501304 Joseph M "Fuzzy" Wise from:Chesapeake Bay, Maryland I was a young kid working for Mr. Wise, known locally as "Fuzzy", as a commercial crabber near the Chesapeake Bay for several summers and I thought of him as a grandfather. He was a lot of fun, but one day he told me of his experience as a POW. I'm paraphrasing what he told me over 20 years ago. He died in 1988.
He was captured at Normandy, put on a train and transported to Germany, where he lost 65 pounds during the trip. He was placed in a POW camp in Memmingen, Bavaria, where he was forced to work in a cheese factory. When he was told the cheese was being sent to the front to feed the Nazis, he gathered mouse droppings and threw them in the bin. He claimed that he shivered all night the during the first cold snap and that a kind German guard gave him a long winter coat that he slept in every night. He said that he would have died without it. He made friends with several German civilian workers in the factory and even continued to exchange Christmas Cards into the 1970s. He remembers being liberated and the POWs were allowed to enter a cave that was apparently full of valuables put there by the townspeople to prevent looting. The POWs were allowed to take "anything they could carry". Fuzzy remembered carrying several pairs of binoculars and cameras around his neck, with fine shotguns under each arm. Understandably, he became inebriated during his first night of freedom and passed out, only to find that all of his new valuables were stolen from him. Hopefully, some of the items made their way back to their original owners.
This was all that he told me. I would love to know if anyone remembered this gregarious, fun-loving fellow named "Fuzzy" from Maryland.
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