238798 Pfc. Thomas Skaggs United States Army Coy E. 222nd Infantry Regiment from:Louisville, KY Thomas Skaggs Jr was my father. He was captured on 25th of January 1945 in an action associated with the German Operation Nordwind and was held in Stalag IX-B, Bad Orb. This was a notoriously overcrowded and under-provided camp. The prisoners of war there were starving to death, being given only "grass soup" to eat.
The camp was liberated on 2nd April 1945 by a task force put together specifically for the mission of freeing the camp's prisoners. My father was within 24 hours of death when the camp was taken.
Tom Skaggs went on to flourish back in Louisville, Kentucky where he married Alice Kleier in 1949, became an electrician, and worked on sophisticated machinery in an automobile assembly plant until his retirement in 1984.
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