Return to Camp Houlton sparks German POW’s memories

Falling through the shadows of an overcast sky, paratroopers rained from above.
“I was very, very sacred,” said Heinz Feldt. “I saw American soldiers wounded laying next to me. I was a German.”

Cold, trapped on the wet ground, as machine guns spit out casings and echoing booms of battleship fire rang through the air, he lay silent and terrified.
The Americans and their allies had invaded Normandy.
In one instance, a frightened teenager, who had been separated from his unit, was pinned and helpless.
“We got bombed out by American ships,” said Feldt. “We couldn’t get up anymore. I lost three friends of mine.”
Crawling through the mud in search of shelter, Feldt’s clothes were slashed by barbed wire that felt like little sharp knives ripping his skin. His mind was still reeling from the horrific scene that unfolded in front of his own eyes. He was scared, alone and cold.
“I took from an American soldier, who had died, his coat off and put it on,” Feldt explained. “Two or three minutes later, I got hit by an American sharpshooter in the head.”
Innocence was lost to piercing screams and a bloody battlefield.
“Lots of wounded, dead people, see so many dead people,” Feldt said somberly. “They came over with the gliders. Peoples came down. Something I never forget. I had dreams about it. Woke up in the middle of the night, sweating. Once in a while, I still have in head … nightmare about war. I hate war.”
Medics turned Feldt over and saw he had on an American jacket and a bullet wedged in his helmet. He was transported to an American ship and then to a hospital in Harlem, N.Y., believing he suffered shellshock.
“I was afraid, so I didn’t talk,” Feldt said. “A Jewish doctor talked to me in German. I started talking to him. He got me there. After that, he said I have to get you out of here quick. He called an American officer to take me right away to a prison camp.”
Feldt, loaded onto a truck with two guards, traveled north to be detained in Houlton, as a prisoner of war.
“I never seen anything, maybe three or four houses,” he said. “They treat us very good. I worked and they gave us a $1 a day for working in potatoes.”
Feldt saved up to $1,100, but it was devaluated in German marks to about $100.
Moving to another state POW camp, “somewhere on the lake,” he recalled, Feldt worked in a pea factory, processing green beans, as well as a lumberjack, processing pulp to be used to print the New York Times.
“I worked on assembly line to pick out bad peas,” said Feldt. “I worked one day only.”
He remembers the guards taking them on trucks and driving them to potato fields and on long rides to the timber camps.
But picking potatoes is lodged in his memory.
“That’s something you never forget. I tell you that,” he laughed. “You have a back ache all the time from bending down all day, ugh.”
Despite being imprisoned during the war effort, the German POWs had plenty of food and fun.
“The newspaper gave us two little pigs,” Feldt said. “The scraps left over, we feed it to pigs. They grow. And, butcher made salami. I get hooked on it. I love salami.”
The fun came with an American soldier.
“When we were picking potatoes, we asked for apples off the ground,” said Feldt. “We take them home and ferment them to make wine. We had some people with copper and made a distiller. We made moonshine.”
An American Sergeant, who Feldt described as having a big nose, would wander into their barrack.
“He turned around … sniff… sniff… say somewhere in here is some booze. He couldn’t find it. He was standing right on top of it,” chuckled Feldt. “We made hole in the floor, hide it, cover it over. Sometimes he found it, sometimes not.”
Other etched memories  … Barrack number four, Biederman and Camp 27 in England.
“Biederman was camp leader,” Feldt said. “He was much older. He kept me as his own son. His son had died in the war. He took care of me. He got me another job. You are not strong enough to work in timber too long. I give you job inside in the camp. So, I go peel potatoes.”
Later on, Feldt was lighting the wood fire at 3 a.m. and flipping pancakes for the other POWs.
“They were hungry, I will tell you that,” he said with a laugh.
Feldt was discharged to England after his American stay where he worked two more years.
“They send only few people home,” he said. “We had to rebuild. No home, no jobs and no food to go back to.”
But in the back of his mind, America was calling.
“It’s a very big, beautiful country. One day I said to myself, I am going to come back to America,” said Feldt.
And he did.
In 1954, Feldt married in Berlin, worked a couple of years saving money for his return trip to the United States.
“I came to San Francisco down to Los Angeles,” he said. “I worked in L.A. for 30 years with a pharmaceutical company.”
Feldt joined a German chemist in the pharmaceutical industry. The company started with only four men. When Feldt retired, there were more than 500 employees. Feldt was responsible for building and designing all the machinery parts to help the company build six assembly lines.
But, things weren’t always that easy.
“I had family and $50 in my pocket and a $3,000 bill for airfare to pay back to my sponsor,” Feldt said upon arriving in L.A. I started as a dishwasher at a restaurant. The restaurant gave me leftover food, wrapped together so I could feed my family with it. We had some hard times, we also had some good times.”
When Feldt didn’t have rent money, he asked his landlord if he could paint his house.
“He gave me the paint and brush,” Feldt said. “I painted a little bit every night until I finished it. That was enough for one month’s rent. He paid me $90 to paint whole house. He said, we are even.”
Despite hardships, Feldt never regretted coming to America.
“I said one day, I am going to have my own place, paid for and nice property,” he said. “I had beautiful golden medallion home and three acres.”
Even though he was just a German soldier who settled in the United States after the war, lines of division were drawn.
“My children, put in school here, L.A., kids running away from school, why? I ask,” said Feldt. “Other kids tell me you are Nazi. It was hard time, I tell you that. Parents at home talking about it. He’s German, so he’s Nazi. It was not. Special Unit they call Nazi.”
Today, Feldt’s daughter is a banker and is buying a beauty shop for her daughter, while his son works for an automobile company. And, Feldt lost his wife to breast cancer, but has a new companion, Neva Fergason.
“Her husband died, I ask her if she wanted to go dancing,” Feldt said. “From there on together.”
Feldt and Fergason spend time traveling. The couple has traveled all over the world, including visiting Germany twice.
“I was surprised so big city and so beautiful too,” Feldt said. “I have brother and sister living in Berlin. It had been 50 years since I had been back. I came to city and said ‘Wow.’”
Earning his apprenticeship in tool and die making, Feldt graduated with his diploma in one hand, and in the other, his drafting paper.
“I came into the army and they pushed us around one place to another,” he said. “I came to France as the invasion started in 1944. It was something you never forget in your life. I realized in war, ‘Why do I have to fight Americans?’ I was only just a little guy. I was 16.9 years. At 17 years, I was a POW.”
When Germany was divided by the wall, Feldt said to himself, ‘Why am I here? There is a big country over there and I want to go and see it. That’s the reason I scrapped everything together to come to U.S. I had a dream. I want a better life. I did it.”
    Editor’s note: Feldt was in town visiting the Houlton Historical Society and reminiscing about his days as a POW at the Houlton airbase, as well as other state camps. He told his story and was interested in reading other POW accounts and looking at old photographs.