On April 4 we began marching to the southeast away from the advancing Americans. It would have been nice to wait there for liberation, but the Germans had different ideas. At least now we knew it would not be long before we would be free. The Germans did not guard us much this time and we were nearly on our own as we marched. Our ranking officers made the decisions to march mostly at night to avoid mistaken attack by American fighters. We also had ten minute rest breaks every hour and the Germans gave us enough bread and soup to keep us alive. We went through the railroad yards at Nuremburg and saw the bomb damage. We were glad to get out of there before another raid came. Our line was soon spread over seven miles and we made the decision to stay with the group instead of trying to escape into the woods and head for the American front. Probably some of the crazier ones did try it.
We spent the first night in barns and any building we could find. The weather was much warmer and we enjoyed the nice spring days. I pinned a sock to my pant leg, found a pop bottle in a trash pile. and carried it full of drinking water. When we went by houses the Germans stood along the road watching us and very often they would fill my bottle with fresh water. The Germans in the areas that had not been bombed were friendly, but those in the cities were more hostile. The American fighter planes were flying over us every day and we could see the smoke from the bombed cities all around us.
The second day I was on a blacktop road and just coming out of a wooded stretch where I could see the line up the straight open road ahead. Some P-51s came over and started shooting at the line of men about a quarter mile ahead of me. The men dove to the side of the road and spread out a POW sign we had made from strips of white cloth to be used on just such an occasion. The planes stopped shooting, but not before two were killed and several wounded. I was lucky to have been still in the woods where we could dive for cover in the trees. After that we marched at night when we could but that too presented problems. It was so dark at night that we suffered from vertigo and had trouble walking. We finally pinned small pieces of white cloth on the back of the one in front of us in order to have something to follow. Sometimes we walked with a hand on the shoulder of the one in front too for orientation.