Diary of Henry Eugene Maul: Prisoner of War

Influenced and angered by the attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, and shortly after graduating Marquette High School in Alton, Illinois, Henry Eugene Maul (Dad), enlisted in the United States Army Air Corps. He trained to take on one of the most dangerous positions in the Air Corps as a waist gunner. As a member of the 96th Bomb Group and the 338th Bomb Squadron he completed 8 missions before his plane was downed by enemy fire, May 8, 1944, at 1600 hours, causing him and his crew to be captured by German scouts. The diary is not a story told in the typical day-to-day method, but he had a drawing-by-drawing, poem-by-poem, note-by-note method of writing his accounts. He used the intense solitude to draw his thoughts, his observations, and his fears. Within each drawing, each poem, each note is symbolism of what he, his crew, and fellow Prisoners of War were enduring. Included in this book are letters from home, photographs, and documents to support dad's writings, as well as formerly classified documents about him and Allied Prisoners of World War II in Germany and how they were treated, by the guards (aka GOONS), their families back home, from starvation to appalling food, loneliness, poor hygiene, and the community the men built. According to one of my dad's former classmates, The Marches were the most difficult ordeals for him to experience. Dad's timeline of one of those marches is included. What my dad brought back from his year as a Prisoner of War, not only shaped the rest of his life, but how he raised his daughters. E Sempre L'ora

About the Author :
Diana Maul Halstead is the eldest of the three daughters of Henry Eugene Maul and Dixie Davis Maul. From when she and her sisters were children, they were told to never ask Dad questions about his time in the war. They never did. Diana's journey to creating this diary, more of a memoir, started as a small project to protect the war diary she had never seen, and only knew existed for the past few years. But reading his poems and touching the pages of each drawing she knew there was more to her dad's story than the words and drawings before her. She set out to learn this never mentioned story of her dad's journey as a Prisoner of War. Her own journey taught her more about World War II, Nazi Germany, what man can endure if he has family, faith, and camradery, and why her dad did not want to relive or share his hell with his daughters. This man, the quiet soul that barely spoke, but always listened, was one of the bravest men she would ever know, and dearly love. May we remember that each soldier that fought or is fighting for our country, our freedom, walk a similar path. We owe each and every one of them our thanks and our respect.