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Show Thursday. March 16. 2006 NORTH COUNTY NEWSPAPERS Page 3 U.S. POWs finally sveterans to avoid being caught by the Russian army. Stalag Luft 1 7B, Ray Matheny's camp, held more than 4.000 prisoners; on April 8, 1945, the POW's were given 24-hour notice for the march. T fie were issued a LA little food and VI liWII told that we would be fed every other day. We were also issued a pair of CH shoes, though mine were three sizes too large. But I was happy to have them. The day we were to leave, a German enlisted man came in, tears running down his cheeks. We asked him, 'What's wrong?" He told a very harsh tale: the German SS troops were in the nearby town of Krems. They had ordered the civilian population, nearly all old men, women and children, to build tank entrapments to prevent the advance of the Russians. They were also given arms and told to stay and fight the Russians. The civilians objected and started to flee. Who wouldn't? They knew the reputation of the Russians. So the SS troops killed 400 civilians a figure I've since been able to verify. That's why the lieutenant was crying. We set out, lightly guarded, in units of 500 men each. The first day out was very painful we were not used t o the marching and were in very weakened condition. We slept out in fields, occasionally occasion-ally in a barn. We did get fed , every other day, but the food we carried was soon consumed. At one point, I broke rank and beggd Jeff pxti at an Austrian Aus-trian faitiliL'e near the road, and the jfuards didn't stop me. I knocked on the door, and a young lady came to the door. I said, in the German I had been fortunate enough to learn in camp, something like Habben sie brot, mein Freuleiri? (Have you any bread, young lady?) She went in and came back with two eggs. I gave one of them to my companion and ate the other one raw. 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Center Provo 374-8076 MOUkli 9air-bpni M-f Sat 9am-3pm Editor's note: This is the Nth and final article in a series about Lindon resident Ray Matheny, who was taken prisoner after his plane was shot down over Germany in World War 11. As the Russians moved into Germany and Austria, the Germans Ger-mans marched the POWs in eastern camps toward the west, cow, and so I got a little taste of raw milk that evening. As we passed by farms, we grubbed into piles of straw and sometime found potatoes, carrots and rutabagas anything we could scrounge. At one point, I saw new shoots of dandelions coming up. I picked a hatful, boiled them in a can and poured off the toxic milk in them, then bofled them again. I put in a handful of raisins and had dinner. I was one of the few who had anything to eat that evening. At one point, we were marched right by a camp where the Germans had incarcerated "undesirables," a rock quarry where the people were literally liter-ally being worked to death. We later encountered a group of what turned out to be about 3,000 Hungarian Jews, who had been on the road for two weeks, without food. When we told them of their fate in the rock quarry, they protested. "Must present a are freed We passed through a number of other small towns and villages. villag-es. In one village, a housewife set out a box of apples for us. One day, late in the afternoon, when we were billeted on the banks of a river, a lone American captain drove up in a Jeep. He got right up on the hood of the Jeep: "All right, you guys, come here. You're free," he added. That was it! We were liberated. These excerpts from local veterans are courtesy of the Orem Heritage Committee. Complete stories of the veterans will eventually be put on the Orem city Web site, www.orem.org. Readers aware of any veterans who have written about their military service are asked to arrange to have these archives in the Veterans History Project, Library of Congress. Phone Don Norton (225-8050). 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