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Monday, July 3, 2006
A POW’s ordeal, a newborn’s debt
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Woodrow Eugene Wooten, with cousin Lois Wooten Brown of Kennesaw at a 2001 family reunion, told the story of his war experience — the kind of memories likely to be held in the hearts of many family members.
Had the preacher not sermonized for 27 minutes into Uncle Dink’s funeral service before mentioning the corpse by name, the cousins might not have turned reflective, counting mourners and absences and resolving, when all the slow-walking and low-talking was done, that we really needed to get together more often.
So it was that for more than a decade now an ever-expanding circle of kin has gathered every October just to keep up with each other’s lives, to talk of new babies and brides. We visit dirt and churn ice cream, and speak of ghosts as though they’re there while walking amid the headstone reminders that six generations were.
But for that preacher, I may never have known Woodrow Eugene Wooten of Tampa, Fla., a first cousin, once removed, an optimistic and cheerful man with a quick wit and mischievous blue eyes. And had I not gently inquired as the reunion years drew by, he may never have gone back. Or taken me to a darkness of his youth.
Last year at his wife Carmen’s behest, he opened up, detailing experiences that before had been just hints among cousins as to the ordeals he had suffered. Time, the six decades since the end of World War II, has added a protective shield. Dates, places, details, indelibly imprinted and meticulously recorded, flow in matter-of-fact recitation. And that is revealing, too. A healing God regenerates and closes doors too painful to leave open until we’ve gained the grace and the wisdom, and therefore the strength, to confront our tormenting demons.
Eugene, the right waist gunner on a B-24J based in England, was shot down on March 6, 1944, while flying at 22,000 feet over Hanover, Germany, as part of a 2,000-plane bombing run over Berlin. His parachute landed at Meppen, Holland. He, suffering a shrapnel wound in his leg, and another crew member were immediately taken prisoner.
While being interrogated, he was forced to sit naked from the waist down on a block of ice. “This was very painful … but I did not give them the benefit of even a grunt.” When he declined to answer, one of the guards “hit me so hard under the chin that it lifted me completely off the ice, and I landed across the room.”
Later, while being transferred from one prison camp to another, he was forced to stand packed with other prisoners without food, water or bathroom access for 38 hours. Upon arriving, he and others were forced to run about three miles through lines of German civilians throwing bricks, rocks and other debris. Those who fell were clubbed by guards or attacked by dogs.
Food amounted to about 700 calories per day, about one-third the average man’s needs. At one camp, Stalag Luft IV, Eugene lost 100 pounds. “I was skin and bones then,” Eugene remembers. “We were hungry. In fact we were very hungry all the time. Our stomachs could not have been as big as a closed fist on the average man. Most of our conversations were about food. We suffered hunger pains. We were always hungry.”
By early 1945, the Germans were desperate. Stalag Luft IV was emptied on Feb. 6, 1945, in the midst of a bitterly cold winter. Prisoners weakened by months of near-starvation began the cross-Germany march.
For 80 days covering as much as 800 miles — a walk from here to Dallas, Texas — frail and weakened men marched. “None of us had any clothing except what we were wearing, so from the time we left Stalag Luft IV until repatriation we wore the same dirty, filthy, lice-infested clothing. This caused all kinds of sores and rashes. … Most of the time … we slept beside the road in temperatures as low as 15 degrees without any bedding or covering whether it was snowing, sleeting or what. Most of us suffered pneumonia, frostbite, freezing, dysentery, etc. A lot of prisoners died on the march,” he says.
His accounts of that ordeal, of surviving on the march by eating dried sugar beets and oats intended for livestock, inspire awe at the resiliency of individuals to endure suffering.
The ordeal ended on the morning of April 26. About 100 of the prisoners had been herded into a barn near the Elb River the night before. They awoke to find the Germans had stacked their weapons and offered surrender. Adolf Hitler committed suicide five days later. For Eugene, who weighed 90 pounds, liberation had come because American soldiers had reached the river.
So it was that six decades ago, a man — whose bravery and personal endurance and sacrifice helped to guarantee the liberties and the freedoms we take for granted — himself became a free man.
Families are made strong by their successes, sure. But in the hardships we all inevitably face in life, we are strengthened by the knowledge that we come — and all of us in America do — from the stock of Woodrow Eugene Wooten. They exist in every family, and each with a story children should hear and a lesson they should know.
It is July 4th. Independence Day. A day to tell America’s story.
I tell you America’s story. It is that every generation inherits a trust, a sacred trust, to preserve the next generation’s freedoms. Our obligations are not abstractions. They are as real as the life and service of Woodrow Eugene Wooten. As individuals, we don’t choose wars. We choose honor — and accept the duty that follows.
At 7:55 a.m. on the 61st day of a POW’s Black Hunger Death March, a baby boy was born free in the hospital near the farm that Eugene left behind.
To the cousin, now 84, that the baby boy might never have known but for a preacher’s ramble, July 4th is an appropriate occasion to say what is in my heart: You saved us, buddy. For the chance to be born free, a grateful family and nation offer thanks.
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Holidays, taxes and traffic congestion
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A holiday weekend — especially one that marks the 50th anniversary of the July 1, 1956 launch of the now-completed Interstate Highway System — is a good time to ask the question: Why in the world is the federal government still collecting 18.3 cents per gallon in gasoline taxes?
It’s an example both of a tax that remains after a project is completed and of the metamorphosing role of government programs. In the Surface Transporation Act of 1982, Congress raised the interstate-construction tax, which had grown from 3 cents in 1956 and 4 cents in 1959, to a 9 cents per gallon. It allocated a penny of it to mass transit. Now of the 18.3 cents collected, 2.86 goes to mass transit.
In addition to the federal tax, the state collects a base of 7.5 cents per gallon, plus the four percent statewide sales tax, making the state tax about 19.5 cents per gallon at the current price of about $3 per gallon.
My view is that the feds should get out of the gasoline taxing business, and out of the business of choosing which highway and transporation projects should be funded, and give that tax over to the states to use as state officials deem appropriate. We’re about to launch a white elephant — a commuter rail project extending 26 miles from Atlanta to Lovejoy — and primarily because federal money is available. What nonsense.
Give the money to a government closer to the people and allow them to decide how they want to spend it — and if they’re smart, they’ll spend it to buy highway congestion relief. If you travel this weekend, or most any day, south of Atlanta on I-75 in the vicinity of Eagles Landing Parkway, you realize the folly of spending on boondoggle rail projects when motorists are stuck in gridlock.
Give the taxing capacity back to the states and let the states address transportation needs on a cost-benefit basis. Spend the money where it buys the most congestion relief. Who could possibly disagree?
