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Former World War II
Prisoner of War Jodie Gowan and wife Louise celebrated
63 years of marriage October 9, 2003.
Hardships wrought by the Great Depression of the 1930's
are credited with molding the hardy men who fought in
World War II, but even the rigors of that purveyor of
austerity and moral fiber failed to prepare them for the
severity of life in German Prisoner of War camps.
Personal accounts of Stalag IVB, where Jodie Gowan of
Atwood, Tennessee was held for four and a half months
after being captured by German forces, detail frozen
days and nights spent in barracks with no heat and only
one thin blanket for comfort against the joint miseries
of cold, hunger and loneliness for home.
Upon arriving at the camp, delousing was accomplished
through a procedure in which the men were stripped of
their clothing, which was sanitized in a pressurized
steam process while they showered en masse. "It was
fortunate that one did not know until later how similar
the procedure was to the gas chamber executions of the
Jews," remarked former POW Stan Lambert in an Internet
account of the Stalag.
"We didn't have anything to eat, that was the worst
part," Jodie says, his eyes betraying hard memories of
days spent in ironic servitude, where living conditions
were conducive only to death but men were required,
nonetheless, to labor. The Germans' own rations were
shortened as Allied gains translated into reduced
resources for the struggling empire.
Work assignments varied each day, affording little
opportunity for familiarity outside the daily routine of
living. Jodie's eyes sparkle as he recalls the day he
and nine other prisoners were assigned to unload
cabbages: "They was the prettiest cabbages you ever seen
in your life! They were that big around," he exclaims,
his big farmer's hands forming a circle bigger than a
basketball, "If you dropped one on the ground it would
absolutely pop."
Those lucky enough to be assigned to the detail thus
subsidized their diet with cabbage that day. "We ate
that; we ate everything we could find," he says. Normal
prison rations included small servings of potatoes
culled from those fed to the German armies, and
rutabagas, a root crop similar to turnips, but were
never enough to ease the men's gnawing hunger or to
provide necessary energy to their wasting bodies.
Jodie, himself a farmer before becoming a soldier, was
assigned another day to plant potatoes. That evening as
he lay hungry in his bunk, he decided an early harvest
was in order. He stole out to the field and dug up the
potatoes he had earlier planted, slipping them inside
the torn lining in the back of his coat. He ate the
potatoes at night, escaping detection during daytime
inspections by shifting them from side to side.
In a postcard Jodie sent
from Stalag IVB, he entreats his family not to worry
about him.
"After Germany surrendered they turned me aloose with
the rest of them; the Germans left us and we didn't know
where to go," Jodie says, recalling that "as far as you
could see" along the road, Germans were leaving, having
abandoned their posts rather than face their conquerors,
among whom were the stalwart Russian forces reported to
be approaching the Stalag.
Many of the former prisoners decided leaving was in
their best interests as well, and Jodie, along with a
small band of four or five other men, began walking in
search of an American unit.
After a couple days' journey, the men encountered a
middle-aged woman, probably in France, who invited the
men into her home where she washed their clothes and fed
them breakfast, then dinner and supper.
"We hadn't had a bath for four or five months; we were
dirty as pigs!" Jodie says, his thanks still fresh after
nearly 60 years. "She didn't know us no more than nobody
else but she gave us whatever she had."
The men rested there for the next three or four days,
with the woman's efforts aided by other townspeople. At
night, Jodie says, he slept on a feather bed that was a
foot deep, covering himself with another one nearly as
thick.
"I was starting to get warmed up," smiles Jodie, who had
never thawed from the freezing cold of the winter's
battle.
A infantryman with Company K of the 9th Infantry
Regiment, Jodie had arrived on the shores of Normandy's
Omaha Beach on the 7th of June, 1944, the day after
D-Day, and fought with his unit through three major
battles in Normandy, northern France and the Rhineland
before being captured during the Battle of the Bulge in
the tiny country of Belgium on the 17th of December.
"We were expecting anything to happen," Jodie says of
every day spent on foreign soil during the war. "You
don't know how scared a fella gets."
Cut off from their unit, with only three men left alive
in their squad, Jodie labored with his fellows all day,
digging a shelter into the frozen ground. "It was cold -
I mean sure enough cold," says Jodie, "I had everything
I had on and wore it all the time."
The men were so weak they could hardly walk by the time
they retreated into their hideaway as German tanks
rumbled into the ranks of troops hidden and scattered
along the thin Allied front.
"The tanks were running nearly about all day and all
night shooting at anybody they could see," Jodie
recounts. "We could've stayed there; if we'd stayed they
would never have found us, but the sergeant decided he'd
better stick his head out the door and when he did they
turned that big gun aloose. They killed the guy beside
of me and blowed the sergeant's head right off. I think
if he'd stayed still we could've made it, maybe."
Jodie's wartime experiences were a world removed from
his early service days when his young wife had joined
him in Wisconsin during training.
The two had known each other all their lives, attending
school together in Whitthorne before Jodie begged his
father to allow him to switch to Lavinia so he could
ride the truck to school with the other boys.
Only later did he and Louise Douglas (the daughter of
justice of the peace and school board official Omer
Douglas) begin dating. They married on November 9, 1940,
when they were both 18.
It was a fun time to live in West Tennessee, the couple
agrees, when no television meant people came together
for entertainment. "Neighbors spoke to each other,
visited each other and all such a thing as that," Louise
begins. Jodie picks up in the couple's familiar custom
of speaking as one, "You could holler one house to the
next; we had lots of nice friends, and everybody helped
everybody."
The two were lying on the couch one evening listening to
the radio when they heard the news that Pearl Harbor had
been bombed.
"We both knew he would be called," says Louise, " the
young ones had done been sent on; we came next, the ones
that didn't have any children."
She recalls the letter Jodie received concerning his
induction into the army began, "Greetings from Uncle
Sam".
Right Above: Jodie Gowan
as a young soldier.
Above: An English photography studio created a composite
Jodie calls "pipe dreams" using a snapshot Lousie had
sent from home.
Louise and another soldier's wife traveled to Wisconsin
by train and the couples rented apartments side by side
in Sparta, 20 miles from the base. When Jodie couldn't
spend the night at home, Louise would join him on post.
The "girls" learned to enjoy military life with the ease
of commissary shopping while the townsfolk went out of
their way to be nice to the soldiers.
"Everybody was just as nice," says Jodie, "We really
enjoyed it."
Louise spent about six months in the northern state,
going back alone after her friend became pregnant and
returned home to Tennessee.
"Jodie still can't believe I went (back) by myself,"
grins Louise, recalling the ordeal of changing trains in
Chicago.
When the soldiers received orders to "ship out",
military officials advised it was time for all the wives
to go home. Louise moved in with her parents in Gleason,
where the family had moved after being displaced by the
Milan Army Ammunition plant that had claimed thousands
of acres.
After he was captured in Belgium, Louise received a
letter from his commander that said he was missing in
action since December 17. Later, she received a postcard
from Jodie, dated January 10, 1945 from Stalag IVB,
letting her know he was okay.
"When I got that card the mail carrier had already made
his rounds about 9:00 that morning. About 3:00 in the
afternoon he brought that around," smiles Louise
appreciatively.
When the war was over, unaware of how Jodie's story was
unfolding, the family was preparing breakfast one
morning when he walked in the door.
"I went to him right quick," Louise declares, glad to
have her man back home, though the war was far from over
for a man who had experienced battle and life as a P.O.W.
"It took me a long time before I'd tell anybody
anything," he says.
"Once he got home he would go out and lay on the back
porch; that went on for a long time," says Louise.
Jodie and Louise bought 180 acres of land outside Atwood
with his G.I. loan where they continued farming. In
later years, Louise and the couple's four children
operated the dairy farm while Jodie supplemented the
family income by working on wells.
In addition to children Linda Inman, Joe Ray Gowan, Kay
Jackson, and Nancy Blankenship, the couple has eight
grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.
This past Sunday, they celebrated 63 years of marriage.
They are members of Hopewell Baptist Church in Lavinia. |
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