by Giles Milton
It quickly became apparent that the end of the war was not going to bring about his early release. The French intended to use their German prisoners to help rebuild the country that they had done so much to destroy.
Peter worked on farms for many months before he and his fellow prisoners were moved to Camp 142 near Bourgen-Bresse. Life there was not a pleasant experience. There was never enough food for everyone and the prisoners were constantly hungry. The hunger and their aching, empty bellies drove them to distraction. On several occasions, Peter woke up at night and bit into his finger, thinking it was a piece of bread.
The debilitating hunger provoked black humour. The prisoners used to joke that if anyone found any fibres of meat in the watery soup, they had to be gathered up and returned to the kitchen to be reused.
The only good news in these grim times was the announcement that prisoners would henceforth be allowed to write letters to loved ones – some of whom had no idea that their husbands and sons were still alive. The prisoners were also told that they would be allowed to receive parcels.
Peter knew that his parents in bombed-out Pforzheim would not be in a position to send him sorely needed items. He wrote instead to his uncles in America, asking them for help.
‘My dear ones, I have been a prisoner since November 1944…Pforzheim is destroyed. Our home is still standing…if you would like to send me something, please send underwear, sewing kit and cigarettes. I hope you are well and I’m very grateful that the family has survived the war.’
Peter’s uncles responded generously to his request: their first parcel arrived in January 1946 with tinned food, shirts and underwear, as well as ten packets of Chesterfields.
Overnight, Peter’s life was transformed. Suddenly he found himself king of the camp. He gave a whole packet of cigarettes to the camp commander, and another to his deputy and an orderly. His generosity was much appreciated – it was very rare for anyone to be given a whole packet.
As parcel followed parcel, Peter realised that the cigarettes and food could be put to good use. Hitherto, he had never seriously considered trying to escape from the camp. Now, however, he had the means and the potential resources to consider making a break for freedom.
He knew that any attempt would carry great risks. Escaping prisoners who were caught were thrashed by three or four of the most brutal guards, followed by thirty days’ confinement with half-rations and constant punishment exercises.
Peter was himself witness to one of these beatings because it was carried out in the camp supply depot where he was working at the time. Four guards set on the recaptured prisoner and kicked him to within an inch of his life.
The punishment ought to have deterred Peter, but he was sick of being a prisoner and the idea of escaping brought a renewed sense of purpose to his life.
He made a list of the five requirements that needed to be met if he was to have any hope of successfully reaching Germany: civilian clothes, identity papers, money, food to last for several days and good enough French to pass himself off as an Alsatian. He also needed to obtain an official paper-of-discharge that authorised his release from the camp. Without this, he risked being handed over to the Allied authorities if and when he reached Pforzheim.
Language was the easiest hurdle to overcome. He already spoke good French and felt sure he could convince people that he was from Alsace, thereby explaining his German accent.
The four other requirements for his escape were more difficult to arrange. Civilian clothes, shoes and official papers had to be laboriously made – and to a high standard – if Peter was to avoid being rumbled.
He had at least half a dozen people working in secret on his behalf. A former tailor in the camp made him a convincing overcoat from a waterproof French cape. Another prisoner, a cobbler by trade, repaired a pair of leather shoes. The same man also crafted him a holdall out of pigskin so as to make his civilian disguise more convincing. A third prisoner, a smithy, made a suitcase out of an old box that had previously contained hand grenades.
Peter’s greatest challenge was to lay his hands on convincing identity papers. He knew that these would be inspected four or five times on his journey home and would be subjected to particular scrutiny as he attempted to cross into the American-occupied zone of Germany.
He managed to acquire a blank identity card – a stroke of good fortune. He then asked a fellow prisoner, a graphic designer named Göppert, to produce the necessary official-looking stamp. Göppert revelled in the challenge, carving it from the cork lid of an ink bottle. It was done with such skill that the resulting stamp was indistinguishable from the real thing.
Only the identity photograph was now missing. This was to prove the biggest hurdle, for none of the prisoners possessed a camera. One day, Peter was told that the camp’s Moroccan cook had an old box camera. The cook agreed to help, in return for cigarettes, smuggling his camera into the camp and taking a picture of Peter in broad daylight. A few days later, the developed photo was safely delivered and inserted on the fake identity paper.
Peter now had his principal requirements in place. Then, unexpectedly, he got a bonus. He managed to get hold of a blank dismissal form that authorised permission for a prisoner to leave camp.
There remained one major obstacle to overcome: how to get himself and his new belongings out of the camp. The solution, settled upon by Peter and the camp leader (a fellow prisoner), was for him to enrol on an external work mission. This would take him to a farm in the nearby countryside. Once he was there, the camp leader would contrive to have one of his parcels from America forwarded to him – but, in reality, the parcel would contain everything he needed for his escape.
The plan worked perfectly. Peter was sent to work on a farm as an interpreter. It turned out to be the perfect location for launching his bid for freedom, being far enough from the camp to require him to sleep there at night. The farmer, a sullen individual, did not want a German prisoner inside his house, telling Peter to bed down in an outhouse that lay at some distance from the main building.
By 16 June 1946, Peter had successfully received his parcel and decided that the time had come to make his break. It was a Sunday. He heard the clock tower of the nearby village strike ten o’clock and felt it was now or never.
He changed out of his prisoner-of-war uniform, put on his newly made civilian clothes and gathered together his belongings. A few minutes later, he set out on the road to what he hoped would be his freedom.
While Peter was hatching his plans, Wolfram had received news that he and his comrades would soon be on the move. At the beginning of June 1946, after twenty-one months in captivity, all the prisoners at Camp Gruber were to be transported back to Europe.
The men packed their few possessions and were put on a train to New York. It was a painfully slow journey, taking an extremely circuitous route, looping north into Canada before heading back towards New York. When they finally arrived, they were transferred on to a ship that was awaiting them in the harbour.
The return voyage across the Atlantic was to prove a storm-tossed ordeal for Wolfram and his comrades. The skies darkened as they left behind the Manhattan skyscrapers and the wind began to whip up a gale. Within hours, mountainous waves were pitching the prisoners from their bunks and hurtling them to the floor, leaving them bruised as well as feeling dizzy and queasy.
Wolfram had never had good sea legs. Now, after a head-spinning night of constant motion, he developed serious seasickness. For the next five days he was violently ill and desperate to set foot on dry land.
He was delighted when one of his friends reported that the ship was nearing the French coastline and that the roofs of Le Havre could already be seen through the spray. However, the good news was tempered by bad: the men, it was rumoured, were not going to be allowed home to Germany. Instead, they were to be imprisoned once again when they landed in France.
After the ship docked in Le Havre, the men were lined up in front of a doctor and given a quick medi
cal. Wolfram looked dreadful; he had been constantly sick for the duration of the voyage and had not slept for almost a week. When the doctor saw his pale face and learned that he had suffered from serious diphtheria in Russia, he immediately declared him unfit for work. Wolfram was free to return home to Germany.
He was one of the fortunate ones. Most of his fellow comrades were declared to be in robust health and were told, to their abject dismay, that they were to remain prisoners of war. The French were in desperate need of manpower to clear minefields and bombsites. The easiest source of labour was the tens of thousands of German prisoners still on French soil. Many of these men would continue to be kept in prison camps for a further two years.
The small group of men who had been set free were told to make their way to a nearby station where there would be a train waiting for them. Wolfram clambered aboard in great excitement. There were no guards – that was the first thing that struck him. The men had not travelled on their own for more than two years. There had always been someone watching their every movement.
Although they were not given any food for the journey, most of them still had the tins of peanut butter that had been supplied to them on leaving America. For once, the lack of food did not bother them. There was just a wonderful, exhilarating feeling that they were finally on their way home.
Wolfram’s mother had seen little of Martha Luise Rodi during the long captivities of their two sons. Both women were kept extremely busy in the aftermath of the Pforzheim bombing. Catering for their homeless house guests, along with the endless search for food and fuel, took up the greater part of each day.
The two mothers met occasionally at church services and impromptu coffee parties. On one occasion, Martha Luise attended a house concert given by local musicians at the Aïchele villa in Eutingen.
Her spirits had been raised by the unexpected return of her husband, Max, who had abandoned his post in Stuttgart in disgust at the Nero Decree. He had made his way back to Pforzheim and a reunion with his wife and family, but his return to civilian life was to prove short-lived. The newly arrived French army announced that any family found hiding German soldiers would be severely punished. Max, who had no official papers of discharge, reported himself to one of the commanders of the occupying forces, along with a fellow officer who had also fled his post.
The Frenchman to whom they addressed themselves took one look at the shiny boots worn by Max’s comrade and ordered him to hand them over. The German officer protested and was subsequently beaten black and blue. What particularly appalled both him and Max, apart from the savagery of the beating, was the fact that a French officer could thus treat a German soldier of equal rank, in complete disregard of the conventions of military etiquette. Only later, when the two men learned of the atrocities committed by the German army, would they realise that their outrage had been somewhat misplaced.
Max would live to regret his decision to surrender himself to the French. He was immediately taken prisoner and transported to France. For the next twelve months, his wife and family received almost no information as to his whereabouts.
In the dying days of the war, Marie Charlotte had learned that her eldest son, Reiner, had been captured and briefly held prisoner by the Soviet army. As the Russian colonel in charge had found himself unable to feed so many prisoners, he announced one day that they were all free to go. He even stamped their papers, officially releasing them back into civilian life. Reiner made his way back to Pforzheim for a euphoric reunion with his parents and younger sister.
Whilst his return was a source of great joy to Marie Charlotte, there was on the other hand a complete silence about Wolfram. The family had heard nothing from him for many months and were growing increasingly concerned for his safety.
Martha Luise was relieved to have had contact with her eldest son, Peter, who had managed to write her a number of letters but without revealing his attempted break for freedom. His mother’s ignorance was, as he knew, a blessing in disguise. She would have been worried sick if she had known.
It was a lovely moonlit night as Peter set out along the country lane that led away from the French farmhouse. The nearby villages were completely silent and not a single light could be seen. Everyone was already in bed.
Peter’s first destination was the railway station at Bourgen-Bresse, which lay some eighteen miles to the north-west of the farm. He had decided to stay on the roads, rather than cross the fields, reasoning that there was little danger of being seen. Only a couple of cars passed him during the night and he was able to hide himself in a roadside ditch long before the drivers spotted him.
Adrenalin and fear enabled him to cover the long trek to Bourg-en-Bresse in just three hours and forty minutes. He glimpsed the station clock in the distance: it was exactly one-forty in the morning. He was now about to face his first serious hurdle: to buy a ticket and board a train, any train, heading east.
There was a nervous moment when he approached the ticket office. ‘Le prochain train pour Dijon,’ he said, ‘quand est-ce-qu’il part?’ The guard passed no comment about his German accent, saying only that the next train would not leave until the morning. Peter bought a ticket and snatched a little sleep on one of the station benches. His one consolation was the fact that he had not aroused any suspicions.
The Dijon train drew into the station long before its scheduled departure and Peter clambered aboard immediately. He knew that he would be reported missing within a few hours and that the hunt would be on to recapture him. It was with great relief, therefore, that he heard the welcome rumble of the engines starting up. Soon after, the train set off.
He experienced his first attack of nerves on arriving in the city. News of his escape would by now have reached the camp authorities and search parties would have been sent to track him down. His nervousness increased still further at the sight of two policemen observing passengers arriving at the station. Having some money, he planned to lie low in a hotel for a few hours, but the place was so disgusting and the mattress smelled so bad that he decided to visit the town instead. It was not until later that evening that he went back to the station and boarded the train to Metz.
This leg of the journey posed a particular challenge. Peter found himself sharing his compartment with a French army officer who was returning home to his family. Keen for company, he engaged Peter in conversation, asking him where he had been and where he was heading. The two talked for a while until eventually the heat of the compartment sent both of them to asleep.
At some point, the compartment’s fold-away table fell down and woke them. For months Peter had prepared for just such an eventuality, training himself to say, ‘Nom de Dieu’ if woken in a start. It was all in vain. Startled, and not thinking straight, he mumbled an apology in German.
The officer must surely have been surprised – suspicious, even – but he passed no comment, inviting Peter to join him in a glass of beer at the station bar once they had pulled into Metz at around midnight.
It was while they were drinking it that the military police asked to see their papers. This was the first time that Peter had had to show his identity card and he did so with trepidation, pulling it out of his pigskin pouch and handing it over. The policemen gave only a cursory glance at the paper and then handed it back. The fake ID had passed its first test.
It was while Peter was chatting to the Frenchman that he picked up important information: the Americans had built a temporary bridge over the Rhine close to the town of Boppard. As this was in the French zone of occupation, there were fewer controls than in other places. When he heard this, he decided that that was where he would cross the Rhine.
The two of them eventually finished their beers and settled the bill. Peter bade farewell to the French officer and joined up with a group of people looking for hotel rooms for the night.
Peter had been a free man for twenty-seven hours and almost 200 miles now separated him from the prison camp. He was tantalisingly close to home: Pforzheim lay
just eighty miles to the east of Metz. Yet a world of difficulties stretched between these two places. He still had to cross the frontier into Germany, as well as the Rhine, and then get himself into the American-occupied zone.
All the hotels in Metz were full but he bribed the receptionist in the Hôtel Bon Pasteur, who allowed Peter to sleep in a bathroom at the top of the building. Then, after a good night’s rest, he boarded a train to St Avold, just six miles from the German border, before continuing on foot to Freyming-Merlebach, a little market town right on the frontier. He had been given the address of an Italian who had previously been held in the same prisoner-of-war camp and who he hoped would help him to cross the border.
The Italian was not at home when he rang the bell, but his mother invited Peter in and, without asking any awkward questions, offered him food and a bed. He felt able to relax until the evening, when the woman’s two sons returned from work.
Peter was now about to have a further stroke of good fortune. The family’s youngest son was engaged to a girl who lived just across the border in Germany. She was due to visit the family that very night, using a path that was unknown to the authorities. It was decided that she would guide Peter back across the border when she returned home. He would still have to cross the Rhine (for the girl lived in the German Palatinate, on the river’s western shore) but he would at least be inside Germany for the first time in almost two years.
They crossed the frontier in darkness and it was late by the time they arrived at the girl’s parents’ house. Peter was once again given a bed for the night and on the following morning the family changed his remaining francs into Reichsmarks. They then took him to the station and put him on a train to Saarbrucken, some fifteen miles to the north-east.
