246852 Pvt George Madden United States Army 45th Infantry Division from:Plainfield, Illinois George Madden was a close friend of mine in Plainfield American Legion Post #13 and although our war experiences were much different (he a WWII vet, me a Vietnam Vet) there was a genuine love and respect among us.
George was a very quite, shy person that never spoke much about his war time experiences and being a POW.
He graduated from high school in 1943 at 17 and when he turned 18 in August of that year he enlisted in the Army. He went through basic training in Texas and was shipped to Italy on a transport ship shortly thereafter at a replacement depot in Naples where he was assigned to the 45th Infantry Division, where his unit practiced for the assault on southern France in August shortly after D-Day at Normandy.
He was involved in the liberation of Grenoble, France and was captured a short time later. Initially he was held for questioning at a local area, then was shipped to his first POW camp eventually ending up at Stalag 7A outside Moosburg. The men there were made to be force laborers in nearby Munich where the POWs were tasked with repairing some damaged roofs of civic buildings (like the town bank, etc.), but most of the labor consisted of working to repair damage caused by allied bombers in and on the local railroad as Munich was the main rail transport in Germany. He mentioned that while the work was difficult it was much easier than the work prisoners from a local concentration death camp were assigned to do as the POWs pretty much filled craters with dirt, etc. while the death camp inmates were assigned the task of laying new rail, etc.
During his captivity he learned enough German to understand and communicate to a point which helped him cope being able to understand some of what he was able to overhear when the guards spoke to each other about the war. During several of the work details near Munich he made friends with 3-4 German kids in their early teens. Although they were not in uniform, their jobs were to man the search lights when night bombing attacks occurred. Feeling he had made a good connection and knowing the youths were looking forward the end of the war, he one day took a chance asking them if he were to escape would they help him. He understood the danger in making that request for if the kids told on him there would be a severe reaction from the camp guards, but he took the risk and the kids said they would help him. Shortly thereafter on about April 30, 1945 he escaped after the morning roll call and the young men hid him in the basement of a bombed out building for several days until he heard the rumbling of what he knew were American tanks. He came out of the basement and was immediately confronted by a Nazi who was fleeing away from the oncoming US attack so he ended up dogging another scary moment. Finally as the tanks came closer he approached them waving his arms. Although his uniform by then was in taters it was clear he was an American and that plus his conversion helped end his captivity.
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