Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, September 30, 1993                   TAG: 9309300024
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: FORT LEONARD WOOD, MO.                                LENGTH: Medium

GERMAN POWS REUNITE IN U.S.

To Gladys Hritsko, the Germans were "the boys."

Hritsko, now 73, returned to Fort Leonard Wood on Tuesday from her home in Ripon, Wis., looking for the German POWs she befriended when she was a sergeant in the Women's Army Corps 50 years ago.

She didn't find many familiar faces among the 20 former captives who returned to the Army base this week for a special reunion, part of the Army's 50th anniversary commemoration of World War II.

But she enjoyed reminiscing with the men, who were among thousands of Axis prisoners held at the sprawling post in the Ozarks from 1942 to 1946.

"I got attached to them," said Hritsko, who drove a truck carrying German POWs to work details. "We felt at ease with each other. After all, they were 18- and 19-year-old boys, same age as me."

Hritsko didn't recall Richard Beck, 71, of Bergen, Germany, but he clearly remembered her. Standing in the fort cemetery before a memorial for three Germans who died while interned there, Beck asked about another WAC, a woman on whom he'd had a crush a half-century ago.

Coincidentally, Hritsko had a 1944 photograph of the woman, which she gave to Beck along with the woman's address.

Clutching the photo tightly, he smiled, burst into tears and gave Hritsko a big hug.

"That's the highlight of the visit," he said in a thick accent.

Returning to Fort Leonard Wood for a six-day reunion evoked a full range of emotions for the 20 Germans.

Many got choked up when they arrived Saturday and saw the familiar oak forest hugging the hills.

"It is unbelievable the feelings we have. It is like being born again 50 years later," said Wolfgang Hampel of Oldenburg.

The Germans held at Fort Leonard Wood had been members of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps. They were captured in Tunisia by British and American troops.

More than 400,000 Axis prisoners were sent to about 500 POW camps around the United States. Missouri had about a dozen POW camps during World War II, with a peak of nearly 5,200 Germans held at Fort Leonard Wood.

American organizers located former POWs through veterans' groups. The German government funded their trip.

Rudolf Krause, 74, of Ingolstadt, was imprisoned for two years in Missouri after spending one year at Camp Phillips near Salina, Kan. He vividly recalls the armed guards.

"Now we are greeted with handshakes," he said.

Some of the visitors quietly noted that many Allied prisoners fared far worse and that thousands of German soldiers died in Soviet camps.

One man joked that if he had known he would be treated so well as a prisoner of war in Missouri, he would have been captured years earlier.

"During the war, we were the enemy," said Robert Bechtold of Deisslingen. "People sometimes yelled names at us. Now they are our friends. Others may not understand that, or they may just talk about it, but we feel it. We feel it."