In “a race against time,” a Framingham man is searching for his father’s World War II poker buddies who played cards as prisoners of war to trump Nazi cruelty.
They played to forget the meals of potatoes, bread and dog meat.
“He thought the conditions were harsh,” Steve Fossey said of his dad, William.
“They were pretty hungry,” he added.
Fossey, 50, has set out to track down his father’s fellow POWs using the names he left behind on a deck donated by the International Red Cross.
That old deck has proven the key to reaching out to a dying generation of World War II heroes. The elder Fossey died in 1999 at age 76.

The deck of cards was found in a cloth bag along with some World War II letters at Steve Fossey’s mother’s house in Woburn. He said he kind of “knew they were there” for years but he hadn’t really delved into them until he was older and became more curious about his dad’s life.
William Fossey was drafted as an airman in May 1942. He served in the 463rd Bomb Group before being taken prisoner by the Germans in May 1944 after his plane was shot down.
Steve Fossey said one reason he decided to track down his father’s friends is because his dad was very reticent to talk about the experience, even years later when Steve and his siblings - one brother and one sister - reached adulthood.
“The first person contacted was Foster Heath of Lakeland, Fla.
“I was surprised when Steve called that day,” said Heath, 87, who works at a funeral home. “I had no idea there was a deck of cards with my name on it.”
He said the cards were a welcome distraction to the misery of prisoner life.
“We played cards and everything else to try and kill time,” he said.