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Staff Sgt. Eldon
Berthiaume, Infantryman
WWII POW - PART II
Ted Tripp
09/01/06
 LAWRENCE - In early 1945,
Pvt. Eldon Berthiaume of the Army’s 3rd Infantry
Division was captured by the Germans in the small village
of Utweiler, Germany. He and other Americans taken
prisoner were force-marched deeper into Germany and,
after a temporary stay at a transitional POW camp, ended
up at Stalag VA [5A] in Ludwigsburg.
Stalag VA consisted of wooden barracks surrounded by a
perimeter of fences and barbed wire. There were large
groups of POWs from Russia, France, Britain, Poland,
India and the United States. The roofs of the buildings
were marked with KG (for Kriegsgefangener, the German
word for POW) and had a large, red cross painted on them
so that Allied planes would not attack the prison
complex.
There was never enough to eat and Eldon always looked
forward to the K-rations delivered occasionally by the
International Red Cross. Much of the rest of the time the
food consisted of a green soup – nicknamed
“spinach soup” – and chunks of lard. When
Eldon was eventually liberated, he was about 50 pounds
lighter than when he was captured.
Eldon remembers that every day like clockwork the Germans
had a ritual where they would parade from the camp
hospital - and purposely in front of the American POWs -
a wooden box covered by an American flag. He never found
out if there was an actual body inside the box or if the
Germans were just using the “performance” for
psychological reasons.
At the time of Eldon’s imprisonment at Stalag VA,
the Allies were quickly closing in on what was left of
the German Army. Eldon and the other POWs could see
dogfights overhead between the Messerschmitt and American
fighters. If an American pilot was shot down and then
brought to the camp, the prisoners would press him for
the latest news on the war. They wanted to know how close
the U.S. Army was to their location. Liberation was
always on their minds.
After months at the POW camp, one night Eldon and the
others noticed explosions on the distant horizon. The
next morning the Germans suddenly moved all the prisoners
out of Stalag VA and started marching them even further
into Germany. The Russians led the column, as they always
would in the days ahead. They marched from sunup to
sundown and Eldon remembers how hard it was on some of
the older GIs who were in their thirties or forties.
Younger soldiers like himself would help carry on their
shoulders the ones who had trouble keeping up. For those
who fell and couldn’t rise, the butt of a  German rifle was swiftly
administered.
At night, the exhausted prisoners had to sleep in the
open fields beside the road. It was still cold with snow
on the ground from the harsh winter months. The cold made
it especially hard to sleep. Eldon remembers one night
when he was able to find a large wooden barrel which he
shared with another GI to conserve body warmth.
Eldon also recalls a night where the prisoners could hear
the drone of Allied bombers flying overhead – and,
incredibly, it lasted all night long. The sound was
particularly heartening to the prisoners, as it
reinforced their hope that it was just a matter of time
before the war would soon be over.
Food was always in short supply. Eldon noted that the
POWs considered any fresh snails they found along the
side of the road as “special treats.” Another
source of precious food was the half-rotten apples still
hanging on nearby trees from the previous fall season.
During the daytime, the forced march turned out to be
especially dangerous. American planes might suddenly
appear overhead and strafe the column with machine gun
fire. The pilots unfortunately didn’t know that
those on the road below were Allied POWs. The prisoners
were then caught in a quandary. If they left the road to
avoid the strafing – and went too far – the
German guards would shoot them. If they stayed on the
road, the American planes would kill them. It was always
a gamble on what to do.
A section of the march took the prisoners through a small
town which had just been bombed by Allied planes. The
residents, many injured, were still searching for their
relatives and neighbors when the prisoners went by. They
yelled and screamed at the Americans as they passed and
some spit in disgust towards those they blamed for the
de-struction.
During the long march, at one point Eldon had a sudden
“nature call” and asked a nearby German guard
for permission to briefly stop. The guard granted
permission and then noticed that Eldon had a rosary
draped around his neck. The German, an older man, then
pointed to Eldon and asked, “Catholic?” Eldon
nodded yes. The guard then pointed at himself and said,
“Catholic.” Incredibly, he then proceeded to
take out his wallet and show pictures of his family to
Eldon. This was one of those rare and short-lived moments
when the instinctive “good” of human nature was
able to transcend the horrors of wartime.
 Late on one of the last
days of the march, the Germans let some of the Indian
prisoners take a quick bath in a nearby stream. When the
Germans ordered them out of the water, three or four just
started swimming away. So the German guards shot and
killed them. The remaining Indian prisoners then sat down
and refused to resume the march until the Indian bodies
were recovered and accorded a proper burial on a
ceremonial funeral pyre. Amazingly, the Germans relented
and that evening the Indian POWs honored their dead
comrades.
The delay worked to the advantage of all the prisoners.
That same night, after the funeral ceremony, and with the
march again underway, the Americans heard machine gun
fire in the distance. There was no question that these
were American machine guns because of the sharp, crisp,
repetitive nature of the noise. The American Army was
getting close. Very close.
Only hours later, the Germans unexpectedly separated the
Americans from the rest of the prisoners and herded them
into a large barn. There were hundreds of exhausted, sick
and hungry American prisoners. The Germans left only
three or four soldiers behind to guard them.
Somewhere around 6 or 7 a.m. that morning, Eldon and the
other American prisoners suddenly heard the rumbling and
clinking of tanks approaching. These were the sounds of
American tanks. The German guards stood silent. The noise
grew louder and then a tank from Patton’s 2nd
Armored Division crashed right through the wall of the
barn. A GI popped out of the hatch and yelled: “Are
there any Americans here!” Eldon remembers a huge
roar went up from the prisoners. The few German guards
surrendered. The GI in the tank then started throwing out
cartons of cigarettes to the crowd and other GIs passed
out rifles to the former prisoners.
Soon an Army colonel appeared and said, “My troops
are now going after the rest of the
prisoners.” But Eldon never found out if the
colonel and his men ever caught up and freed the
remaining POWs.
The now-liberated Americans were even-tually put onto
trucks and taken to an airport where they were flown to
Rheims, France, the site of Allied Supreme Headquarters.
Here they were de-loused, cleaned up and given all the
food they wanted. After weeks of rehabilitation, the
former POWs were shipped back to the United States. Eldon
arrived on U.S. soil in August of 1945 and was granted a
30-day leave to go home to Lawrence.
During Eldon’s capture and imprisonment, the U.S.
Army had no idea what had happened to him. All they knew
was that he had been missing since sometime in early
1945. When the Army first realized he was missing, it
sent a telegram to his parents explaining that Pvt. Eldon
Berthiaume was listed as “missing in action,”
without further information. When Eldon’s mother,
Aldona, got the telegram, she started attending Mass
every day praying for her son’s safe return. She
didn’t find out that Eldon was actually alive until
after he was liberated by Patton’s forces some four
months later.
When his leave at home was up, Eldon was sent by train to
Lake Placid, New York where the Army had a special
facility for treatment of returning POWs. Here Eldon recuperated from his ordeal
along with many other former American prisoners.
After Lake Placid, Eldon was given orders to report to
Ft. McClellan in Anniston, Ala. to become an Army
instructor. He would subsequently be promoted to staff
sergeant before being discharged from the service in
1946.
Upon returning home, Eldon went back to work at the
Shawsheen Mill for several years before eventually taking
a job at Western Electric in Lawrence. In 1956 he was
transferred to the company’s huge new complex in
North Andover on Rte. 125. He worked in various jobs
making telephone equipment and ended up as a supervisor
in microwave equipment engineering when he retired in
1983.
In the summer of 1943, before Eldon entered the service,
he had attended a family outing in Canada on Prince
Edward Island. Here he met Corinne Gallant and was
immediately infatuated with her. While there was little
contact between the two during Eldon’s army service,
he finally got back in touch with her after the war. In
1946, Corinne and Eldon were married in a Canadian
ceremony. This past July 10th, the couple celebrated
their 60th wedding anniversary.
The Berthiaumes have four daughters, Ruth Messina, Carole
Bonin, Elaine Foley and Lisa Singleton; seven
grandchildren; and seven great grandchildren.
Eldon is a member of American Legion Post 122 in Methuen
and also a member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars.
Staff Sergeant Eldon Berthiaume, we thank you for your
service to our country and the sacrifices you endured to
protect our freedoms.
As a final note, Eldon would like to extend a special
thanks to John Doherty, the Director of Veterans’
Services in Andover, who was a tremendous help to him
over the past two years in his application for POW
benefits.
*Send your questions comments to ValleyPatriot@aol.com
The September, 2006
Edition of the Valley Patriot
The Valley Patriot is a Monthly
Publication.
All Contents (C) 2006, Valley Patriot, Inc.
We publish 9,000 newspapers and distribute in Andover,
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