Former World War II POW looks back on experience
SMITHFIELD – With his shadowed eyes wide behind heavy-framed glasses, William Robinson shuffles nimbly from his front porch into his tidy Smithfield home. “I have something I want to show,” he says, his aged voice soft but excited.
His thin arms, roped with blue veins, quiver, as he cradles an army-green canvas book that had been tucked under his bed.
“I always kept it on me in the service so I wouldn’t lose it or no one would take it,” Robinson says of the Red Cross journal he was “lucky” enough to get when he was in World War II.
As he slides the cover back, he smiles and his eyes light with remembrance and honor – a face he undoubtedly has made hundreds of times in his 89 years – and begins to recount the three years he was a prisoner of war in the 1940s.
Robinson, who will take part in the Smithfield Memorial Day parade this coming weekend, is one of hundreds of local World War II veterans who will remember those who have fallen and who will finally have a national memorial dedicated to honor their sacrifice.
The World War II Memorial will be dedicated Saturday in Washington, D.C., where hundreds of thousands of veterans are scheduled to gather to hear President Bush speak and to pay tribute to their fallen comrades.
While Robinson, who was drafted into the Army in his early 30s, will not attend, he said he will honor the veterans at home by participating in the parade and is happy the nation is finally constructing a fitting tribute to the World War II generation’s sacrifice.
“I think it is long overdue,” Robinson said, leaning back into his couch, his black suspenders taut across his wiry frame. “It will be very nice.”
He laughs about the coming parade and the fanfare.
“They are going to put me in a convertible,” he said.
Robinson, who worked as a cook, was captured in North Africa and, along with about 300 other U.S. soldiers, was taken by boxcar train to a German prison camp near the Baltic Sea. The camp would become his home for some of the longest months of his life but also some of the most beloved.
“We were treated real nice. We had everything to pass the time,” Robinson said. “We played baseball. We had a library. We could paint. We played cards. We even built our own chapel. I went to church every Sunday.”
Robinson had been the service for only about six months when 54 of the men he went through basic training with were killed at the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
He said that shortly after he was deployed overseas and in the few months leading to his capture, he spent most of the time suffering from the mumps, as did three other area men with him.
Robinson said that the Red Cross was pivotal to his survival and to troop morale.
He said that without the Switzerland Red Cross, he never would have made it through the prisons. He continues to support the Red Cross today as a result.
“I know I wouldn’t be here today without them,” he said. “Here these poor other guys were walking around nuts (at different camps) and we had everything. We even had a radio and listened to news about the war.”
As he turned the pages of his scrapbook filled with pictures and sketches and poems, all contributed by fellow prisoners, he remembered the talent and the camaraderie during the long stay.
The baseball league had 16 teams, he said, and there was a band and a makeshift theater where the “Yankee Doodlers” performed shows monthly. He said all the supplies for all the activities were donated by the Red Cross. The constant activity kept him from worrying too much about his family, who for the first year of his capture knew only that he was missing in action. Eventually, Robinson was able to send correspondence to them about once a month.
Robinson, who has lived in Fayette County all his life, said he married after he returned home from his service, but his wife and children have all preceded him in death.
Now, Robinson spends much of his time reading and gardening, as well as keeping company with his 95-year-old sister. The two visit each other regularly.
As he flips through the last pages of his book, glancing at any antique collector’s dream – “Moonlight Becomes You,” a poem, a label from a can of “Smithfield Corned Beef,” a pack of Juniper-brand matches and a sketch with a soldier looking through wire with the caption, “I wonder how much longer” – Robinson slips the book closed.
He glances out his screen door, with sunlight streaming through his peonies, a hobby he has maintained all his life. The white and purple heads bobbing, Robinson turns his eyes away and rests his wrinkled hands on the book.
He says he was never scared during the war, even when he felt he might not make it home.
“I never gave up,” he says softly. “I just felt I was going to be on that boat home, just like everybody else.”