225218 Pvt. Miles Richard Nix United States Army 3 Battalion, Co I 168th Infantry Regiment. from:Estill, SC My father joined the Army in 1941. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor the US declared war on Japan and immediately after Germany declared war on the US.
America entered the war with the invasion of North Africa and Daddy was one of the soldiers in the first invasion. He group landed at Algiers, Algeria. He was later captured at Faid Pass in February 1943 by the Germans under the command of the "Dessert Fox", Erwin Rommel.
They were marched to Tunis where they were held in a fenced in compound, burning under the African sun during the day and digging holes in the sand at night to keep warm during the cold nights. They were sent to Stalag VIIA, which was a staging area for the POW's and then sent out to his permanent camp at Stalag IIIB.
He was required to go out on work details and worked building an electric plant. The men in the camp had some very rough conditions. They had little food. They got a cup of Ersatz coffee for breakfast, waterey soup for lunch, and one loaf of Black Sawdust Bread for supper which had to be divided between 6 men. It was a while before the Red Cross parcels began arriving to the camp. The parcels were kept outside the compound and overseen by the Germans. When they received them, they had often been gone through and some food and other things had been taken.
Occasionally Hitler's SS would visit the camp and they were very fearsome. Even the German guards were afraid of them. He was a POW for 26 months. When the Germans heard the guns of the Allied Army moving closer and closer, they quickly marched the POW's away from front lines with little preparation for the march. They had little food or water and snow was on the ground. They would stay in barns and whatever shelter they could. Daddy once stayed in a chicken coup.
At some point while on this march, Daddy and some others escaped and held up in a barn hoping to get to the American troops. When they awoke it was to the sound of tanks. They feared they had been recaptured, but it was the Russians who found them and helped them to return to American control. Freed POW's were given priority on air transport coming back home. He was sent to a hospital in Georgia for a while and then sent to Miami, Florida to recoup. It was a very trying time in his life.
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