Behind Hitler's Lines (40 page)

It had been a terrible attempt, though it had started so well. Luck and judgment had not been good, but the only thing in Joe's mind was that he was still alive.

“We'd survived the Gestapo,” he says. “As little as I knew about them then, I still realized that not many of their prisoners ever did survive. God had saved me in the strangest way. He'd never left me, even in Gestapo headquarters, so there was nowhere on earth outside His presence. I'd screamed for Him to take me. He hadn't because He knew better. That was like a personal assurance that God would forever watch over me, and watch what I did too.”

Rolling through the gate at III-C made them forget their gratitude. They sat in the staff car for a long time while the Berlin Wehrmacht officer chewed out the commandant, who immediately sentenced the three to thirty days in solitary confinement on bread and water. That was mild treatment compared with the Gestapo, but extreme cold had settled in Poland, likely to be fatal for anyone in their weak and broken condition, and the treatment could become worse if they were closely interrogated about the escape.

On the grain train they had decided, if captured, to deny anything about the escape committee, the middlemen in the bribe. Actually the three didn't know the name of the bought guard, so they couldn't identify him no matter what was done to them. That fact worried Joe a lot because their whole cover story revolved around an exclusively three-man escape. A skilled interrogator would immediately see that if there were only three, which of them bribed a guard?

Quinn, Brewer, and Joe were dumped in separate cells so they couldn't coordinate their stories, but spontaneously they came up with the same one: no one was bribed; they just took a chance in cutting the wire. Joe's interrogator didn't believe that but tossed him back in the cell. It was a cagelike box about five by six feet with straw on the floor and lice in the
straw Cold lice that were glad to have a warm body to infest. The box was shaped so that a man could sit but not lie down or stand up. At night the temperature was below zero, so he had to keep moving or freeze. Joe's thrashing for warmth slowly subsided; he began to experience delirium and lose feeling in his extremities.

Concurrently the psychic impact of the Gestapo ordeal began to probe into his mind like deepening shadows, the forecast of imminent death. Logic confirmed it: he was dying, indeed should have already been dead. But he refused to let the Gestapo of Prinz Albrecht Strasse kill him after they had had their chance. Joe began a retreat to an internal place where they could not touch him, where he was inaccessible to their cruelty.

“There was a 'skylight' about the size of an envelope above my head,” Joe recounts. “There was so little sun it was hard to tell day from night except for the temperature. It didn't seem I could get through thirty days of this. The pain I'd gone through in Berlin had weakened me more than five Atlanta marches. It was like ice forming around a candle. It kept flickering. I saw how it melted wax and the ice would back up, but with more water the ice got thicker. I was watching all this in a dream that kept coming back, watching in a detached sort of way, the way I had watched the fight between the Gestapo and the Wehrmacht.

“God stayed with me. After serving half my sentence the cell door opened as it did for Paul in the Acts of the Apostles and a guard rousted me out. He pointed to a pan of warm water and told me to wash up. I stripped and was shivering but didn't mind as I rubbed off the grime and filth. He tossed me a set of underwear and a wool GI uniform with no markings. I was marched out of the punishment block, shoved into the old American compound, and that was that. I was assigned to a hut. Quinn and Brewer were already in other huts, acting as if nothing had happened.”

What had happened was a visit by the Red Cross, one of their semiannual inspections allowed by the Geneva Conventions. Records of the stalag bureaucracy revealed that the
three were being punished in solitary for the offense of escaping. The Red Cross representative pointed out that escape was not a crime but rather a duty of POWs, citing chapter and verse from the Geneva Conventions. The commandant reluctantly conceded the point, so the three were released. The Red Cross visit had been postponed from October.

“If it had occurred then, we'd have had to complete our sentence. God stepped in once again. Whenever I'd called to Him like Job, He responded as if to say, 'Believe it!'

“Back in the compound, back in a hut, was a very strange experience. My countrymen treated me like a leper: they gave me extra care but also isolated me. Word came down from Coleman to discuss the escape with no one. I received special rations from the PX, but a kriege would accompany me whenever I left the hut. It was like a quarantine. I could understand why the escape committee had to be protected. I was no longer on that committee and not allowed to talk with them at first. I had trouble understanding why because we should be debriefed for information that could help future escapes.”

From his new hut mates Joe learned why the virgin escape from III-C had been resented in some quarters. The morning after there had been a lockdown of the American compound. No one could leave his hut except for the latrine, roll call, and to pick up meals. The three were gone about two weeks, and the lockdown had continued till recapture. Some krieges fumed at how Joe had changed their lives for the worse. In a way he understood why. They'd had no vote on the committees that had approved and supported the escape plan, which resulted in collective punishment. True enough, Joe concedes, but then tries to remember a saying attributed to Colonel Ewell of the 101 st: Though the U.S. Army is that of a democracy, the army itself is not a democracy.

“What I really couldn't understand was Quinn's and Brewer's attitude. They kept very much to themselves and away from me. They'd been assigned to different huts. Maybe I had something to do with our separation. I'd been the only one of us who'd had his shoulders dislocated. American medics
came around to put hot compresses on them and gave me some ointment, which helped relieve the pain and swelling. Maybe Quinn and Brewer had not suffered quite as much from the Gestapo. Maybe they'd told more than I did. I never asked them and never knew. It wasn't something to talk about, even with your wife after the war.”

Maybe they were told how Schultz came around and took Joe aside. He put an arm around his shoulder—Joe winced because it was still filled with pain—and counseled him like a father: “Joseph, be a good boy now. The war will be over soon, and you can go home to your family.”

Slowly recriminations and suspicions faded as stalag life returned to normal and the three were debriefed about the escape. They were not much help in describing the surrounding area because it had been late evening when they got away, and a lot of memory had been erased by torture.

“III-C began to improve as RC parcels came in every other week. I was paired with a mucker, Johnson, the kriege who had safeguarded the cache of cigarettes I'd left behind. My 'will' was that if I didn't return, he was to get half and the other half go to the escape committee for however they wanted to use it. Their honesty was guaranteed because none of them smoked! Cigarettes kill people these days, but back then they saved a lot of lives.

“I was having nightmares when hut mates had to grab me in my bunk, but I felt much better as Thanksgiving approached. Only Americans celebrate it, but Coleman convinced the commandant that it would be good for everyone if this was allowed to be a special day. We krieges had little to be thankful for, the Germans less, and the Russians least of all, but we all had our hopes, and hopes are helped along by gratitude.”

There were some kriege artists who did pictures of turkeys and Pilgrims. Schultz granted an advance IRC allowance of evaporated milk, canned corn, and corned beef. “Before you take this be aware that you'll have less food for Christmas,” he told Coleman.

Those ingredients went into a kettle, where they were stirred
seasoned with mustard, and steeped. The soup-stew that came out was the best-flavored food Joe had tasted since capture. He was much more thankful than in England a year before when the Screaming Eagles had plump turkey, cranberry, stuffing, and all the trimmings.

Between Thanksgiving and Christmas kriege morale was up, the Germans' down. There was now a clandestine crystal set in the American compound, tuned to the BBC. Coleman sent around couriers, like confidential town criers, who memorized the news and delivered it to every hut. The news was all good. The Russians were coming on like an avalanche, and the Allies had breached the Siegfried Line in some places. Nothing but the Rhine and the Oder looked like major obstacles from here on out. Krieges started talking about a stalag reunion at Times Square this time next year.

Joe's morale improved with his recovering health but had setbacks whenever he saw cords of freeze-dried corpses carried out of the Russian compound. With the spring thaw they'd become the reason for the wavy earth pointed out by the Polish farmer in 1992.

“Dear God, how can we give thanks when there is mass murder going on right across the fence? What if they're Communists, not Christians—what does that matter? They're humans, God's children. Having gone through some suffering like theirs, I felt close to them. Hardly anyone else did though when we got extra of anything there was a way to get it over the fence and we shared it with the Russians. But to us they were a different species, people to be pitied but not too much because to relate to them was hard on the emotions. We wanted to preserve our emotions like a stash of cigarettes. The easiest way was to make the Russians separate, almost the way the krauts did.”

Christmas was coming along, and everyone looked forward to it, something like the old-time feast days in England. Krieges knew they'd hardly feast, but Christmas was something they had in common with the Germans.

To general surprise the Germans became arrogant and
turned up their noses. The commandant, with Schultz nodding beside him, reminded Coleman that Thanksgiving had been the Americans' luxury so there would be nothing extra for Christmas. The clandestine crystal set soon explained the change of German attitude. It was Hitler's surprise offensive, the kickoff of the Battle of the Bulge.

“Suddenly there were truckloads of new POWs coming in. They went to the 'new' American compound. Remember it was only Normandy POWs in the 'old' compound of III-C. Every American who came in after that went to the 'new' Physically the compounds were the same. The krauts were smart to separate us. We could have given the new guys some confidence and tips on how to survive and endure.”

Joe was shocked at how the new POWs looked, and he didn't shock easily. They were young but not strong, battle-rattled and forlorn, blitzed. Immediately Coleman worked to establish contact with them, identify their key people, bring them on board. Schultz was alert to this effort and doubled the guard to prevent it, but before long messages were exchanged with the new guys. When trucks unloaded new POWs, Joe went to the fence looking for 101st patches. There were few, and no faces he recognized.

“The cold in the Ardennes actually helped us in Poland. Piles of winter gear came in with the new POWs. Schultz liked us old guys. I was able to add a layer of wool shirts and pants and make a thick pair of mittens and a warm stocking cap. Actually a kriege who had been a tailor made them in exchange for my last stock of cigarettes.

“Johnson, my mucker, provided the packs for that trade. My pre-escape 'will' turned over half my stash to him and he had rights to keep it, but he didn't. He is another face, another of God's children I should but can't remember to the point of regaining contact with him. I'm too old now. Too much life has happened since then. This is my thanks and tribute to him.”

Initial German success in the Bulge changed something in Joe's outlook. The krauts were crowing. Their propaganda
was saying that the Allies would break up. The BBC was saying that Montgomery would have things under control, but the krieges weren't believing it, not after Market-Garden.

With things going badly in the west, the Western prisoners— so the rumor went—would reverse status with the Russian POWs, whose army was still coming on hard from the east. When there's not much information, people in confinement can believe speculation like that. What they knew was that no status could be worse than that of Russian POWs.

“So Christmas was a big deflation for us, a big inflation for the krauts. The
fest
food didn't taste nearly as good as at Thanksgiving. Over at stalag headquarters we could hear German drinking songs. Around midnight they ended with ‘Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht.’ It's like Beethoven. How could a German have written such music?

“It was the day after Christmas, and all through the huts only the rats were stirring, but so was I. Over at the fence I saw Quinn. I looked around for krauts. Couldn't see any except in the guard towers, so I went over to him. We had to be careful because if any of the three escapees were seen together, Schultz would investigate. He had some good human qualities, but he also had a job, which was to prevent escapes, especially after ours.”

Joe and Quinn acted like tourists who didn't know each other, watching Niagara Falls. Ten yards apart and looking in different directions, they talked out the sides of their mouths. Quinn didn't like to look at the Russian compound, so they reversed views. How's Brewer? Joe asked.

Getting along. He wants out.

So do I.

The Bulge had affected all three of them. They decided to investigate possibilities.

“That was how our second plan was hatched. We knew it would be unsupported because the escape committee couldn't take another chance with us, but what we came up with did require the help of other krieges. Just thinking about escape again made us feel better about ourselves—sort of like a rodeo rider who has to get right back on a horse after he's bucked
off. What we'd learned was that if this time we failed, we also died. The first thing we bartered for was small sharp shivs. We wouldn't be taken alive and tortured again. Knowing that calmed us. We were much less nervous planning our second escape than we were before the first.