Another warm evening came. It took about 2 hours to get to the POW camp. It was silent the whole way. That boy kept messing with his toe and he started crying about it until the older soldier next to him slapped him in the face and told him to shut up. He just cried more.
When we got to the camp, it was already filled with dirty German soldiers. It smelled horrible and fly's flew everywhere, landing on all parts of my body. In a ditch next to the gravel road, there were piles of dead German solider's that were thrown in, left to rot. I keep my head down when we entered it.
There were giant groups of German soldiers that were being abused by getting hit with ends of guns, starvation, and they were thrown around. There were a group of young boys that had broken bones, big brusises everywhere on their bodies, missing limbs, sicknesses, and some were even naked.
The trucks drove to the back of the camp where there was a barn with blood dripping down the side. There were sounds of multiple gunshots that were near the barn. When the truck was at the other side of the barn, there laid five dead German solider's that got executed. There was a line of German soldiers being guarded by Russian soldiers. The dead German soldiers that were shot were dragged and thrown into a pile of other dead soldiers. Then, five more lined up and one started to cry. I looked at the Russian soldiers with their rifles to their sides, waiting for the command to shoot. The Russian officer rose his right arm and yelled something in Russian. The other soldiers aimed their rifles and waited for the command to fire.
"Ready, aim, fire!" The officer yelled.
I looked away after that. There were two soldiers that screamed. I could hear the sounds of the bodies hitting the small wooden floor outside of the barn. The truck began moving again, closer to the barn. They loaded us up and kicked us into the barn where there were two officers with a fountain pen and lined paper. I walked up nervously, wondering what they were going to do with us. The soldier on the left of the table was crossing off names with a soldier standing next to him, telling how they died.
"Heinrich Mueller marked as executed, Joseph Miller marked as starvation, Dietrich Fischer marked as executed, Stefan Neumann marked as beaten, Helmut Wolfgang marked as missing, Klaus Graf marked as starvation, Haas Winter marked as executed, Karl Frank marked as missing, and Ernest Keller marked as missing," the Soviet soldier said while the officer crossed off the names.
Then he asked me in German what the soldiers names in front of me were. I stood there with my legs shaking like crazy and my hand was shaking behind my back. We all were worried what they were going to do to us next. I knew that either tonight or tomorrow, I will be standing in that line and will be on the road to hell. I was now next in line. I stuttered when I said my name and I felt my face heat up. The officer starred at me and took a good look at my face.
"NEXT!" he yelled.
Then a solider grabbed my arm and led me over to where I would be going. Lucky enough, it was away from the execution site. I was led to a field that had barbed wire fencing around it with soldiers sitting inside, laying on the ground, trying to sleep. He pushed me inside and locked three of the locks that were on the gate. I stood there in the corner and looked through the barbwire fence for awhile, starring at all of the other soldiers that were thrown in.
It was now completely dark outside and the camp was silent, except for a few gunshots around the camp and some dogs barking in the distance. The crickets were loud and that relaxed me. Most of the other soldiers were on the other side of the field, staying as far away from the gate as possible. I laid down on the dirt and closed my eyes, my stomach kept growling and that's what made it hard for me to go to sleep and because of the thought of being here, locked up in a Russian POW camp.