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Olin Pickens, 104, recalled one of the worst moments of his time as a prisoner of war during World War II.
Pickens said his company lost 75 men in what he called a “suicide mission” to establish forward positions to slow down the Germans’ advance in north Africa. Throughout the night, German soldiers fired flares trying to locate American soldiers.
Pickens crawled through the flares using his uniform as camouflage in the sand until he found a slit trench. He covered himself in a cactus brush and hid there until a local Arabic man found him the next morning. The man motioned for Pickens to stay down and left.
“My heart calmed down,” he said.
“I thought, ‘Well, he’s going to bring me water and food and tonight I’m going to get up and go again.’”
Instead, the man returned with a squad of German soldiers, their rifles drawn.
One of them made Pickens stand up. He motioned for Pickens to take his gun and asked in English whether Pickens wanted to shoot him or the Arabic man. Pickens grabbed the rifle, wanting to kill the man who turned him in, but gave up when the other German soldiers pointed their guns at him.
Pickens spent the next 26 months as a prisoner of war.
On Sunday, the National Memorial Day Concert in Washington, D.C., will honor Pickens and several other veterans on stage. He shared his story of survival recently with Mississippi Today.
Before the war, Pickens lived with his family in Blue Mountain, a small town in Tippah County in North Mississippi. He volunteered for the Army in 1942. He was assigned to the communications section as a rifleman in the 805th Tank Destroyer Battalion in North Africa.
His time as German prisoner
Upon his capture, German soldiers forced Pickens and other POWs to walk to Tunis. If they fell out of line or tried to escape, they’d be shot and killed. They would walk for four hours and take 10 minute breaks.
The walk lasted from Tuesday until Saturday, and in that time the POWs drank water only three times and ate only one cup of sauerkraut soup. During the march Pickens had another traumatic experience.
“One of the boys in front of me just fell flat on his face. I reached down and called his name and tried to pick him up, and I said, ‘Let’s go, they’ll shoot you.’” he recalled.
“He was out. He was completely out. This German on the right, one of the guards, pointed his gun at us and motioned with it ‘go on.’ And I had to turn him loose, and that bothers me today.”
Olin Pickens, 104, of Blue Mountain in north Mississippi, is being honored Sunday during the National Memorial Day Concert from Washington, D.C. Credit: Courtesy photo
When they reached Tunis, the 16 POWs had to share one loaf of bread and about a pound of corned beef hash. They also gorged themselves on water from a horse trough. They slept in horse stables.
After a few days, their captors transported them to a prison camp in Naples, then they were shipped by train to a prison camp in Nazi Germany. They all went to different places, and Pickens went to Stalag 3B.
By this time, Pickens had been in captivity for 30 days and lost a third of his body weight. He chose to go to a labor camp for the promise of better food and light work, even though he knew it was a lie. The work was near-constant and grueling, and he lived on a starvation diet.
After about a year, Pickens and a fellow prisoner escaped.
“If we die, if we got caught down the line somewhere when we were escaping, it wouldn’t be any worse than dying in that slave camp,” he said.
They made it to Czechoslovakia, but were quickly recaptured. The escapees were interrogated, stripped down to their underwear and put into a smokehouse with metal bars for a few days. At night, they took turns sitting in each other’s laps and draping over each other to stay warm.
The next morning, a woman who lived nearby brought them food and clothes, and her son brought them water. Some women from the village came by. Pickens said they were very friendly and asked them questions about life in the United States.
“The first question they’d always, always ask, ‘is everybody in the United States gangsters?’” he said. He told them no.
A guard took Pickens and his comrade out of town. After an interrogation, they were placed in solitary confinement.
“He thought he was putting me in there by myself, but I wasn’t in there by myself,” he said.
“Jesus went in right ahead of me, and he was with me at all times and still is.”
Pickens said the Devil tried to convince him to lay down and die, but Jesus reminded him that he promised his parents he would come back home. He said the Devil left after that and didn’t return.
Pickens used an aluminum pitcher to scratch marks on the wall for each day — 21 days total. After he got out, some of his fellow prisoners shared their bread with him until he regained his strength.
His return home
In January, they were forced to move to a different prison camp to outrun the Russian Red Army. Despite this, Russian forces liberated the camp on April 9. Pickens finally left on April 21, 1945.
He was flown to Camp Lucky Strike in La Harve, France. He and other POWs were covered in lice from sleeping on straw. He had to shower in DDT, an insecticide, and his old uniform was burned and replaced.
Before the Army sent him home, they put him on a 30-day eggnog diet to gain weight. After 30 days, he went from weighing 120 pounds to 150 pounds.
On his journey home, he saw the lit up Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. He claims the statue spoke a unique message to every person on the ship.
“‘Welcome home son, well done.’ That’s what it said to me,” he said.
When he made it back to Blue Mountain, neighbors swarmed the bus he was on, praising him and offering him rides home. He chose to walk home with a neighbor. The neighbor had lost a son in the Battle of the Bulge.
Pickens finally made it home. As he tearfully embraced his family, he glanced over and saw the neighbor crying over his own son.
He told his mother, “As bad as it was, Jesus never let me suffer more than I could stand.”
“And as bad as it was, we would do it again for our freedom.”
Pickens was told he didn’t have enough points to be discharged. Instead, the Army sent him to Miami Beach for “R&R” and then to Fort Lewis, Washington. He and the 65 other former POWs sent there refused to work and wrote to a U.S. senator for help. The Army finally discharged them after the senator reached out.
After his service, Pickens took advantage of the GI Bill. He owned a service station, worked in a factory and drove a freight car. He also got help from a psychiatrist for post-traumatic stress disorder.
After retiring, he enjoyed hobbies such as traveling with his wife, who passed away in 2005. He has two sons, a grandson and a great grandson.
Pickens began sharing his story with audiences in the 1980s. He said he’s told his story about 116 times across the South, and leaves a DVD with his story at each place he speaks.
He is part of an interactive oral history exhibit at the National World War II Museum called Voices from the Front.
“Whatever situation you’re in, accept it if you can’t fix it,” he said. It’s advice he says has helped him throughout his life since returning home.
