This year for Christmas my Mom and Dad gave us kids mementos from their life. My Dad gave me this ring. It was made for him by a Russian POW at the WWII German POW camp where they were being held prisoner. Tonight my Dad told me a story about the ring I had never heard before.

My Mom and Dad got married the week before he shipped out for Europe. He was wounded and captured by the Germans at the Rapido River Crossing, Mt. Cassino Italy. He ended up at Stalag 2B near Hammerstein and from there was sent out to a work camp at a small rural town in the countryside.

Because they got married on such short notice, my Dad didn't have a wedding band. A fellow POW had a ring that a Russian POW had made for him from a silver coin. My Dad wanted one too. The ring maker had been a silversmith back in Russia. His job at the POW camp was to drive an ox-drawn wagon hauling whatever needed to be hauled, and tending to the oxen.

The Russian told my Dad he would need a silver coin from which to make the ring. My Dad asked around and found another American POW who had fought in France and Belgium and happened to have a silver Belgian coin. My Dad traded him 10 cigarettes for it.

He took the coin to the Russian, who punched a hole in it and put it on a spindle. He worked it with a small blowtorch, turning it and hammering a little at a time in the evenings after he tended to the oxen. It took nearly a month to finish the ring. My Dad paid the Russian a pack a cigarettes for it.

He wore it the rest of his time at the POW camp until they were liberated by invading Russian troops, while he and a group of other American POWs made their way across Europe on their own, when they hooked up with an RAF outfit who got them joined back up with American forces (in Brussels, Belgium) who got them back home where my Dad was finally reunited with my Mom.

Tonight he gave the ring, and the story, to me.