We Begin the Forced March

Last night at 11:00 pm local time, we began the forced march. We marched 9 long miles last night from Luft III to Illowa, Poland. Then today, we marched an even longer 18 miles to Przewoz, Poland (previously Priebus, Germany). OOOOHHHH! How our feet ache! Tomorrow... another 14 miles.

You can view pictures from our trip at the following link:

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Trinity Students

I have not been able to get online, and I am not sure whether I will be able to tomorrow, so please bear with me. Yesterday, we toured the site of another prison camp, visited the 100 year old Bismark water tower in Zagan, and went back to the site of my dad's barracks. After checking into our hotel, we went to have dinner and a restaurant called Kepler's. Johannes Kepler was an astronomer and astrologer who discovered the laws of planetary motion. He used his belief in God and what he had learned in religion as the basis of many of his theories. He was also a Lutheran.
We went back to the museum at Stalag Luft III and watched a DVD that the brother of three of the people on our march made about their dad. Then, at 11 pm, we started walking. Boy was it dark! I can't imagine what it must have been like with 10,000+ men! We got to our hotel (in the town where the men stopped the first night) at about 2:30 am. We were up by 8:00 and walked into the town.
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We were so fortunate to be able to visit a school there. It was for 9-12 year olds. Several of the girls who were taking English class took us around. Students are the same around the world. The principal even had to tell a young man not to run in the hallway! The students were anxious to tell us about their school because it was named for one of the men that stayed in the town that first night. There were pictures of the march in their hallway. I took lots of pictures to show you.
After our visit, we went to the church where many of the men slept that first night. Mr. Bender started out there, but his friends, knowing he didn't have many warm things, came and got him and took him to a barn where they shared their blankets.
Then it was off to march some more. We walked a total of 18.79 miles today!!! My feet really hurt, and I am tired, but I am so glad I made it. Tomorrow we start out and should walk about 13 miles. Friday we will finish the march.
I understand that you haven't had school for 2 days!! I can't believe I missed some Snow Days!
When I am able to connect to the internet again, I will write more.
Mrs. Maurer

To see pictures of Flat Stanley's adventures, click here
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Jan. 27-28: On the Road Our Fathers Traveled

Internet access has been difficult. Here's what Miriam wrote two days ago:

The cold mist hung like a grey curtain about twenty feet above the ground. It wasn't the greatest for pictures of distant landmarks, but then, there weren't many there to view in the midst of the silent field surrounded by fairly-new-growth forest. Each footfall made a jarring crunch in the mid-afternoon quiet, leaving deep prints that gave three-dimensional testimony to our pilgrimage. Our group of sixteen advanced tentatively, not quite sure of what we would find and how we would react to it. Our guide, Jasek (pronounced "yaa-sick"), led us out into the field carrying maps of Stalag Luft III camp as it was in 1945. We listened with interest as Jasek described the metal cross erected to honor the dead from Napoleon's army. As I (Miriam) finished reading the English translation on the board mounted to describe the memorial to Napoleon's fallen, I was suddenly yanked back to the present as the others called to my sister and me, "Miriam! Diane! This is it - this is where your father lived!"

What a shock to suddenly be faced with personal history amidst the still of the clearing. Jasek was speaking in his thick Polish accent, "This is where barracks 158 was located; where Bender was in combine 13." My sister and I hurried forward, looking about for some sign of the barrack, some evidence that our father had struggled to live here with others like him, for over eight hard months during the war. There was no sign. It was an empty field. We were informed that the West Compound had been cleared very soon after the camp was evacuated, to serve as athletic fields for the Russians who occupied the camp for years through the Cold War. Someone found a brick and then my sister found another. We were told that these were most likely from the foundation pile-ons under the barracks. We would keep them as a memento of our father's history. The others took pictures of us standing on the site of barracks 158, and then the group moved on to find the next former residence. We lingered, taking pictures of the field, turning round to take in the view our father saw then, so many years ago. Marveling at the beauty of the white birch trunks framed by tall pines, cognizant of the fact that his view was much less scenic and included barbed wire fencing and guard towers. We stopped to photograph a stump, as my sister remembered our father relating how many he had removed under the direction of the NAZI soldiers.

We hurried on to catch up with the group. The other sites included many more remnants of foundations and structures, yielding mementos for the others that they clutched eagerly. Some of us still had our fathers, but others had lost theirs within the last decade. Emotions hung in the air like the mist, but at each site, the group encouraged and hugged the person whose father had lived in that barracks. As we moved from site to site, taking pictures and searching for mementoes took on an almost religious quality. We were honoring our fathers - both those still living and those who had passed on. We were on a pilgrimage; a journey. A journey of love...
The link to pictures is here
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