My father, Arthur Curry, never did speak very much about the war. He was a very good shot with a gun as he grew up on a farm and was familiar with shooting and trapping. His family was very poor and he had to work in the Bush in order to support his large family. He was one of 7 children in the family and he was the second oldest son. His father favored the eldest son and allowed him to go to school and obtain an education. He was very abusive to my father and made him stay home and work in the Bush or in the fields.
This lack of education tormented my father until his dying day as he was very intelligent and felt that he had been abused and neglected. One thing that worked in his favour was that because he had worked outside so much, he had a very good sense of direction and could use the stars to establish his location. He was trained to be a sniper and because he was a great shot and because he had a good sense of direction and because he always felt at home in the Bush, he was sent on many missions.
He was captured three times, twice behind enemy lines and managed to escape each time. He said that he was in Stalag 4B and watched as Dresden burned!
He worked picking potatoes on a farm when sent out as a prisoner at one time, but most of the time he worked in a coal mine. It was very hard labour and there was very little and poor food. He says that they would get pumpkin soup. Pumpkin, seeds and all mashed and heated up with water. He said that it kept one from dying but was not sufficient for the hard work they were doing.
After he escaped, he joined Paton's American Army. The Americans de-loused them and then fed them. They were so emaciated that they had to feed them slowly as they were told that they could die if they ate too much too quickly.
He never spoke about his years in the war and never had any antagonism against the German people. He saw many atrocities and had PTSD even years later, when I was growing up. I would wake up in the night and he would be having flashbacks and crying and moaning in his sleep. I would be terrified that my big, strong, silent, father could be so terrified and traumatized. There was no access to psychiatry in those days. How he suffered mentally! The physical scars did not go away either. He was very hard of hearing, as he had been close to explosions and I learned as a little girl to speak very clearly and very loudly if you wanted to tell him something.
The other scar he had was that he had fallen off the tailgate of an army truck onto the hardtop highway when the chains broke after going over a bump on the road. He landed on his tailbone and of course passed out. The driver of the truck came and picked him up. They did not take him to a hospital or provide any medical care. He said that he could limp around after a few days but his coccyx and pelvis were broken. He had severe arthritis in those joints when he came home after the war and suffered terribly all the rest of his life.
When he was 62 years old, the doctors did a hip replacement but they could not fix his pelvis. His left leg was shorter than the right one. They replaced his right hip after a few years and then the left one again. I don't remember a time when he was without pain, either mentally or physically. In spite of all that, he was a very joyful person and was able to make good friends and taught himself to read and write.
I was rather afraid of him as a small child because he was so silent and would seem to be off in his own thoughts. As I grew up, I learned to appreciate what a truly remarkable person he was. We lost him in March 2014 at the age of 89. There were so many people at his funeral, they had to turn people away. He and my mother raised 6 healthy children and never asked for any help from anyone. His 4 proud sons preached at his funeral and his 6 loving grandsons carried his casket. His youngest grandson carried a wreath to put on his gravesite. He had lived a long, often difficult life, but we were proud to have had him as a father. In spite of his lack of opportunity, he made sure that all of his children went to school and had every opportunity to be successful.
