Camp near Siegberg Germany? - Printable Version

On 6 June 1944 Arthur Alexander Grano landed on the shores of Gourock, Scotland, with the 104th Infantry, 414th Regiment. On the same day, allied forces landed in Normandy, France. The invasion of Europe had begun. At 19, the young PFC Grano of Portland, Oregon, had been deployed from the US to cross the Atlantic in six days aboard the Queen Mary. He would spend the next six months in England training for his role in the invasion. He later joined the 6th Armored division at Nancy, France, and spent four months at the front, finally ending up in Belgium at the infamous "Battle of the Bulge ”.

On 4 January 1945 Grano was severely wounded by anti-tank artillery in the Ardennes Forest in Bastogne when a projectile struck a nearby tree and exploded. Upon regaining consciousness, he realized that a horse that was also near the tree was dead. Miraculously, Art survived the episode, though badly wounded by shrapnel. He and a few of his comrades were rescued by a French family and hidden in their potato cellar. Later in the day the sound of German voices and boots were heard over their heads. The cellar door flew open, and they saw the enemies’ rifles pointed down, directly at them. Art thought this was the end of his life; however, the enemy soldiers captured and took him to Germany along with 16 wounded American soldiers. It was his 20th birthday.

He was operated on in Sieburg, Germany, in St. Michelsberg Catholic Monastery where all but one piece of the shell fragments were removed from his body. The single remaining piece would remain with him for the rest of his life. The surgeon was Russian. The guards were Italians who intensely disliked the Germans. They would insult the Germans in Italian, and Art would pretend he didn’t understand; but it was difficult for him not to smile. He survived a dismal existence with little food. One day a week there was broth with meat. The other days there was only broth with black bread. While lying on his filthy bed of straw with a drain shunt through his leg, Art would write the names of foods his Mother used to prepare i.e., Lasagna, Spaghetti, green peppers & eggs etc with a pencil stub on a small pad of paper he had salvaged. He observed one American prisoner coughing up blood day after day until he finally died, and another who had a leg primitively amputated. The future did not look bright. The German captors would constantly tell the American prisoners that the Luftwafe had bombed New York and their side was winning the conflict. While the conditions left much to be desired and circumstances were grim, he later recounted that the Americans seemed to get much better treatment than the other allied prisoners. He remained a POW for three months

Arthur was liberated by American troops on 8 April from a camp in Waldbroel, Germany. Years later he still struggled to contain the emotion while describing the first sight of his fellow allies coming to the rescue. How the low-flying allied airplanes would tip their wings to acknowledge the POWs, and how finally his captors surrendered to the overwhelming allied forces. He was free at last, malnourished and scarred, but free.

His trip home would take three weeks of air travel to various hospitals throughout Belgium and France (including Paris). Upon arrival on American shores he would spend many months in and out of Army hospitals until he was finally discharged honorably in November 1945. Arthur received various decorations for his active duty in WWII including three battle stars (Rhineland, Ardennes and Central Europe) the Bronze Star, Army Good Conduct Medal, and the Combat Infantryman Badge, just to name a few.