by Peter Finn
On this night, the bitter cold overcame nerves, and the guard eventually climbed in. Attempts at conversation failed, but the two Germans and Gertie spontaneously burst into song, giving rousing renditions of “Wien” and “Lili Marlene.” “We shrilled away in the night,” Gertie said. “They had good voices and in the communion of song, I felt relief.”
At one in the morning, the truck pulled up to a pub in the village of Flamersheim, about thirty miles southwest of Bonn. A group of German officers sat around one table. Gertie was parched from the raucous singing. Along with the driver and guard, she was on her second round of beer when an officer in a green overcoat and heavy gun belt walked in, drawing everyone in the room to their feet to issue stiff-arm salutes with the clicking of heels. “At last, here was my typical Nazi,” Gertie thought. “Prussian, pompous and overbearing.”
In French, he ordered Gertie to follow him and the two soldiers accompanying him, and they proceeded—Gertie scampering to keep up—along a street to an old stone building. For the first time, she was carefully searched and the contents of her shoulder bag emptied for examination. Her camera, film, and an army identification card, which made no reference to the OSS, were seized. Her U.S. passport, cigarette lighter, lipstick, and shoulder bag were returned.
The officer asked the familiar barrage of questions but quickly announced, “It is quite possible that you will be exchanged.” He asked if she wished to sleep in one of the bunk beds or preferred to be taken to a nearby prison to be with her compatriots. Gertie chose the prison, hoping to see Jennings or at least some other Americans. Again, she followed the German officer through the streets, a guard some paces behind, until they reached an imposing door in the side of a long wall. A bell was rung, and eventually a cadaverous figure opened the door a crack and held up a lantern. Gertie was guided to a small cell about eight feet by ten with three wooden bunks. The nauseating stink of an open latrine wafted in from the yard outside. But after nearly two days without sleep, she was too tired to care and collapsed on a bunch of gunnysacks filled with straw.
Gertie awoke to the delivery of ersatz coffee—the artificial brew that American prisoners called “mucker fuck”—five slices of coarse bread, a small blob of margarine, and fleas. What began as a tiny itch spread across her torso and down her thighs. As she tore open her tunic, she found small red welts across her stomach. She was infested. The prison, she learned, had only recently been used to hold Russian forced laborers, and they had been kept in crowded, filthy conditions.
Standing on tiptoe, looking out at the courtyard through the narrow bars of her cell while scratching continuously, Gertie saw Jennings pass by.
“Bob!” she shouted.
“My God, where have you been?” he asked.
“Right here in this pesthole,” Gertie replied. “I thought I had lost you.”
“How are you making out?”
“Marvelously,” Gertie said. “Wonderful people. Treat me like a queen.”
A guard intervened, shrieking at them to stop talking, and Jennings moved away with a wink. Returning from the latrines, he indicated with a glance skyward that he was in a cell above Gertie’s. A short time later, she heard scratching in the ceiling of her cell; the building was old and crumbly. Some plaster fell away, and a hand emerged to drop a folded piece of paper. It read, “As you will probably get out of here before we do, here are the names of the airmen who came in last night. Several are wounded and have been taken off to a hospital. Tell their families that they are okay.” The paper contained a list of names written in a blunt blue pencil. Gertie tucked it inside her bra.
The notes continued to arrive for the eleven days Gertie was held at Flamersheim, including addresses back home and requests that she send gifts to the sweethearts of the airmen and soldiers—perfume, stockings, and chocolates. “I tried as best I could to dispose them about my person and into crevices among my effects,” Gertie said. “Had I kept them together in my original place of concealment I felt sure my new buxomness might invite attention.” The communications and camaraderie were a boost but couldn’t disguise Gertie’s new reality. “Have no cigarettes, no books, no toilet paper. No toothbrush, no soap, no nothing.” She was a POW in a German camp.
9
Limburg an der Lahn
On the morning after Gertie and the others were captured, the OSS sent out an officer to retrace their probable route; Papurt had informed his commanding officer where he was going but without specifying his mission. At the Luxembourg village of Reisdorf, about a mile and a half from Wallendorf, the officer searching for the missing group was stopped at a U.S. military roadblock and forced to turn around—belated recognition that the German village down the road was back in enemy hands. The search continued through the following day in hospitals throughout the area, but by September 28 the military had concluded, “The party was missing in action, presumably either captured or killed by the enemy.”
Consternation—and fear—about the potential implications of their capture ricocheted across the OSS as Paris, London, and Washington were informed of the disappearance. Donovan paced in his office in a rage, calling Gertie a “loose cannon.” He was “concerned that Legendre might talk,” according to Edwin Putzell, one of his aides. Gertie had highly sensitive information about operations in North Africa, Italy, and occupied France. Most recently, she had seen reports on French Resistance teams working with the OSS following the invasion of southern France. “Her knowledge of these activities could have been vital to Nazi planning at the time German forces were being ambushed and scattered by the French resistance,” one OSS veteran concluded.
A letter to John J. McCloy, the assistant secretary of war, captured some of Donovan’s alarm when the OSS chief wrote of Gertie that she “has acquired a tremendous fund of information concerning OSS operations in the European theater. Any discovery by the Germans that she possesses such information would have grave consequences not only for her personally but also for this organization.” He urged the military to see if it could arrange a prisoner exchange. “Ample justification for an urgent request, it seems to me, lies in the fact that Mrs. Legendre is a woman,” he wrote.
The OSS ordered that any news stories on the capture of Gertie and the others be suppressed by the War Department. The families of the four POWs were eventually informed about their status as missing in action—the standard first notification—but not until news had begun to break publicly about a month after the capture. The families were warned not to discuss the OSS service of their loved ones. Donovan personally called Sidney, but Gertie’s husband was angry it had taken so long to let him know what had happened. “Naturally, I had gone over to [the OSS] to ask where you were when you did not show up as you had promised,” Sidney said. “All the time the louses knew you had disappeared.”
Much of the alarm at the OSS focused on Papurt. After serving in army counterintelligence during the Italian campaign, Papurt was attached to the OSS and transferred to England just before D-day. He was trained in running agents by Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, better known as MI6, and also took courses in traditional special forces skills, including jump school, which he loved. “I don’t know when I’ve gotten such a kick out of anything,” he said. At thirty-seven, he noted, “I’m one of the oldest active jumpers in the U.S. Army.”
Papurt moved to France in late August, first for a brief stint in Paris and then in operations just behind the advancing troops. “This is one of the most thrilling assignments of the war,” he wrote. “I’ve been everywhere—on all fronts—and beyond and it’s been a terrifically fast moving job. I’m in command of a completely self-maintained detachment and we really get around and see things and do things.”
Military censorship prevented him from getting into any more details in his letters to the war photographer Margaret Bourke-White. He was even enthusiastic about the routine deprivations of being in the fie
ld. “I feel wonderful right now,” he wrote in one letter. “We hit a town where there was water and I actually had a bath—my first in three weeks that wasn’t out of a helmet. Also had a chance to change underwear so feel terrific.”
By late September, as the Allied advance paused, Papurt’s unit was ensconced in the Hôtel Brasseur in Luxembourg City—the spot where he would cross paths with Gertie and Jennings. Papurt’s SHAEF pass said he was involved in the “detection and prevention of the enemy’s espionage and sabotage”—information that would have been a stunning gift to German interrogators had the four Americans not burned their most incriminating identification. (The capture prompted Papurt’s deputy to urge the OSS to produce “passes bearing wording of a less specific nature.”)
Papurt was part of what was called a Special Counter-Intelligence (SCI) detachment—joint British and American units that accompanied Allied regular forces and exploited intelligence from top secret British intercepts of German communications. Papurt’s unit used the intelligence—code-named Ultra—to find enemy agents and any abandoned German matériel that could benefit the war effort. Ultra—so named because it was regarded as even more sensitive than the top British classification, Most Secret—gave the Allies immediate insight into the resources and plans of the Germans on multiple fronts. Its existence was among the most closely guarded secrets of the war and was not publicly revealed until the 1970s. The British severely limited access to Ultra intelligence, and Papurt was one of a select pool of OSS personnel who knew about the program. If the Germans learned about Ultra, the Allies would lose a critical edge over the enemy.
As a result, the issue of Papurt’s capture reached the level of General Stewart Menzies, the head of MI6, as well as General Kenneth Strong, the British chief of staff for intelligence at Eisenhower’s headquarters, and his American deputy, General Thomas J. Betts. It was a matter of acute embarrassment for the OSS and a validation in some British quarters of their disdain for American tradecraft.
Senior officials at the OSS, with little more than wishful thinking about Papurt’s resourcefulness, tried to assure themselves that he—and they—could survive the blunder. Norman Holmes Pearson, the head of X-2, told the acting chief of OSS London, Russell Forgan, in a memo, “My general feeling is that of all our SCI personnel, Papurt stands the best chance of bluffing his way out of his embarrassing situation. He possesses a certain natural instinct for this.” Papurt could draw on his experience with the U.S. Army’s Counterintelligence Corps in Italy to provide the Germans with some limited information if they associated him with intelligence work, while keeping his knowledge of OSS and Ultra secret. Divulging information about CIC procedures “would be much the lesser of two evils,” Pearson told Forgan.
* * *
—
After his wounding at Wallendorf, Papurt had been moved to a hospital in Limburg an der Lahn, a town on the Lahn River between Bonn and Frankfurt and a major transit point for American and British prisoners of war. At some point, he was searched, and the Germans found a sheet of paper on him under the heading “SCI” with a list of at least fifteen people, including several French names. One was Lieutenant Pierre Haas, a Free French liaison officer to T-Force. Some came with ranks, others not. The Germans were immediately suspicious of the document, but uncertain what it meant—a list of intelligence officers and agents, or something more innocuous?
The Papurt document became an increasing focus in the questioning of Gertie and Jennings at Flamersheim. A constant flow of American POWs moved in and out of the prison—interviewed and assessed before being transferred to another facility—but Gertie and Jennings continued to be held. At one point during Gertie’s detention in the town, there were eighty American officers and men in the prison; at others only a handful. Gertie and Jennings remained the objects of special suspicion. Why was Jennings, a naval officer, so far from water? Why did Gertie, a civilian, have a “simulated” rank and a uniform? And what were they doing with Papurt?
In one interview, a plainclothes German, who Gertie believed was Gestapo, accused them of being spies.
“Madame Legendre, I have new information,” he said. “You, Papurt and Jennings are a team. We have found incriminating papers on Papurt and it looks serious for all of you.”
Gertie repeated her cover story and described their casual encounter in Luxembourg and trip to Wallendorf.
“I know nothing of Major Papurt,” she said.
The Gestapo agent brought up the SCI document.
“Is it not true that [Papurt] is with your intelligence?” the Gestapo agent insisted. He demanded to know what “SCI” stood for.
Employing her best ditzy girl act, Gertie said she “told him I was not up on all the funny letters used by the government.”
“Does not believe me at all,” Gertie concluded after the interview. “Horribly suspicious.”
Jennings, in a separate interview, said that as far as he knew, Papurt was in the Supply Corps and “SCI” “undoubtedly meant ‘Supply Corps, Infantry.’ I could not be sure of this because, being in the Navy, I was not familiar with the Army nomenclature,” he told the interrogator.
The questioning eventually eased up; Flamersheim was not a location for the systematic interrogation of prisoners. That would come later.
* * *
—
Gertie was released from solitary and allowed to join other officers in a small common room during the day. Enlisted men were held separately.
The filthy conditions and meager rations were accepted without direct complaint until the arrival of an American captain who objected loudly and insistently, noting that German POWs slept between sheets and ate the same food as their U.S. guards—as required by the Geneva Convention. The Nazis reacted to the tongue-lashing. The building was fumigated, the latrines were cleaned and flushed, and the prisoners were given fresh straw in new sacking. The diet remained unchanged, but the “goons,” as the prisoners called the Germans, could be moved to action, it seemed, if given a loud enough bawling.
Gertie benefited the most from the new regime. She was taken one evening without warning to a whitewashed cottage in the village, about a block and a half from the prison, and shown to a small neat room on the second floor with a feather bed, sheets, and a washstand with a pitcher of clear water. Her coat and shoes were taken by her escort—surety, apparently, that she would not try to escape. “I flung myself on the bed and let myself sink into the soft clean mattress.” This became a new routine. Each evening at 7:00, Gertie was deposited at the house, and each morning she was picked up at 8:00 and returned to the prison.
An elderly man and his daughter lived in the cottage. One night, the daughter entered the room, pressed a finger to her lips, and pointed to a hand-carved wooden crucifix on the wall, as if to enforce an oath. She gave her American guest a slice of Apfelstrudel, which Gertie devoured, and a freshly baked pie, which she brought back to the prison hidden in her clothes to share with her fellow POWs. The next morning when she uncovered it, the “room instantly became hushed. Then little exclamations arose.”
Gertie was generally treated as a curiosity by the Germans. One guard, an artist called Toni May, made a charcoal drawing of her, posing her one afternoon in a guardhouse with only lamplight for illumination. “I thought it quite excellent,” Gertie said, and May gave it to her as a gift; she tied it up with string and kept it at the bottom of her shoulder bag.
Some of the Americans also regarded her as an oddity, so much so that some newly arrived GIs thought she might be an English-speaking stooge planted by the camp authorities to pick up information.
Days were passed playing checkers and sharing any cigarettes brought in by new arrivals; everyone took just one drag, the butts held with a pin to draw out the last hit.
The prisoners’ happiest diversion was the sight of daytime American bombers overhead, drawing whoops from the cells
and courtyard as the sky began to throb from the collective noise of their engines. “Come here, sister, and blow those buddies kisses,” one GI shouted at Gertie. She happily obliged. The guards, cursing the absent Luftwaffe, told them that Bonn, about twenty miles away, was being pummeled. The Germans held their native ground, but the air above was increasingly British and American.
* * *
—
On October 6, without notice, Gertie and Jennings were led to the street and ushered into a Buick limousine. Gertie was seated beside the driver. Jennings was put in the back between two officers. They headed south along the Rhine toward Koblenz. Gertie was struck at how lightly guarded the city seemed, with just a few trenches and stockades, and she concluded the coming onslaught would crush these defenses.
They continued on toward Limburg and Stalag XII-A—a complex whose hospital already housed Papurt and Dickson. The camp held thousands of prisoners, including Russians, Poles, Italians, Indians, and French as well as increasing numbers of Americans, British, and Canadians.
In all, the Germans would imprison about ninety-five thousand U.S. servicemen over the course of the war. Many of the U.S. ground troops captured after D-day were first interned in Limburg in a section of Stalag XII-A reserved for Americans—the officers in barracks and separated from the enlisted men, who slept on the ground in vast tents. By the time Gertie arrived, there were already several thousand Americans inside the barbed wire. Almost immediately, the presence of a woman in an American uniform caused a stir among the men. “I stood there in the sunshine and realized what consternation and interest I was causing,” she said. For the first time, she worried for her safety if she were held in a camp of several thousand men.
