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‘Finding forgiveness’ was origionally printed in the September 13, 2006 of the Washington County News

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Finding forgiveness

Caitlin Sullivan/Staff
Printed in the September 13, 2006 edition of the Washington County News

H.C.  Kiser heard the clink of the cleats on the road outside his prison camp and then the American tanker before it busted through the gates. He was 20 years old, 86 pounds and for seven months had been a prisoner of war at a German camp.

“Who do you want me to kill?” cried an American soldier as he jumped from the tank and shocked at Kiser’s gaunt body.

“I don’t know which one,” Kiser replied. 

Kiser left his home in Abingdon for Italy as a Technical Sergeant in 15th Air Force division in 1943. Based out of Foggie, Italy, the 772nd Bomb Squadron’s mission was to bomb the oil fields in Romania.

“We knew that if we destroyed the oil fields we’d help shorten the war,” he said.
Kiser was a waist gunner on a B-17 when it was shot down over Bologna, Italy on Oct. 12, 1944.

“We went down in such a sudden dive my body floated up to the top of plane - my arms and legs were hanging and I couldn’t move my head,” Kiser said.

The wreck scattered metal everywhere and temporarily blinded Kiser.

The next thing he knew Kiser was knee deep in a swamp, a German machine gun gouged into his left ribcage and a bayonet poked into his right.

“I just closed my eyes and prayed,” he said.

During the interrogation, he said the Germans fed him coffee and bread. He said they told him to relax and just talk.

“I only gave them my name, rank, and serial number like I was supposed to do under the Geneva Convention,” he said.

It earned him solitary confinement for seven days.

“I was so dehydrated I couldn’t talk but a whisper,” he said. “My tongue was swollen and stuck to the top of my mouth. I had to reach up and pull my tongue down to talk.”

He was put on a train to Stalag Luft IV, Grosstychow, Poland - a permanent concentration camp for airmen. He said the prisoners were fed cabbage and water. Once, he said, he found a small pink mouse in his soup.

“I had put it in my mouth and burst down on it,” he said. “I pulled it out by its tail and said ‘Look, men, I got meat.’”

He didn’t eat it but another prisoner did.

He was transferred by train to Stalag XIIID at Nuremberg, Germany. When his glass soup bowl broke he used a rusted tin can and rubbed it with sand and dirt all along the inside to clean it. “I really enjoyed that tin can,” he said. “I’d give anything for that tin can again.”

The POWs then marched 80 to 100 miles from Nuremberg to Moosburg. Kiser remembers sleet storms and frozen feet. He had developed dysentery and was severely malnourished.

He remembers struggling up a hill and a guard offering him a slice of bread. Kiser reached for it. The guard pulled it back and tossed it to his dog. The guard did it again with a piece of cheese and Kiser kept reaching.

“I remember his big blue overcoat,” he said. “He’d hand me a piece of cheese and then take it back, take a bite and feed it to his dog. He’d laugh. I swore and lunged at him. I said I’d kill him. If I get mad I forget I’m dying.”

Patton’s Third Army liberated the POWs from Stalag VIIA in Moosburg on April 29, 1945. Kiser said the Americans lined all of the German guards up against a wall and asked the POWs to choose which guards deserved to die.

“I could hear the pop of other POWs shooting their guards,” he said.

Kiser remembers coming face to face with the guard that had been brutal and tempted him with food.

“‘I’m the guard now,’ I told him. He was trembling and perspiring,” Kiser said. “His uniform around his belly was wet with sweat.”

Kiser bowed his head and prayed for guidance. 

“We were mortal enemies,” he said. “Now was the time to get even.”
Kiser shook the guard’s hand.

“I forgave him,” he said. “I wish you could see the expression on his face.”
To contact Caitlin Sullivan e-mail or call (276) 628-7101.