Christoph, I still can not get over everything you have sent me! Wow!
This is real quick, but with your curiosity wanted to tell you that the service men only got discharged after they had a certain amount of points. I do not know exactly, and maybe in the past I read somewhere exactly what activity could be counted for to equal so many points. I don't think being a POW or escaping gave him extra points. But I think after being a POW you were not allowed to serve in that Theater again - the European Theater. (Could he have been sent to Japan if it was required, I do not know and will one day see what the rules were.) Those who had more points got out of Europe faster when the war was over, or supposed to.
In my Dad's case, his Regiment had been partially decimated in the Hurtgen Forest, and reassigned, and he never met up with his buddies again. Very Very Sad for him! Like at the Abbey, he never had closure, or could shoot the breeze with a few of them and know how it ended or talk about what they had been through together. I am lucky to have some letters from some of the men in his outfit after he was captured. The men loved him.
While it took a couple of months for him to get back to the USA, and fortunately he wrote Mom some VMails during that time, he still had to put in more time in the military back in the USA.
Bye for now,
Jean J