US National Archives recovers over 120 previously unknown American POW statements from WWII

Approximately 300 pages of World War II American Prisoner of War (POW) interrogation reports and ancillary reports were recovered by the US’s National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) earlier this summer.

The documents were discovered by Waterloo resident Jason Hurdle inside a cardboard box hidden in a previously unknown crawlspace in his garage, The Washington Post reported last week.

Marked with a “SECRET” stamp on the first page, the files are made up of mostly handwritten, first-person accounts of over 120 American POWs held by the Germans during World War II.

After finding the documents, Hurdle brought them to a nearby museum where he was recommended to contact NARA. In January, NARA sent two representatives to Hurdle’s home, and in July, it announced that its Archival Recovery Team (ART) had safely recovered the documents.

“I’m in podunk little Waterloo, New York, and this went all the way to the National Archives,” Hurdle told The Washington Post. “We’re kind of in shock here.”

The documents appear to be part of a larger American initiative investigating whether or not Germany was upholding its end of the international treaty regarding the dignified treatment of future POWs, signed in Geneva in 1929.

Handwritten accounts detail inhumane conditions

Pictures of the documents, shared by The Washington Post, show soldiers recounting being held in inhumane conditions by the Germans after being captured during the Battle of the Bulge.

Over 23,000 American soldiers were taken as POWs from the Battle of the Bulge.

“During an air raid near 7A, an unteroffizier [NCO] shot at and wounded an American from our barracks. I did not know his name,” wrote Private First Class Waldon Joseph Green, adding that he had been witness to a bombing that killed three Americans and left 28 missing.

Private First Class Henry Daly, in his account, wrote that when he had been first captured, “we were marched for days at times without food and water, at times we were crammed into boxcars as many as 80 men to a car, and we were not even allowed to get off and relieve ourselves.”

Second lieutenant Robert Warren Bieber shared that Nuremberg had very little medical supplies and food, and that he had seen “one boy die of malnutrition, name unknown.”

“A prisoner [stopped] to adjust his pack and a guard shot him. I do not know the boy’s name,” wrote First Sergeant Eugene William Eidschun.

According to The Washington Post, the files did not appear on NARA’s list of missing federal documents.

No one has yet figured out how they ended up in Hurdle’s garage, though The Washington Post said Hurdle suggested they may have come from a former neighbor. 

Documents now displayed at archives

Kimberly Guise, the National World War II Museum’s associate vice president of curatorial affairs, told The Washington Post that the documents found by Hurdle are significant for the large number of firsthand accounts they contain.

“It’s really lucky that this material was discovered, that the gentleman looked inside the box, and that he got it to a safe place,” Guise said. “It’s pretty great in terms of POW research.”

The documents are now displayed inside a gray box with a typed label marking them “declassified,” according to The Washington Post, in the same order they were found in. 

The Washington Post noted that at least one page, which had been partially ripped, has been preserved in a clear plastic sleeve, and that NARA archivists are the only ones allowed to handle the fragile files.

NARA spokeswoman Grace McCaffrey explained to The Washington Post that the archives is planning to digitize the records and make them available to the public.

“This stuff was stuff that you don’t learn in history books,” Hurdle told The Washington Post. “You actually see this and read this; that to me is very, very special. I was like, I got to find a place these can go."