School observes POW/MIA Day
Woodsfield veteran the guest of honor for New Matamoras event
MICHAEL KELLY The Marietta Times Guests and speakers join students and staff at Matamoras Elementary School on Fridayi in the Pledge of Allegiance to open the school’s annual program for National POW/MIA Day.
MICHAEL KELLY The Marietta Times Guests and speakers join students and staff at Matamoras Elementary School on Fridayi in the Pledge of Allegiance to open the school’s annual program for National POW/MIA Day.
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NEW MATAMORAS – When Herman Zerger makes a point, he gently grasps your sleeve, leans into your radius of attention, fixes you with piercing blue eyes and speaks softly.
The 93-year-old was the guest of honor Friday at a 28-year tradition in New Matamoras – lunch at VFW Post 6387 and a program at Matamoras Elementary School marking National POW/MIA Day.
As about 20 people mingled and ate home-cooked beans, meatballs, macaroni salad and cake, Zerger told his story of captivity and survival.
A lifelong resident of Woodsfield, Zerger graduated from high school in June 1942 and enlisted in the Army. After infantry training in South Carolina, he shipped out from New York City with the 36th "Texas" Infantry Division.
"We were the first to invade Hitler's Europe," he said. His regiment landed on the beaches at Salerno, Italy. "It was hard fighting to San Pedro. At the Rapido River crossing, we lost 1,000 men. At Monte Cassino, I was in a foxhole while we were being bombed. I waa getting tossed around."
He was promoted to platoon sergeant at Monte Cassino and was part of the fighting that captured Rome.
After that came another beach landing in France and more hard fighting up to the Rhine. On Feb. 3, 1945, his unit was overrun by German tanks at Herrlisheim. His lieutenant was wounded severely and their position was surrounded.
"It was either give up or die," he said.
Having been a high school athlete, Zerger said, he never smoked or drinked, and when the PX rations were handed out he always traded the cigarettes to someone for chocolate bars. That habit would become an important part of his survival.
For reasons he still doesn't understand, Zerger said, the SS officer who took him prisoner frisked him thoroughly and seized all the chocolate bars in one pocket of his combat jacket but left those in the other pocket.
"I still don't know why he did that," Zerger said.
The Germans moved him from one camp to another, increasingly further from the front lines, ending in an Austrian camp named Markt Pongau in the Salzburg region. He recalled the conditions at the various prisons he was cycled through.
"The first one, Baden-Baden – I've been back there, it's a casino town now – they threw me down in a dungeon and I felt something crawling on me. It was full of rats."
At each location, prisoners were fed "weed soup," he said.
"It was nothing but weeds and water, even the broth was green," he remembered. "Those chocolate bars helped me survive."
Even so, he lost 30 pounds before the camp was liberated on May 8, 1945. He had been a POW three months. He remembers daily grilling by his captors, at least two of whom were educated in the U.S. "One of them went to Ohio State University. He spoke better English than I did," Zerger said.
The day of his release, he remembers a P-51 fighter plane buzzing the prison yard so low he could see the pilot's face and the thumbs-up he gave them. "Then we heard the rumbling of the tanks," he said. The camp was liberated and he went back to the U.S., landing at Hampton Roads, Va.
He returned to Woodsfield after his duty ended and started a trucking company, then opened a stone quarry.
"I like operating machinery," he said with a smile. He retired at age 77.
His friend Andy Methany, a Veterans Administration nurse, said the New Matamoras event is the only one of its kind in the region. Jeanetta Berentz, president of the New Matamoras post auxiliary, has been organizing it for 28 years.
At the school, Zerger sat on stage with guests and dignitaries. After speeches, the students sang to the veterans, performing "Thank You, Soldier" and a medley of service branch anthems. They assembled a Missing Man table, and sixth graders read out their essays on the value of military service to the country.
Speaker Tim Peterson, a former Army Staff Sergeant from the Vietnam era, praised the POWs by noting for the students, "Earned freedom is always more precious than gifted freedom."
Few of Zerger's kind remain. He said there used to be eight former POWs from World War II in Monroe County who would get together once a month and share a meal. He's the only left alive.
The 36th Division – known as the "Texas" division – POWs held an annual convention in Texas for decades, but this year so few remained alive and able to travel that the event was cancelled, he said.
Speaking to the students, Marietta VFW post commander Bernard Cleveland said, "As long as you speak their names, they will live on, and on, and on."
At a glance
≤ Number of Americans who served in World War II : 16,000,000
≤ Number who were held as prisoners of war: 94,000
≤ Number of American servicemen missing in action and still not accounted for: 73,000
≤ Number of World War II veterans still alive: 558,000
Source: Department of Defense.