Fort George G. Meade: The First 100 Years

Confessions of a POW
During the mid-1980s, I worked as a technician at the Fort
Meade Museum. While attending to the public during
our operational hours, I would enjoy identifying visitors
who were connected to either Fort Meade, or a unit that
trained at Fort Meade and went on to do other things of
importance after they departed. One of my favorite units
to follow was the 29th Infantry Division. The 29th was
made up of local National Guard units, primarily from
Maryland and Virginia, had trained at Fort Meade, and
went on to land on D-Day at Omaha Beach.
One afternoon, I had a visitor to the museum who
was of the proper age to be a veteran, and I started a
conversation with him. Sure enough, he turned out to be
a WWII veteran of the 29th Division. He admitted that he
had landed on Omaha Beach and had been captured some
weeks later. He said that both he and an officer he had
been driving with had been captured by the Germans. I
asked for his name, and expressed an interest in recording
his history, which he politely refused. He was somewhat
embarrassed to have been captured.
Undeterred, I asked how he was captured. He responded
with one word. “Calvados!” He said.
I had heard of Calvados from other veterans and knew
it was so named for the area of Normandy where it
was made. I’d heard about the fermented apple brandy
renowned for its potency and, according to various stories
of U.S. and German forces, the drink sometimes brought
enemies together, prompting a temporary truce to share a
keg discovered in the basement of a French farmhouse in
the middle of a battlefield.
I had heard time and time again that sometimes
American GIs would not give the drink the respect they
should have because they mistook its taste for apple juice
or cider. So I informed the gentleman that I was familiar
with the name of the drink, but had never tasted it myself.
“What happened?” I asked him.
The story came out in starts and stops, eventually
flowing easier as the details tumbled out.
He told me he and the officer, a captain, were conducting
a recon of the French countryside when they happened
upon an abandoned farmhouse, abandoned probably due
WORLD WAR II YEARS
By James Speraw
to the close proximity to the front lines. My visitor said
the captain suggested they should investigate the house,
that there might be some German souvenirs or something
to wet their whistle in the basement. Rumors of casks
of Calvados in the basements of French farmhouses had
spread quickly through the ranks and sure enough, they
found a cask and tasted it.
He pointed out that both he and the captain found
the taste to be quite agreeable, to the point they made
themselves comfortable, ate a portion of a ration and had
a full canteen cup of the drink. And as it was time to go,
they filled their cups as well as their canteens with the
libation and went on their way.
I nodded and said, “OK, what happened next?”
“I don’t know,” the former soldier said.
“You don’t know? What do you think happened?”
He smiled a little and said, “All I can tell you is what the
Germans told me.”
“Ok. So, what did they say happened?”
My visitor’s face colored slightly while he continued. He
told me he woke up tied to a bed in what turned out to be
a German billet.
“I could only move a little bit, but I immediately
recognized there were a lot of Germans standing around.
Under normal circumstances, that would sound really
frightening and I would have been, except these guys were
all laughing at me.”
After several minutes of realizing that he was the butt
of several German jokes he couldn’t understand, he was
finally approached by an English speaking German who
said,
“Oh you are finally awake my American friend?”
“Where am I and what happened?”
“You are now guests of the German army and quite
fortunate to be alive,” the German said, amusement in his
voice.
“I don’t understand,” the soldier said.
The German, apparently an noncommissioned officer
informed him that he and the captain had come driving
down the road in their jeep, singing at the top of their
lungs. According to the German, they had smiled and
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