Part 6 (2/2)
There was a little window about fifteen feet off the floor which gave a little light in the daytime. The only furnis.h.i.+ngs in the room was a wooden bed with a burlap mattress filled with straw. I could just faintly hear the prisoner in the next room and later learned that some of the prisoners tried to communicate with one another by tapping on the wall in Morse code (which we had learned in training). We were fed three times a day by the guard stationed in the hall outside. In the morning there was one slice of bread and a cup of tea, at noon a cup of barley soup, and at night the bread and tea again. It was just enough to keep you from starving. I got so hungry that when eating the bread I would put my jacket over my lap, eat over it then lick the bread crumbs off the back of the jacket. I tried to keep track of the days by taking a stick of straw out of the mattress and putting a one inch piece on the board at the head of the bed each morning. With nothing to do all day you would soon begin to wonder if you had counted the day or not. I would sometimes spend several hours worrying: did I or didn't I do it? The bathroom was down the hall so when you needed to go you banged on the door until the guard came.
There was no paper and no water so we couldn't keep clean.
I spent eleven days living like this with no one to talk to. All you could do was think and look at the pieces of straw on the board. I would walk back and forth for exercise then sit and think. About the third day a guard took me into a room where a German officer sat behind a desk. He asked me questions about the mission I was on, the others in our outfit, all about the planes and our base in England. We had been told to give nothing but our name, rank and serial number and that is all I did. After about an hour I was taken back to my room. A few days later I was returned to the officer and he began telling me all the information he already had about me. He knew my hometown (even about the lake), when I graduated from flying school and all my training bases, and who I was flying with the day I was shot down.
They even knew about my home base back it England.
1 was amazed at how widespread their spy system must have been and a.s.sumed they must have had informants at every base in England and the U.S. All he asked was that I sign the papers to the effect that all the information was true which I refused to do. He even had the number of my plane and knew the position of it in the flights.
Just recently I read the book The Interrogator by Haus Scharff and realized that he was the one who interrogated me. He moved to the United States after the war and lived in California. The third and last time I was taken in for interrogation Bruce was in the room when I was brought in. We just looked at each other and tried to show no sign of recognition. He didn't say anything and shortly another door opened and in came ”Here I sit, fat, dumb and happy” Barlow who had been shot down a month previously. We still tried to show no sign of recognition and finally the interrogator said: go ahead and say h.e.l.lo to each other for we know already you were flying together. We shook hands and smiled at each other. After eleven days of solitary confinement we would have liked to talk, but didn't. After those eleven days we were desperate to talk to someone besides the interrogator! He asked no more questions and we were taken back to our rooms. Barlow was not in the same prison camp that I was and I believe that was the last time I saw him. I learned later that after he returned to the States he stayed in the service and rose to the rank of Major before I lost track of him.
After eleven days, according to the straws on my shelf, we were all taken to a large room. There were about fifty of us and it was a sight you should have seen. We all had beards an inch or longer and the talking and hollering was deafening. Even the situation in which we found ourselves did not dampen the laughter and Joy of being with friends again. Bruce was the only man I knew but these bomber crews were immediately as close as long lost buddies. We all had a shower and then a shave. They gave us a little pair of scissors like you have in kindergarten and I cut Bruce's whiskers and he cut mine. We had to cut them off enough so the razor could do the rest. We only had one razor blade which everyone used (and it was dull) but we managed to get fairly clean without too much bleeding.
I a.s.sume the reason we were not interrogated further was due to the greater number of Americans being brought into the place. I also suspect that they weren't getting much information from second Lieutenants and were more interested in higher ranking officers who knew a lot more about the war effort in England. They were probably trying to find out more about invasion preparations. One thing of interest was a ceremony in England presenting a medal to one of the leading war aces of the time. He was shot down the next day and when he arrived at the interrogation center the Germans had a large picture of him receiving the award. It was hanging on the wall of the room when they brought him in for interrogation. You can understand how fast their extensive SPY system worked!
The next thing I remember we were all standing out in an open field waiting for a train. We were each given a cardboard suitcase from the Red Cross. Wt opened them and mine contained a sweater, pajamas, toothbrush and paste and several other small items which I forget, mainly because the sweater took all my attention. It was bright orange and when I put it on it came down to my knees and the sleeves were about six inches too long. It was Just straight knitting like a scarf and was probably done by some Volunteer who knew nothing about knitting but wanted to help the war effort as best they could. It was the best present I ever received. It was worth a million dollars to me under those conditions and I probably had tears in my eyes. I know everyone said that if the Red Cross were collecting money there that they could have had everything we owned.
As we were standing there talking, I heard someone mention the name Len Pierce, so I called out ”Who knows Len Pierce?” I met the pilot who was flying with Len and he told me all about how Len was killed.
Len was lost on May 10 the day before I went down and it was strange to learn about it under these circ.u.mstances. I probably knew about it over there in the middle of a field in Germany even before his folks were notified. The pilot who had been flying with Len explained that Len's plane was damaged and he was trying to make it back to England.
His plane quit over the Channel and he had to parachute out. He landed in the water and the chute came down on top of him. He was tangled in it and drowned even though he was a good swimmer. He was flying with a good outfit and had shot down two enemy planes.
The German guards were standing around us with huge black dogs that I believe were Dobermans. They started marching us to a train in single file and the guards and dogs kept us in line. The dogs were staining at their 1eashes with teeth barred and saliva foaming from their mouths. They were really fierce and we were petrified with fear. They were only about six feet on each side us and you can bet we stayed in a perfect line! We boarded the train and started out with the hope that American fighters would not come down and strafe the train. We didn't know where we were going but figured it was to a prison camp.
Somewhere along the way the train stopped and down a bank below us was another train with all the people from it standing on the gra.s.s. They were about 200 feet from us and Americans also. We saw pilots we had gone through training with and a few we knew from other squadrons in England. We waved and hollered but our train started up again. It was on that train I learned my first German word ”abort” meaning bathroom.
I forget how long we were on the train or if they fed us, but we were so apprehensive about our future we were less concerned about our a appet.i.tes.
Chapter 8 A POW
We arrived at Stalag Luft III (which means camp air) toward the end of May, 1944. It was located about 100 miles Southeast of Berlin near the town of Saigon. it consisted of several compounds of several acres each and had been cut out of a heavily forested region. The trees were all pine, planted In rows and it seemed so dark underneath them that it must have been the 'Black Forest' of Germany. Each compound held about 2,500 prisoners and when it was filled, they would clear another separate area and build another using Russian prisoners for labor. The compound I was in was opened April 27, 1944 so there were already some prisoners there when I arrived. I was a.s.signed to barracks number 167, Room 12 and Bruce and I, who were still sticking, together like two peas in a pod, were in the same room. There was no one else in the camp from our squadron in England, so we were glad to be together.
The camp was rectangular in shape with the buildings occupying about two thirds of the s.p.a.ce and the remainder was Just the rows of stumps left when they cut down the trees. A high barbed wire fence surrounded the area with guard towers at each corner and two on each side. There was always a guard with a gun in each tower. About thirty feet inside the fence was a low wooden rail. Between it and the fence was white sand. If anyone was caught in this area, they were shot. We had a large white sweats.h.i.+rt with a large red cross on it and when we had to enter this area to retrieve a ball or something else, some one would put on the s.h.i.+rt, get the attention of a guard who would then give you permission to go get the object. You still had to trust the guard in the farthest tower not to shoot, so you would proceed cautiously with your hands in the air.
Each barracks had a center hall with a door at each end and rooms along each side. There was also a washroom, a small kitchen and an outdoor john. There was also a large outside John about a twenty holer, in a separate building for daytime use. We slept triple bunks and I was in the middle one. The mattress was made of wood shavings in a burlap cover and was really just a pile of lumps. There were 12 men to a room and at the and of the building there was a small room for one or two where the ranking officers of that barracks lived. We had a major in our barracks and the highest ranking officer in the camp was a colonel. I had the same bunk for the eight months we were in this camp and had the map that I made fastened to the wall in my bunk.
The compound next to ours was where 'The Great Escape' took place, the one about which they later made a movie. Their tunnel came under our compound and the ground had a dip in it where we used to walk around the edge by the warning fence. We were told that they filled the tunnel in with human manure so that it would never be used again and the ground had settled over it. We were lucky in that these camps contained only American and British airmen and the camp was run by the German Luftwaffe. They had respect for any air force personnel and we were treated much better than the army prisoners. I understand that their camps were terrible and they were forced to work outside the camps. After being at this camp awhile we gave up any hope of escape as the security was very good.
Our camp was not full yet and every week another group of prisoners was brought in. We would all run down to the main gate when they came to see if there was anyone we knew. We had only been there a couple of days when some new prisoners arrived, among them Neil Ullo. We found a place for him in the room next to ours as our room was full. He had quite a story to tell about his experiences. His plane was. .h.i.t by large sh.e.l.ls, and either when he was. .h.i.t or when he bailed out and his chute opened, he broke his back. The pain was terrible and hence he didn't really know how it happened. In that condition he was worried about what it would do to his back when he hit the ground. He landed in the woods and his parachute caught in the trees leaving him swinging from the harness. He was only a few feet from the ground and the branches bent to set him down on the ground light as a feather. I don't remember how he was captured, but they took him to a Catholic hospital in Berlin where he was kept for five months. He said he received excellent care and treatment under adverse conditions. At this time the Americans were bombing Berlin days and the British bombing at night. Every time there was an air raid they strapped him on a plank and carried him down to the air raid shelter. He was doing okay when he arrived in camp, but his back was stiff and he bent forward a little.
We were locked in our barracks each evening at 10:00 and the lights went out at midnight. One guard patrolled the area at night with two huge German Police dogs. We had one large window in our room and opened it for ventilation in warm weather. It was about six foot off the ground and sometimes at night one of the dogs would put his front paws on the sill and look in, which gives you an idea of how big they were. Needless to say, no one thought of going out at night! Every morning we had to line up outside our barracks for 'appel' (roll call) when we were counted by the German camp commander and guards. About once a week during roll call they would put guards around a barracks and not let anyone return until they made a thorough search. They would crawl around underneath the floor looking for tunnel digging and count all the silverware and dishes to see if any were missing.
They also counted all our bed sheets to make certain that we were not using them for some form of escape. This usually took about an hour and we would hang around outside and hara.s.s the guards. The guards were usually older men or those unable to be in the army. They always checked our knives and forks to see if we were making weapons from them.
Alfred Jocque was in the bunk next to me and he was the bombadier on a B-17 that was shot down. One day he took his s.h.i.+rt off and his longjohns were pink and red. He told us that the pilot and co-pilot who were directly above him in the bomber had been shot and their blood ran down over him and stained all his clothing before he bailed out. All the enlisted men from the bombers went to different camps so there were only officers with us. We all got along well with the men in our room and there were no difficulties. Most of the guys were a happy bunch, no doubt due to simply having survived. It was June and the weather was warm so we spent a lot of time outside mainly walking the perimeter, which was about 3/4 of a mile.
The Red Cross provided us with almost everything we got while in prison camp aside from the food from the Germans. (when it was available). Red Cross deliveries were made by truck from Switzerland and were not dependable due to air raids, strafing attacks and poor road conditions. The Swiss volunteers who drove the trucks certainly deserved a medal for bravery. The food parcels were about one foot square and six inches high. We received one each and it was to last a week. Mostly the parcels were American and some Canadian. The American ones contained KLIM (powdered milk), a D-bar (chocolate), prunes or raisins, Spam liver pate, one cake of soap, peanut b.u.t.ter, margarine, army crackers, sugar, cheese, coffee or tea and two packs of cigarettes. Most items were in cans and sometimes hard to open. There was always someone yelling for a ”church key” (the metal key on the bottom of a can) to borrow. The Canadian parcels had different contents and were not as well liked. Their tins of margarine were always rancid and later on I will tell you what they were used for.
Each room did its own cooking and we put a clothes locker on its side beneath the window to store food in and as a work surface. We also had a table with a couple of chairs and picnic benches. It wasn't long before we decided to divide our room in half to make it simpler for the one doing the cooking. Eventually I took over the food preparation for our side and did it for about three months with the help of Bruce.
You were responsible for the food, how to ration it as well as preparation and cleanup. Due to the shortage of German food, the cookhouse was only used to dispense hot water for beverages and another pot for was.h.i.+ng dishes. Before each meal I would run to the cookhouse before they ran out of hot water, and run back before it got cold. They also gave out potatoes, kohlrabi, bread and blood sausage at times.
The one kitchen for the whole barracks was a room with a stove and a daily ration of coal to be used at mealtime. A time for that use was a.s.signed to each room. We also had a small stove in the corner of our room to use for heat when we could got something to burn in it. We would cook on this when we could, but actually most of the food was eaten cold. When we got potatoes we would draw straws to see who would peel them as the Germans used human fertilizer and the smell was terrible. This was the only time I smoked cigarettes. You put one in your mouth and turned your head as far as possible while peeling.
After we had been there several months and became more desperate for food, we just washed them well and ate the skins also.
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