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FIRST CONTACT WITH FAMILY IN 8 MONTHS
Immediately after my arrival in Norfolk, I called a next-door neighbor at home--neither my wife nor my parents had a telephone at that time. This was the first contact with them I had since the day of my capture--a period of eight months. I had not received any of the numerous letters and packages they had sent. She knew most of my family and she told me that all were OK except that Jack had been very ill.
A day or two later we were told that we were being sent to a camp near our homes. I was to be sent to Fort McPherson, near Atlanta, so I sent a telegram to Mary and asked her to go to Atlanta if she could. I didn't know if she could leave Jack or not. I met every bus and train that came to Atlanta the next day hoping that I would get to see her. She had received the telegram, gotten her mother to keep Jack, and boarded the train for Atlanta. She met her former employer on the train and, when they arrived in Atlanta, he showed her a short cut to the taxi stand so she could go directly to a hotel. Therefore, I was waiting where most people passed as they left the train and probably missed her by just a few yards! Late that afternoon, when I had about given up and imagined that she had been unable to leave, an officer who I did not recognize as ever having seen before, came to me and asked if my name were Culler. He had been to Fort McPherson that day and had seen a notice on the bulletin board for me to contact my wife at a hotel in Atlanta. This hotel happened to be just a block or two away, so I covered this distance in record time, found her room number and knocked on the door. She was delighted to see me as she had about given up hope that I had received her message or had left and gone to Ridgeway or whatever.
HOME AGAIN
I was able to leave Atlanta ane go on two weeks leave to Ridgeway and Wolfton to see my parents and other family members and friends and, above all else, to see my 16 month old son for the first time was, indeed, an experience for which an appropriate superlative adjetive does not yet exist.
Later, Mary and I were sent to Miami Beach for 2 weeks Recreation and Rehabilitation leave that was granted all Prisoners-of-war. In all, I had accumulated about 6 months of leave and began shortly to seek employment as there were bills to pay and a life to live and a family to support. I tried to put away all the unpleasant recollections of the past several years and to live a normal life. Only recently, have I had the urge to record these facts for the benefit of others while I am able
PROMOTED TO CAPTAIN
John Culler, on terminal leave from the Infantry, has been notified of his having been promoted to the rank of captain. Capt. Culler, a native of Wolfton, entered service immediately after receiving his B.S. degree in Agronomy from Clemson College in June 1941. He spent 16 months overseas. He served as liaison officer with the 85th Division, Fifth Army, Italy, until his capture by the Germans in September, 1944. He was liberated by the Russians in April 1945 and returned to the States in June 1945. At the present time Capt. Culler has charge of the Boys' Division of the Columbia YMCA. He is married to the former Mary Rives Dixon of Ridgeway and they, with their young son, Jack, make their home at 1401 Laurel Street, Columbia. Capt. Culler is now in the Officers Reserve Corps and has won the Purple Heart with an Oak Leaf Cluster, The European theatre of operation ribbon with two battle stars, the combat Infantryman's badge and the American Defense ribbon. I was eligible for promotion to Captain in May 1944 just prior to the time I was wounded, but paperwork during combat does not rate first priority. Neither does it get high priority in prisoner of war camps
In Stalag VII-A, I had had a gnawing burning pain in my abdomen. Dr. Salvador Vasille, who had been with an Infantry Battalion Aid Station that was captured in toto, had been designated by the Germans as Medical Officer for our compound, but had been given only minimum supplies for first aid. He gave me the only thing he had, which was sodium bicarbonate--baking soda--and emphasized that it was only for symptomatic relief and that, in normal practice, this would never be prescribed. Under the current conditions, however, it was the best that he had. He asked the Germans for an anti-acid, but it was never supplied. I found out how true this was to be many years later when, after much suffering and many doses of anti-acid medicines for ulcers, I was hospitalized for a month to have a vagotomy and hemigastrectyomy which involved the removal of 60% of my stomach and the construction of a passage between my stomach and small intestine (a bilroth 2) which causes all my food to bypass my duodenum. This resulted in my inability to regain my normal weight even though I stay on a "seafood diet"--that is, to eat all the food that I can see.
Then, again, in 1976, I was to have some more problems resulting from malnutrition during this eight month POW period in the form of an abdominal aorta aneurysm. I had to have this repaired in the hospital and, thankfully, I have about recovered from this. I have been warned by the doctor that I should not lift heavy weights and to "discontinue acting like a 16 year old".