NJ Man Gets POW Medal 66 Years After Capture by Germans

A New Jersey man received a federal Prisoner of War Medal on Monday, more than 66 years after he was captured in Europe during World War II on the night before he turned 19.

The medals were created in 1995 and in the years after that, veterans from World War II and the Korean and Vietnam wars started applying for them.
      
But Alan Hayden, a salesman who spent his career peddling hats, then cameras, and who was never involved in POW groups, did not learn about the award until the past few years.
      
On Monday, the arthritis-stricken, 85-year-old Hayden rose from the scooter he uses to get around to receive the medal from U.S. Rep. Christopher Smith, a New Jersey Republican, in the Masonic Home in Burlington Township.
      
Smith called Hayden's time in captivity in the Alsace-Lorraine region in present-day France ``64 days in hell.'' His office helped speed up the process to get the medal and says military records verified his story.
      
Hayden graduated from Passaic High School in 1944 and enlisted. In January 1945, the private was fighting in France and Germany.
      
On Feb. 22, he was one of several U.S. soldiers taken prisoner. They were marched, along with soldiers from England, Canada, Australia and India, to several prisoner-of-war camps, or stalags.
He recalled being served only weak potato soup and subsisting with the help of food from occasional visits by the Canadian Red Cross and by trading valuables to villagers for food. He swapped his watch.
      
One surviving artifact from that time was a telegram sent to his mother back in Paterson in April 1945 announcing that he was missing in action. Throughout the ordeal, he said, he was confident he would survive.

"We knew that one of these days, we were going to be freed by the Americans,'' he said.
      
And by the end of April, German forces abandoned the prisoners outside Munich. They were found by American troops on April 27.
      
He returned to New Jersey in June and was discharged from the Army in December. He married, settled back in his hometown, had three children and worked as a salesman until 1992 _ a few years after his wife died. He moved six years ago to the Masonic Home, where one of his claims to fame is crafting wooden gavels for Masonic leaders.
      
"After all this is over,'' he said, looking forward to an afternoon nap, "I'm going to sleep good.'