#FlashbackFriday: The Stories of Three Exchange Associates Who Had Been WWII POWs

Today, the Exchange commemorates National POW/MIA Recognition Day. Exchange special emphasis program HEROES—which recognizes the contributions and sacrifices of Exchange associates and retirees who are military Veterans, their spouses and families—has set up a special commemorative table display in headquarters honoring prisoners of war and those missing in action.

Through Exchange history, there have been associates who were prisoners of war themselves. In 1981, three associates who had been POWs during World War II were honored in a POW/MIA Recognition Day Ceremony at headquarters.

Guy Charland, an Exchange illustrator in 1981, was serving with the 357th Regiment, 90th Infantry Division, when he was captured near Metz, France, in October 1944. Charland, who was captured by a German SS unit, was held for six days before he escaped.

Charland killed one of the guards and led several other captives to freedom. The group hid during the day and moved under cover of darkness for several nights before locating an American unit.

When he was discharged in 1946, Charland wore the Bronze Star, the Combat Infantryman’s Badge and the Purple Heart with three clusters. In 1978, when he was working for the Exchange, he received an unexpected honor in the mail: the Croix De Guerre With Palm—one of France’s highest military awards for bravery and gallantry in combat.

Born in Montreal, Canada, to French-speaking parents, Charland grew up in New York City, The transplanted Canadian joined the U.S. Army in 1942 at age 18. In March 1944, his unit shipped out of Fort Dix, N.J., destined for England, where staging fora massive cross-channel invasion of Hitler’s “Fortress Europa” was underway.

On June 7, 1944, Charland’s unit stormed ashore at Utah Beach in Normandy during the D-Day invasion. By nightfall, the unit had advanced several miles inland and accomplished their initial mission of relieving troops of the 82nd Airborne Division who had jumped into France on June 5, a full day before the D-Day landings.

Charland’s unit eventually overcame strong German resistance and advanced south of Paris, where it took part in the entrapment of the German Seventh Army near Falaise. Charland, who was fluent in French, questioned villagers and farmers about the location of enemy troops.

In the fall of 1944, Charland, who served in Gen. George S. Patton’s Third U. S. Army as it fought across France, and his unit crossed the Moselle River by open attack, seizing the German fort of Koenigsmacher, capturing many prisoners. While enduring a counterattack, the American troops advanced over heavily mined ground, recapturing the French city of Metz from the Germans. It was shortly afterward that Charland was captured.

Charland retired from the Exchange in 1983 after about 17 years with the organization. He died in 2003.

William Yingst, who was deputy director of Merchandising in 1981, was a prisoner of war in Germany for about five months during World War II. A private first class in the Army, 106th Infantry Division, he was captured during the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944. He had been overseas since September.

He was first taken to Stalag 2B in eastern Germany. The camp housed British prisoners who had developed a well-run underground network. In 1981, Yingst said he didn’t know how the British underground group accomplished its missions, but added that he learned of its effectiveness via daily broadcasts from the BBC on a receiver hidden somewhere in the barracks.

After 30 days, Yingst was assigned to Stalag 7G, which organized work parties of prisoners, moving them throughout eastern Germany from project to project. Yingst was facing a move to southern Germany with the members of his work party when the 65th Infantry Division overtook them. By that time, Yingst said, the German army had “simply melted away.”

Yingst retired in 1982 after more than 30 years with the Exchange. He passed away in 2009.

Robert G. Glass, supervisory personnel management specialist, was imprisoned by Germany for a nearly a year late in World War II.

Glass was shot down over northeast Germany near the Kiel Canal en route to Berlin on May 24, 1944. He was on his second mission, an orientation flight, and had been overseas only three weeks.

At Stalag Luft III, where he was first held, Glass encountered an elaborate communications network similar to the one that Yingst had found. (Shortly before Glass arrived, an escape attempt happened—the one chronicled in the movie “The Great Escape.”)

Glass remained in the prison camp, where the prisoners were not meant to work. They kept their sanity by keeping their military bearing and through traditional military organization—and ingenuity.

To fill the hours, they manufactured stoves from tin cans to cook their food, tried to grow fruits and vegetables to supplement their meager diet, kept up with “housecleaning,” and played baseball and walked to stay in physical shape.

“When the Germans would crawl underneath the barracks to spy on us,” Glass said, “we would always manage to wash the floor”—dousing the spies in the process.

In 1945, Glass was freed in Moosburg, Germany, where the prisoners of Stalag Luft III had been taken when the Russians overran the camp. The prisoners had been forced to make the 100-mile journey from Stalag Luft III to Moosburg on foot—in 2½ days. (The photo at the top of the story, which appeared in a 1981 issue of the Exchange Post, was taken at Moosburg shortly after the prisoners were released.)

About a year before the ceremony honoring him, Glass visited the site of the camp where he was held prisoner. He and his wife were among 43 people who visited Stalag Luft III as part of a tour arranged by a fellow former POW. Of the group, 18 had spent time in the camp located near the German border.

Most of the camp was gone,” Glass said in the August 1978 Exchange Post. “The only things that remained were a few memorials to the prisoners who had spent their time there.”

Robert G. Glass retired from the Exchange in 1983, after 15 years with the organization. He died in January 1993.

Col. Richard L.W. Henry, director, Command and Public Relations, presented the three men with plaques during a dinner at headquarters. “All three of these men do us an honor by being here tonight,” Henry said, “because they not only represent themselves and their own sacrifices, but thousands of other American men and women who have continued to resist and protect the interests of their fellow Americans under the most desperate physical and psychological circumstances that can be imagined.”

Source: Exchange Post archives.