Pro Deo et Patria Copyright 2004 by Robert E. Skopek All rights reserved Isbn 1-8887301-27-5 Preface letter provided by John Kline Gesu church 2470 Miramar Boulevard University Heights Cleveland 18 Ohio Yellowstone 2-0617 Yellowstone 2-0818 Dear John (Gallagher cub editor 57/59) Here is my manuscript. At last, I hear you say. Just received the recent cub and read about Toyland (toland?) & his proposed book on the GI's. I do not have a copyright, but will be willing to make a deal with him, if he should have to use some of it. Please feel free yourself to use anything in the cub. Sincerely Paul W. Cavanaugh, S.J. ------------------- Letter provided by John Kline, M company, 423rd infantry regiment, 106th division-- Editor the cub magazine, 106th division association Preface Copy of letter Dated September 17, 1984 Mr. Sherod Collins 625 Channing Drive N.W. Atlanta, Ga 30318 Dear Mr. Collins: I am enclosing a copy of a book written by Father Paul Cavanaugh a former Chaplain of the 422 infantry regiment. Father Cavanaugh has been dead for about 5 years. After he returned from overseas he was running an obstacle course at the university of Detroit high school and fell and broke his leg. He should not have been doing the same as he was no spring chicken at the time. During the time he was hospitalized with his broken leg he wrote the enclosed book. He attempted to get it published without any success. Apparently prisoner of war books were a drug on the market at the time. This copy is one that I have re-produced a number of years ago. He had several copies of the book typed and then lent them out to people to read and all but one copy disappeared. I had several copies made for him and kept this copy which I am surrendering to you as division historian. Father Cavanaugh was a Jesuit priest. As I re-call it he came out of the Cleveland Ohio area and did have family connections there. He had a nephew who lived in the Detroit area for a time but I do not re-call his name nor do I know how to reach him. I believe a copy of this book should be made a part of our division records. Very truly yours, Robert E. Rutt Forward Father Paul W. Cavanaugh, a Chaplain in the European theater during world war ii, represents those Chaplains who dedicated themselves to their faith and tried to share that faith with the prisoners of war in the various camps throughout Germany and Poland. There were perhaps upwards of 275,000 * allied soldiers who were POWs and were marched from their camps in the early months of 1945. It is not known why the German government instituted these marches other than allied armies were approaching from the west and east. Perhaps Germany hoped to use them as hostages in the event of the German defeat; however, there does not seem to be any specific evidence to corroborate that assumption.* The indignities and suffering endured by these prisoner groups is unimaginable and in many cases equivalent to the holocaust. Father Cavanaugh, Father Hurley, Father Madden, Chaplains Moore, Kospamp, Neel, Stonesifer and others mentioned in this book exemplify the dedication of these men to supply spiritual guidance and comfort to their men. Robert E. Skopek * “The Last Escape”, John Nichol and Tony Rennell The untold story of allied prisoners of war in Europe 1944-45 (page 466 and appendix 12) * Winston Churchill archives March 22,1945 “the object of this maneuver might be either to avoid unconditional surrender or to save the lives of the more important Nazi gangsters and war criminals, using this threat as a bargaining counter, or to cause dissention Among the allies in the final stages of the war.” *prisoner of war camps in Germany internet web site: http://www.fleetairarmarchive.net/roll of honor/pow/camp_list.htm To The officers and men of the 422nd infantry regiment with whom I campaigned and the prisoners of war with whom I suffered Paul W. Cavanaugh, S.J. Manresas Jesuit retreat house Woodward Ave. Quarton Rd. Bloomfield Hills, Michigan American priest in a Nazi prison The personal narrative of an American catholic Chaplain as a prisoner of war in Germany ByPaul W. Cavanaugh, S.J., Chaplain, Army of the United States (property of 106 division association) Table of contents Introduction 1. Captured in the bulge insert: St. Vith to bad orb, bad orb to Hammelburg 2. Prisoners of war 3. Christmas in a boxcar (statistical report on bombing of Limburg) 4. Bad orb 5. Hammelburg 6. Kriegie pursuit of happiness 7. Saint Joseph answers a prayer 8. Liberation of Hammelburg 9. Way of the cross intelligence summary, Nuremburg bombing) 10. Bavarian train of American tin cans 11. “der krieg ist kaput” aftermath Appendix Bibliography Introduction “we better not go to sleep tonight, Paul.” I said to corporal Dalton, my assistant. We were bumping along in our jeep over a well-packed frozen road between the second and first battalion command posts. In a quiet, wooded spot a few hundred yards back from the front lines I had just said mass. A group of about thirty men from b company with rifles slung from their shoulders had knelt in a snow to receive holy communion. Though not yet five o’clock in the afternoon, dusk was fading into darkness along the snow covered ridge under the thick growth of tall evergreen trees. It was the 15th of December, 1944, and our intelligence section was aware that a German offensive approached the hour of its mounting. Paul Dalton and I obtained some supper at the first battalion headquarters’ mess where we learned the password and picked up some more information about the anticipated battle. We returned to the Chaplain’s headquarters, a small log cabin built over a dugout by some soldiers of the second infantry division. About twenty yards away loomed the Siegfried line bunker which housed the command post of the first battalion of the 422 regiment. With night came fog. Several men from battalion headquarters company crowded into our cabin to make coffee and toast and to discuss the situation. Somehow we had a strange foreboding of catastrophe. The military situation, as we knew it, was this. Our 106th infantry division (golden lion shoulder patch) had moved over to the continent from England early in the month. We had been assigned to viii corps, first army. December 9th to 11th the 106th replaced the second infantry division, unit for unit, along a twenty-seven mile front in the Schnee Eifel. The Eifel forest is on German soil just across the Belgian frontier east of the Ardennes. For about ten weeks of autumn this had been a quiet sector of the front. As our division was yet untried by enemy fire we were assigned to this locality that might be mercifully seasoned to what our regimental commander, colonel George E. Descheneaux, Jr. Had told us at Stow-on-Wold (England) was the filthy, dirty, bloody, disgusting business of modern war. For four days Paul Dalton and I had been traveling by jeep along the snow covered roads through forests of spruce trees to companies on the static front. There I had said mass in comparative security near the company command posts and unalarmed visited the foxholes and dugouts along the line of outposts. Our regiment - 422nd - was the farthest north in our division sector. To the south of us in order were the 423rd and 424th, the other two combat teams of the 106th division. The Belgian town of St. Vith was situated about ten miles to our rear. This town was the center of communication and supply to our combat positions. Being a Chaplain and untutored in the science of military strategy and tactics, it is not my purpose here or throughout this book to discuss the military side of the war. I merely recount what I saw and heard. Undoubtedly the doughboys I was with knew and understood, even at that time far better than I did the reasons for the events that led to our capture by the enemy, the strategy employed by the high commanders on either side and the successes and reverses in the lower echelons. It is for this reason that I pass over hurriedly the first three days of the battle of the bulge. The overall picture (unknown to us at the time) but common knowledge now) was briefly this. Early in the morning of 16th of December, 1944, the German offensive started. A heavy artillery barrage was directed against the 14th cavalry group which joined our regimental sector on the north. The barrage moved slowly southward. The 589th field artillery battalion, which was part of our 422nd combat team, was severely shelled and crippled. Successive German attacks during the daylight hours forced a wedge between the 14th cavalry and the 422 regiment; then another opening was made between the 423rd and 424 regiments. Through these corridors columns of panzers - three German armies, it was been said - began a fan-shaped blitzkrieg movement toward St. Vith, Bastogne, and the Meuse river. Their objective was to seize the bridges across the Meuse, then in quick succession to overrun the allied supply depots at liege and Antwerp, simultaneously cutting off the British and American concentrations of troops along the northern flank of the western front. The 422nd and 423 regiments were surrounded. To the supreme allied headquarters we were lost regiments.