Veteran remembers struggle to survive in German POW camp

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Turning 21 is usually a big event in a person's life. For Bill Woodward, a Cree from northern Saskatchewan, it was the day he was marched into German POW camp Stalag 7A.

The year was 1944. Woodward had enlisted as a 19-year-old, escaping from unemployment and hunger, the legacy of the Dirty Thirties.

"I was tired of bumming around the country starving to death," said Woodward with a laugh. He had been living in the Ft. McMurray area since leaving Buffalo Narrows, Sask. at the age of five. The army seemed the best ticket out of a desperate situation at home.

The war in Europe had reached a peak and the Allied forces were cutting a swatch through German defences. In 1943 the Allies invaded Sicily, the Italians surrendered, and German forces surrendered to the Russians in Stalingrad.

To a private in the Prince Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry fighting on the front lines, the news signalled an end to the death and horrors of war. Woodward had been shipped first to England, then to Italy and grinding combat in the Allied takeover of Mussolini's territory. He welcomed a swift victory and a journey home to peaceful Canada.

But for Woodward, the true horrors of war were just beginning. On a foray across the Favio River in northern Italy his group met with enemy forces and was captured.

"We advanced too far on the front line and didn't have any backing," said Woodward. "Only 13 of us made it across."

On the other side was a large force of German soldiers. The Canadian group was surrounded before they could escape. They surrendered.

"I surrendered but I didn't give up. I don't backwater for nobody, and I looked them in the eye," said Woodward, gruffly. "And I still look everybody in the eye."

The Patricia's were herded onto a box car with other captured Allied soldiers and transported to Germany. The two-week journey was a taste of things to come. Fifty men were packed in the rail car, suffering from cold, hunger and dysentery. Russian, British and Canadian soldiers shared the little food and water given by their captors, and wondered where they would end up.

Stalag 7A was a prisoner-of-war camp located just outside of Munich, Germany. Woodward walked through the camp gates on his 21st birthday. The experience was one that, 50 years later, he still has difficulty discussing.

"You have to live things like this. Because if you didn't there's no way to explain it to people," the normally gregarious man said in a quiet voice.

Woodward lost more than a third of his body weight during the internment. The struggle to find food and live was uppermost in prisoners' minds, more than thoughts of God, family or home.

"I was thinking more on how to survive more than anything else," said Woodward.

"What we think of as food is completely different than what the POW's were given to eat," he added.

Seven months later, on April 27, 1945, at three minutes before 10 a.m., American soldiers liberated Stalag 7A and the hundreds of Allied soldier POWs. On May 8, Woodward was flown to England where he spent three months in a hospital recovering from the effects of starvation.

Today the 70-year-old veteran lives surrounded by his children, grandchildren, and "the boss", his baby great-granddaughter. He tells colorful jokes and is full of laughter. But the memories of his 208 days at Stalag 7A will always remain.

"I don't know what the hell kept us going,. We kept on hoping. When you give up hope, it's pretty hard to go on."