SODA & SCHNAPPS
YOUR DECEMBER 2019 “TRAVEL” STORY about Camp Hearne, Texas, sparked memories. In 1945, I was six years old and residing in Milwaukee near Camp Billy Mitchell (today home to Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport), which housed many German POWs. My older brother drove a truck for a local soda water bottler and I accompanied him on deliveries. Sometimes we threw bottles over the fence to the POWs. My folks immigrated from Germany in the 1920s, plus my older brother’s first language was German, so he could communicate with them.
In 1961, I was drafted and sent to Augsburg, Germany. While traveling on the train there, I chatted with the conductor; he spoke such fluent English that
