The smell hits the medical officer before he even reaches the examination table. It is January 1945 somewhere in the flatlands of Texas. Inside, a prisoner of war processing camp run by the United States Army. A 19-year-old German soldier sits on a wooden bench, boots still laced tight, face blank with exhaustion.

 The intake guard reported that the boy walked off the transport truck without assistance, but every step looked wrong. Now the doctor kneels in front of him, scissors in hand, ready to cut the laces. He does not know it yet, but what he is about to see will become a training case study. A story whispered among camp physicians for the rest of the war.

 The boy’s feet are not just injured. They are dying. We are at Camp Hern in Texas, one of dozens of prisoner of war camps scattered across the American interior during the final year of World War II. The boy who just arrived is cataloged as prisoner number 4,112. His name is Otto Wernern Steiner, though no one will use it for weeks.

 He is 5′ 7 in tall, weighs 109 lb, and his paperwork says he was captured in Belgium during the Arden’s offensive in late December. That offensive, known to the Americans as the Battle of the Bulge, was Germany’s last major counterattack in the West. Tens of thousands of German soldiers were captured when the offensive collapsed.

Otto is just one number in that flood of prisoners, but his feet tell a story that will shock everyone who sees them. Otto does not speak English, and the intake sergeant does not speak German, so they communicate through gestures and a single translator, who is managing 30 other prisoners.

 That afternoon, the translator asks Otto if he is injured. Otto shakes his head. The translator asks again, pointing at his legs. Otto says one word, cult. Cold. The sergeant writes it down and moves him to the next station. No one realizes yet that cold is not the problem. Cold was only the beginning.

 Inside the medical tent, there are four other prisoners waiting for examination. Otto sits at the end of the bench and waits his turn, boots still laced tight. Two prisoners have lice. One has a fever. One has shrapnel fragments embedded in his shoulder that were never removed. The US Army requires every prisoner of war to undergo a full medical screening within 48 hours of arrival.

 It is a rule designed to protect both prisoners and guards from typhus, tuberculosis, and other diseases that can spread fast in overcrowded camps. Otto waits quietly, unaware that the warm air inside the tent is about to trigger a catastrophe. The air inside is warm. A kerosene heater glows in the corner.

 For the first time in weeks, his feet begin to thaw. When the doctor finally calls Otto forward, he stands slowly. His gate is stiff, shuffling, almost mechanical. The doctor notices it immediately. He asks through the translator if Otto was wounded in the legs. Otto says no. The doctor asks if he can remove his boots. Otto nods. The boy reaches down and tries to untie the laces himself, but his hands are shaking.

 Whether from cold, exhaustion, or something else, the doctor cannot tell. The doctor waves him off and kneels in front of the bench. He begins to untie the left boot. What he finds will change everything. Let us know in the comments where you are watching this from. Are you in the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, or somewhere else? If you want to dive even deeper into these untold stories, consider becoming a channel member.

You’ll get your name mentioned in the video, early access to videos, exclusive content, and direct input on which stories we cover next. Join our inner circle of history keepers. The leather is cracked and frozen stiff despite the warmth of the tent. The doctor works carefully, assuming the boy might have frostbite or trench foot, both common among soldiers who spent weeks in snow and mud.

 The laces are knotted in places, frayed in others. But when the boot finally comes free, the smell is immediate and unmistakable. It is not the sour smell of sweat or unwashed skin. It is the deep rotting stench of necrotic tissue, dead flesh. The doctor pulls back instinctively, then leans in again to assess the damage. He has treated hundreds of injured prisoners, but nothing prepared him for this.

Otto’s left foot is swollen to nearly twice its normal size. The skin is modeled dark purple in some areas, pale gray in others. Around the toes, the tissue has turned black. When the doctor touches the skin lightly with a gloved finger, there is no reaction, no flinch, no pain.

 That is the most alarming sign of all. Pain means living nerves. No pain means the tissue is already gone. The doctor looks up at Otto and asks through the translator how long his feet have been like this. Otto does not answer right away. He stares at the floor. Finally, he says one sentence. since the march. Those two words open a door into something far worse than anyone in the tent expected.

 We are still in the medical tent in Texas. But now we need to understand what Otto means by the march. Now we go back 3 weeks earlier to Belgium and Germany in the chaos of January 1945. Otto was part of a Vermach unit that had been surrounded and forced to surrender near the town of Bostononia after the failure of the Arden’s offensive.

 Thousands of German prisoners were captured in the span of a few days. The Allied forces, primarily American units, had no infrastructure in place to process so many men so quickly. Temporary holding areas were set up in open fields. The prisoners were searched, disarmed, and grouped into columns for transport. But transport to where? The ports were overcrowded. The rail lines were bombed.

And the weather was savage. January 1945 was one of the coldest winters on record in Europe. Temperatures dropped to 10° F at night, sometimes lower. Snow covered the ground in thick drifts. The Allied command made a decision. The prisoners would march on foot to collection points farther west where trucks or trains could take them to the coast.

 Some of these marches covered 15 miles, some covered 50, and some, like the one Otto was part of, were far longer because the routes kept changing due to destroyed bridges and ongoing fighting. Otto marched for 11 days. The column he was in contained roughly 800 men. They were guarded by a mix of American infantry and military police.

 The prisoners were given minimal rations because supply lines were stretched thin feeding the advancing Allied armies. Each man received one meal a day, usually a tin of cold rations or a piece of bread. Water came from snow melted in cantens. The guards were not intentionally cruel, but they were overworked, undersupplied, and following orders to keep the prisoners moving.

 When men fell behind, they were put on trucks if trucks were available. If not, they were left at aid stations along the route. Otto did not fall behind. He kept walking even after his boots began to fail. He kept walking even when the pain became unbearable, and he kept walking even when the pain stopped.

 That silence in his feet was not mercy. It was death. Back in the medical tent in Texas, the doctor removes Otto’s right boot. We are in January 1945, weeks after the march that destroyed Otto’s feet. The smell is even worse than the left. The sock underneath has fused to the skin in places. The doctor does not try to pull it off.

 He knows that will tear away living tissue along with the dead. Instead, he cuts the fabric carefully with surgical scissors and peels it back in sections. What he finds confirms his worst fear. This is not frostbite in the typical sense. This is full thickness necrosis, meaning the tissue death has penetrated through skin, fat, and muscle, possibly reaching bone.

 The damage is so severe that the doctor wonders how Otto is even alive. The doctor calls over the head physician, Captain Raymond Howell, a surgeon with experience treating combat injuries. Howell examines both feet and asks Otto a series of questions through the translator. Did you try to warm your feet during the march? Otto nods. He says he stuffed dry grass and cloth into his boots whenever the column stopped.

Did you feel pain? Otto says yes at first. Burning pain, then stabbing pain, then nothing. Did you tell the guards? Otto shakes his head. He says he was afraid they would leave him behind if he could not walk. Howell writes everything down. Then he makes a decision that will determine whether Otto keeps his feet or loses them.

 He orders the boy transferred immediately to the camp hospital for emergency debrement and assessment. Otto does not know what that means. He does not know that his feet are about to be cut open. He only knows that the doctor looks worried. And when doctors look worried, prisoners learn to be afraid. We are now in the camp hospital, a series of wooden barracks converted into wards with 20 beds each.

Otto arrives on a stretcher even though he can still walk. Otto is placed in isolation, not because he is dangerous, but because the infection risk is severe. Necrotic tissue is a breeding ground for gang green and gang green can spread through a ward faster than any other infection.

 Captain Howell examines Otto again under better light. He measures the extent of the tissue death using a probe and a marker. On the left foot, all five toes are fully necrotic. The tissue death extends back to the ball of the foot. On the right foot, the first three toes are dead and the surrounding tissue is borderline. The measurement process takes 20 minutes.

Every mark Howell makes on Otto’s skin is a line between life and amputation. Howell has three options. Option one is amputation. Remove both feet at the ankle and eliminate the infection risk completely. It is the safest choice medically, but it will leave Otto disabled for life. Option two is partial amputation.

 Remove only the dead toes and tissue, leaving the rest of the foot intact. This option carries a high risk of infection spreading, and if it fails, Otto will need full amputation later anyway. Option three is deb breedment and observation. Cut away all the dead tissue, disinfect aggressively, and hope the remaining tissue heals on its own.

This option has the lowest success rate, but offers Otto the best chance of keeping functional feet. What happens next is not just a medical decision. It is a moral test that American doctors faced throughout the war. Howell consults with two other doctors and a nurse who has experience with severe frostbite cases from the Italian front.

They review Otto’s overall health. Despite his low weight, his heart and lungs are strong. His blood work shows no signs of sepsis yet. That is critical. It means the infection has not entered his bloodstream. The team makes a decision. They will attempt option three first with the understanding that if infection develops, they will amputate immediately.

 Howell tells Otto the plan through the translator. Otto listens without expression. Then he asks one question. Will I walk again? Howell does not lie? He says, “Maybe it depends on how much tissue is still alive.” If you are enjoying this story and want more untold accounts from World War II prisoners of war, make sure to subscribe to the channel.

 We are bringing you stories that most history books never covered. Now, we go into the operating room where Otto is about to undergo one of the most painful procedures in wartime medicine. Deb breedment is the surgical removal of dead or infected tissue. It cannot be done under full anesthesia because the doctors need Otto awake to respond to pain signals.

 Pain tells them where living tissue begins. No pain means they are still cutting dead material. Otto is given a local anesthetic injected around his ankles and a leather strap to bite down on. He understands what is about to happen. He grips the sides of the table. The procedure takes 2 hours. Howell uses a scalpel to cut away blackened skin and tissue.

 In some areas, the flesh comes away easily, already separating from the underlying muscle. In other areas, it clings stubbornly, and Howell has to cut deeper than he wants. The nurse assists by flushing the wounds with saline and applying iodine to disinfect as they go. Otto does not scream, but his breathing is ragged and sweat soaks through his shirt.

 Every few minutes, the nurse wipes his face. Every few minutes, Howell pauses to let Otto breathe, but the cutting continues. By the time Howell finishes, Otto has lost the front third of both feet, including all 10 toes. What remains is raw, exposed tissue that will either heal or rot. There is no middle ground. After the procedure, Otto is moved back to isolation.

 His feet are wrapped in gauze soaked with sulfa drugs, an early antibiotic used to prevent infection. The dressings are changed twice a day. Each time, the medical staff inspects the wounds for signs of spreading necrosis or pus. For the first three days, Otto runs a low fever. Howell watches him closely, ready to amputate if the fever spikes.

 But on the fourth day, the fever breaks. On the fifth day, the edges of the wounds begin to show signs of granulation, the formation of new tissue. It is the first indication that Otto’s feet might survive, but survival is only the beginning. Walking is another question entirely. We are still at camp here, but now we move forward 2 weeks.

 Otto is out of immediate danger, and the wounds on his feet are healing slowly. The infection has been controlled. The wounds are healing slowly but steadily. However, the damage is permanent. Without toes, Otto cannot balance properly. Without the front of his feet, he cannot push off when walking. He will need custom shoes, physical therapy, and possibly canes for the rest of his life.

 But he is alive, and his feet are still attached. That alone makes him one of the fortunate ones. Now, the doctors want to understand how this happened. During Otto’s recovery, the medical staff learns more about the march that destroyed his feet. Through conversations with other prisoners who arrived on the same transport, they piece together the full story.

 The column Otto was in was originally supposed to march 30 miles over 3 days, but a bridge was destroyed by German artillery, forcing a detour. Then a snowstorm hit and the column had to stop for two days in an open field with no shelter. The guards distributed blankets, but there were not enough for everyone.

 Otto gave his blanket to an older man in his unit, a decision that likely saved that man’s life and cost Otto his feet. The guards did not realize how bad Otto’s condition was because he never complained. He kept walking even when the pain became unbearable. He kept walking even when the pain stopped. In his mind, stopping meant being left behind, and being left behind meant death.

 That belief was not irrational. During the chaos of early 1945, prisoners who could not keep up were sometimes placed in temporary holding areas that had no medical staff and minimal food. Some of those men died waiting for transport. Otto feared that fate more than he feared losing his feet. So he walked until he physically could not walk anymore.

 Now we place Otto’s story in the larger context of what Cole did to prisoners of war during the winter of 1944 and 1945. We are looking at the full scale of the disaster that no one talks about. The International Red Cross estimated that more than 12,000 German prisoners of war in Allied custody suffered some form of cold weather injury during that winter.

Of those, roughly 2,000 required amputation. The injuries ranged from minor frostbite that healed with no lasting damage to cases like where the tissue death was so severe that survival itself was uncertain. The mortality rate for prisoners with advanced necrosis was approximately 15%, not from the cold itself, but from secondary infections that developed after the initial injury.

Otto was lucky. Thousands of others were not. The Allied forces were not equipped to handle the sudden influx of prisoners during the final months of the war. In January 1945 alone, American forces captured over 40,000 German soldiers in the Western Theater. Processing camps in Belgium, France, and eventually the United States were overwhelmed.

 Medical supplies ran short. Blankets ran short. Even food ran short in some locations. The Geneva Convention required captive nations to provide prisoners with the same standard of care as their own troops. But that standard became nearly impossible to maintain when supply lines were stretched across a collapsing continent and a raging winter.

 The US Army conducted an internal review after the war and found that forced marches contributed to more prisoner injuries than any other single factor during the winter of 1944 and 1945. The review recommended that future operations prioritize motorized transport for prisoners, even if it meant delaying other logistics.

 But those recommendations came too late for Otto and thousands of others who lost toes, feet, legs, and in some cases their lives because they were forced to walk through one of the coldest winters in European history while wearing boots that were never designed for that kind of punishment. Back at Camp Hern, Otto begins physical therapy six weeks after his arrival.

 We return to Texas in March 1945, where Otto must relearn something he has done since he was a baby. The therapy consists of learning to walk again without toes. The camp has a physical therapist, a US Army corporal named James Dalton, who works with wounded American soldiers and when time allows with prisoners who have serious injuries.

 Dalton builds Otto a set of wooden practice bars and teaches him how to shift his weight back onto his heels to compensate for the missing front of his feet. The process is slow and frustrating. Otto falls multiple times. He refuses help getting up. Each fall teaches him something about balance. Each refusal teaches Dalton something about Otto.

 During one of these sessions, Dalton asks Otto a question through the translator. Why did you keep walking? Otto does not answer immediately. He thinks about it for a long time. Then he says something that Dalton writes down in his personal journal and later shares with Captain Howell. Otto says he kept walking because he did not want to be the reason the column stopped.

 He did not want to be the man everyone else had to wait for. He did not want to be a burden. Dalton finds this answer strange, almost incomprehensible. Otto was a prisoner. He had no obligation to protect the convenience of his capttors or his fellow prisoners. But Otto did not see it that way. In his mind, stopping was weakness.

 Walking was duty. This mindset was not unique to Otto. Many Vermach soldiers carried a cultural conditioning that equated suffering in silence with honor. Complaining, asking for help, or showing weakness were seen as failures of character. That conditioning saved lives in some situations by pushing men to survive against impossible odds.

 But it also killed men in situations like Otto’s where asking for help early might have prevented permanent injury. The US medical staff at Camp Hern saw this pattern repeatedly. German prisoners would arrive with untreated wounds, infections, or injuries they had hidden for days or weeks because they feared being perceived as weak or being separated from their units.

 Otto’s feet were evidence of that silence. And that silence almost killed him. We are now 3 months into Otto’s recovery, and a new problem threatens everything the doctors have accomplished. His wounds have fully closed. The risk of infection is gone. But Otto is developing contraurs, a condition where the muscles and tendons in his feet are tightening and pulling his remaining tissue into unnatural positions.

 The contraurs are caused by scar tissue forming as the wounds heal. If left untreated, the contraurs will lock his feet into a rigid, unusable position. He will never walk normally again. Howell brings Otto back into the clinic and explains the situation. Otto needs another surgery to release the contraurs and reposition the tendons. Without it, all the previous work will be wasted.

 Everything they saved will be lost. Otto refuses. He has had enough of surgery, enough of pain, enough of being cut open. He tells the translator he would rather live with stiff feet than go back into the operating room. Howell tries to reason with him. He explains that without the surgery, Otto will likely need canes or crutches for the rest of his life. Otto does not care.

 He is done. Howell makes a decision that goes against standard medical protocol. He tells Otto he will not force the surgery, but he will give Otto one week to reconsider. During that week, Howell assigns Dalton to work with Otto daily, showing him exactly what his life will look like if the contraurs are not corrected. It is not a lecture.

 It is a demonstration. Dalton takes Otto through a series of exercises that simulate daily tasks. walking upstairs, standing for long periods, crouching down and standing back up. Otto struggles with all of them. The contraurs make every movement painful and unstable. By the end of the week, Otto changes his mind. He agrees to the surgery.

 Howell schedules it immediately before Otto can change his mind again. The surgery takes 90 minutes. Howell cuts through the scar tissue, repositions the tendons, and inserts temporary pins to hold the bones in the correct alignment. Otto will need to wear casts for 6 weeks, then custom shoes for the rest of his life.

 But if the surgery works, he will walk without assistance. And walking without assistance means freedom. We are now in July 1945, months after Otto first arrived with feet that were dying inside his boots. The war in Europe has been over for two months. Germany has surrendered. The camps are beginning the process of repatriation, sending prisoners home.

But home for Otto no longer exists in the way it did when he left. His hometown, a small village near Leipig, is now in the Soviet occupation zone. His family, if they are still alive, are behind what will soon be called the Iron Curtain. The US authorities offer Otto two choices. He can return to Germany and take his chances with the Soviet authorities, or he can apply to stay in the United States as a displaced person, a category that includes refugees and prisoners of war who cannot safely return home. Otto chooses to stay. He is

processed through a displaced person’s program and eventually sponsored by a German American family in Pennsylvania who agree to provide him housing and help him find work. Before he leaves camp here, Captain Howell gives Otto a set of medical records documenting everything that was done to save his feet.

 Howell also writes a personal letter to the sponsoring family explaining Otto’s condition and the kind of ongoing care he will need. The letter includes a single sentence that Howell does not write in any official report. He writes, “This boy survived because he was stronger than his injuries, but he will need help for the rest of his life.” Otto leaves Texas in August 1945.

He travels by train to Pennsylvania wearing custom shoes built by the camp’s cobbler, a German prisoner who had been a shoemaker before the war. The shoes have reinforced heels and thick soles to compensate for Otto’s missing toes. They are ugly and heavy, but they work. Otto walks off the train without canes, without crutches, and without assistance.

 The family meets him at the station. They take him to a small house on the edge of a town called Lancaster. Otto will live there for 2 years, working odd jobs and learning English. Eventually, he will marry, have children, and live a mostly normal life. But he will never run again. He will never dance. And he will never forget the smell of his own feet rotting inside his boots during that march in January 1945.

Those 11 days in the snow changed everything. They took his toes, his balance, and his ability to walk without pain, but they did not take his life. And in the end, that is the only victory that matters. The doctors at Camp Hern saved Otto’s feet, but Otto saved Otto. He made the decision to keep walking when walking was agony.

 He made the decision to survive when survival was uncertain. And he made the decision to rebuild when rebuilding seemed impossible. Those decisions are not dramatic. They do not make good headlines. But they are the decisions that define what happens after the war ends. When the cameras are gone, when the historians move on, and when the only thing left is one man, two damaged feet, and the long walk forward into whatever comes Next.