BILL BARSANTI

Staff Sergeant Bill Barsanti, 21-years-old, sat in the truck to St. Vith, Belgium. The trucks were covered, so the soldiers couldn’t see the frostbitten landscape they were passing through. He had trained in Cannon Company for months before shipping off to England—a trip that cost his Cannon Company all of their cannons. So, part of the newly-renamed Rifle Company, he gripped his M1 and rode into the Ardennes Forest with the rest of the 106th to replace the 2nd Division. It was December 1944.

He met his brother, Mark, serving in the 2nd Division. “I hope the war ends here so we can both go back home and take care of the family,” Bill told him. Mark was preparing to push north and gave Bill some souvenirs and a German Luger P-08. After a few hours, Bill said goodbye with full hope that the war would soon be over, and the brothers could return home for Christmas.

Snow and sleet covered the ground. The 106th settled in some abandoned houses in St. Vith, three or four to a room. They were lucky to have good clothing, and eating K-rations, they managed to withstand the cold. They were constantly skirmishing with the Germans across the Siegfried Line, shooting back and forth, sniping each other for days. They thought the war was coming to an end and had no idea how their position was about to change.

On December 16th, from the top of the hill they were holding near Beliaf, Bill could see the Germans storming. With trucks and tanks, they bombarded the 106th. Adrenaline pumping, Bill retreated, retreated, retreated, and the soldiers fell back to their abandoned houses, praying for anything good to happen. “It was like the end of the world.”

Suddenly, as the Germans drew nearer, Bill and his fellow soldiers knew—they would have to surrender. Bill ditched the Luger, hid his grenades, and ripped off his stripes. Then, he waited.

“Was ist los? What are you doing in our territory?” When they arrived, the Germans saw Bill’s key ring and assumed he was a driver and told him to drive a Jeep for them. He immediately yelled back “No way!” and they beat him down with their rifles.  Bill yelled out, “Someone, tell them! Someone, sprechen Sie Deutsch! Tell them I don’t know how to drive! Tell them that I’m a supply sergeant! These keys mean nothing!” They finally realized he could do nothing and didn’t insist that he drive.

The soldiers that captured them—they weren’t exactly the poster children of Nazi Germany. They were “unfortunate people—older men and boys. They were not even regular soldiers.” Germany was short on ammunition, weapons… and people. They had been reduced to enlisting the oldest and the youngest, “young children practically,” to fill out their ranks. Fortunately for Bill and the other POWs, this meant that they weren’t too insistent to get what they wanted—but they would get what they could.

First, they stayed the night in a church where the Germans took their overcoats, helmets, and galoshes. They let the Americans keep their boots.

The POWs were marched 30 miles to Stalag XII-A near Limburg, Germany. Bill received his number: 318378 IVB. The Wehrmacht camp was fenced. Twenty men slept on the floor of each barracks; a little brown blanket was issued to them to lay on the dirt. Bill had nothing to eat, but he knew that the Germans themselves probably had very little to eat also.

They were divided by rank. Commissioned officers, non-commissioned, and privates. Bill, a part of the non-commissioned group, did not have the same privileges as the officers; however, he was in a better state than the privates, who were put to work in the mines and fields.

All Bill could think about was food—all any of them could think about was food. “Our stomachs were driving us, and we had pangs of hunger.” Their only nourishment was what they called “grass soup,” which was essentially weeds and grass mixed with a bit of flavoring. One time, they got meat. The men held a lottery to see who among the 200 POWs would get to eat the cooked horse’s tail. Bill’s group won. When they got bread, it was very carefully divided; all eyes were glued to whoever did the cutting to make sure nobody got a bigger piece.

Bill could see the V-2 rockets and Allied bombers overhead; the skies were black with their numbers. Because of this, he knew the war was drawing to an end.

He was only at Stalag until December 23; then the POWs were moved to other camps. They moved to Leipzig by train and on foot, where they stayed for a week. It was there the men had to strip down and go through a bathhouse. Bill thought it was going to be the end, that their fight was over. But, the men were deloused, and then moved on. Every field they walked through, the men would dig up turnips that were planted. If they passed a chicken yard, they would pick the corn feed off the ground to eat. The guards—really, young boys—did nothing to stop them.

They took another train headed to Stargard, near Stettin, Poland. Bill and the rest of the 106th were “walking” prisoners, not “fixed” prisoners. They moved from camp to camp because the Germans just didn’t know what to do with them. The cattle cars were so crowded, they couldn’t sleep or sit. If you had to go to the bathroom—push the doors open a bit and try to go while you’re moving. They stopped in Berlin for one night, January 17, 1945, and slept in the railroad yard. “That was the only night that the Allies didn’t bomb Berlin. It was so overcast that the planes couldn’t fly.”

Bill arrived at Stargard. For the first time since he was captured, the Germans gave them all a bath. He was greeted by the familiar sight of grass soup and ersatz bread (made with a high content of sawdust). The camp was very similar to Stalag. It was scarce; the Germans were not equipped to handle the POWs at this point in the War.

Some prisoners had been there since the earlier days of the war, 1941, 1942, and 1943. There was a French Catholic priest among them. Bill, a born and raised Catholic, couldn’t communicate with him, but said that the priest still held confessions. “If you wanted to confess, he would pull out the list of sins, and you’d just identify the sins you wanted to confess to, and the number of times.”

Unlike Stalag, there was a definite chain of command at Stargard: the strongest ruled. He thought they were paratroopers, but they could have been Special Forces or tougher troops. Either way, they were husky, and they were the strongest. Bill even felt that “in a way, they were more oppressive than the German guards. They ran the place. They divided the bread. They dealt the punishment if you did something they considered improper. They would put you to work digging cesspools. They had their clique that dominated [the] camp.” Resentment built among the other POWs because of their harsh military-style treatment, and there was nothing Bill could do but obey.

There was a camp-wide buddy system that was adopted for protection. Bill needed someone he could trust who would watch out for your stuff while you slept. Bill’s first buddy sold his watch for a piece of salami. His second buddy, although “very dumb,” was “very protective.” He had been a prisoner for a long time. The camp was dog-eat-dog, and Bill aligned himself with someone strong. The number one thread was theft, so Bill needed someone who would have his back.

Bill remained at Stargard for four months, until April.

“One night, at 2:00 or 3:00 a.m., they roused us and sent us out of our barracks. They told us that the Russians were coming, and the Cossacks were in front.” They quickly moved everyone out of the camp. “A few diehards stayed behind,” but Bill never learned what happened to them, but could only assume the worst—"the Cossacks had a fierce reputation.”

Bill walked for three days over hills and through fields to Bremervorde in Northwest Germany. At one point they walked through a village; Bill looked around at the German civilians and saw that they were as bad off as the POWs. Their guards were in such bad shape as well. Everyone was poorly off and desperate, yet they marched on.

Bill’s feet were frozen. 800 men marched through snow-covered mountains with frostbite, covering 180 kilometers. “Every once in a while, one of [them] would drop off dead.” They couldn’t stop. They couldn’t do anything about it.

They reached Bremervorde. Nearby, there was a laager, or tank formation, moving in Jews to a facility near the POW camp. Bill was horrified. The Jews were “naked, dying, and stacked like cordwood.” Bill could see their “dead bodies stacked one on top of the other—about 800 to 1,000 yards away.” The sight absolutely horrified him.

Once, the Red Cross came to visit, accompanied by an SS officer. The German guards feared the SS, and harshly commanded the prisoners that if anyone said anything negative about their time, they would regret it. So, “Everything is fine! Couldn’t be better!” echoed in each interview. “It was dangerous to make complaints in the presence of the SS, but [the] guards were more scared of the SS than [the prisoners] were.”

Each day, there were more planes overhead; each day, they knew the end was coming. Their guards started to hide or run off. Eventually, all of their guards just left, and Bill and the other POWs with him were alone. They managed to break into a warehouse where they found Red Cross packages that had chocolate in them. Bill, who had already lost 70 to 80 pounds and was completely emaciated, ate chocolate until he was bloated and couldn’t move. They completely gorged themselves; the men were sick as dogs, but it was the most they had eaten in months. Later, some remaining guards asked them to get into trucks and move to another camp. They “refused and pretended to be dead.”

Once the Germans were gone, they climbed on the roof of the barrack and flew a banner to alert the Allied planes that they were POWs, so they wouldn’t get bombed.

Finally, in May 1945, Bill heard the sound of bagpipes in the distance. The sound grew louder, louder. The Scottish Black Watch Regiment liberated the camp.

They brought soup and food, but because of the chocolate incident, the men had to refuse.

Soon, Bill was sent to Camp Lucky Strike in Le Havre, France. He was poked and prodded, medically examined, and interviewed before he could go home. He also had his first, long bath in over six months.

Overall, Bill felt sympathy for his German captors. He knew that prisoners often develop a sort of “Stockholm syndrome” for their captors, but for Bill, he just knew that his guards were in such bad shape by that point in the war. They were fairly mild and didn’t insist on much. They didn’t give the POWs any food because they didn’t have any for themselves.

After the War, Bill went on to the University of California at Berkeley. He earned his Master’s degree, spoke five languages, and built a long career with Arthur Anderson. Bill eventually retired in Milan, Italy, where he was the managing director of a small national television network.

Bill passed away in Rome, Italy on October 10th, 2021, at 98 years old.