The Things Our Fathers Saw—The Untold Stories of the World War II Generation-Volume III: War in the Air—Combat, Captivity, and Reunion

by Matthew Rozell

  I can tell you another story about a PoW in our chapter who could speak seven languages. He was in our camp. He told me his name was Alex M.—about a year or two ago the Russian Ambassador gave him a medal down in Washington; it was in the papers. Now this guy was a prisoner in the camp that communicated with London. London dropped tons of cigarettes, which we used for currency. The Germans got a lot, but we got a lot in the camp. Alex got all of them; he had an apartment in Munich in which he was hiding because he could speak the language; how the hell he got in and out of the camps, I have no idea. And he has Russians in this apartment, a whole story on its own, fantastic thing. [This is one of the ways] we got radio parts—cigarette companies sent tons and tons of cigarettes over—for every 5th or every 10th or every 100th carton or shipment, there was one pack or in one cigarette, it had a part for a radio, and when it came we gave it to whomever we were supposed to give it to. Given enough of those, we’d get radios. We’d get cameras and we’d get parts and we’d sneak things in. So it was a very, very, complicated thing.

  Interviewer: Speaking of colonels, didn’t you tell me that one time they dropped an officer, maybe a colonel, into your camp?

  Earl, pilot: Yes, in our camp the colonel was running the camp, what was his name, the old fellow?

  Sam, bombardier: He was a colonel in the B-24 group.

  Earl, pilot: Yes.

  Jerry, navigator: Once you were behind the barbed wire, the Germans said you were in the military organization and the officers would run things, so that they don’t have to. We have to tell our officers what we wanted. We had rules, very strict rules. You couldn’t escape if you felt like it. You had to go to the escape committee, because you might do something to screw up somebody else’s [escape plan], but anyways, let’s not get into that yet.

  In our compound, the west compound, there was a colonel. A fighter pilot, Jack Jenkins was his name, a Texan. He was the officer in charge. A story I knew about him is that he was standing outside when they have a roll call; they call it once at morning and once at night. They lined everybody up with space and then two Germans go down and they count. They see that each line is complete and then they count up the lines [counts in German]. Then they count up this one and write it down, and add that one to make sure everybody is there. Well that opens up a whole bunch of stories. However this one particular day we stand there, the counters are right, were we just standing there two hours, we were standing there. Something was said and the colonel and the counting man came together, you know and the next thing we know, they’re standing there and there is a big argument. And the story as I got it was this—they said they wanted a list of all of the Jewish PoWs.[46] So the next day, we came out there and there’s this big argument, there was raving and ranting. Jenkins says ‘That’s it!’ After all this standing around, we said, ‘Well, what happened?’ and the story filtered back. The German says ‘Give me a list of the names of the Jews!’ Well, they all took the pledge that night, like they all had converted, like everybody was converted to Judaism. They would not give him the list of Jews! There was a ‘hoo-ha’ about it. The rumor was they wanted to take the Jews and hold them hostage up in the Alps. The next rumor that went around, I guess, maybe a month later, when they started to march when a whole pack of us out. The story was they were going to take us as hostages to the Alps and use us as bargaining chips. Another story, which I’ve seen in print, one German general after the war said that Hitler had said he wanted all of the Allied airmen shot, because they were being coddled by Goering. We weren’t, if you want to put this into perspective. Hitler said he wanted all the airmen shot [pounds table with his fist for emphasis] and they did not follow his orders. You know, we came this close [gestures with his thumb and index fingers very close together], God-knows how many times. But that was one of the stories about Jack Jenkins, the fighter pilot from Texas. What made me cry was this is a guy from Texas, and even if he didn’t like blacks, or he didn’t like Jews, or Catholics, or whoever, no German was going to tell him what to do—no general was pushing him around! He says ‘We are Americans in this camp, and we are all the same.’ There was another PoW camp for allied officers in the North Sea, and a colonel was the head of a fighter group. The same thing happened up there. They asked him for a list of all Jews and he said, ‘You’re not going to get it—if you’re going to shoot them, you’re going to shoot us all, because we are not going to tell you which ones to pick out.’ So these are the things that make me feel damn proud to be an American.

  Earl, pilot: I saw this colonel stand up to a German general. Prisoners were tearing the boards off the building down there in Nuremberg. A general came in there and says ‘The man who tears the next board off, we are just going to shoot him’. And the colonel just stuck his chest out ‘Anytime you want to start, start with me!’ He had been on the march with us, but they had him in a wagon because he couldn’t walk. And he was screaming at them back there because the Germans wouldn’t get him up front with his troops. He was the same one that was at Sagan.

  Jerry, navigator, to interviewer: ‘Sagan’ is Stalag Luft III—‘Stalag’ is ‘Prison camp’, ‘Luft’ is ‘Air’, ‘Three’, it was third one, and Sagan was a village nearly. [To Earl] Was he the fellow that wrote a letter about the bad conditions in the camp?

  Sam, bombardier: Colonel Davenport?

  Earl, pilot: Yes.

  Sam, bombardier: I have it home at home; it’s twelve pages.

  Earl, pilot: He wrote a letter on the conditions and slipped it to the Red Cross. And it went through.

  Interviewer: Why were you tearing boards off the buildings?

  Sam, bombardier: Heat. That was our heat.

  Earl, pilot: Yes, we didn’t have any other.

  Sam, bombardier: Burned anything that would burn, we were freezing.

  Earl, pilot: Yes, that same night, you could hear the boards being torn off.

  Jerry, navigator: This was in Nuremberg.

  Earl, pilot: Yes.

  Earl, pilot: In Sagan we were using boards to make the tunnels.

  Sam, bombardier: We were taking the boards off to make tunnels.

  Earl, pilot: We were taking the bed stakes out of the beds.

  Jerry, navigator: Next thing you know you were sleeping on three boards.

  Interviewer: For escape?

  Earl, pilot: Yes.

  Sam, bombardier: That is when they were digging the tunnels.

  Earl, pilot: So I was saying, you see you had to shore up for every inch you made.

  Sam, bombardier: And when the guys touched down straight so many feet they had to shore it up with the wood. Then they’d start this way [motions with hands] and every time they’d move they’d have to shore it up. They made a gadget that they had to carry the dirt. They made a rope that they put wheels on it. The guy had only room to go through. He could not turn around, you see. When he came out, he had to come out backwards.

  Earl, pilot: At first they had to bring the dirt out in stockings, but they had gardens, see. They’d mix the dirt in with that [out in the garden]. Well, then the Germans stopped the gardening business. So then they figured it out and we had a whole bunch of people go out in the field and drop the dirt.

  Jerry, navigator [stands up pointing just below the knee, walks around, demonstrating]: The stocking is right on his leg, tied with a string, and you walked out and pull the string. But the dirt is going to look different: so they put a little out, then they walk, and mix a little up… They claim that the field there was raised six inches! The Germans drove a tank and a little would collapse and we would have to dig deeper.

  Earl, pilot: That happened when they brought a load of potatoes in Sagan and about three days later before they came and checked it. In the first camp that we were in was north of Berlin.

  The Germans soldiers were not supposed to think for themselves, and they drove across this tunnel, it caved in, so they got another wagon and unloaded that one and move it on out. Then the officers came
and spotted it, and of course I heard this story from other guys in there, because I’m not privileged to everything, but by then our tracks were all covered up and they didn’t know anything about tunnels.

  Jerry, navigator: Let me tell you about the escape committee. Every prisoner of war was expected to escape at all times—the reason being you tie up more Germans troops guarding you, it keeps them away from the lines—but if everyone tried to escape at once up, it would mess up the other guy. So if you wanted to get out, they would help you, but you needed a plan to get over the fence. Once you got over the fence, they would get you clothes, timetables for trains, tickets, you know, maps, the whole bit. They could get you this stuff, but you had to go to the escape committee.

  Let’s say [a guy] wants to escape and has a plan. The committee would review it, and say, ‘Ok, go, we will try it such and such night’ then they will try to find the weather report, for good cover. Two or three days before his plan of escape, somebody goes out of the barracks at night, and they clip some wires and make some tracks, and return. The Germans get up in the morning and they see this, they count, you know, and [they think] one guy is missing! But he’s not missing;—I’m up in the attic somewhere [point to the ceiling]! So then they line everybody up and you go through, past the desk, and they check your number and your picture and identify you and say ‘Silverman is missing’, that’s the guy were looking for, but I’m up in the attic. Three days later, one of the guys planning to escape goes out in the honey wagon[47] or potato wagon or to the hospital and he gets out. Now I come down from the ladder, or the attic and I’m standing where I’m supposed to stand, it doesn’t make any difference—they don’t know he’s gone, you see? They’re still looking for me! So until he goofs and gets caught on the outside he is still free, this why they had an escape committee. You know, just example of how they did things.

  Interviewer: You had to organize it.

  Earl, pilot: And you did not try to escape on your own. It had to be approved by the committee.

  Interviewer: Now how many men were on the committee? Were there officers?

  Jerry, navigator: One guy was called ‘Big X’, I don’t know who he was; he was number one. His assistant was called ‘Little X’ and I think you can find that in the movie ‘The Great Escape’, what went on in that camp, it was only across the wire from where we were in the next camp. We had towers there, they were the guards: all Germans were called ‘goons’—so they called them ‘goon boxes’. And there were little wires about this high [motions about six inches with his hands] called a ‘warning wire’ and if you stepped over it, you were shot. If you were playing ball and the ball goes over, you wave to the guard and point. You’d hop and if you pick up the ball and went back, it was ok, but if you go the other way, they’d start shooting. Then there was a barbed wire fence, it was a big fence and then there was another fence. Between these two fences there were German Shepherds running around, you know, walking back and forth in case anybody went through. Also between the fences there were goon boxes up there. They had German guards we called ‘ferrets’.[48]The barracks were put on the blocks, so that they could see through, go underneath, so you couldn’t dig a tunnel, theoretically. There were always people standing around, saying ‘Goon up!’ you know, that meant if you’re doing anything, put it away, there’s a German in the area: they might walk through the place, they might go under, they might hang around, they might listen, so consequently, with the American sense of humor, funny incidents would take place. I didn’t see this, but I heard about it. Every [barracks] had twelve guys with pails, each guy had a pail of water. One day one of these ferrets would go underneath [the barracks crawlspace] and start snooping around, and they’d say, ‘Okay fellas, let’s do it today!’ They’d go down with scrubbing brushes—‘Scrub your floors, men!’ —and on the command, ’1-2-3’—everybody would dump their buckets and this wet rat comes out yelling. ‘Oh, so sorry Hans, we didn’t know’. [Laughs; Earl and Sam chuckle]

  Interviewer: Where would the tunnels be?

  Jerry, navigator: They had ways of getting tunnels, they would dummy up things, latrines or...

  Sam, bombardier: They took the stove, remember the stove?

  Jerry, navigator: I can’t ever get how they linked the stove down to the tunnel below. They went through the stove, probably through the space, and then they’d have a pallet of some sort of covering the tunnel, which they would cover with dirt. There must have been some way to get through this stove and get underneath their building. They’d lift this thing up and started digging their tunnels.

  Earl, pilot: See, at first, the building sat on the ground and everybody was digging. It was later that they [built them] up on stilts. In the washroom, it was concrete, so I think the one in the ‘Great Escape’ they went down through the manholes in the bathrooms.

  Jerry, navigator: They had three tunnels, Tom, Dick, and Harry, I remember that.

  *

  The March

  Over a quarter million Allied prisoners were under German control by 1945. Between January and April, in a scene to be played out all over the Reich, hundreds of thousands of slave laborers, concentration camp victims and PoWs were force-marched out of their camps to other locations to escape being liberated by the advancing Russian and western Allied powers. On January 27th, Hitler himself ordered the captured airmen out of Stalag Luft III to camps west of Berlin.[17] On the same day, Soviet forces overran Auschwitz death camp, less than 250 miles to the southeast; the Russians were also closing in hard less than a hundred miles away to the north and south of the PoW camp. With little the men shuffled out into the cold and snow towards Bavaria. The rumor mill had it that they were going to be executed or simply marched to death, on Hitler’s orders, or that they were going to be held as bargaining chip hostages in the Bavarian Alps, where the SS planned to make a last stand.

  Some of these forced marches indeed lasted for weeks in some of the harshest winter conditions of the 20th century. Men fell ill to typhus and dysentery, often contracted by resting in the same places along the march.[18] Many men died from exposure and hunger; some were beaten to death when they fell, while in other situations, guards found themselves littler better off than the prisoners they were to guard, as time went on. Some townspeople, fearful of the Russian advance, gave assistance to them, while others angrily pelted the prisoners with rocks and debris as they wearily shuffled into a new town.

  Interviewer, to Earl, pilot: You said you thought you had the best crew over there. Do you still think that?

  Earl, pilot: Yes.

  Jerry, navigator: Who said that?

  Earl, pilot: Me.

  Sam, bombardier: And I second that.

  Jerry, navigator, joking: And who gave you the authority?

  Sam, bombardier, pointing to Earl: Him.

  Interviewer, pointing to Sam: Is this the bombardier who had the amnesia?

  Earl, pilot: Yes.

  Interviewer: After you were shot down?

  Earl, pilot: This was on the forced march.

  Jerry, navigator: To this day he’s got amnesia. [Laughter]

  Earl, pilot, pointing to Jerry: He was on the march, too. There were about 10,000 of us on the march.

  Interviewer: What about the forced march?

  Earl, pilot: Well, they have heard my version of it, let someone else give them their version of it.

  Sam, bombardier: Well, this is in January, 1945. The Germans didn’t want us to be liberated in any way, shape, or form, so they were moving us all, going west through the forest.

  Interviewer: Because they wanted you as bargaining chips.

  Jerry, navigator: Well that’s the rumor, the prisoner of war camps are the greatest rumor factories in the world.

  Interviewer: Sure, you don’t have any information.

  Sam, bombardier: Well, we did have good information.

  Earl, pilot: We had a radio.

  Sam, bombardier: Yes we had a radio; the Germans could never fin
d it.

  Earl, pilot: They would ask when we were moving, ‘Taking your radio with you?’

  Interviewer: Where did you hide it?

  Sam, bombardier: You took it apart and put it together: everybody had a little piece.

  Jerry, navigator: In our camp, it was in an accordion. I always heard about it, then a book got published … and in it they had the picture of the accordion and I start jumping up and down like a maniac. I said, ‘By God, I heard about that thing!’ and here it is, there is a picture of it. The guys are sitting around and the Germans are taking everything apart, and one guy is sitting there playing ‘Home on the Range’, and the radio is inside the accordion that this guy is playing.

  Earl, pilot: And the BBC[49] knew it to, because they beamed stuff into us.

  Sam, bombardier: We used to have a map on the wall, this big map the guys have drawn, and we knew where everyone [invading armies] was in the war. Where the French were moving up, where the Russians were, where the Germans were. They used to come to us to look at our map to find out what the hell was going on. But the radio always picked up from outside, always like a newscast. And there it was, we would have it.

  Earl, pilot: And on that same map it would have our line where we knew it was, marked. Then we would have their line where they advertised marked and they didn’t agree at all.

  Jerry, navigator: In many cases they agreed, but the interesting part was we would get interpreters and we would get the German news. And of course we would get our own news from the BBC and the Germans would say that ‘All victorious troops strongly defended this particular town’, then the next day… ‘All victorious and glorious and loyal Nazi troops successfully beat down two platoons of American infantry at this town’, but now they were back over here! The next day they beat the hell of us over here, and then they beat the hell of us over here, then over there. When we look at the map, we laugh at the thing, but they haven’t won a battle and they are slowly losing the war.