Captured soldiers in a Soviet camp, circa 1942. Photograph: Koch/Corbis

We all have images etched into our memory, images we can’t erase of events we can’t forget. Sixty years later, an event can be as clear as on the day it took place. We see it, we smell the odors, and we hear the sounds.

I was a Navy signalman doing maintenance work on the bridge of the Liberty ship Chief Osceola on a warm April morning in Odessa, Ukraine, in 1945. I looked up and saw another ship docked nearby flashing Morse code on its signal light. I caught the last few words: “Roosevelt is dead.”

The news spread quickly among the crew, but the president had died more than 6,000 miles away, and we were too busy to dwell on it. I must admit, I was thinking more about my 18th birthday, which was just a couple of days off. Several of the gunners were planning a celebration in a cellar bar near the top of the Potemkin Steps, a few beers, perhaps a shot of vodka, black bread and cheese. It would not be like being back home, but it was the best they could arrange.

For several weeks, Romanian prisoners had been slowly unloading a few thousand tons of cordite and black powder from our holds. Back in the States, at the naval ammunition depot on Hog Island in the Delaware River, our entire cargo had been loaded in three days, but things didn’t move as fast in Odessa.

At noon a horse-drawn cart driven by Russian soldiers hauled a huge kettle of greasy gray soup dockside. The soldiers dumped a few burlap bags filled with chunks of black bread onto the cobblestones, and flies quickly switched their interest from horse manure to the new treat. The Romanian prisoners formed a line, filled tin cups with the soup, and picked up a single chunk of bread. If they ate their meal fast enough they had time to take off their patched uniforms and pick lice off their clothing before returning to their stevedore tasks.

Four scruffy-looking Australian servicemen came aboard that day trying to hitch a ride homeward. They had been captured in North Africa, at Tobruk, in 1942, had been liberated from a German prison camp by the Russians, and had spent over a month working their way back through the lines to reach Odessa. Our captain agreed to take them as far as Istanbul on our way home. They had a square meal, a hot shower, and a clean bunk for the first time in over three years. They didn’t care when we sailed.

Every week or so, a dull-gray troop transport would arrive filled with German prisoners, always docking in the restricted area across the harbor from our ship. There were two of these ships that shuttled back and forth from somewhere. Through binoculars I could see the men, some wearing gray remnants of uniforms, others wearing blue, inching down the gangway single file and being herded into lend-lease American diesel trucks. When a truck was completely loaded, a couple of Russian soldiers would board the cab, the tailgate would be locked, and the truck would depart the harbor area. It was the ship Bessarabia one week and the Transylvania a week or two later, but the ritual was always the same. As soon as the ships docked, before the city was awake, the blues and the grays shuffled down the ramp to the trucks like a row of ants. Shortly, only a haze of exhaust was left behind.

Later that spring the Chief Osceola sailed south, to Constanta, Romania, to unload its remaining cargo. I was on the bridge as we entered the breakwater, and there was the Transylvania across the harbor. So this was where the ships started their journey; they were headed, I realized, away from Germany. Instead of going home, their human cargo were likely going to spend a long time, perhaps the rest of their lives, rebuilding what they had spent the previous five years destroying.

But it was no concern of mine. A few more weeks and the Chief Osceola would be on its way home. We’d eventually head down through the Bosphorus, the Sea of Marmara, the Dardanelles, and around to Fethiye in southern Turkey, where we would load a few thousand tons of chrome ore to push the prop underwater for the long ride home. The European war had ended a few days earlier, so we could sail without waiting for a convoy to form. At eight knots it still would take nearly a month to get back to Baltimore, but we were on the downhill leg of this five-month trip.

In the days it took for another contingent of Romanian prisoners to unload our ship’s cargo in Constanta, my friends and I had little difficulty getting past the Russian harbor guards to sell a few packs of cigarettes for spending money that would procure beer and a couple of shots of calvados. We’d stop at the open-air shops, buy fresh melons, and sit on the curb in the spring sun cutting them open with a pocketknife and enjoying the sweet fruit.

It was a lovely day in that May of 1945 when I decided to walk out of town for a bit of exercise. After a mile or so I heard a mumble of voices down the road, and soon I arrived at a big field surrounded by a 10-foot-high barbed wire fence. Inside was a sea of gray and blue uniforms—prisoners, numbering in the thousands. A few were stripped to the waist soaking up the sun. No barracks. The only amenity was an open latrine pit.

I walked over to the barbed wire and a Russian soldier came up to me, waving a submachine gun and shouting in Russian. I had no idea what he was saying but I’m sure the message was to move on. Using sign language I asked if I could talk to the prisoners. He shrugged his shoulders and moved a few feet away. I cupped my hands and hollered, “Can anyone speak English?”

A blue uniform drifted toward me. “I can.”

The prisoner was in his late thirties. He pointed to his uniform. “Luftwaffe,” he said.

“Where did you learn to speak English without an accent?” I asked.

“I was a waiter at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York for 10 years.”

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“I went back to Germany in 1938.”

“You picked the wrong side.”

“Yes, but no matter now. It’s over now, and they are sending us home.”

I shook my head. I told him that my ship had just come from Odessa and that troop ships were bringing German prisoners there. “They must be taking the long road back to Germany.”

He shook his head in disbelief. “That’s not true. They said we were going to be sent home.”

“Why would I lie? I’m telling you what I saw during the month we were in Odessa.”

He looked stunned. He repeated, “They told us we were going home.”

Several other prisoners crowded around to find out what we were talking about. He told them in German. I only understood the word “Odessa.” They turned to tell others. A wave of voices carried the message, and soon the entire compound was animated. The guard walked closer to me and flaunted the submachine gun again. This time he meant it. I didn’t say goodbye. The prisoners were too busy trying to understand what would happen to them next. I think they knew. But that day I didn’t care. The Germans lost the war. Let the waiter from the Waldorf-Astoria go rebuild Russia.

It has been over 60 years but I can still see the despair on his face.

George Crosby ’51, MA’52 is the retired chairman of Quad Systems Corporation. He resides in Cupertino, California, and is the author of two mystery novels, Delen Close (2000) and The Funfun Club (2001).