Silver Wings, Iron Cross

by Tom Young

  “You guys know what happened at Stalag III back in March?”

  Both men nodded.

  “Well,” McLendon continued, “what you saw in the roll call pretty much tells the story. They’re so worried about another escape that they actually punch holes in our canned goods. You can still eat the food, but it won’t keep—so you can’t take it with you on the run. And the fact that they’re losing the war isn’t making the Krauts any easier to get along with.”

  Wilhelm wondered how the captain knew with such certainty that the Reich was losing. Surely, the guards kept news of the war from the prisoners. But most of these prisoners were aviators—highly trained, intelligent men with time on their hands. Who knew what capabilities they had?

  “Some of the guards are decent. Don’t get me wrong,” the captain explained. “But a few of them are bastards, and every now and then, we get an inspection from the Gestapo or the SS. And, believe me, they’re all sons of bitches.”

  McLendon outlined the camp’s routine and command structure, and he told Wilhelm and Hagan where to find the washhouse, the cookhouse, the chapel, and the library. The kriegies kept a duty roster for chores such as cooking, washing, and sweeping.

  In a low voice, McLendon turned to more serious matters. “Watch your mouth every minute of the day,” he said. “A few of the guards are what we call ‘ferrets.’ They sneak around and hide outside the windows. Sometimes they’ll throw a surprise inspection and tear up all the bunks. They even pull up floorboards.”

  When the captain asked about their backgrounds, Hagan said he was a pilot from the 94th Bomb Group. He repeated the story that Meade was his navigator.

  “Either of you boys speak German?”

  “Both of us,” Hagan said. “My dad came from Germany after the last war.”

  “That’s useful,” McLendon said. “Keep your ears open, then. But don’t let on you understand them.”

  “You bet,” Wilhelm said. That’s it, he told himself. Short American sentences. The fewer syllables the better.

  “By the way,” McLendon added, “if you ever think you got it bad, just take a look across the fence at the Russian camp. The Krauts hate the Russians because they think Slavs are an inferior race. You know the saying ‘This ain’t hell, but you can see it from here’? At this place, that’s literally true.”

  The captain described starvation on the other side of the wire. The Russians, he said, walked around gaunt and stubbled, with arms like matchsticks. Occasionally a shot echoed from that side. Sometimes it was a prisoner executed for a minor infraction. At other times, it was a suicide by proxy: A Soviet kriegie would make a feeble show of escaping, placing his hands on the fence as if to climb. A shot from one of the guard towers, which McLendon called “goon boxes,” would end the Russian’s misery.

  “I even heard they caught a dog and cooked and ate it,” McLendon said. “Turned out to be the kommandant’s mutt. That got several of them shot.”

  “They value a dog more than a human being?” Hagan said. “Unbelievable.”

  Wilhelm believed it; he’d seen the evidence at Valentin. Military dogs got treated far better than those Jewish slave laborers at the U-boat base. McLendon was correct: You could see hell from here. And from many other places within the Reich.

  36

  Climb and Confess

  Karl practically bounded from Hut 4B. At the end of McLendon’s briefing, he’d asked about his crewmates. One name rang a bell for McLendon: “Pell? Yeah, maybe we have a William Pell.”

  Searching the compound, Karl stopped every kriegie he saw: “Billy Pell. Do you know that name? A bombardier from the 94th?”

  Three times, Karl’s question met with a blank stare and a shaking head. That didn’t surprise Karl; this was a big POW camp, and Pell couldn’t have been here long. Finally someone recognized the name. The prisoner took a last drag on a cigarette, exhaled the smoke. Dropped the butt and stepped on it.

  “Yeah, Pell’s over in Hut Six Able. Good fella.”

  “Where?”

  The kriegie pointed. Karl took off at full sprint. Pounded on the door of 6A.

  “Yeah, yeah, Fritz,” a voice called from inside. “We’re coming.”

  A POW opened the door. Perhaps the man expected to see ferrets bent on ransacking the hut, because his expression softened when he saw Karl.

  “Billy Pell,” Karl said. “He here?”

  “Yep,” the man said. Then he turned and called toward the back of the hut. “Hey, Pell. You got a visitor.”

  A familiar voice sounded from the back of the hut: “A visitor? Tell me it’s Lana Turner.”

  “Nope. He ain’t nearly that pretty.”

  Karl felt a warm turn in the pit of his stomach. He’d dreamed of this for days: finding at least one of his crew. He’d have preferred not to find him in a prison camp, but he’d take what he could get.

  Boot steps sounded across the hut’s plank floor. Sure enough, Billy Pell, Hellstorm’s crack bombardier, materialized in the doorway’s shadows. He wore a woolen watch cap and his A-2 jacket. Karl felt as if he’d encountered the ghost of a long-lost friend. Pell must have felt the same way, because when he recognized Karl, his face changed instantly. The sallow cheeks of a downed airman gave way to the broad grin of a schoolboy reunited with an old chum.

  “Ha-haa,” Pell shouted, spreading his arms wide. “Look what the cat drug in. I thought for sure you got burned up with the airplane.” He stepped outside with Karl, grabbed him in a tight bear hug, slapped him across the shoulders.

  “I almost did,” Karl said. “Damn, it’s good to see you. Who else is here?”

  At Karl’s question, the bombardier’s face fell. “Just me, I’m afraid. And now you, of course. I landed close to Conrad; I had his chute in sight all the way down. We landed in a residential area, and Conrad’s canopy snagged in a tree.”

  Pell described how he touched down in a park, unclipped his parachute, and ran toward Conrad. He covered the few blocks that separated him from Conrad and discovered the navigator suspended six feet off the ground. Conrad hung from his parachute risers. The chute’s shroud lines had tangled through the tree’s branches, and Conrad tugged at his release clips, trying to free himself.

  A mob had already found him. Townspeople hurled rocks, bricks, and bottles. Conrad tried to shield himself with his arms. Then he went limp, blood streaming down his face.

  “Awfulest thing I ever seen in my life,” Pell said. “It was old men, old women, boys, even a couple of pretty girls. I pulled my Colt and fired up in the air.”

  Everyone scattered, Pell explained, but it was too late. Conrad was dead. The mob had stoned him to death in a matter of seconds. One or two rocks to the head was all it took.

  “I wanted to cut him down,” Pell said, “but that mob started getting back together and coming for me.”

  “Sons of bitches,” Karl muttered. “How did you make it out?”

  “I wouldn’t have, except the Luftschutz showed up. Pulled up in a truck. I guess they had orders to take us alive. They started yelling at the crowd. Made everybody go home, and they took me prisoner. Had to ride in the back of that truck with what was left of Conrad. I tell you, buddy, be glad you didn’t have to see that.”

  “What about the rest of the crew?”

  “Got no idea. I didn’t see any other chutes. Did Adrian get out with you?”

  Karl turned his gaze down to the ground, then up at the sky. A layer of high, thin cirrus slid overhead, with clear visibility beneath. Good bombing weather.

  “He didn’t get out at all,” Karl said. Karl told Pell about the cannon round that tore through the copilot’s chest.

  Pell stared out beyond the camp perimeter, ground his boot heel into the dirt as if trying to tamp down emotions. “So he never even had a chance to get out of his seat?” Pell asked.

  “No, it was quick.” Karl snapped his fingers. “He was there one second and gone the next.”

  “Damn it.”


  Karl tried to push his thoughts from grief to more urgent matters. “Billy,” he said, “you got time to take a walk? I got something important to tell you about.”

  Pell raised his eyebrows and cocked his head, obviously puzzled. “I got nothing but time,” he said.

  He was about to become even more puzzled, Karl knew.

  How to tell him about Albrecht? How to explain how a German deserter shows up in Stalag Luft XIV pretending to be an American? Oh, yeah, and he’s pretending to be from your crew.

  Karl had no idea how to start, so as he and Pell began strolling across the compound, he lowered his voice and just started at the beginning.

  “After we got shot down,” Karl said, “I had a little help.”

  Karl explained how he’d met Albrecht in the bombed-out ruins of Bremen, how they’d tried to blend in and evade capture. How their luck had eventually run out. Pell stopped walking and stared at Karl with an open mouth.

  “You mean to tell me a Nazi deserter was with you all this time?”

  “Well, I don’t think he was ever a Nazi party member, but yeah.”

  “What happened to him? Where is this guy now?”

  “He’s here, Billy. And they think he’s one of us.”

  Pell’s eyes widened, and his jaw dropped even farther. Then he closed his eyes, shook his head, and held up his hands with fingers outstretched as if to ward off a swarm of wasps.

  “Wait,” Pell said. “Let me get this straight. You brought him here? Why in God’s name would you do that? And why are you telling me?”

  “Well, I didn’t exactly bring him here, Billy. It’s not like we joined this country club by choice. I’m telling you because I said he was one of our crew. And I need you to do the same.”

  Pell glared at Karl now, eyes flinted with anger. All feelings of joyful reunion clearly gone. Behind the anger, Karl sensed confusion and befuddlement—and he could understand. The bombardier had been trained to handle a lot of things, but nothing like this.

  “You vouched for him?” Pell asked. “And you want me to vouch for him, too? Have you lost your mind? I just told you what these people did to Conrad. And now you ask me to help one of them?”

  Karl wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, thinking. How could he get through to Pell? Of course, this made no sense to him.

  Finally Karl said, “Listen, he helped me. He didn’t have to do that. If he hadn’t, they might have done to me what they did to Conrad. And if we still have some of our crew on the run, I hope somebody helps them.”

  “Do you have any idea how dangerous this is?” Pell asked. “For him? For you?” Pell placed his hand across his chest. “For me? We don’t got enough problems as it is, and now we’re harboring—”

  “I understand, Billy, but keep your voice down.”

  Pell looked around and whispered, “And now we’re harboring a German deserter?”

  “I know, I know. The Gestapo or the SS would love to get their hands on him.”

  Pell’s cheeks flushed red with frustration. “Yeah, but not just the Gestapo,” he hissed. “We got an outfit in here called the X Committee. They decide when we try to bust out. They’re also on the lookout for spies and plants. That’s what they’ll think he is.” Pell jabbed Karl’s shoulder with his index finger. “They’ll think you’re one, too. And now they’ll think I’m one.”

  “Look,” Karl said. “I don’t blame you for being mad. This is a lot to take in at once, and if I were in your boots, I’d be pissed, too. But I didn’t plan on coming here—none of us did. Least of all, him.”

  The bombardier clenched his fists. He seemed to struggle for words.

  “You’re not hearing me,” Pell said. “I don’t mean they won’t pick us for the softball team. I mean you could wake up one night with a belt around your neck. That happened to a couple of guys over on the Russian side. The Russkies just thought they might have been plants, and they strangled both of them.”

  “Damn, what happened after that?”

  “The Krauts shot ten Russians.”

  The possibilities, all of them bad, raced through Karl’s mind faster than he could process them. The overload felt like trying to calculate a B-17’s descent rate when he was too tired for mental math.

  “Billy,” Karl said, “I’m sorry you’re mixed up in this, but I can’t change that now. Here’s all you need to know. The guy was our navigator. His name is Lieutenant Thomas Meade. You know him. You’re glad to see him.”

  Pell shook his head and said, “Perfect, seeing as how I don’t even know what he looks like.”

  “I’ll have to figure out a time to introduce you. He’s actually a hell of a guy.”

  “Yeah, you’re going to have to figure out a whole lot more than that. This is beyond crazy.”

  “What else do I need to figure out?”

  Pell massaged his brow with his thumb and forefinger as if suffering from a migraine. Pursed his lips in concentration.

  “You need to tell your block commander,” Pell said. “I mean, right now. Right the hell now. Don’t let him think you’ve been hiding something. Who is your block commander, by the way?”

  “Drew McLendon.”

  “Good. He’s got a good head on his shoulders. But he ain’t gonna like this any more than I do.”

  “What about Timmersby? Do I tell him, too?”

  “Probably. But let McLendon make that call.”

  “Anything else I need to know?”

  Pell clicked his tongue, pondered for a moment. From that familiar mannerism, Karl somehow knew his old bombardier was still on his side.

  “For the first several days,” Pell said, pointing, “everybody’s gonna be watching you. Anything looks fishy, the X Committee is gonna hear about it. You tell your boy, Thomas Meade, or whatever the hell his real name is, he better watch himself. He better put on an Academy Award–winning performance. Mainly, he better just keep his mouth closed. Dear God, this is nuts.”

  “I know it, Billy. We were supposed to be home by now.”

  “Yeah, well, just about everybody here was supposed to be home by now.”

  * * *

  Karl made his way back toward his hut. The aroma of cooking—boiled beets, maybe—wafted from the cookhouse, while less pleasant smells drifted from the latrines. Kriegies stacked wood, hauled coal, carried laundry. Others lounged and chatted, while still others strolled the perimeter. In contrast to Pell, who still looked well fed, many of them appeared thin, their faces hollowed out by weight loss. Karl guessed they had been here the longest, subsisting on meager rations for as long as two years. Not starving like the Russians, but probably hungry all the time. Karl wondered how long he’d have to stay here, and how long before he looked like the long-term kriegies.

  At Hut 4B, Karl found McLendon outside, smoking. He didn’t know how to begin except simply to spill his guts. The predicament reminded him of what instructors had told him to do if he got lost in an airplane: climb and confess.

  “Captain,” Karl said, “have you seen Lieutenant Meade since roll call?”

  “Yeah,” McLendon said. He ground out his cigarette butt with his boot. “Meade’s sleeping. I suppose he got worked over pretty good.”

  “Yes, sir, he did. And I need to talk to you about him. In fact, I got a bombshell to drop, if you’ll pardon the expression.”

  McLendon cut his eyes at Karl. His face gave away no reaction, and he fished another cigarette from his pocket.

  “I don’t think anything could surprise me in this place anymore,” McLendon said, “but shoot.” He lit his cigarette with a Ronson.

  Karl told his story the same way he’d told it to Pell: in chronological order. The block commander did not interrupt, and he did not gape. But he stopped smoking. The ash grew long on his forgotten Chesterfield. He regarded Karl with professional detachment, as if he were scanning instruments during a foggy approach. When Karl finished, McLendon flicked away his cigarette and said, “Well, I was wrong. You
did drop a bombshell.”

  For nearly a full minute, McLendon didn’t say anything else. Karl waited for him to explode in shock and anger, to get mad like Pell. But it never happened. The block commander just seemed to . . . calculate.

  McLendon finally said, “I’d assume all three of you were spies—you, Pell, and Meade, or whatever the hell his real name is. I might even have the boys do something drastic. Except no spy would come to me with a story like this.”

  “Believe me, sir. I sure didn’t plan it this way.”

  “Nobody in here planned it this way.”

  “So, what now?” Karl asked. “Do we tell the men?”

  “No, let’s keep this quiet. If everybody knows, the Krauts will know sooner or later. I’ll talk to Timmersby. Beyond that, the fewer people who know about this . . . the better.”

  Relieved, Karl let out a long breath. Now that someone in the POW chain of command knew about Albrecht, he felt a bit less isolated. But protecting the U-boat man still amounted to flying through a flak barrage: It would take a hell of a lot of luck to get through. Even if most kriegies bought Albrecht’s story, eventually someone might ask a question he couldn’t answer. Karl couldn’t possibly teach him enough about American culture. Or about the USAAF or the B-17. Something as innocuous as baseball could trip him up. What would the guys think of an “American” who didn’t know about Ted Williams or Stan Musial?

  Karl had a hundred questions for McLendon—about how to play it from here, about the X Committee, about the camp itself. But he didn’t get to ask them. Five guards strode toward Hut 4B. Two carried crowbars. The others carried clubs. All wore Lugers and scowls.

  “Damn it to hell,” McLendon said.

  “What is it?” Karl asked.

  “Another ferret raid.”

  37

  Eric Sevareid, CBS News, London

  Wilhelm startled awake when the guards flung open the door and charged inside. For about two seconds, he thought his life had ended; surely, the Gestapo had tracked him down. However, the guards all but ignored him. When he stood up, one shoved him out of the way, pushed him against the wall. They had come not to arrest, but to search and intimidate.