Everybody Loves a Train, Right?

March 2026

“Through the valley flowed a Mississippi of humiliated Americans.”

Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five

Moving across Europe as a POW by train was no luxury ride. The travel was rough and the conditions were treacherous and unsanitary. A captured soldier would be stripped of most, if not all of his gear. Essentials, like good boots or weapons, even personal items of higher quality were quickly seized. Moving was done via a variety of modalities; marching, lorries or trucks, and the infamous “40 and 8’s.”

Being part of the ever-increasing of Vonnegut’s river of men was raw and humiliating. Three months after being processed and imprisoned at Limburg, my father was shipped out and transferred to a camp deeper into the heart of Germany - Muhlberg. This prison was the mothership of the largest network of POW camps under German command. He was quickly assigned to a sub-camp about twenty miles west of Dresden; closer to the Czechoslovakia border. Here, he and a relatively small band of Allied prisoners worked seven days a week as manual laborers. He did not talk much about his time at Limburg, other than that it was a sobering and dark place. As for Muhlberg, it is not clear if he was merely processed there, or if in fact, he ever even set foot in the mothership. Up until, 1944, Muhlberg was filled with British, other Western Europeans, and some Americans prisoners from the Italian campaign. There were also Russians there. He would have been a somewhat early American arrival to the massive camp system. Men, like him, captured in the fighting after D-Day started the influx of Yanks to Muhlberg and its satellites. The real crush of Americans would come later after the Battle of the Bulge. The famous novelist, Kurt Vonnegut, was among this latter group who were scooped up by the thousands, herded, and driven to places like Muhlberg.

The stories of “40 and 8” rides are filled with details of sickness, the constant presence and smell of human waste, and a desperate want for food and water.  The cars were locked shut by the guards and sent on down the rails. The capacity of 40 men and 8 horses was far exceeded as the POWs were often crammed and stuffed into the boxes. They would ride in these conditions for hours and days rarely with any opportunity to catch some fresh air or even grab that all-important “smoke.” The space between the men was so tight that it was often impossible to sit. If they did manage to sit and rest their worn-out bodies and psyches, it would require quite a bit of negotiation. Many sat between one another’s legs and soiled one another with their sweat, blood, urine, and feces. Food was scarce. Viruses were plentiful. Sickness spread quickly. There might be some bread, but not much for men to grab a bite or two. Too many times, the bread or other types of food was passed through the rail cars and was gone before everyone had a chance to eat. Some GIs reported that they traveled in squalid conditions for days and never had the opportunity to eat or drink. A staff sergeant from the 134th Infantry, Edwin Douglass recounted, “The men would travel for days without food or water…We were fed bread once in the four or five days that we were traveling. No water.”  American POWS in WWII, H. Spiller

Relieving oneself was a disgusting experience. Urine, vomit and the contents of the bowels often runny, brown, and red from blood were deposited where one stood or sat. If there was room and the POWs could get organized; a corner of the “40 and 8” might be carved out as a “latrine.” They would have to work their way to the spot expel their waste without much hope of cleaning themselves, then find their way back where they could sit and ride out the remainder of the trip. One airman, who was shot down in a plane named “Honey-Chile” shared, “We were in the boxcars for three days and nights with no water and no sanitation. One corner of the car was reserved for a toilet area. But who could go in a corner with 49 men looking on?” American POWs, H. Spiller.

At times, during a stop, the doors might be opened, and the guards would grab a few helmets, fill them with water and allow the POWs to pass them around and take a few swigs or gulps to keep them going. Water was not the only thing for which the helmets were used. With no place to urinate or defecate, the men were sometimes forced to pass helmets around for this purpose. The helmets might be passed to the edges of the interior where some GI would be told to lift it and try to drain the contents out of the vents high up near the top of the interior side panel.

It does not take much imagination for me to envision him in one of these foul trains trying keep his spirits up.  Being surrounded by deep odors and having to navigate the human needs while the “40 and 8” chugged, swayed, and hitched their way along the lines was a challenge.  A gunner from a B-17 bomber, Sergeant William Carr, spoke of it plainly. “The conditions were terrible…The smell was unbearable…It took five days to get to the prison camp, but it seemed like five years”.  American POWS, H. Spiller

Kurt Vonnegut, aptly captured a particular image for us in his bestseller, “Slaughterhouse Five.” “Human beings were in there excreting into their helmets which were passed to the people at the ventilators, who dumped them. Billy was a dumper. The human beings also passed canteens, which guards fill with water. When food came in, the human beings were quiet and trusting and beautiful. They shared.”

Vonnegut continues to detail conditions that he experienced as a POW through his odd and sometimes, humorous fictional character, Billy Pilgrim. “Even though Billy’s train wasn’t moving, its boxcars were kept locked tight. Nobody was to get off until the final destination. To the guards who walked up and down outside, each car became a single organism which ate and drank and excreted through its ventilator. It talked or sometimes yelled through its ventilators, too. In went water and loaves of black bread and sausage and cheese, and out came shit and piss and language.”  Slaughterhouse Five, Vonnegut

Once my father arrived at his assigned prison camp, like the others, he was checked into a barracks where lice and bedbugs reigned, along with other unspecified critters. The lice were a common experience, and I do not believe there were many GIs who made it through prison without being infested by these little bugs. There are even stories of men pulling the lice off their clothes and bodies and eating them with the hope of finding a little bit of protein. It seems that Rick and pretty much all of his buddies were given the “opportunity” to be deloused in the showers. Bedbugs were another scourge, and soldiers would spend sleepless nights being bitten by these nasty things. I suppose this experience of living with these creatures was one of the reasons he so often sang to us at bedtime, “sleep tight and don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

How endearing.