UNMATCHABLE service
Former prisoners of war recognized for sacrifice
Just a few dozen gathered at the Raymond G. Murphy VA Medical Center to honor and remember the 142,000 Americans that have been interned as prisoners of war since World War I.
Another 93,000 were lost or never recovered.
“Every brand of service is special but the brand of service that a former prisoner of war has devoted to their country is unmatchable,” said Andrew Welch, director of the New Mexico Veterans Affairs Health Care System.
Albuquerque’s VA Medical Center hosted a ceremony for former POWs on Wednesday, just ahead of Former Prisoner of War Recognition Day on April 9.
Among those honored were veterans from World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War.
Joe Gideon was a teenager and a tailgunner when his B-24 bomber flying over Hungary was riddled with 88mm anti-aircraft shells in March of 1945.
“The sky was black with them,” Gideon, now 92, said.
The aircraft was able to fly for another couple hours, but a fuel leak prompted the 10-man crew to bail out.
Gideon and two crewmates landed in a soccer field in a small Hungarian town.
Two crew members were never seen again.
The remaining men were sent by train to Stalag VII A, a POW camp in southern Germany.
For Gideon, his few weeks in the camp were relatively uneventful and his Nazi captors treated the prisoners reasonably well, although they were underfed.
“They called it soup, but it was really just water,” he said. “There was a little meat. Every once in a while you’d see a little piece of cabbage floating around. I don’t know how much weight I lost.”
The two helpings of soup served daily were supplemented by two slices of bread.
Gideon was housed with around 200 men in tight quarters in a former barn.
The prisoners weren’t forced to work and spent their time sharing stories and playing cards.
Sometimes, they could hear British soldiers captured at Dunkirk playing bagpipes from another part of the camp.
The sound still brings tears to his eyes, he said, and as a piper played “Amazing Grace” during the ceremony, Gideon was visibly moved.
New Mexico’s most wellknown POWs are likely the hundreds of National Guardsmen who were captured and imprisoned after the infamous Bataan Death March in the Philippines.
Col. Steve Garcia, chief of staff of the New Mexico National Guard, spoke of his grandfather, a Bataan survivor himself.
Being from a military family, he said they always celebrated Memorial Day, Independence Day and Veterans Day, and he’s glad there is now a day to honor former POWs.
“There’s no other group of individuals in our society that know better what the cost of freedom really is or how precious it is than our former POWs,” Garcia said.