by Tom Young
Pell released Wilhelm from the headlock, and Wilhelm grabbed Pell’s right hand. “Ain’t seen you in a dog’s age,” Wilhelm said.
“Well, it sure feels like a dog’s age,” Pell said. “I lost sight of you when we bailed out. Didn’t know if you’d even got out at all.”
“I didn’t see you, either,” Wilhelm said. He cocked his thumb at Karl. “But I had this guy in sight all the way down, and we met up after we landed.”
“I’m real glad you made it. But this sure ain’t no way to finish a mission.”
Wilhelm hesitated, perhaps searching his mind for some new Americanism he’d learned. Finally he said, “You got that right, pal.”
Some of Pell’s hut mates drifted through the doorway and stood outside, witnessing the “reunion.” That pleased Karl; it was the whole point of the exercise. They made no comment or interruption. The kriegies simply stood around with their arms folded, smoking and talking among themselves.
One in particular, however, followed the conversation with apparent interest. The man eyed Wilhelm and Pell with a look like he had a bad taste in his mouth. Karl had met him briefly—a bombardier from New York by the name of Fox. Spoke with a strong Brooklyn accent.
Karl didn’t especially like Fox, and he liked him even less when he butted in without introducing himself.
“McLendon tells me you speak German,” Fox told Wilhelm. “Where did you learn it?”
“Ah, I had an aunt who came from Germany,” Wilhelm said. “And I took it in college.”
Very good, Karl thought. A prepared answer.
Fox turned to Pell. “You never mentioned a navigator who spoke German.”
Pell shrugged. “I didn’t know.”
“I speak German, too,” Karl said. “My family spoke it at home. But we didn’t have much use for it in the B-17.”
“But Pell at least told us about you,” Fox said. “Soon as he got here, he started asking if you were here. He mentioned a Hagan and a copilot named Adrian Baum. Thought maybe I’d know Baum, since I’m Jewish, too.” Fox rolled his eyes. “But Pell never asked once about a navigator.”
He never asked, Karl thought, because he knew our navigator was dead.
“I didn’t think he got out,” Pell said. “I’m damned glad to see he did.”
“Hmm,” Fox said. He hooked his thumbs into his pockets. Regarded Wilhelm wordlessly, and for long enough to move from awkwardness to open rudeness. Walked away in a manner that put Karl in mind of a crime film detective who’d just found a clue. A few of the other kriegies trailed behind him.
Some sort of little clique, Karl supposed. Bastards.
Karl fumed as he and Wilhelm left Pell’s hut. The whole thing would have gone down smoothly if Fox hadn’t nosed in. But they couldn’t do anything about it now—except stay off the radar until one army or another plowed through the front gates.
* * *
After the p.m. roll call, however, Karl realized staying off the radar was damned near impossible. As the kriegies filtered back to their huts, Karl noticed three of them standing in a knot around Wilhelm. In the dusk, with light from a lamppost washing over them, they looked like gangland loan sharks cornering a debtor. And one of them was Fox.
Not good.
Karl lingered in a pool of darkness at the end of Hut 7C. His hiding place put him within earshot of Wilhelm and his new acquaintances.
“So, Meade,” Fox said, “where did you go to nav school?”
Karl’s diaphragm tensed. Would Wilhelm remember the things he’d taught him?
“Mather Field in California,” Wilhelm said.
Karl let out a sigh of relief, but Fox continued with the third degree.
“Uh-huh,” Fox said. “You and your buds do a lot of partying in L.A.? Look for some starlets in Hollywood?”
“Nope. Mather’s close to Sacramento. Never got as far south as Los Angeles.”
Another of Wilhelm’s three interrogators spoke up: a short guy in a black watch cap, with a neatly trimmed moustache. Karl could barely understand his Scottish brogue.
“I’m still not buying your story, mate. If we find out you’re not who you say you are, you just might have a little accident. Aye, ye’d never goose-step again.”
Wilhelm glared at the Scot. “Are you calling me some kind of Nazi?” he asked. He must have been angry because he dropped the American accent; the question sounded more like the British English he’d learned in school.
“We don’t know what you are, bub,” the third man drawled. Karl had met him, too. A pilot from Oklahoma, though the kriegies called him “Tex” because of his accent.
In character again, Wilhelm muttered, “I don’t have to listen to this.” Turned to leave.
“Don’t you turn your back on us,” Fox said. Grabbed Wilhelm by the elbow.
Bad move.
Wilhelm reacted like the boxer he was: with a right cross. The blow landed on Fox’s jaw. The Brooklyn man crumpled. He would have fallen if Tex hadn’t caught him. The Scotsman lunged at Wilhelm, caught him around the waist. The two men fell to the ground and began kicking and punching in the dust and gravel.
“Hey!” Karl shouted. He ran toward the fight. Figured to break it up, make a big scene of coming to the rescue of a crewmate.
But someone else got there first.
Group Captain Timmersby, the senior-ranking POW, strode into the lamppost’s glow. “Stop this rubbish,” he ordered. “MacDougal! Stop it now!”
The Scot stopped struggling with Wilhelm—which was probably lucky for him. Wilhelm had freed his right arm and was ready with one of those powerful punches; Karl knew firsthand how much they stung. The Scot stood up, brushed himself off. Timmersby offered a hand to help Wilhelm up, but Wilhelm rose without assistance.
“MacDougal, you should be ashamed of yourself,” Timmersby said in the clipped tones of a highly educated Brit. “Getting into a street fight like a common ruffian. You’re a British officer.”
“Yes, sir,” MacDougal said, eyes downcast.
By now, Fox had recovered from Wilhelm’s blow. He stood on his own, wiped blood from his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Just trying to establish some bona fides, sir,” Fox said.
Karl turned toward Fox. “You leave my navigator the hell alone,” Karl said. “Let’s hope he knocked some sense into you. A man can’t get much more bona fide than getting a B-17 blown out from under him. Ain’t that right, Tommy?”
“Yep,” Wilhelm said. Cut his eyes at Fox, who stared back as if saying: This isn’t over.
“Now listen,” Timmersby said. “We all know the war’s going rather badly for the Jerries. They’ve got their knickers in a twist, and there’s no telling what’s in store for us. We’ve got plenty to worry about without fighting amongst ourselves.”
Karl took a close look at the senior kriegie. Timmersby’s flight suit bore the embroidered wings of a British pilot, with a crown in the center and a wreath around the letters RAF. Some sort of scar on his left thumb—probably a burn. Crow’s-feet around his eyes. Given his rank, he was probably in his thirties, but he looked a decade older.
“We’re just trying to figure out who we can trust,” Tex said.
“Let me worry about that,” Timmersby said. “If I see another fight like this, I’ll put the lot of you on permanent laundry duty.”
Just put them on laundry duty now, Karl thought. Why let them off so easy?
“Sorry, sir,” MacDougal said.
Tex and Fox said nothing. They exchanged a glance, and Karl couldn’t quite read whatever alliance ran between them. But Fox’s contempt for Wilhelm and Karl was unmistakable; his smirk made that plain enough.
“We’ll talk more about this tomorrow,” Timmersby said. “Come see me in my office in the morning.”
MacDougal and Tex at least had the decency to say “yes, sir” before they departed. Fox stalked off without a word. That left Karl and Wilhelm alone with the senior kriegie. Timmersby frowned like a
man facing a new problem he didn’t understand. Folded his arms as he looked at Karl and Wilhelm.
“McLendon told me about you two,” Timmersby said. “You are a complication we didn’t need.”
“I realize that, sir,” Karl said. “But I—”
“I’m not finished,” Timmersby said, spoken in a command voice much colder than the one he’d used on Fox and Tex. “McLendon believes you, but I’m not sure I do. It really doesn’t matter, though.” He turned to Wilhelm. “There are men here who would kill you for being a spy, as you’ve probably gathered. If you really are a German naval officer, there are men here who would kill you for that, too. They wouldn’t care if you deserted or not. And there are Jewish fellows here who worry about the SS coming round to take them to a place worse than the Russian side.”
Fox among them. Maybe that explained his attitude.
“I understand,” Wilhelm said.
“No, I don’t think you do,” Timmersby snapped. “After the escape attempt—I suppose you know about that—the stalags have become powder kegs. And you two amount to a pair of lit matches.”
“Yes, sir,” Karl said. “But with all due respect, if you just could get your boys to leave us alone …” Karl gestured in the direction where Fox, Tex, and MacDougal had walked off.
“They were doing their job,” Timmersby said.
“Beg your pardon, sir?” Karl said.
“Their job,” Timmersby said. “Security.”
Karl remembered Pell’s warning, and then he understood. Wilhelm had just received a visit from the X Committee.
39
The Biscay Cross
Weeks passed and winter hardened. Mud in the Center Compound froze into concrete. Snow dusted the pines, piled onto window ledges, and drifted against outside walls. Wilhelm settled into camp life as best he could, but Karl and Pell remained his only real friends. The X Committee didn’t trust him, and they’d put out word that no one else should, either.
Forlorn Christmas decorations began to appear around the prison camp. Someone placed a pine seedling in a corner of Hut 4B. Makeshift ornaments adorned its branches: foil from a cigarette pack, a label from a tin of English biscuits, an Eighth Air Force patch ripped from a uniform, a star carved from a block of wood.
One crackling cold evening, the kriegies’ chaplain gathered the men for Christmas caroling around a barrel of burning trash. He wasn’t a real chaplain; he was a bomber pilot. But before the war, he’d been a divinity student at an American school Wilhelm had never heard of: Wake Forest College. That was enough for the men to call him “Padre.” He spoke in a United States Southern dialect Wilhelm could barely understand.
“Y’all know the Bible tells us the Israelites waited a long time for their deliverance,” Padre said. “And many of us have waited a long time, too. We don’t know the hour of our deliverance, but tonight we praise the Good Lord that it does seem near.”
Padre then led the men in singing “Silent Night.” Wilhelm listened, noting multiple layers of irony: Allied POWs, some of them Jewish, singing a Christian hymn originally written in German. Men in guard towers above them wielded loaded Mausers, and Wilhelm thought he heard one guard giving voice to the carol’s original words: “Stille Nacht.” Low clouds hid the moon and darkened the night, save for a single fissure that revealed a glimpse of ice crystal stars. Cinders from the barrel fire rose to meet them.
Distant thunder rumbled as the last notes faded. Or Wilhelm let his wandering mind pretend it was thunder, if only to stretch out this little moment of peace.
This, of course, wasn’t thunder. It was Allied ordnance. Wilhelm didn’t know if it was British bombers or Soviet artillery, but it didn’t matter. The war was drawing closer.
Some of the men exchanged glances and smiled. From the darkness across the razor wire on the Russian side, cheers erupted.
“Sounds like we got some bass accompaniment,” Padre said. The men laughed. “Let’s close with ‘It Came Upon the Midnight Clear.’ ”
Wilhelm had never heard this carol’s lyrics. One verse was unfamiliar even to many of the Americans. Their voices died away, leaving only Padre and three or four others carrying the music. Those few voices sang loud and clear, and the words brought tears to Wilhelm’s eyes:
“And man, at war with man, hears not
The love-song, which they bring;
O hush the noise, ye men of strife,
And hear the angels sing.”
Detonations punctuated the final verse. The kriegies retired to their bunks, speaking in excited tones about release within days.
The next evening, they gathered for another hour of clandestine radio listening. Wilhelm hoped news might take his mind off his hunger. Supper for the POWs had consisted of nothing but stale bread and boiled potatoes—many of them starting to rot. He let himself imagine reports of a quick end to the war. Perhaps a coup had toppled Hitler. Perhaps fuel-starved German mechanized units had groaned to a halt. Perhaps the Allies had launched another invasion front from the Baltic.
Sparks began tuning his contraption, which gave off a warm hum. The tuning coil blipped and popped with snatches of voices in the ether, each word interrupted by crackle. For a while, no clear signal emerged, not even from the BBC. But those brief tatters of human voices from over the horizon gave Wilhelm hope in a world beyond his present darkness.
Sparks finally pulled down from the night a complete sentence, followed by more. An American newsman by the name of Richard C. Hottelet spoke of an unexpected development, but not the kind Wilhelm had envisioned.
A German offensive in the Ardennes Forest threatened to split the front. Already the map of Allied lines showed a bulge in the wrong direction, Hottelet reported, and overcast skies prevented air support. American forces seemed taken by surprise.
Maybe Wilhelm imagined it, but he thought some of the POWs glared at him as if he’d engineered the whole thing from the barracks of Stalag Luft XIV. If they looked for any hint of jubilation on Wilhelm’s face, however, they did not find it. His spirits sank as if lashed to an anchor. He wished he could, like old Captain Slocum, simply sail away and disappear from the world altogether. Now it appeared the war might bleed on until the 1950s. Perhaps longer. Had not the kingdoms of England and France fought a Hundred Years’ War?
* * *
Days passed and the cold bit harder. Frost crept across the inside walls of Hut 4B. Some men’s fingertips turned glassy with the onset of frostbite, then darkened to purple when warmed again. Christmas came and went with little joy. Nights dragged and tempers flared. Unending hunger shortened everyone’s fuse. The kriegies weren’t quite starving, but they never ate their fill; rancid potatoes and kohlrabi satisfied no one.
Wilhelm had experienced hunger pangs before: During his U-boat days, the crew had occasionally lived on short rations to extend a patrol. But it was hard on these flyboys. Karl looked like he’d lost twenty pounds.
During the secret radio sessions, Wilhelm learned that an armored division led by General George Patton had relieved Americans at Bastogne, ending what the Yanks called the Battle of the Bulge. The kriegies were too cold and discouraged to celebrate.
The ferrets never came for Sparks’s radio, but that fact did not seem to exonerate Wilhelm in the eyes of the X Committee. One afternoon in the washhouse, Fox and Tex taunted him with questions he could not answer: If he was from New York, how many boroughs did it have? Who pitched for the Dodgers? Did a Buick Roadmaster have four doors or two?
With each question, Fox moved closer to Wilhelm. By the time he asked about the car, his nose nearly touched Wilhelm’s.
Fox seemed to want a fight, and Wilhelm decided to give it to him. Wilhelm grabbed him by the lapels, shoved him against a drying rack, and used another new expression: “I don’t have to take any guff from you, pal.”
A vein bulged in Fox’s temple. He hawked up phlegm as if to spit in Wilhelm’s face. But he never got the chance.
Wilhelm threw his upp
ercut—the one his opponents never saw coming. The blow came with a satisfying crack, and it knocked the USAAF cap from Fox’s head. Tex grabbed Wilhelm from behind. For his trouble, Tex caught an elbow in the nose. Blood streamed from both nostrils.
Men outside must have heard the commotion; Karl and McLendon burst into the washhouse. The two grabbed Fox and Tex by their shirt collars and broke up the fight.
“I’m gonna make you boys stay after school if you keep this up,” McLendon said.
“I’m telling you, sir,” Fox said as he rubbed his chin, “there’s something not right about this guy. I’m just trying to do my job, here.”
“You’re a hardheaded son of a bitch, aren’t you?” Karl said. “I told you, he’s my navigator. I’ve known him for almost two years.”
“If he’s a navigator,” Fox said, “I’m Joe DiMaggio.”
“Shut up, all of you,” McLendon shouted. “You stop this crap now. We got enough problems as it is. One of the guards let it slip, we’re getting another inspection tomorrow. I got a feeling things are gonna get worse before they get better.” McLendon shook his finger in Fox’s face. “And I don’t need any more barroom brawls.”
“Sir,” Fox said, “if the SS starts pulling some of us out of roll call tomorrow, we’ll know where they got their information.”
“You go to hell,” Karl said.
“Enough,” McLendon said. “Meade and Hagan, out of here. Fox and Tex, finish the wash and get back to your barracks.”
“Yes, sir,” Tex said.
“Yes, sir,” Fox said. But he wasn’t looking at McLendon. He stared at Wilhelm until Wilhelm turned to leave.
* * *
At the next morning roll call, Wilhelm stood in formation and tried to stop his teeth from chattering. Dirty, packed snow crunched under his boots. Men coughed and wheezed. Life in U-boats could be miserable, but at least the damned things got warm when the hatches were closed.
At the front of the formation, two strangers appeared with Kommandant Becker. One was an SS standartenführer. The other was a Luftwaffe major. Wilhelm craned his neck for a better look. When the major came into clear view, Wilhelm realized the major was no stranger. Mein Gott! It was Treider, who had interrogated him at the dulag luft. Yes, the flightless bird. The Luftwaffe man with the temperament of a Gestapo commander. Treider remained within two paces of the standartenführer. Perhaps he wanted to be SS. As these Americans would say, a man who missed his calling.
