P. O. W.

The men thought they'd endured the worst after their capture and the harsh march to this place, wherever this place was. The fence looked almost ricketty, made up of rough-hewn logs, squared off by forced labor. Those who were able to think of such things knew the rickety appearance was mirage, for though the wall appeared to have been put up quickly, the logs were easily a foot thick and were guarded by men on what looked like pigeon roosts every hundred feet or so.

The smell was the first thing they noticed, easily half a day ago. As they neared what would be their new home, they started to hear a din of voices and movement, even over the 20-foot wall.

The man commanding the transport party told them to stop. Then, the giant doors opened, revealing a log portico, a buffer zone between the hellish mirage that they'd known and the true hell into which they would soon be cast.

Their metal cuffs were removed and the door swung shut behind them. Only then did the doors in front of them open, casting them into the sea of humanity that would serve as the place they stayed--but never a home--until they either died or somehow release came.

Camp Sumter, they called it, though it was anything but a camp. At its peak, the 26.5 acre stockage housed more than 30,000 men. who were forced to scavenge for what they could to provide shelter. The only source of water was the stockade branch. On paper, it was a stroke of genius, the prisoners could get their water where the stream entered the stockade, and relieve themselves where the stream left the stockade. In reality, the plan didn't work. The logs cut the water entering the stockade to a trickle. The water leaving the stockade was also backed up, creating a toxic marsh that men would sink to their hips in just to get fetid water.

Over its life, about a year, more than 45,000 men were housed at Andersonville. About 13,000 of them died.

The experience of being a prisoner of war must be among the most humbling. Sent out to fight for your country, you are taken and then must rely for your subsistence on whatever your captors allow. Typically, the captors allow near-starvation diets, torture, hard labor, solitude, and psychological manipulation.

The Prisoner of War Museum at Andersonville paints a vivid picture of the POW experience and the hell endured by both the POWs and their families. Two testimonials stick in my mind.

A pretty blonde woman about my age told how she would feel when other childrens' fathers were released from Vietnam and how she longed for the same experience they had, in meeting their fathers when they returned. Only her father never returned. He died as a POW.

In another story, a man taken prisoner in either Korea or WWII (I don't know which) held on to the vision of coming home to his wife. While he was in captivity, though (for several years), his wife re-married. Although the first instinct is to condemn the woman for not staying true, the stories of the other families make her decision understandable. The families, too, are prisoners of war.

The stories at the museum end with the release of those who survived and touch on the coming home. It's not the time of euphoria you'd think. It's a time of fear and trepidation. What about this man--or woman--coming home? Is this the same person who left? Will this person be changed, ruined, by what happened? Will I live with the shell of my loved one and what will I do if he or she isn't the same?

Will they accept me back? Will they even know me any more? Am I damaged beyond repair by this experience? Can I be a good spouse, parent, child, and friend again?

We do some horrible things to each other. Makes me want to re-examine what we're doing at Guantanamo.