By Michael H. Zang.
Havertown, PA: Casemate Publishers, 2024.
ISBN 978-1-63624-455-6. Maps. Photographs. Bibliography.
Pp. xiv, 210. $34.95.
Michael H. Zang weaves a welcome story of a soldier’s long internment and daily activities in World War II German prisoner of war (POW) camps. Zang had the good fortune of having access to abundant wartime correspondence, as well as the subject’s voluminous diary. It did require that he interpret the diary’s somewhat cryptic notes, abbreviations, and circumstances to discern the meaningfulness of some entries. Like Sergeant Focht, some men are driven to record daily occurrences and create lists. Most do not. There would not be a story without Focht’s persistence and habitual observations. Unlike many combat veterans, Focht was also unusually willing to share his stories orally at length about his wartime experiences.
The story is, however, not quite as advertised by the dust cover. Prospective readers may expect a narrative more focused on military aspects. Yes, the clever title creates some wonderment and alludes to the POW theme, and that something different than combat is afoot. The use of “The War of” in the subtitle does lead one to expect a different kind of “war” experience, yet the link to the tank destroyer unit creates an expectation of unit action that barely occurs. What Zang then constructed consumes a third of the book with introductory and postwar information that close family members may find valuable, but is of little significance to most readers.
Willing readers should persist to the story’s core to learn of a POW’s daily routine that is markedly different than that portrayed in most movie scripts. While the German captors were more humane to American and British POWs than the Japanese, the methods of how certain things get done, and the consequences, is engrossing. Of course, Axis POWs in U.S. camps were treated the best, but some had uncomfortable situations such as those working the sugarcane fields in Florida. Those sub-camps were the equivalent of the German “commando” camps Focht describes. Curiously, many of those captured Germans sent to Florida and its main POW facility at Camp Blanding had been in the Afrika Corps, the brethren of whom had earlier captured Sergeant Focht.
While not covered in the book, it is curious that the U.S. Army reissued identification tags (dog tags) early in the war to remove next-of-kin and home addresses, thinking captors should not have such information. Yet, for a POW to send and receive mail from home, Focht’s notes show that the same information was required to be revealed to the Germans and the Red Cross.
Like many recent World War II books, this one includes a significant number of names of other soldiers that can provide a reference to families interested in their own veterans’ exploits. A less welcome addition is the half-dozen personnel and equipment tables in both graphic and textual versions that are repetitive and conflict with each other. Indeed, for a traditional publisher, there is evidence of scant editing and no index. Key words that would complete thoughts are sometimes missing, and at least once, Zang launches a new subject with no transition or subheading. Subject matter is repeated, sometimes more than twice, both within the story and in conjunction with Appendix 1, the 805th Battalion’s history. Since that history was well covered in earlier text, the later focus should have been limited to the battalion’s activity after Focht’s capture.
Perhaps as a saving grace, Zang dispels the notion that POWs generally escaped lethal harm. Exposure to “friendly fire,” added to incarceration and inadequate treatment standards, truly adds insult to injury. Tank destroyer training is also handled well, showing the developmental nature of a combat arm for which too little is in the literature.
Lieutenant Colonel Ralph V. Little, Jr., USA-Ret.
Jacksonville, Florida