POWS RETURN TO THE STATES

Homer Hall
[back row, 3rd from left] is shown with a group of men, all unidentified.  Based on the inscription [shown at right] the men may all be returning POWs.

Near Starvation
Besides identifying Homer, the inscription reads "original weight 185 lbs, lowest in captivity 110 lbs. which leads to our conjecture that this is a POW group.

1. In Stalag #?: He would trade a pack of cigarettes to a German guard for bread, however. he managed to empty the pack and then fill it with sawdust

2: There is a collection of cigarette papers that are very fragile, we hope to reproduce them perhaps next summer. Homer would use any brand of cigarette paper and then draw on the back side. He first drew around the shape of his dog tag, getting about four to five such shapes per page, placed on an angle.  Inside each box he wrote an address of each man in his Stalag. There we over 45 such names listed. Also there is a poem about a mother, I have not seen this collection to determine if it is about our mother. On the front of the collection he drew a C-47, a plane which carried the paratroopers on D-Day.

3. There is also a collection of favorite sayings of men in the camp. we have to locate this material.

4. One man (Bud Curry, who later served on the New York City Police force} claims that Homer saved his life The situation was that frequently the Red Cross would send packages containing Hershey bars, cigarettes, dried fruit, etc. to the men. They were so hungry that most of them would devour the entire contents immediately. Homer, being older than most of the others. taught them to save food for later. For example, he told one man when eating a prune to eat the fruit but to save the pit for another day Sucking on the pit helped to reduce the hunger. When they smoked. he suggested smoking only one-fourth of the cigarette each time.

5. As they marched, Homer compiled a list of the men who fell] out and died along the way The FBI took this list upon his return to the U.S.

6. He carried a photo of a friend’s five-year old daughter One German guard, when searching Homer’s papers, asked if that was his daughter He had no children but responded that it was his child, This seemed to please the guard, who had three girls of his own, and thus did no physical harm to Homer.