Posted on 05/27/2002 12:24:07 AM PDT by sarcasm
Monday, May 27, 2002 - MONTE VISTA - The best way to describe World War II veteran Paul Hagedorn is that he is a survivor.
The 84-year-old Army veteran survived some of the war's bloodiest battles, two years of starvation and slave labor in Nazi prison camps, and a grueling winter "death march" across Germany in the closing days of the war.
Hagedorn is also surviving a lifelong battle with war-related health problems and the effects of a stroke, a broken hip and two heart attacks.
"I can tell you things you wouldn't believe," Hagedorn said. "Sometimes I don't believe them myself."
The only problem is, the terrible wartime memories overwhelm his emotional control and words can't come out - only tears.
"I don't know whether I feel fortunate or not. I feel guilty . . . so many of my buddies never came home," Hagedorn said after composing himself. "It was only by the grace of God. I don't know how else to look at it."
Hagedorn was born and raised on a potato farm in southern Colorado's San Luis Valley. Drafted into the Army in 1940 and assigned to the 1st Armored Division, Combat Engineers, he built bridges and roads in North Africa.
His unit survived several battles with Gen. Erwin Rommel's Afrika Corps, but it was overwhelmed in the 1943 Battle of Faid Pass. Hagedorn and others escaped only to wander in the Tunisian desert for six days before being captured.
"I carried a wounded buddy all night while we hid during the day," Hagedorn said. "The Americans kept pushing Rommel a day ahead of us. We couldn't find them."
Four miles from the American lines, near Kasserine Pass, Hagedorn was captured. His group was force-marched to Tunisia, then flown to Italy, packed into railroad cattle cars and moved to Germany, where he was incarcerated in several "stalags," or POW camps.
While being held at Stalag 2B, the men were beaten and tortured while they dug ditches and rebuilt bombed-out factories, Hagedorn's wife Marjorie explained while he daubed his eyes. "The Lord kept him alive for me," she says, softly.
The men were transferred to Stalag 5B, where they worked in potato fields and chopped wood in nearby forests. For 27 months their only food was potato-sawdust soup.
"I was skin and bones. We were slaves," Hagedorn said. "It was terrible."
Malnutrition drained half his body weight, and endless labor ruined his back, denying him his postwar dream-job of operating a dairy farm.
Ironically, while Hagedorn's captors were beating him and confiscating his Red Cross packages, back home in the United States, German POWs incarcerated in the Monte Vista Armory were treated well, local historians say. Many German POWs worked on area potato farms, including Hagedorn's own family farm.
"They were doing what they felt was the right thing to do," Hagedorn said.
He holds no grudge toward his farmer friends and family. "But it hurt me when I came home."
The winter of 1945 was one of Europe's coldest and was especially hard on men who were forced to work outdoors all day and sleep naked in unheated barracks.
"They'd take our clothes at night and lock them up so we wouldn't be able to escape," Hagedorn said. "Even if we did, we had nowhere to go."
As the Soviet Red Army swept across Europe, the Germans retreated, taking their captives with them.
"The Germans didn't want to be captured. They knew the Russians didn't take any German prisoners alive," he said. In early February, "in the dead of winter in knee-deep snow," he said, 12,000 Allied prisoners began walking across Germany.
When Russian troops liberated them in early May, "there were only about 500 of us left."
"I saw more hell there than at the front lines," Hagedorn said. "I had some buddies killed right in front of me."
As the war ended, so many American POWs were liberated that the Army gave them passes to make their own way to England. A week later Hagedorn was back in America.
"There were no parades, no celebrations, no nothin'," Hagedorn said sadly.
He's raised a family, outlived his first wife, worked many jobs and now keeps busy puttering around the townhouse he shares with Marjorie, his second wife. They knew each other before the war but married others. After their spouses died in the 1980s they found each other again and renewed their love.
Hagedorn is a member of the American Ex-Prisoners of War, Disabled Veterans and Veterans of Foreign Wars. He often spends quiet afternoons reading the "Ex-POW Bulletin," a monthly magazine that features several pages of "Taps" obituaries, evidence of America's loss of about 1,000 World War II veterans a day.
"There aren't too many of us left," Hagedorn said. "Out of 37 guys who served with me, only three of us are left."
As with many POWs, Hagedorn's war-related health problems were ignored by the Veterans Administration, and he didn't receive medical benefits until the mid-1950s.
He was also ignored when the Army passed out postwar medals. In 1996, after former U.S. Sen. Hank Brown called the Pentagon, he got his POW medal.
In spite of governmental neglect, he still loves his country.
"I'm glad I went, and I'm glad I could do what I did for my country - but when I came home, I was on my own," Hagedorn said. "I just don't know why it took them all these years. . . ."
His advice to young people considering a military career is cautious.
"It all depends. Some kids just can't find themselves, and they ought to try it. There are good opportunities for education and it's not a bad income," Hagedorn said. "I don't think I'd encourage my son to go, though."
What else to expect from our draft-deferment "lawmakers"? They have more important things to worry about, like passing more laws and getting re-elected and attending the next cocktail party. Can't expect them to care about guys like this.
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