Veteran of the Month

February-March, 2009

This month’s REMEMBERaVET.net Veteran of the Month hails from Lumberton, Mississippi

Mr. Mark Rayborn 

  Mr. Mark Rayborn was born 16 August 1924 in Baxterville, Mississippi. He swore in for military service in the United States Army at Camp Shelby, Mississippi on 3 September, 1943. He never imagined that his dedication to freedom would require him to become a Prisoner of War.

  Mark completed basic training at Fort McClellan, Alabama, and then left for Newport News, Virginia to await his deployment to Italy by way of Lion’s Mounting, Africa. In Italy, Mark joined up with the 361^st of Company K of the 91^st Division. “Above Rome,” said Mark, “in the woods”. 
  
  On 3 July, 1944, his platoon was sent to Casole d’Elsa in Tuscany, Italy, arriving early in the morning 4 July, where they set up their pup tents in a huge field- just in time for an enormous thunderstorm and several days of whipping wind and torrential rain. He next went to Pisa (where a Chaplain gave Mark a pocket Bible that he has to this day), then on to “guard a canal.” Mr. Rayborn read the pocket Bible regularly from the day he received it, all the way through his imprisonment, and still reads that same Bible to this day. My attention was drawn to the foreword of the Bible, written by President Franklin Deleno Roosevelt. The foreword read as follows:

  “As Commander-in-Chief, I take pleasure in commending the reading of The Bible to all who serve in the Armed Forces of the United States. Throughout the centuries, men of many faiths and diverse origins have found in the Sacred Book words of wisdom, counsel, and inspiration. It is a fountain of strength and now, as always, an aid in attaining the highest aspirations of the human soul.”

                                                                               Very Sincerely Yours,

                                                                                Franklin Delano Roosevelt

  A few days after being assigned to canal guard duty, Mark was walking along when he saw a sign on a fence. Since the sign was in Italian, Mark didn’t know what it said; he did know, however, that there was a huge tomato patch on the other side, so he climbed the fence, gathered a bunch of tomatoes, and returned to share them with his brothers-in-arms. One of his buddies asked where he got the tomatoes, and he told him of the field with a sign on the fence. His friend (who could read Italian) went with him to the field, and promptly let Mark know that the sign read “KEEP OUT- MINE FIELD”. Once he knew that, the tomatoes tasted even better…

  Mr. Rayborn says that on 16 August, they went on a 10 mile or so hump (full packs, of course), “took another small town or two, capturing a hundred or so Germans by the edge of September.” Mark remembers once when it got “cold as heck and misting rain” when they came upon a building which had a spring running through it. As German soldiers were trying to get back to their lines through the night, Mark’s platoon “captured them left and right.” One morning shortly after, Mark was awakened by cooks rattling mess kits with hot breakfast, then they “heard a shell coming in.” The shell hit a tree- Mark took a piece of shrapnel in his finger, but was lucky compared to the five men who were killed, and the 15 who were seriously injured. The next day, Mark humped with his platoon to another small town, where Mark became the body guard for the new Company Commander.

  Once, when his platoon had taken shelter in an abandoned farm house, Mark was ordered by a “brand new 90-day Wonder” to start a fire to brew the Lieutenant some coffee. Mark said “I did what I was told- started a fire in the fireplace.” Almost immediately after the fire got going good, a mortar shell came in and hit the yard. Mark’s Sergeant (a fellow from Tennessee with a slow Southern drawl) said “I don’t give a damn what the 90 day wonder wants- put that target (fire) out!” Mark said that this same Sergeant repeatedly advised the Lieutenant to be still, but the Lieutenant stated “I know what I’m doing!” and took off across the yard worm crawling, where he was promptly shot by a sniper “right between the butt cheeks.” Those Sergeants usually know what they’re talking about.

  Next, Mark’s platoon was instructed to take another hill, across a mine field. Two men lost feet that day from mines, but the platoon made it to the mountain, where the Germans had a pill box machine gun nest set up in the hillside, and would spray them with fire every time they moved. Mark’s platoon overcame several disadvantages to take the hill, and the German Army didn’t like it, dropping paratroopers on their location that very evening. Mark’s unit lost 96 men in three days. Mark’s platoons came out of the mountains through Futa Pass on 8 October, 1944, and were told that hey had three days to take Bologna, Italy.

  It was raining again as Mark’s platoon got to the edge of a little town outside Bologna, and they took shelter in a small building with arched doorways. The same Sergeant from Tennessee (mentioned earlier) advised a (new) Lieutenant to stay clear of the arched doorways. This Lieutenant also ignored the advice of the Sergeant, and took a sniper’s round to the side of the head. His radio operator also paid for his Lieutenant’s error, getting shot in the back through his radio.

  The replacement for the Lieutenant took a round to the chest while on a road march. Some of the platoon huddled together in the road. Mark took cover in a ditch, where he encountered two other soldiers from another platoon, who said that they were going up to where their men were pinned down in a building up a hill. The two men took off toward the building, and Mark heard the sub-machine gun firing. One of the men was shot just as he got to the building. Mark then took off to help the fallen soldier, and was surprised that the German machine gun nest “didn’t fire the first shot at me.”

  On 10 October 1944, Mark was sent out on guard. He said he often thought of taking off, and that he couldn’t help recalling the Alamo, where “only the coward survived.” Mark Rayborn is no coward- not by a damn sight. His remembering the Alamo was interrupted when the building where Mark’s platoon was sheltering started to encounter 88mm cannon fire from a German tank. The German unit surrounded the building, and ordered Mark’s platoon to come out or “they were coming in with flame throwers.” Mr. Rayborn recalled the scene: “I decided that I’d shoot the first one who came in. Since we were upstairs, I decided that if they threw in a grenade, I’d kick it back down to them. As I was contemplating how I’d make my last stand before I died, my Captain announced that we would walk outside and surrender, but not before calling in a big artillery strike. 81 of us were captured in all. They took us to a really long building. There was a German soldier walking backwards in front of us, waving his machine gun and smiling- I thought we were dead for sure.”

  From the point of capture, Mark and the other POWs were taken to the edge of Bologna, where there was a three story building near the edge of a mountain. There were three large rooms upstairs where the POWs were kept. Two days later, Mark and company were being interrogated when an air raid started. The air raids repeated for a day or two, and then the POWs were led to a HUGE tunnel.

  Mark said that they had been used to having little to eat, but that they hadn’t eaten for several days after capture. The Germans gave them some bread, which had been stored like wood- out in the open. The bread had soured inside, and made the soldiers ill. Soon after, they were taken across the Poe Valley from Bologna to Montova. Mark and the other POWs were loaded into covered trucks- 25 soldiers per load. Mark recalls that “some of the fellows had come across some wild garlic, and since food was so short, they’d eaten it raw. Well, it wasn’t long before they started cutting garlic farts, which made the German guards riding with them mad as Hell!” Mark said that soon after that, he and the other POWs were given a can of bully beef, which was, according to Mark “the first and last good food we got.”
  About three days after leaving the site of the air raids, the POWs arrived at Stalag 7A in Mooseburg, Germany, where Mark and the rest of the POWs would be held until 1 May, 1945- 206 days as a POW was the price Mr. Mark Rayborn would pay for your freedom.

  Mark recalls several interesting tidbits, like being transported via trucks that used wood for fuel. He recalls himself and other POWs being assigned to various work details, including railroad repair, farm work, and cutting wood to fuel the trucks mentioned earlier. He remembers that they started receiving Red Cross boxes about six weeks before they were rescued- he remembers trading the German guards 10 cigarettes from the Red Cross pack for a loaf of bread.

  There are many colorful stories Mark can tell you about his time as a POW, including several where he and his fellow POWs would use humor to get through the tribulations of being held prisoner by your enemy.
   One story that stuck with me was when Mark and about 20 other POWs were taken by truck to Munich, where they were instructed (through an interpreter) that they would be on a work detail to carry bricks from a damaged building to an open field. One of the POWs shouted “Cocksucker!” and the German soldier to whom the insult had been addressed quickly demanded to know what a cocksucker was. The quick-thinking interpreter told the guard that it meant “premium soldier,” at which point the guard started thumping his chest, saying in broken English “Me primo kook-socker!” Another guard asked the interpreter “what am I, then?” to which another soldier responded “You’re a good son of a bitch!” Mark recalls “the fellers were getting a good kick” out of seeing one soldier constantly referring to himself as a “premium kook-socker,” and another guard calling himself a “premium sunna-beach.”

  Then one early evening, US fighter planes started zooming overhead. Mark recalled “we saw five planes blowed out of the sky that evening- one fella’s plane got cut in half, and the pilot’s chute got hung up in the tail section.” The pilot remained tethered to the aircraft as it plummeted to the ground.

  On 1 May 1945, SS troops came through town. “They sent two men up to kill us, but our guards kept them out drinking Schnapps. The next morning, our guards told the SS troops that the Americans were coming from the other end of town, and that the best thing they could do was leave- so they left.” Shortly after that, the 13^th and 14^th Armored Divisions came in on halftracks and liberated the POWs.

  Mr. Rayborn returned to Southern Mississippi, where he worked for many years with the Postal Service. He is currently enjoying a well-earned retirement in Lumberton, Mississippi.

  It is with great honor and appreciation that we recognize Mark Rayborn as the REMEMBERaVET.net Veteran of the Month for the Month of February-March, 2009.

 THANK YOU for your service to your country, our families, and our communities. Your service will not be forgotten, and we appreciate your efforts to help secure our freedom.


The Veteran of the Month for the month of December, 2008 - January, 2009 represents the Lamun-Lusk Sanchez Texas State Veterans Home in Big Spring, Texas