The duplex where Martin Jones lives now is much nicer than where he was for a while. It’s clean, calm and straightforward, much like the man that lives there. Located near the back of Lawrence Presbyterian Manor, the duplex is a place where Jones can spend the days of his retirement as he pleases. The thin man with a stern booming voice can be found sitting in his red chair, or eating with his wife Phyllis, who lives on the assisted living floor in the Presbyterian Manor’s main building. But life wasn’t always so wonderful for Martin Jones.
Martin Jones’ story really begins with a story of the United States. Jones enrolled at the University of Kansas in 1940, a year after fighting began in Europe. President Roosevelt had said the United States would not become involved in the war, but Jones had a feeling the United States would be involved in the war very soon. Rather than make excuses or run, Jones joined the University of Kansas branch of the Reserve Officer Training Corps. While this decision was noble, Jones said there were other reasons as to why he joined the ROTC.
“I joined the ROTC so I could avoid the infantry,” Jones said, with a grin.
Jones enrolled in Coast Artillery/Anti Aircraft and was told that he would be allowed to finish school at KU before being deployed. Once again this wasn’t the case. Jones and the 143 other students in the KU ROTC were given an ultimatum by the United States Government: enlist in the army immediately, or be drafted immediately. Naturally, all of them enlisted. After finishing basic training in Camp Wallace, Tex. in September of 1943, Jones was sent to officer candidate school. Following officer candidate school, he was assigned as a Second Lieutenant in the 106th Infantry Division. Second Lieutenant was the lowest commissioned officer position, and being in the infantry was what Jones was trying to avoid by joining the ROTC at KU.
Jones was sent overseas, and in December of 2004 found himself along with his division guarding the edge of Germany, a place the allies had captured. Jones and the three regiments of the 106th Infantry Division were in charge of holding the area for the allies. Looking back, Jones can see many flaws in the 106 Infantry’s orders.
“We were given very little combat training, and our forces were spread out very thinly across the area,” Jones said. “It was meant to be army of occupation. We weren’t supposed to have to fight.”
The forces were spread out so far because according to U.S. intelligence reports, the Germans had no tanks or heavy artillery in the area, so any offensives by the Germans would be small and wouldn’t last long. General Dwight Eisenhower also thought that the Germans would never attack through Belgium or Luxembourg, countries that bordered the area of the Germany the allied forces were occupying.
Both of these beliefs proved to be huge blunders. On Dec. 16, 1944 the Germans attacked heavily with full artillery along the Luxembourg and Belgium borders. The ensuing battle would be called the Battle of Ardennes by the U.S. Army, but would come to be known by most as the Battle of the Bulge. With Jones’ division spread out so far and with little combat training, it was sure to be an uphill battle. The men were instructed to hold their positions at all costs, and food and supplies would be dropped them through the air. Three days later, Jones’ brigade had run out of ammunition, but no more had come via plane because Germany mounted the attack during a stormy season, effectively negating the Allies’ air superiority.
Cold, hungry and dispirited, Jones received orders to surrender to the German forces. In total more than 7,000 allied forces were captured by the Germans in the Battle of the Bulge. Jones and his men were taken by German soldiers, and walked to a train station. At the station, dozens of trainloads of prisoners of war were loaded up. Each dark car was filled to the brim with prisoners. Jones was loaded into a car with hundreds of other men, and spent hours doing nothing but sitting in the car among the other dejected prisoners. That night, the British Air Force bombed the railroad yards, in an attempt to weaken German forces. In total, 25 two and a half ton bombs exploded on the railroad yards that night. The car Jones was in rattled off the track. Other cards tipped up on their sides, sending prisoners flying throughout the car. 85 American prisoners in the station’s main building were killed when a bomb directly hit the building. Jones says the incident was the worst as a prisoner of war.
“It was the most helpless I’ve ever felt in all my life,” Jones said. “Locked in a boxcar while the yard was bombed; nothing but the sound of explosions and the screams of other men.”
Christmas morning, the prisoners were lead farther into Germany. By this time, the Germans were losing lots of territory, so the prisoners were moved farther into Germany so as to be harder to find by the allied forces. They arrived on foot at a prisoner of war camp in Frankfurt. Jones was placed in a room with sixty other men. The room had a non-working toilet in the corner with a puddle of water around it. By this time, Jones was starting to get in pretty bad health condition. His feet were badly frostbitten from walking through a stream in the cold weather, and eating nothing but small bowls of soup infested with dead worms had caused Jones’ weight to dip from 155 pounds to around 120.
On Jan.10, Jones was once again moved by the German forces. This time he and the other officers were packed back into boxcars and sent to another camp in Hamelberg. This camp had much better conditions, but the food was the same. Jones and the officers slept on wooden bunks and used straw as mattresses. Soon after the move, the allied forces hatched a plan to get the prisoners back. Called the “Baum Raid” allied tankers swarmed the camp at Hamelberg in an attempt to take the prisoners to safety. But there was one major problem. The general in charge of the mission thought there were about 350 prisoners at the camp. In actuality there were around 1,350. The tankers did their best to take the men, but because there were so many the Germans quickly recaptured the men. Jones had been free for about eight hours. The prisoners were taken to Nuremburg. Soon after, allied troops bombed Nuremburg and Jones found himself caught in the middle of the bombing. Jones and the other prisoners hit the ground. As the men lay in the dirt, they could hear bombs explode around them. In total, more than 1,000 planes bombed that day. Jones popped up after the bombing and discovered that he had no major injuries. However, one of the men around him was not so lucky. The man had lost both of his legs and was bleeding profusely.
“I’ll never forget that,” Jones said. “He seemed to be so calm, sitting there smoking that cigarette. He didn’t live a minute after the bombing stopped.”
After the bombing, the prisoners were taken to a prisoner of war camp in Mossburg. Two days later, the allies liberated the camp. The troops then took Jones and the prisoners to an airfield, where they began to feed the now liberated prisoners six small meals per day. Because of the way they had been fed, none of the men could keep any of the food down. The men were quickly declared fit to go home, and sailed to New York Harbor on June 9, 1945. Jones received his discharge orders from the military on Jan. 9, 1946, and returned to his hometown of Osage City.
What Martin Jones went through in Germany needs little context, but to find more about how difficult being a prisoner of war is, one needs to look no further than the respect shown to Jones by Al Sellen. Sellen was a member of the 26th Infantry and was wounded in the Battle of the Bulge when hit by shrapnel. He also happens to live on the other side of Jones' duplex.
“I was able to spend the rest of the European war in a hospital,” Sellen said. “He had to be a prisoner, without adequate food. I was out of that while he was still over there.”
Sellen says the main joy of meeting Jones has been the ability for the two to share stories and help relive their days in the military.
“We both have a common interest in knowing about the battle,” Sellen said. “We can always talk about that. It’s very helpful.”
Remembering the battle, and not just forgetting has always been important to Martin. In September, Martin returned with a group of veterans to Germany for the first time, and visited the places where he was captured during the war, along with concentration camps where Jewish people were kept by the Nazis.
“Remembering is very important for me,” Jones said. “When we visited the Holocaust museum, the man who gave us a tour was Jewish. I asked him, ‘how can you do this job?’ and he told me he had to remember. Jewish people, German people, everyone thanked us. That’s what makes it important.”