
The only thing on the minds of the men at that point was food and food they were given – cold turnip soup. The soup satisfied all the empty stomachs except one: that of Private Raymond Thomas Noon. He held out his rusted metal plate like a beggar holding out a tin cup. He hated turnips. Reflecting back on the situation, he recently said, “When you’re hungry, you’ll eat anything. Well, in my case, that was not true. I hated turnips and after 4 days of no food but turnips, I refused to eat them. Nothing, not even hunger, can make a man eat what he despises most.” As they walked back to their residential blocks, they walked in single file and were taken to their respective living quarters. Ray stared into the empty cement block room and was reminded how he had arrived in such a place.
The guns rattled over the tall sugar beets. The 84th division was on its way to backup the 106th division, which had found itself trapped while being pounded brutally by German forces. Before they could find the 106th, the shooting started. Ray remembers only the chaos of it all; people were shooting on all sides and the sound grew to the sound of popcorn in a kettle. Their move was meant to be a surprise attack on a division of German forces but blew up in their faces as the enemy saw right through it and turned the surprise back on the Americans. The lieutenant in charge of their platoon was a former English teacher and had made one mistake: leading them into a sugar beet field that gave the enemy the high ground advantage. Ray could only lie flat on his stomach underneath the 3 foot tall sugar beets. His long B.A.R. rifle was a powerful rifle that could shoot up to 10 shoots per second, but was not useful in tight quarters. One by one, his friends around him got up to shoot only to be shot by the enemy. Half of the platoon was killed before their lieutenant decided to surrender. This occurred outside the town of Guilenkurken, where they had hoped to find the location of the trapped 106th division.
A guard walked in behind them to inform them of the rules and living arrangements. The guards name was Helmut; he was the only English-speaking guard at the camp.
“In six months you’ll all be able to speak German,” he said. Ray later learned that the guards at Stalag 2A were Whermacht, or “home guards.” They were civilians: painters, carpenters, and bankers. As Ray recollected, “They knew as little about what that war was about as we did.” The guards had nothing against any American POW that they were assigned to guard and had something very much in common with the POWs – they wanted nothing more than for the war to be over and to go home to their families. He learned that the guards were not SS, Hitler’s henchmen. They were civilians forced to leave their careers and help with the war. Ironically, the common ground between the guards and the POWs continued to grow as the months passed.
Ray urgently had to learn simple German phrases and pick up whatever else he could from the communication he had with the guards so as to assure his survival. By the end of six months in the camp, he could “carry on a half-assed conversation in German.” It was shortly after his arrival that he came into contact with a guard by the name of Wilhelm Drahk, or “Willy” as the prisoners called him. He was quite friendly, of middle age, and walked around with a limp. Apparently he had been injured and now found himself with a permanent limp. He was a painter with three kids from the town of Deuseldorf, which coincidentally was a town that the cattle carts passed through on their way to Stalag 2A. The town had suffered a lot of loss, had been demolished to the point that “not even a mouse could find shelter from the rain”, as they told Willy, but Willy appeared surprised when the incoming prisoners told him what they’d seen.
One day, Willy suggested to Ray that he take a job at a brick factory in nearby Friedland since it was easy work. Willy was constantly trying to make life easier for the prisoners and periodically would make suggestions vital to their health and life in the camp. Ray probably would have declined the job if it were not Willy who had made the suggestion. It was known among the prisoners that Germany was forcing prisoners of war to work in armament factories thinking that allied planes would hesitate to drop their bombs knowing their own soldiers were in the factories. Since this factory was just a brick factory, Ray decided to take the job.
Willy was right. It was easy work and periodically they would receive pay. The Geneva Convention required that working POWs be given a paying wage that matched the rest of the civilian population. However, German marks were worth nothing and prisoners could not spend the money in any event. Working in the brick factory would define most of the rest of Ray’s days in the camp. The POWs were given other assignments but most prisoners worked in factories.
One other form of work Ray received while at Stalag 2A was working in cemeteries, digging graves. One day, a truck filled with cattle drove by the field they were working in and as it did a calf fell off the back of the truck. He and his friend, Sly Fox was his nickname, decided to take it back with them. They stared at the calf with hungry eyes. It was like the heavens decided to give them a feast fit for kings. A calf was worth quite a bit at the time and they knew if they brought the calf back to the camp, it would be taken away from them. They decided to hide the calf in a grave and went back to the camp saying, “We’re going to have steak tonight!” Unfortunately, it was later discovered by the guards before they could go back to recover the calf. It was occurrences like these, however, that brightened the long days and cold nights.
When they arrived back at the camp that day, it was evident that something great had happened. People were all running around excited about something. They managed to stop someone to find out where everyone was going. “Our Red Cross packages have arrived!” the man said. Sly Fox and Ray went back to their living quarters uncertain as to what that meant. A guard soon arrived with packages wrapped in pale paper to hand out to the prisoners. As Ray opened the package, he soon learned what the veteran prisoners were excited about. Inside the package, he found food, candy, and most importantly, cigarettes. The real value in these packages was not the food, but the cigarettes. Cigarettes during this war, especially in a POW camp, were like gold. They were worth more than American dollars or German marks - which were usually worthless. The German guards knew that these packages contained cigarettes yet did not take them. More importantly, these were American cigarettes, which had the reputation of being made of higher quality tobacco than German cigarettes. They periodically received these packages, and yet, the German guards had enough integrity to not steal them. Ray was surprised when he learned this. There was more to a German soldier than he’d realized when they were seen only across the sights of his B.A.R.
Officers in the German army periodically visited them. One day, a Colonel visited and had a large group of POWs lined up and searched. Some of them were found to be carrying American cigarettes. The German officer spoke in English:
“I will trade you two packs of German cigarettes for one pack of your American cigarettes. There will come a time when you won’t care about the quality and will appreciate the additional quantity,” he said. Ray was puzzled as to why the Colonel did not just force them to give up their cigarettes. These people were not all the monsters that they had appeared to be and in fact wanted to be fair to the prisoners.
The months passed and with it the season did as well. The air warmed up and the sun shone brighter with each passing day. By that time, however, Ray had come down with dysentery, which was rampant throughout the camp due to the generally unsanitary conditions. There wasn’t a single soul in the camp that didn’t have dysentery, including the guards. It seemed like the guards and the POWs had more in common than not. It was like they were both in a situation that they could not escape from and because of that they worked together and passed the time together.
Ray found himself losing a lot of weight due to the dysentery. He knew that this weight loss had little to do with the amount of food he was receiving. For breakfast, they received a slice of bread and a cup of coffee. For supper they received several potatoes or cabbage. There was very little meat in their diet and therefore very little protein. This also accounted for some of the weight loss. Sometimes, they were fed horse meat. However, at times the horse meat was rotten. With the generally unsanitary conditions and the crowded living quarters in the camp, dysentery spread like wildfire. Fortunately though, this did not rob his strength.
By March, 1945, Ray had been in the camp for about four months. Ray had continued the counting of days that he saw in the box cars by marking bars on the wall of his living unit. 150 bars meant 5 months had passed. They were working out in a field one day when Willy came over to them to inform them that Roosevelt had passed away.
“Roosevelt tot,” he said. Ray and his friends had a difficult time figuring out what “tot” meant but finally realized that this meant “dead”.
“Germany is sure to win the war now, this is our saving grace!” he said.
“That doesn’t mean that the U.S. is out of the war,” they replied.
“This will disrupt the U.S.’s position and involvement in the war,” Willy told them and then he left.
They were left alone to discuss what Willy had told them. Willy’s remarks made little sense to them. They could not understand how he could think that Roosevelt’s death would help Germany to win the war. This told them that the people in Germany were used to long term, well-establish leaders like Hitler and would misinterpret the meaning of the death of Roosevelt. They didn’t know that the vice president of the U.S. would take over the presidency and that nothing would change. If a similar situation occurred in Germany, the death of the leader meant the end of the country’s involvement in the war and perhaps a complete change in political direction for the country. This would later prove true as the death of Hitler meant the death of the Nazi party. Hitler was the Nazi party. Everyone else relied on the survival of the party, and therefore Hitler. During Ray’s entire stay at Stalag 2A, the Russians were making large advances on German territories.
During the last week of April, the Russians got so close to the camp that the guards were forced to leave the camp, all the guards except one: Willy. With the little money they had, some of the prisoners purchased a cart and ox for the prisoners that could not walk due to injuries or illnesses. Willy confronted Ray about the possibility of hitching a ride with the injured prisoners. Willy’s limp kept him from leaving the camp with the other guards and his own life was at risk if the Russians found him there.
“You too, Willy. Get on,” Ray told him.
“I’m not sure that the other guys will like a former German guard riding with them, especially if we run into German soldiers,” Willy replied.
“If any of them have a problem with it, they’ll have to deal with me,” he told Willy.
The Russian POWs joined the American POWs as well. Ray took this as a sign that getting caught by the Russians would be bad news. Even the Russians didn’t want to be found by Russian forces, so they decided to march west towards the American lines. He looked at the wounded in the cart. They looked like a disheartened, sad bunch. All of a sudden Willy spoke up:
“You all represent the best army in the world. Act like it !!” he said.
Willy’s words reminded Ray of his reserve time in England before D-Day. He’d found the 106th division sitting in a remote area of the base. He was sent to get them established, since they had just arrived from the states. The 106th division was a collection of misfits the army had recruited. They “couldn’t tell the difference between their butt and the butt of their gun.” As he put it, “They were a sad bunch of yo-yo’s.” They were the rejects, the rebels of society. As soon as they could be sent to the front lines, their superior officers would get rid of them. However, they represented the best army in the world, that of the United States of America.
After they escaped from the prison camp, the American and Russian prisoners marched for two days, all the while separating further and further from one another. Some were weaker than others and had to take rest breaks. Ray eventually found himself alone, as he had a leg problem and decided to stay behind. He was walking alone through the German countryside when he ran into an Italian that crossed his path. Apparently the Italian had separated from another POW group. He sat down with the Italian to take a break. They exchanged small talk for a while. The Italian knew some English. Before they separated, however, the Italian indicated with his arm that he wanted to exchange hats, perhaps as a souvenir. Ray received the Italian uniform hat and in exchange the Italian received an American hat.
They parted ways and Ray continued his trek westward. He stumbled upon a little Volkswagen jeep parked at the bottom of a hill. He decided to try to get on the back to give his legs a break. The little jeep eventually got moving again, but its engine was not strong enough to pull both the driver and Ray sitting in the back. The driver stopped and got out. He went around back to see what was keeping the jeep from climbing the hill and there he found Ray lying in the back.
What happened next was both shocking and miraculous. The driver was actually a German soldier and as soon as he discovered Ray in the back, he reached for the pistol in his holster and began yelling at him in German. Ray froze, as the gun was pointed right at him. The soldier indicated with the waving of his pistol that he wanted Ray to get out of his jeep all the while yelling at him. Ray did as he was told.
Ray stood in the middle of the road, sweating nervously at what had happened to him. He watched the jeep drive away. He removed his hat to wipe the sweat off his brow. Instantly, he was reminded that he was wearing an Italian hat. If he had been wearing his American hat, the German soldier probably would have shot him. The angels save people in some of the most peculiar ways.
Later that day, he finally came across an American platoon. He was taken to an American base in France where he was deloused, bathed, and clothed. He was also treated for the dysentery that had caused him to lose 30 pounds. At the time he’d entered Stalag 2A, he weighed 150 pounds. Two hundred days later, he weighed 120.
Ray returned to the United States after the war and today has lived to reach 77 years of age. Ray never returned to Germany or England and never knew what happened to his friend, Willy, the Whermacht guard.
In May of 1948, Raymond Noon married Ruth Bracken in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and in September, he enrolled in the Carnegie Institute of Technology. In 1952, Ray graduated with a degree in Chemical Engineering and began a career that would provide countless opportunities for himself and his family. In March, 1949, Ruth gave birth to their first son, Thomas Francis Noon.
