Olin Pickens was born in December 1921 near Dumas, Mississippi in the small village of Locum. His father worked as a barber and a blacksmith. During the Great Depression [Annotator's Note: The Great Depression was a global economic depression that lasted from 1929 through 1939 in the United States], Pickens and his family lived on a farm and supplied their own food. Along with their neighbors and other nearby farmers, they often shared whatever meat they had and helped one another maintain their farms. Three Sundays a month, Pickens’ father cut hair at 10 cents per head, and on the fourth Sunday the family would attend church. Pickens had two older brothers who found work with the CCC [Annotator's Note: Civilian Conservation Corps] and began to bring home enough money for the family to buy new clothes and shoes. [Annotator’s Note: A voice can be heard off the camera talking to the interviewee at 0:03:47.000.] Despite their new income, Pickens says his family struggled financially until World War 2 began. In 1938, Pickens family purchased a radio which he and his brothers used to listen to boxing matches on Monday nights. They were not very interested in the news coming out of Europe and Asia at the time. After the attack on Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941], Pickens slowly became aware of what was going on outside of Mississippi, but did not think that the war would ever affect him. In August 1942, many of Pickens’ friends and neighbors began being drafted into the service. Rather than wait around for his draft number to be called, he volunteered for service in the Army. He chose the Army for two reasons: first, as a country boy used to walking many miles per day, he did not flinch at the prospect of marching endlessly, and second, his parents made him promise that he would not jump out of planes in the service, so the Air Force and paratroopers were excluded. He arrived at Camp Shelby [Annotator’s Note: Camp Shelby, Mississippi] for induction and received his immunizations in the August heat. To stay cool, Pickens and others crawled beneath the buildings to seek shade. After a few days there, he boarded a train to Spartanburg, South Carolina where he was stationed at Camp Croft for basic training. Because the Army needed men quickly for the coming invasion of North Africa, the training was hard and fast. This intense training regimen came in handy on the long, forced marches of his captivity. Although his brother was allowed to return home after basic training, Pickens was not, and he was immediately placed on a train to Camp Kilmer, New Jersey. He sailed out of New York Harbor and arrived at Oran, North Africa. Pickens knew nothing about North Africa and had only heard of the horrors of the arid desert.

Olin Pickens sailed overseas and arrived at Oran, North Africa on 26 January 1943. The men with whom Pickens had trained were split up and assigned as replacements to many different units. Pickens became a member of the 805th Tank Destroyer Battalion and was assigned to a communications section as a rifleman and placed on a jeep towards Faid Pass [Annotator’s Note: in Tunisia]. The unit’s captain and lieutenant were brothers by the name of Hunsinger [Annotator’s Note: phonetic spelling]. Lieutenant Hunsinger issued orders to Pickens’ unit for what amounted to a suicide mission. Pickens and the other men in his outfit were to establish forward positions to slow down the German advance on the rest of the American forces. Lieutenant Hunsinger told the men that they would likely be killed or captured as the Germans would surely overrun the positions. After issuing the orders, Lieutenant Hunsinger was killed when his jeep ran over a road mine. The entire company was either killed or captured that day. [Annotator’s Note: The interviewee is having technical difficulties at 0:17:18.000 – 0:18:12.000. Can see a man in the background going in and out of a door.] The Germans began firing flares in the sky in an attempt to locate any American survivors. Using his uniform as camouflage, Pickens crawled through the darkness between flares all night until he found a slit trench, climbed in, and covered himself with cactus brush. In the morning, his cover was removed, and he looked up to see an Arab local staring down at him. The man signaled for Pickens to stay down and quickly left. Thinking he would return with food and water, Pickens was shocked when the man returned with a squad of 12 German soldiers with their rifles drawn. One of his captors motioned to Pickens with his gun as if to give him a chance to take it. Pickens grabbed hold of the gun and thought immediately of killing the man who had turned him in, but the Germans began to point their weapons at him, and he let go. He was marched to an area where other men were being held captive and, upon arrival, was told that they had been turned in for 200 francs, the equivalent of one dollar. As the prisoners stood around awaiting their next move, German General Rommel [Annotator's Note: German Army Generalfeldmarschall, or Field Marshal, Johannes Erwin Eugen Rommel] passed nearby. The prisoners were given orders to begin marching towards the sea because the Germans lacked trucks to transport them there. They were ordered not to attempt to escape or fall out of line as they would be killed immediately. They would walk for four hours and rest for ten minutes. A man marching in front of Pickens began to stumble and ultimately fell. Pickens urged him to get up and keep walking and attempted to help him up when a German soldier pointed his rifle at Pickens and told him to keep moving. Leaving his fallen comrade behind to be killed is one of the worst things that he experienced during the war. The march continued from Tuesday until Saturday when they arrived in Tunis [Annotator’s Note: Tunis, Tunisia]. Throughout those five days, they were fed sauerkraut soup once and given water just three times. In Tunis, the prisoners were placed in stables where they gorged themselves on water from a filthy watering trough. They were divided into groups of sixteen and given a loaf of bread and corned beef hash to share. After several days in Tunis, they boarded a Ju 52 [Annotator’s Note: The Junkers Ju 52/3m is a transport aircraft] bound for Naples, Italy. However, the pilot came over the loudspeaker and announced that they would be landing in Sicily because Naples was under an air attack. They were ferried to Italy and began the march to Naples where they were housed in a prison camp with many British soldiers for several days.

[Annotator’s Note: After being captured in North Africa by Germans and sent to Italy,] Olin Pickens boarded an overcrowded boxcar where they remained for seven days and nights before arriving at Stalag VII A in Moosburg, Germany. Here, Pickens was issued a POW [Annotator's Note: prisoner of war] dog tag, separated from the men he had been with since he was captured, and sent to Stalag III B in Furstenberg [Annotator’s Note: Furstenberg, Germany]. Thirty days had passed since Pickens was captured and he had lost a third of his total body weight. As he began to starve, Pickens was sent out of the camp to an Arbeitskommando, or “Work Company,” where he was promised better food in exchange for his labor. Pickens knew this was a lie, but the prospect of more food motivated him. After a year of living on a starvation diet and growing weaker while working ever harder, Pickens and a fellow prisoner named Honeycutt [Annotator’s Note: phonetic spelling] began to plot an escape. The escape committee within the prison had contacts with members of the French Resistance in Prague [Annotator’s Note: Prague, Czechoslovakia] who would help them stay hidden and get them to freedom in Allied-controlled Italy. Another man who they met while out of the camp on a work detail acted as their radio and gave them important updates about their route of escape. After saving their bread rations for nearly two weeks, the day of the escape attempt dawned. Pickens and Honeycutt exited the camp early one morning on their way to the construction site with the bread hidden in their overcoats. Pickens and Honeycutt spent the day hidden on planks in the rafters of the building where they worked. After the other prisoners had left for the day, they climbed down and snuck passed the guards on duty at the site. [Annotator’s Note: phone rings in the background at 0:34:47.000.] Pickens is thankful the guards were without their dogs or they surely would have been caught. He decided to escape because he did not know how much longer he could survive the starvation diet. He describes the work schedule, meals, and winter conditions in detail before saying the thought of being killed if they were recaptured did not scare him because death would not be any worse than life in the prison camp.

[Annotator’s Note: After being captured and then escaping from prison camp] Olin Pickens followed a river into Czechoslovakia, arriving on Saturday 29 April 1944 just as their food stores ran out. Pickens says they were due to meet with a family that would get them to safety at 10 o’clock that night. Because they arrived a few hours early and were feeling elated to have made it so close to freedom, Pickens and Honeycutt [Annotator’s Note: a fellow prisoner of war with whom he escaped] became careless and were immediately surrounded by two German guards dressed like forest rangers, carrying shotguns in one hand and leashed dogs in the other. The dogs were snarling and snapping as the Germans began to interrogate Pickens. He quickly gave up his identity and they were placed in a smokehouse with iron bars and stripped of their clothes. To keep warm at night, they took turns sitting on one another’s lap and draping their bodies over the other. At dawn, the woman who lived nearby came to visit them and told them that she had lost her husband on the Russian front before giving them new clothes, a pitcher of chicory, and bread with margarine. At lunch she fed them again, this time a meal of boiled eggs, potatoes, and bread. The woman’s son brought them all the water they could drink. At midday on Sunday, many of the women in town began coming by their cell to look at them and ask questions about America. Pickens says the two most frequently asked questions were “Is everyone in America a gangster?” and “Is the Empire State Building as tall they say it is?” The people were very friendly, and they bid them “Auf Weidersehn” as they were led out of town on Tuesday. While being marched back to Stalag III B, they spent the night in a British camp where they met a man who had attempted to escape 13 times.

[Annotator’s Note: After being captured and escaping from a prisoner of war camp] Olin Pickens and a fellow prisoner, Honeycutt [Annotator’s Note: phonetic spelling], were recaptured and taken back to Stalag III B and were interrogated by a colonel who spoke perfect English and revealed he had been educated in the United States. Though the colonel was a nice man, both Pickens and Honeycutt were placed in solitary confinement. Pickens says he was not alone, however, as Jesus walked in the cell ahead of him and spoke to him for days to give him the strength to live after the Devil came in and told him to lay down and die. When the day came for him to rejoin the rest of the prison population, Pickens counted the marks on the wall which he made each day with his small pitcher – 21 marks represented three weeks he had spent in confinement. For two weeks following his confinement, the other prisoners gave him portions of their bread until he regained his strength. On 29 January 1945, Pickens and the other prisoners were marched West in knee-deep snow away from the advancing Russian Red Army. The men spent the nights standing in a huddled mass for warmth. On 14 February, they arrived at Stalag III A in Luckenwalde, where they were forced to sleep on the dirt floor on beds of straw. The Russians again caught up to them on 9 April and liberated the camp from German control. Because the road between the prison camp and the American front was heavily mined, Pickens was not released until 21 April. A truck came and brought the prisoners back west of the Elbe River where Pickens’ freedom was restored. Covered in lice from his weeks spent sleeping on straw, Pickens’ clothes were taken and burned, and he was herded into a shower and sprayed with DDT [Annotator’s Note: an insecticide] before being allowed shower and being issued a new uniform. He weighed just 120 pounds. On 4 May, a C-47 [Annotator’s Note: Douglas C-47 Skytrain] arrived and flew Pickens and the others to Camp Lucky Strike in Le Havre, France. Because he was underweight, the Army would not allow Pickens to be sent home immediately and placed him on an eggnog diet for 30 days. At the end of 30 days, Pickens had gained 30 pounds and weighed in at 150 pounds.

After being approved to go home [Annotator’s Note: following liberation from a prisoner of war camp in Germany], Olin Pickens boarded the USS Admiral Bennington (CV-20) on 4 June and arrived in New York Harbor [Annotator’s Note: New York, New York] on 10 June [Annotator’s Note: 10 June 1945. The Statue of Liberty was lit up and spoke to each man on the ship, saying something different to everyone. For Pickens, Lady Liberty said, “Welcome home, son. Well done.” [Annotator’s Note: Voice off the camera talks to interviewee at 0:59:40.000.] Many of the men were greeted by family members while disembarking, but Pickens was all alone as he boarded the bus to Camp Kilmer [Annotator’s Note: Camp Kilmer, New Jersey] where he was given a haircut and placed on a train to Camp Shelby [Annotator’s Note: Camp Shelby, Mississippi] with other Mississippi boys who had been POWs [Annotator's Note: prisoner of war]. One night, the train Pickens was riding on passed through his hometown of Blue Mountain, Mississippi to pick up some water. A man Pickens knew was standing on the platform asking if anyone on board was from town. Pickens called out to him and asked him to deliver a letter to his parents to let them know that he would be home in a few days. Upon arrival at Camp Shelby, Pickens was placed on a bus with 65 other men and driven north for home. When he arrived in Blue Mountain, people swarmed the bus to offer him well wishes and rides home. Pickens wanted to walk home and his neighbor, a man who had lost his son in the Battle of the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945], walked with him. Upon arriving at the house, Pickens ran to his father who embraced him and began to cry. Pickens says his entire family surrounded him and cried tears of joy while the neighbor cried tears of sadness that his son would not be coming home. After his first eight months in captivity, Pickens was allowed to write letters home to his family, but they were heavily censored and he was only able to tell his family he was okay and well-fed. After his escape, he never received another letter.

Olin Pickens dealt with nightmares for years after his time in captivity as a prisoner of war, often dreaming about vicious dogs and guns pointed at his face. He began to see a psychiatrist who he told his story to for the first time. The psychiatrist told Pickens to put his wife in the dreams with him to help ease their frequency and terror, which helped. The three worst things Pickens experienced in the war were when the Arab man turned him in, a burning tank with its crew trapped inside, and when he was forced to leave a fellow captive behind to be killed. These were also subjects of his nightmares. He was declared 60 percent disabled because of his PTSD [Annotator's Note: post-traumatic stress disorder; a mental health condition triggered by a terrifying event either experienced or witnessed]. Pickens took advantage of the GI Bill [Annotator's Note: the G.I. Bill, or Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, was enacted by the United States Congress to aid United States veterans of World War 2 in transitioning back to civilian life and included financial aid for education, mortgages, business starts and unemployment]. His most memorable experience of World War 2 was when an Arab man turned him in to German soldiers. At that moment, he knew his fate was uncertain. Pickens chose to fight in World War 2 because he knew that one in nine men would die in combat and had to risk it. Before the war, Pickens was a farmer, blacksmith, and carpenter. After the war, he continued to practice in those fields, but he also drove a tractor trailer. Pickens was proud to serve in World War 2. He wishes American civilians were caring and giving like his generation was during World War 2. He believes there should be institutions like the National WWII Museum [Annotator's Note: The National World War II Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana], and that we should continue to teach World War 2 to future generations. [Annotator’s Note: Man with interviewee shares a story about interviewee’s discharged at 1:25:05.000.] Upon his arrival home, Pickens was not immediately discharged and was transferred to Miami Beach [Annotator’s Note: Miami Beach, Florida] for R&R [Annotator's Note: rest and recuperation] before being assigned to duty at Fort Lewis, Washington. Pickens and others who had been POWs [Annotator’s Note: prisoners of war] in Europe were placed in lousy barracks and refused to work. They were threatened with dishonorable discharge and replied, “Good, we can finally go home.” He and 65 other men wrote a letter to Mississippi Senator Bilbo [Annotator’s Note: Theodore Gilmore Bilbo was an American politician who twice served as governor of Mississippi and later was elected a U.S. Senator] for help. The senator contacted the Army, who finally discharged Pickens and the other POWs. He worked at a service station for 22 months before going to Memphis [Annotator’s Note: Memphis, Tennessee] with his brother to work for Kleenex in October 1947.