You are prisoner Nr.1 and I am prisoner Nr.2...

Every morning truck loads of POW's were taken through the suburbs of Liege to an outside, distant American War Cemetery All other POW's were marched, under Belgian armed guards, to various American Army depots. For many months I went with the trucks to a distant cemetery.

Here was my first job, digging holes for graves using a pick and shovel, because the ground was partly slate. Painting the timber crosses white as well as putting the names on in black with a machine made stencil, was a much easier job. There were many crosses for unknown soldiers. Lots of ground levelling had to be done as well.

During the lunch hour, burial ceremonies were held which I could watch from the distance. Afterwards we closed those finished graves. The idea of escaping was on my mind, but this place was further away from the Belgian/German border. One day using a wheel-barrow, I was a little slow. An American guard pushed his loaded gun into my back and started yelling: "Let's go, let's go!"... to which I did not respond. My mind was thinking only of going home; nothing else mattered. I wished he would pull the trigger.

Another time on our way to the cemetery, through the suburbs of Liege people threw tomatoes from a house at us; one of them hit me in the face. On the way back to camp in the evening miraculously many POW's were equipped with a rubber catapult. Passing the place from where the tomatoes had come in the morning one big clatter and all windows were shattered in that place. From there on, never again was anything thrown at us. The whole population must have heard or read about it.

Close to the cemetery was a 90ø road curve in the road. Usually Negroes were driving the huge semi-trailers in open canopies through this corner at full speed. They could drive alright and it looked very funny indeed. My next work places were near the camp. In one of them I happened to talk to an American Negro. He said to me: "You are prisoner Nr.1 and I am prisoner Nr.2." I never understood why he said that.

In a motorcade my next assignment was to dig a hole for a new outside toilet. A few of us started digging. Since there was no order how deep it should be, we ended up with an almost two man deep hole. We then asked the NCO to check it out. He nearly had a fit; someone could fall in there and drown, so we had to fill it up half way.

From now on I was under armed guards all the time

The end of the World War 2, was the end of the Citadel in Liege. Dramatic changes occurred. I was now a POW working for an American Labor Service Company:

POW Oncken Jurgen
POW Nr. 31G 993 754
4440 HQS QM Service Company
8795 Labor Service Company
148th L S Center
APO 223 US Army

It was a burial Company, organizing War Cemeteries. In my case it meant relocating all German burial grounds to a central Cemetery for fallen German soldiers, in Bourg Leopold, Belgium.

But at first I was working on an American War Cemetery. For this I was moved to Camp 3. This was a rectangular, barbed wire fenced area, outside Liege, Belgium. At its front it had a building with an entrance on either side of it.

All around the outside was a small stretch of neglected grass and bush land. The fence itself was doubled with a roll of barbed wire in its bottom centre.

In the middle of it all was another target practice building of concrete construction with a central wall that made it two separate POW quarters, of considerable length. This one was much dryer, but lots of rats were around.

From now on I was under armed guards all the time, and behind barbed wire fences; not to forget POW printed on all my clothes. In good memory, is a nearby clock tower, with a green lit dial at night, and on the other side of camp a Highway not far. This time our kitchen was inside the camp. Washing facilities and toilets were outside between building and fence, rather primitive in every way.

The American soldiers were from now on only in supervisory positions. The guards were replaced by Belgians. The French speaking Walonen did not like the Jerry POW's, the Dutch speaking Flamen were more understanding.

We slept on steel frame beds with some sort of mattress on it. There was sandy soil underneath and a concrete roof over the top with some huge air vents across. It did not take long until primitive walls were erected, causing small POW groups to sleep together.