I, Mario Genova, landed in Naples, Italy on April 18, 1944. My outfit was the 85th Infantry Division (ed: the old "Custer's Division", Company B of the 338th Infantry Regiment); we went into combat the next day.  I was captured on September 13, 1944 between the Arno River and Florence.  I was held a prisoner for 7 months; my camps were Mooseburg, Memmingen and Augsburg Germany.

There were 10 of us that got captured on a mountaintop, the Germans took us inside the mountain it had rooms all cut out and pure white like salt or lime stonewalls.  We were taken to Florence, Italy and put on a truck with more American prisoners.  There was about 8 to 10 freight trains waiting, full with prisoners from different countries, each freight car was so full we had to sit in one place for 3 days and 3 nights with no food or water.  We got off at Munich, Germany and all prisoners were shipped to Camp Mooseburg, Germany.  We had to work to remove all the bombed out railroad tracks in Munich.  American bombers would drop bombs every day at 12:00 noon.

I was sent to Memmingen with other prisoners, we had to get up at 5:00 am and bury tons of potatoes in hay and dirt into big mounds to keep as needed.  Our workday was from 5:30 am until 6:00 p.m. with just one meal a day.

My next and last camp was in Augsburg, Germany, it was much better.  The last days of war all prisoners were on a death march which we didn’t know until we were liberated by the 1^st Armored Division.  We walked from Augsburg to Stuttgart, Germany got onto a plane to Le Havre, France and a ship back to the states