Marion Bahlinger was born in August 1925 in Baton Rouge [Annotator's Note: Baton Rouge, Louisiana]. He grew up with eight other siblings. He was in the Boy Scouts as a kid. He graduated from high school in 1942 and went to LSU [Annotator's Note: Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana] for six months until he was drafted in November 1943. He was sent to Campy Shelby in Mississippi with the 65th Division [Annotator's Note: 65th Infantry Division] and trained with them. In July 1944, he was assigned to the 106th Infantry Division at Camp Atterbury, Indiana. In November, he was sent overseas on the RMS Aquitania, leaving New York Harbor unescorted. They followed a hurricane and landed in Glasgow, Scotland. Bahlinger took a troop train down into a small town in England where they lived in tents. His unit [Annotator's Note: Company B, 1st Battalion, 422nd Infantry Regiment, 106th Infantry Division] crossed the channel [Annotator's Note: English Channel] in December 1944. He remembered they could not unload because the waters were so rough, so they had to unload in Le Harve [Annotator's Note: Le Harve, France]. They moved up to the Siegfried Line [Annotator's Note: a series of defensive fortifications roughly paralleling the Franco-German border built by Germany in the 1930s] where the 2nd Infantry Division was holding the line. The 106th Infantry Division took over the line and were waiting there until they were given further orders. On the morning of 16 December 1944, the Germans began an attack on the infantry. The 106th Infantry Division was surrounded by the German forces. Bahlinger recalled that his unit was ordered to take a road, but the Germans were able to hold it because they had tank firepower, the troops had to disperse into the woods. Bahlinger remembered that he waited near a hill until he heard that the officers had surrendered to the Germans on 21 December 1944. Bahlinger relinquished his weapon and began to walk through several towns until they loaded them onto boxcars on Christmas Day. The train was strafed by fighter planes and several prisoners were injured or killed.

Marion Bahlinger was order to march again [Annotator's Note: the train he was put on after he was captured was strafed by friendly aircraft] and does not remember receiving any food since his regiment [Annotator's Note: Bahlinger was a member of Company B, 1st Battalion, 422nd Infantry Regiment, 106th Infantry Division] surrendered unless they scavenged it themselves from the road. They were put on another train for several days until they reached the Stalag IV-B prisoner camp in Mühlberg [Annotator's Note: Mühlberg, Germany]. He and fellow prisoners went through a shower and deloused, and then put in barracks. He remembered befriending British prisoners who had been there for a few years, and they helped the new prisoners get acquainted with their new life. Bahlinger remarked that realizing that he was a prisoner of war was a devastating feeling. What gave him and other prisoners hope was seeing the bombers flying over the camp, but it was very difficult to not have contact with home or America. He did not talk about his prisoner experience until later in life. The hardest part of being a prisoner was the lack of food. They received soup once a day with some bread. Bahlinger left Stalag IV-B in late January 1945 and was assigned to a work group in the small town of Zschaitz, Germany. His job was to repair roads that were damaged by bombs and build an air raid shelter on a side of a hill. He was housed with 20 other American prisoners and French internees in a warehouse. In another area of the compound Polish prisoners were housed. Bahlinger remembered how they did not have contact with the Polish except one time when a medic came over to aid a sick man in Bahlinger's section. Throughout his prisoner experience, there was hearsay of another group of Americans prisoners in town, but he never saw them until American troops were on there way to take over the town. The Germans put all the American prisoners together in a house and Bahlinger remained there until he was liberated by American troops.

Marion Bahlinger recalled one man was assigned as the guard to the group of 20 American prisoners. He was an older man and carried a rifle with him. Bahlinger remarked that he was most accommodating to his group and was not brutal or harsh, and sympathized with the prisoners. Bahlinger tried to keep in contact with him after the war, but he does not know what happen to the guard. Bahlinger remembered two prisoners escaped while he was a laborer in Zschaitz. Bahlinger cannot recall much about his liberation except that the Americans came and took over the town. He remembers riding in a truck on the Autobahn and he was amazed by the highway system. He was taken to a hotel and slept on a feather mattress with a feather quilt. He was put on a plane and sent to a hospital in Nancy, France for a month before returning to America. He was sent to Camp Lucky Strike [Annotator's Note: one of the transit and rehabilitation camps in France named after popular cigarette brands; Lucky Strike was near Le Havre, France] then returned to Boston Harbor [Annotator's Note: Boston, Massachusetts] on a troop ship.

Marion Bahlinger remembered that during the lead up to the Battle of the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945], he could hear a lot of truck traffic going on and other activity going on during the night. He and other men felt something was going on, but the patrols would come back with no intel. Bahlinger can remember the attack started early in the morning and he was in a covered foxhole in the woods and could hear the Germans making there way on the roads. He did not experience much combat because he had to look for cover as tanks rolled in. Days later, while he was waiting in a foxhole on the side of a hill, he saw someone waving a white flag and he was told to take apart his weapon and bury it with the ammunition then go to the bottom of the hill to surrender to the Germans. Bahlinger was able to hide some English currency in his overcoat that the Germans did not find and he also had a notebook and pencil and he kept a journal throughout his prisoner experience. The Germans forced them to march to a railroad. When they were put in a boxcar, American fighter planes strafed the train, so Bahlinger was forced out. A group of them made a formation in the snow to let the planes know they were prisoners of war. Bahlinger remarked that the uncertainty of his experiences was fearful for a 19 year old.

Marion Bahlinger traveled to Europe [Annotator's Note: the interviewee flips to pages looking for information at 0:56:44.000] and looked up a British friend from the Stalag IV-B prisoner of war camp [Annotator's Note: in Mühlberg, Germany]. Bahlinger recalled that the British put on plays while they were in the prison camp. When he met his friend years later, they both remembered lines from a parody play. He visited areas of England where he was stationed during World War 2. He has no ill feelings towards the Germans today. Bahlinger remembered receiving Red Cross parcels every now and then but not frequently. He remarked that he learned a lot by being in the service.