Someday You Will Understand

by Nina Wolff Feld

  December 20th, 1943

  My Dears,

  Thanks for the big package. I have enough stuff now to open a large store—I do not have the intention of doing so. I’ll send back the underwear, and I hope you won’t continue sending me things I really have no need for.

  It was a pretty exciting weekend for me. I think, as you can tell from my previous reports, there has never been a CQ (Charge of Quarters) in our company with more to do. It started when I began my service at 17:45. A man from my company came in like a hurricane and told me his buddy had a temperature of 102.7 F. I put another guy in my place and went up to see for myself. I took his pulse: 100/min! I wrapped him up in some covers and went back down to the office. I tried to get hold of the Sgt., the Capt., HQ-ASTP, HQ Air Force, Navy Infirmary. Finally, I decided to take responsibility. I telephoned the hospital, asked them for an emergency ambulance—which arrived after an hour.

  Afterward, we found out that 5 soldiers on guard duty (the commander included) had left camp and 25 men who weren’t allowed to leave had also left. Telephone calls every 3 minutes for the soldiers: HQ, Provost Marshall, and 3 other companies wanted to know this or that on top of all the routine work that needed to be done. At midnight, I was relieved until noon on Sunday—12 hours, which I spent sleeping. After that, I had to keep tabs on each man who went to eat.

  After that, a man whose father had died that morning asked for an emergency furlough; 10 phone calls to find our captain. I had to convince the guy not to leave camp without permission—despite the circumstances. Another 10 calls. Another guy from Philly called to extend his pass. It was getting crazy. Furthermore, the captain was in a bad mood because he didn’t have his weekend, so he was quibbling and in general just hassling annoying me. After 1745 they relieved me for good, but at roll call part of my squad (I’m the acting squad leader [2 stripes]) wasn’t there; [and] that had to [have been planned ahead]—anyway, it was interesting to manage a company. Because of the absence of the commander and the Sgt. I was absolutely the boss. I was automatically saying, “Co F, Charge of Quarters speaking!” The telephone operator said to me, “You are kind of busy today, aren’t you?”

  Well, I have to study for an exam the day after tomorrow. See you Thursday evening!

  Yours,

  Walter

  * * * *

  In January 1944, my father was transferred from the ASTP program at Yale to Camp Grant, a facility built during World War I in Rockford, Illinois. The camp was so large that it served not only as a medical training center but also as a detention center for German POWs. During the three months my father spent there, he met refugee soldiers from all over Europe, including his friend Joe Poser’s brother from boarding school in Switzerland, as well as others he knew from New York. In March he became an American citizen.

  Two friends, corporals Baymiller and Gallenbeck, accompanied him as he marched up the grand marble steps into the Circuit Court of Winnebago County in Rockford. They stood as his witnesses when he became the first American in his family, raising his right hand to swear allegiance3 and fidelity to the United States of America, along with the forty-eight other people who took the oath that day, promising to defend and protect the homeland against all enemies, foreign or domestic. My father was now free. No longer the stateless refugee, he would never be forced to wear politics or religion on his sleeve. He would never have to look over his shoulder ever again.

  When the clerk examined his certificate of arrival, he looked up at my father and remarked, “S.S. Navemar, September of forty-one? Pheew, you’re a lucky young man, you know that, dontcha?!”

  “It’s a miracle I’m alive, sir,” my father said in response.

  With his two buddies at his side to serve as witnesses, he said, “I do” so many times in the two minutes it took to become an American that he felt as though he was getting married. After they signed all the necessary papers with my father’s new fountain pen, the men walked out of the courthouse, passing the statue of the Civil War soldier, and went to the bar at the old Nelson Hotel for a toast. My father couldn’t help but notice that the weather was like Saint Moritz in May. The azure skies melted the snow and wet the streets. He loved it when the sun shone on a cold crisp day, often remarking that it was “Swiss-ish.” He didn’t officially become an American for another forty-eight hours, but over a fine vintage Coca-Cola they raised their glasses and, on March 1, 1944, they celebrated Walter C. Wolff as he became Citizen Wolff. The middle initial C was added in the army because Americans usually have middle names. The C stood for nothing, but I know my father and I know he chose it as a joke. WC, meaning “water closet,” is on every sign on every bathroom door in every public place in Europe.

  Camp Grant, spring 1944.

  At Camp Grant, he couldn’t get enough of the roast beef sandwiches and pineapple juice. Having never tasted such an exotic juice, he wondered where it came from. The innocence of some of his discoveries is funny. The things we’re so accustomed to and take for granted were new to him even two years after living in America.

  After lunch he returned to the barracks to find that someone must have stuffed the pipes again. It was so hot that the windows had fogged and condensation was dripping onto the sills, while sweat was rolling off the soldiers’ brows. They were not supposed to open the windows because of the convoluted air conditioning system—one pipe pushed fresh air into the room while the other sucked out the used air. The communal radio played what my father called Kentucky hillbilly music in competition with his short-wave radio, which was tuned in tandem with the corporal’s to WQXR in New York City. For better reception, my father used his helmet as an antenna to boost the explosive, rhythmic sounds of Tchaikovsky. The corporal, a violinist with the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra in civilian life, raised the volume on his four-dial Emerson radio at key moments during the symphony. As soon as the trumpets blew into the string section, they upped the ante and blasted the hillbilly music. Tchaikovsky’s crashing chords reverberated throughout the barracks, and the bluegrass fell away. Suddenly, the cacophony of sound was interrupted by the news: “Leaving trails of steaming vapor in their wake, United States bombers bound for Berlin destroy armament industries in and around the Nazi war capital. Their first daylight mission over the heart of Hitler’s fortress, American bombers combined with British forces are pounding Germany with raids around the clock.”

  The low ba-ta-ta-tam, ba-ta-ta-tam, ba-ta-ta-tam of artillery could be heard in the background of the reporter’s broadcast.

  In all, sixty-eight American planes failed to return. But the next day and the next, American bombers returned in follow-up raids. Today, squadrons like these in ever-increasing numbers are taking the war home to Germany itself. In other news, Ralph Heinzen, a Paris correspondent, reports, “Back from her fourth wartime journey of mercy, the Swedish exchange ship Gripsholm arrives in New York harbor. Aboard are 663 Americans, home from Nazi internment and prison camps. Wounded soldiers, war correspondents, and diplomats are among her passenger list. They bring firsthand news of conditions in Nazi-occupied countries. Douglas MacArthur, nephew of General MacArthur, was attached to the American embassy at Vichy. ‘We’re very glad to get home. We’ve been thirteen months interned in Germany, and thirteen bad months for the Germans as well as for ourselves. Because in those thirteen months, Germany has lost the war. They know they’re whipped, but they’re wondering how they’re going to get out of it. Last year, Hitler has lost tremendously his prestige, particularly as a military leader. All through Europe, there is a very fierce underground warfare going on against Germany. In every occupied country of Europe but particularly in France, there is this mighty organization of courageous patriots who are waging a war day and night against the forces of occupation.’”4

  Cheers could be heard erupting around radios all over camp, as this barracks’ battle for the airwaves ended and news of the real war poured through. For the rest of the afternoon, my father made himself comfortable. With his pipe h
anging from his mouth, he leaned over his stationery and wrote letters:

  Cher Papo, My best wishes for your birthday. I hope you have a good year of health and prosperity, and I really regret not being able to be with you for your birthday. Well, c’est la guerre! . . . I hope the gloves are large enough. If they aren’t, then you can send them back to me, and I can easily exchange them. If they get dirty, you can wash them with bath soap.

  The news from Europe is excellent. The situation is certainly much better than a year ago—at least an end is in sight, though I’m not expecting an immediate end. . . .

  Again, my best wishes,

  kisses . . .

  When he was done, he folded the letter and enclosed it with the gloves for my grandfather. This lovely gesture would turn into an interstate comedy, with the gloves taking center stage as questions about size became part of several letters, ending with my father imploring my grandfather to bring them with him to Chicago when they came for a visit. When he couldn’t find a smaller pair of gloves after my grandfather gave them back, he wrote, “Shall I send them to you anyway? It’s better than nothing! . . . Cher Papo, do you want the gloves (the same pair you had), or what? It seems soldiers have larger hands than civilians—there are no smaller ones. Frankly, I don’t know what to do.”

  Leaning back against the metal frame of his bunk, Dad settled in to read through his new issue of France-Amérique. It established, as he said, “contact with the old world, my old world, and the present.” Every once in a while, despite his usual lack of emotion, the pathos comes through with sparkling clarity, and, from extraordinary details about the war’s progress, its effects on him also seep through. He could have been called to battle at any point, and the letters would have changed dramatically, as they do later.

  For now, they flowed home almost daily. During the two months that he was stationed at Camp Grant, my father sent home more than sixty pages of letters and telegrams. I wonder how much correspondence I would have inherited if he too had saved everything he received. In the immense amount of discussion and quarreling that filtered through the postal system, my grandmother’s and aunt’s passionate disdain for one another was a constant thread that wove through the fabric of the letters, the words between them corrosive for the rest of their lives.

  At one point, my grandmother thought the letters had been censored and got nervous. My father had to explain that within the territorial limits of the US there was no censorship unless the military took a special interest in a person, but he clearly wasn’t one of them. My grandmother also had the idea she could influence on his behalf anyone she encountered who had a connection to the army. He grew very concerned that she and her friend Junot were hindering his progress, and he wrote to make sure that only he was in charge of his “business.” While acknowledging their good intentions, he told her there was really no point in trying, without access to the appropriate offices where decisions were made. Recommendations could be made, but only the War Department confirmed them, not West 79th Street. “Every soldier can be sent wherever the government wants, to New York, Texas, the moon, Mars, Europe, or Africa. . . . Read your newspapers. Do as you wish, but leave me and my affairs out of it!”

  Omi also suggested that he get a room in town so he could bathe and take care of himself. My father had to assure her that the barracks did indeed have outlets for electric razors above every mirror, the shower room was entirely covered with aluminum plaques so there was an opportunity to shave everywhere, and every washroom had a footbath. This was the US Army, not the German army, but even with that rejoinder a steady stream of letters and care packages kept arriving.

  Most of the guys my father met during the months he was at Camp Grant were ex-ASTP friends he made while at Yale and soldiers of the same caliber from other technical schools, like the private who studied Japanese at the University of Michigan. They hated studying Japanese so much that one night, while exchanging stories about the various language programs, they joked about forming the “Society Against the Propagation of the Japanese Language.” He eased into comfortable familiarity with them, dropping some of his reserve. He soon discovered that his company was made up of platoons separated into groups of intelligentsia, illiterates, and professional athletes. The community of refugee soldiers was just contained enough that, if he wasn’t running into friends he had made along the way in the army, he found old friends and acquaintances from Europe, including the brother of a friend from boarding school in St. Moritz.

  Although he never encountered any anti-Semitic behavior among the men at Grant, a portion of the camp housed German prisoners behind guarded barbed-wire fences. That was when, for a brief moment, he contemplated a position as an MP. On several occasions, my father was used as an interpreter and, perhaps for the first time, did come face to face with the enemy POWs. He spoke to them in his best Prussian accent. Many of them had arrived on the Queen Mary, docking in New York after passing the Statue of Liberty, a far cry from my family’s passage on the Navemar. The POWs came to Chicago in Pullman cars sitting on upholstered seats—all very civilized in comparison to Germany, where captives traveled by boxcar.

  The prisoners at Camp Grant had surrendered in North Africa. After spotting the American army, they gambled for safe and humane treatment under the Geneva Convention and won. The United States adhered to the Geneva Convention rules to such a degree that prisoners were not only treated humanely but were paid a stipend commensurate with the rank of a US army private and lived in accommodations that far surpassed any in the German army. They were given army uniforms printed boldly with PW on the backs and every amenity to keep themselves clean; they had showers and toilet paper, and wanted for nothing other than their freedom. They ate better than they would have in Europe at the time and far better than if they had been caught by the Russian army, where rations likely would have to be supplemented by rodents they captured. German POWs in the United States eventually numbered in the hundreds of thousands, and very few tried to escape. In fact, while my father wandered the streets of Chicago with friends, some of the POWs were on work duty cleaning the streets. The thought behind their treatment was that if we followed the Geneva Convention rules, the Germans might do as well with their American POWs. They were eventually repatriated after the war, and some emigrated legally to the United States, making permanent homes here during the postwar years.

  In my father’s interview with the Shoah Foundation, he looks down while he speaks about this. He clearly sees their faces on the screen behind his eyes. When he is done with the recollection, the camera catches him again as he rubs his chin after admitting, “Each one of them I would have gladly killed with my own hands, but”—he hesitates for a moment and looks up—“I am not a killing person.”

  The slightest stumble or bad luck in my father’s escape could have sent him north over the Polish border to Auschwitz. There he would have stared through a barbed-wire fence and lived on starvation rations, drinking green water for as long as he survived. The constant reminder that he could never take any portion of his freedom for granted is at the heart of my father’s story. What an incredible sense of satisfaction he must have felt when he left camp for court as a stateless refugee and returned later in the day as an American. On his petition for naturalization, when asked his “present nationality,” he wrote, “None.” But when he looked across the fence or shouted orders to the POWs, his talent for compartmentalization took over.

  Ten months in the army and my father still had not been placed in any kind of serious position. Camp Grant was disorganized enough for him to continue his practice of avoiding any of the army’s grunt training and get away with it. Until he was able to transfer, he was up to his old tricks. Any time he had KP duty or anything requiring him to sully his hands, he would ask for a medical checkup, get new glasses, have his teeth examined, or even volunteer to wash windows at the clinic. His only complaint was that the camp was so small that it took less time to be seen for an appointment, forc
ing his return to whatever he was trying to avoid in the first place. Without much to do, he would often sneak an afternoon siesta. One day, he was startled awake when he heard footsteps. He jumped up and out of bed, standing to attention so fast that the sergeant looked at him and yelled, “Jesus Christ, Private Wolff, you must have a bad conscience. Get back to sleep!”

  American citizenship, no longer being an “enemy alien” in the training ground of America’s defenders, meant that he could now apply for reclassification to positions that his refugee status had formerly closed to him. A lot of permanent posts were open at three general hospitals being formed abroad. He thought about applying to one of those first, since they were located in safe zones in Casablanca or Southern Australia as opposed to the Pacific Theater where he was very adamant that he did not want to go.

  In the meantime, he spent a lot of time in Rockford, which in 1944 was a two-hour drive from Chicago. It had a population of about 80,000, not the small village my father had imagined. There were buses, trolley cars, and all sorts of restaurants, shops, movie theaters, drugstores, and department stores just like he found in the East: Shulte, Walgreens, Liggets, Woolworth, Kress, and the list went on. It also had the USO, the likes of which he had never seen before. Housed in one building, there were two ballrooms, a swimming pool, a music room, enormous game rooms, a snack bar, half a dozen luxurious lounges with rugs and couches, and even a tailor. One day my father sat on a plush velvet armchair sewing his military rank patch onto his new coat. He could hear a near perfect rendition of Chopin’s “La Polonaise” coming from a piano somewhere down the hall. While taking a moment to listen to the music, he happened to notice the magnificent quality of the fabric as he rubbed the cloth between his fingers: it was lighter, with longer wool fibers than usual. A lieutenant appeared from behind him and observed quietly as he struggled to stitch the patch on. He let him continue for a moment longer before he said, “Hello.”