For any WWII history buffs out there

I was just looking through some copies of Life Magazine from 1945 and came across two short tidbits.

New years eve, '44/'45 a gentleman named Paul Stachowiak joined a bunch of other people celebrating the new year in the Chicago area. He ended up at a private residence and a New Years eve party. As the night went on, everyone was partying and he grew a little intoxicated, he started bragging that he was free and that he had escaped. Not everyone at this party was totally inebriated and one person started to listen, after asking around he found that no one had invited Mr. Stachowiak, they all thought someone else had. A quick call to the Police and Mr. Stachowiak was escorted back to his temporary home, a POW camp in near by Rockford. Seems he was one of over 378,000 German POWs held in America along with over 51,000 Italians and 5,000 Japanese.


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The next day, January 1st, 1945, across the Atlantic in Occupied Italy, someone had the idea that what the Americans there needed was a Bowl Game. So 25,000 GI's from the Fifth Army and Twelfth Army Air Force, along with WACS and Army Nurses flooded into Florence's Berta Stadium for the "Spaghetti Bowl". Teams were made up of men from both forces and while everyone had hotdogs and watched the game, P-38's flew overhead as CAP in case the Luftwaffe decided to interrupt the party. They never showed and the game went on without a hitch.
(No Score reported)