Americans Behind the Barbed Wire : World War II: Inside a German POW Camp

They went from being soldiers fighting on the front line to being prisoners of war-"kriegies"-fighting for survival. Imprisoned behind the barbed wire of a German POW camp, their enemies were hunger, cold, and boredom. This is the uplifting story of endurance, sacrifice, and courage that never made the headlines, but was just as real as the great battles of World War II.

J. Frank Diggs was born in Hagerstown, Maryland in November of 1917, graduating from American University in 1938. After receiving his Master s Degree in Economics from the George Washington University and an early stint as a writer for the Washington Post, he was drafted into the peacetime army in 1941. He was commissioned a second Lieutenant in 1942 . He participated in four amphibious landings and three campaigns in the Europe-Africa Theater. He was awarded a Silver Star, a Bronze Star, and a Purple Heart. He also became a prisoner of the Germans after a less than successful landing behind enemy lines in Sicily. He spent 18 months as a POW until eventually escaping and making his way out through Russia.
After the war, the author left the army and spent nearly 40 years as a writer, reporter, and editor with U.S. News and World Report. He covered military affairs for a number of years, starting with the Bikini Bomb Tests in the Pacific in 1946. As a reporter, he cruised aboard nuclear-powered submarines and aircraft carriers, attended Marine Corps war games, flew missions with the Air Force, and witnessed close-up the Soviet Missile Crisis in Cuba. He was also a regular participant in the Army War College s Annual National Strategy Seminars. His specialty, however, remained economics, and in 1982 he retired from U.S. News and World Report as a Senior Editor. J. Frank, as he is usually called, loves travel, and has visited over 108 countries on all five continents. After retiring, he continued to write for the Maturity News Service, syndicated by the New York Times to several hundred newspapers across the country.