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Sgt. Hugh O’Neill was a soldier with the 61st Armored Infantry Battalion during WWII. He was spending his time on an armored half-track in the American Third Army led by General Patton. O’Neill and some other soldiers were taking shelter from the winter cold in a seemingly abandoned bunker when a group of Germans surprised them, killing several and taking O’Neill as a POW. Over the next four months, he would be grouped with many other POWs and marched across southern Germany through the winter without proper cold weather equipment. O’Neill recounts that despair and the certainty of death were constant companions. He discusses the importance of water to the prisoners and recounts how sparsely any type of food was distributed. Occasionally, their captors—also soldiers stuck in the midst of war and hardship—would show a bit of kindness, but mostly, they ignored or abused the prisoners. It was uncommon to form bonds with others as a POW because numbness, survival, and despair simply overrode higher human functions and personal engagements.
Many servicemen have stories about their time spent as POWs. Even in the best of times, being a POW is terrible. O’Neill was one of the fortunate ones in that he was able to return to tell his story, although he brought back trauma and memories that would forever color how he saw the world. Another POW was Louis Zamperini. His story was written by Laura Hillenbrand and titled Unbroken. Like O’Neill, Zamperini would later be returned home, but only after two years of physical and mental torture under the hands of his Japanese captors. Then there is the famous POW story fictionalized for the big screen called The Great Escape starring Steve McQueen. One thing that stands out in these accounts is that, like O’Neill, POWs who were on a “Death March”—as the long marches with prisoners during the war were often referred to—were burdened with surviving each day’s march through the elements, affording them less time to form alliances with other POWs and make any plans for escape. All these titles speak about the POW needing to have some internal fortitude and inner strength just to survive the extreme mental and physical trauma to which they have been subjected.
O’Neill’s book includes some commentary and editing by Scott MacGregor and fantastic illustrations by Gary Dumm. The writing is easy to read and leans toward a more thoughtful rather than descriptive experience. O’Neill focuses his writing on the mental state of himself and his fellow prisoners. He talks quite a bit about feeling such despair that a person can only focus on a couple of things, such as the march itself and the basics of food and shelter. As he explains it, the reader gets the sense that most of what is presented about POWs is highly fictionalized and sensationalized to the point that they become Homeric epics when the reality is colder, muddier, and messier. What comes across clearly in the narrative is that the basic need for survival necessitates POWs to become withdrawn and protective of themselves. Others who have written about similar experiences often concentrate more on the moment-to-moment experience of being a POW. In contrast, O’Neill focuses on the internal self rather than minute details, summarizing much of his own time as a prisoner in order to give readers a more global perspective on the mental state of the POW. The result is a unique look at the prisoner-of-war experience.