Currently Browsing: This Week in Marne History
April 27 - May 3
Sunday, 27 April 2008
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3ID Liberates a POW Camp
In this week in April World War II was obviously drawing to a close. From both east and west Allied forces were drawing the noose around Nazi Germany ever tighter. The Third Infantry Division had captured Nürnberg a week earlier and had flown the Stars and Stripes in the stadium where Hitler had held his famous rallies in the 1930s. Now the Division was racing south down the Autobahn toward Augsburg and Munich in Bavaria. But first, in a small episode, but one that was very important to 3ID soldiers, it had to rescue some of their comrades who were Prisoners of War.
The hamlet of Unter Thurheim was about five miles northwest of Augsburg when Company K, 3d Battalion, 7th Infantry Regiment, entered it on 27 April 1945. Today it can not even be found on the map, but then it was the site of a small German POW camp. Fifty-two Americans, some of whom were members of the 3d Infantry Division who had been captured by the Germans at the Anzio beachhead in early 1944, were in the camp. They knew that the Americans were coming: They had been able to hear the 3ID Artillery for several days and they were “sweating out” the time, fearing a misaimed shot (which was not unknown) would get them just before they were freed. Fortunately, that did not happen and the 150 German soldiers defending the town surrendered after a short firefight and traded places with their former captives. Twenty-year-old Private Frank G. Parco from the Bronx spoke for all of them: “When I saw those guys out of the window, my knees started to knock and I didn’t know whether to jump or fly. Everybody was out in the street hugging and slapping each other, and I even kissed the first infantryman I saw, because I had been swearing for the last fourteen months that I would do so.” After freeing the men, Company K continued on the road to Augsburg, which surrendered to the 3ID without a fight the next day.
