REMEMBERING
By: Karen WeHunt Harden, Contributing Writer | wharden1950@gmail.com
This Christmas, let’s not forget our active-duty military personnel and first responders. Please help the Red Cross, Tunnel to Towers, your local firehouse, or perhaps adopt a soldier.
In many of his letters, Daddy praised Mother for writing to him every night. He pleaded for her to tell him everything happening at home in dear old Woodruff, SC, and to always write more than ten pages.
Mother sent care packages often and included a note for the soldiers. When several boys received a package, they would open them together when their work was caught up, share, and have a party in one of their tents. Often Daddy wrote that some of the boys had been forgotten by the folks back home, and there were many sad faces at mail call.
On December 16, 1944, Daddy was wounded and captured during the Battle of the Bulge at St. Vith, Luxembourg. As a Prisoner of War, did they travel on foot or in a cattle car with no food, water, or sanitation to Stalag Luckenwalde, Brandenburg, 449 miles away? A few days before April 12, 1945, Daddy and a few others daringly escaped Stalag Luckenwalde. The Nazi guards fled into the woods before the Russian Red Army liberated the camp on April 16, 1945.
Christmases were happy during our childhood, and as an adult, I think of Daddy being cold, tired, wet, hungry, and miserable throughout that snowy winter. Once he came home, they put the war behind them and got on with their lives. They built the home they dreamed my brother and I would be born into in Spartanburg. We have sweet memories of visiting our aunts, uncles, and cousins in Woodruff in peace at Christmastime.
Karen Harden is a local author from Spartanburg, SC. She authored Hope From Stalag Luckenwalde: Fifteen Pounds of Love Letters. It was written after Karen and her brother discovered an old cedar chest filled with love letters written between their father and mother, Clarence and Sara WeHunt, during WWII. The love letters document much of their everyday lives while Clarence was over seas and Sara was living in Woodruff, SC. You can find her book Hope From Stalag Luckenwalde: Fifteen Pounds of Love Letters on Amazon.
Author: Tracy Sanders
