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Sitting It Out: A World War II POW Memoir

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David Westheimer takes us in for another look at the warbehind the barbed wire at Stalag Luft III. There are somenew details here about Stalag Luft III in a book that brings a more personal insight into the life of a POW inside Germany during World War II. I recommend this book to all those that have an interested in World War II, and the sub-genra of POW stories. As a note, David also wrote 'Von Ryan's Express', which also became a movie starring Frank Sinatra. Although that story was fictional, you can see where some of the ideas came from.

"Sitting It Out" by David Westheimer.

Subtitled: "A World War II POW Memoir".

Rice University Press, Houston, Texas, 1992.

David Westheimer is probably best known for his 1964 novel, "Von Ryan's Express", which was made into the 1965 movie, of the same name, and starring Frank Sinatra. "Von Ryan's Express" is loosely based upon David Westheimer's experience in World War II. Westheimer served as a navigator on a B-24 Liberator bomber which was shot down and crashed in the sea near Naples and Salerno, Italy. Some of the crew drowned; most of the crew were captured by Italian forces and sent to an Italian POW camp. During most of the interrogations of the new Prisoners Of War, the Italian translator would ask "Why does a country so rich make war on a country so poor?" For the next nine months or so, Westheimer and his fellow crew members attempted to keep their Italian jailers happy by obeying the somewhat arbitrary rules and regulations. Then, Italy surrendered.

Nazi German forces swept over much of the Italian boot to prevent the Allies from taking all of Italy. Westheimer reports on the many discussions in the POW camp as to whether or not the POWs should abscond or wait for liberation or just sit around. Some POWs did leave, but were later captured when German troops flooded Italy. In the book, "Von Ryan's Express", Frank Sinatra's character, Colonel Ryan, leads the combined American and British POWs to overpower their guards and take a train ride to Switzerland. In real life, the combined American and British POWs were re-captured by German forces and given a train ride to Germany. There, they sat out the remainder of the war, until the advance of the Red Army forced captors and captives into a snowy trek, a death march for some, into the heartland of Germany.

In the book, "Sitting It Out", there is an emphasis, almost a fixation or a fascination, with food. This is to be expected of a group of men who are being, de facto, slowly starved to death. I had to look up "KLIM" on the web. KLIM is a powdered milk developed in Syracuse, New York, before World War II. Klim was added to the Red Cross packages to provide added calories to POWs who received the packages. The author spends some time describing how to use Klim to make a frosting for the " cakes" they had baked and other uses for the powdered milk. Further, Westheimer reports on the discussions, almost arguments, on the relative merits of the Red Cross packages. Were the American packages better than the British, or were the Canadian Red Cross packages the best? This may not be really that interesting to a reader in 2009, but it does show what the POWs went through.

In 2009, I re-read Westheimer's book, due to a comment from the author of "Old Man In A Baseball Cap", B-24 veteran Fred Rochlin. In his book, on page 34, Rochlin states that WASPs were sent to pilot school, while airmen with Scandinavian or German names were sent to bombardier schools. Irish, Italian and Polish kids were trained as gunners. Jewish kids were taught to be navigators. I thought that this was another of the author's war stories. From the Plymouth Public Library, I borrowed "Sitting It Out", Westheimer's story of being a POW in World War II, and read that book to reaffirm my memory. Sure enough, Westheimer was Jewish, as he threw away his dog tags marked with "H" and Westheimer WAS the navigator in his B-24 that was shot down in Italy. Perhaps there is some truth in Rochlin's memory of the assignment rules for Army Air Force trainees...

Leon Hale, Houston Chronicle columnist, recommended this book in a recent Sunday column. I was on Amazon that afternoon to order it, used of course. The seller had great response time and the book was in excellent condition.