Robert Lee (Bob) Pugh was born in 1924 in Crawfordsville, Indiana where he lived a typical American boyhood until 1943 when he enlisted in the United States Army. Soon he was on his way to France to fight the World War 2 Germans.One life-changing day while engaged in combat, Bob's unit became vastly outnumbered by its German foe and was taken as a "Prisoner of War". He remained a prisoner about 6 months until May of 1945 when he was liberated by the Russian Army, then turned over to the Americans.During that imprisonment the young Private Pugh personally witnessed and frequently fell victim to atrocities beyond human imagination. But somehow Bob survived where many of his fellow POWs starved to death. Over the immediate years after liberation Bob answered questions indicating the public had little knowledge of the events you are about to read. So, he penned a manuscript primarily to pass on to his children and others with a similar interest.

However the depiction of POW life got worse, fueled a great deal by entertainment venues on television and in movies. He was encouraged to publish his work, but declined. More recently, during a casual conversation, the POW topic came up. Someone said "Tell me some of the funny things that happened."."What do you mean funny?" Bob replied."Well you see on Hogan's Heroes all the fun they had with the German Commandant and his people, you must have been in on some of that." Perhaps the man was joking.

But Bob Pugh doesn't joke about that subject. He can't see the humor in having but one meal a day, every day, consisting of a slice of awful tasting black bread and a scoop of something called "soup" thickened by sawdust. Nor the time he had his face, head and upper body bashed about by the butt-end of a German rifle. Waking up in the morning to hear one of his POW mates had finally given up hope of rescue and committed suicide may have been typical but not funny. Instead Bob gave the questioner a copy of the manuscript he had written many years earlier and requested he take it home and read it. A few days later the man returned, apologized for his lack of understanding and made fifty copies of Bob's manuscript to distribute on his own. That lead Bob to publish this fact-filled manuscript within these pages. Learn more about his long journey into Hell.

And remember. the movies and TV shows are fiction.this is all TRUE.- Dick Munro -.