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Oscar G. Richard—a native of Sunshine, Louisiana—was not the usual World War II serviceman. After enlisting in the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1942 and training diligently for many months, the B-17 bombardier spent only one week in combat. On his third and last mission—on January 14, 1944—his plane was shot down over France and he was imprisoned by the Germans. Thus, like many in the Eighth Air Force in late 1943 and early 1944, he spent most of the war not in combat but in captivity. In this riveting memoir, Richard vividly describes his wartime experiences both before and after his capture, poignantly recounting the transformation of a fresh-faced recruit into a seasoned POW.
Offering insight into the early days of soldier life, Richard chronicles his enlistment, the months he spent waiting on the home front for induction, and his training at vari-ous sites in the American West. He gives compelling accounts of his bombing missions and vividly relives his parachute escape from his doomed plane and his subsequent seizure.
Richard relates the path that most German-held POWs, or kriegies, took after capture: from the front lines to solitary confinement and interrogation at Dulag Luft, through a long and uncertain journey through Germany, to the final destination—for Richard, Stalag Luft 1, near Barth on the Baltic coast. Richard gives a superb description of camp life, detailing the monotonous daily roll calls, the bribing of guards, the endless efforts to undermine camp rules, the interbarracks softball games, the attempts to escape.
As Richard shows, despite the prisoners’ primitive existence behind barbed wire, they formed an infrastructure that was quite complex. The captives created their own community, complete with families (of bunk mates), sports teams, orchestras, a theater group, and an underground newspaper—the “POW WOW”—which kept the prisoners better informed than even their captors. Cigarettes, the medium of exchange, dictated prices for everything from chocolate to wristwatches.
Although his internment was relatively benign compared to that of Eastern Europeans and Russians, Richard’s stay in Stalag Luft 1 was not without hardship. Prisoners were shot for venturing too close to “no man’s land,” Jewish POWs were sent to segregated barracks uncertain of their future, and famine swept the camp in early 1945 when the Germans cut off Red Cross packages. Even the end of the war and the camp’s liberation renewed anxiety among the prisoners as a breakdown in German authority left them unsure of their fate.
Throughout his story, Richard honors the friends who made his confinement bearable and never forgets that he was one of the lucky ones. He did not have the chance to distinguish himself in battle, and yet, as this touching memoir illustrates, Oscar Richard—like all kriegies—is a hero nonetheless.
Oscar G. Richard III is the retired director of public relations at Louisiana State University. He and his wife, Billie, live in Baton Rouge.
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