Hold at All Cost: 42 Rainbow Division Prisoners of War / Rainbow Division Veterans

The extraordinary collection of memoirs that follows is almost certainly unique in the millennia-long literature of war. First-hand accounts of combat from the perspective of the spear-carrier, bowman or rifleman have come down to us in barely a trickle from ancient Greece and Rome to the present day.... There were 1174 men from the 42nd Rainbow Division captured by the Germans in WWII, and in WWI 122. (We are fortunate to have two stories from WWI Rainbow ex-POWs.) The disparity was partly because of the increased mobility of the armies, but it was mostly due to the assignment of WWII men to an extended front without supporting units in their initial test in combat. Almost all the WWII Rainbowers were captured in their first month of combat. Sixteen years ago, the division Archivist, J. William Keithan, began collect¬ing the stories of the ex-POWs, eventually 115. When the decision was made to publish the stories, Suellen McDaniel, a Rainbow daughter with the Millennium Chapter, recruited a group of transcribers to type or retype the stories, some of which were in longhand. Suellen also had an important part in the assembly and proofing of the book. As the typed stories were received, Val Spiegel, F-232nd Inf., did most of the editing. In order to control the size of the book, which was burgeoning, the stories were trimmed to include only the combat and prison camp experiences. At the time of capture, most men had a combination of wounds, frozen feet,fatigue and hunger. Interrogation and crossing the Rhine River followed quickly. Once in Germany, the men walked and rode crowded box cars to the stalags. Some of the road marches lasted for weeks and those wearing "shoe pacs" developed severe foot problems. Either when walking or in boxcars, they were mistakenly strafed by Allied airplanes.The men who were wounded or became ill received primitive medical care because of the shortage of medical supplies and doctors in Germany...
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