After formulating a plan, the guards emptied Fred’s boxcar and selected hostages who would be killed immediately if anyone attempted to escape. Fred and the rest of the men from the boxcar were marched to the front of the train, where the passengers and guests had piled their luggage, and the German SS officers their records and equipment. Ahead, Fred could see the ruined bridge, and in the distance, on the other side, sat a second freight train. Although useless for motorized vehicles, enough of the bridge structure remained to allow careful foot traffic, and the prisoners were assigned to carry the baggage across the bridge and pile it near the front of the waiting train. Back and forth they went through the long afternoon.
When all of the baggage had been transferred, the guards counted the prisoners, verifying that there had been no escapes. Fred and the rest were allowed to relieve themselves and have a drink at the river before they were loaded like pack mules with the food, ammunition, grenades, and other military and personal gear of the guards. Emptied water and waste buckets were taken as well. Fred could see the same thing happening all along the train. The prisoners from each boxcar were being loaded with gear while a small number (usually six or seven) were under close guard. The guarded prisoners were hostages, to be killed if anyone from that boxcar resisted or attempted to escape.
Like the other men, Fred and Sam, already fatigued from multiple trips across the bridge, had sacks on their backs and duffel bags in their hands. Fred saw a young airman with an obviously broken arm being beaten by a surly guard for not carrying a full load. The airman, in pain, could do nothing to defend himself. Suddenly, the distinctive older airman, clearly a senior officer, stepped in. Looming over the surprised guard, he moved the injured airman, who he called Mr. Hemmens,52 to the side. He then protested to an SS officer, who was standing nearby, that this was a wounded prisoner of war, not a draft horse. There was no further beating. Hemmens was given a small bundle of straw, intended for the boxcar floor, that he could carry in one hand. Many of the airmen saw the incident and were impressed by it. Word soon spread that Hemmens’ defender was Squadron Leader Philip Lamason of the Royal NZ Air Force.
No attempt was made to drive more than 2,000 heavily laden prisoners across the damaged bridge. Instead, a long slow procession walked south around the hill through which the tunnel extended. Any stragglers were dealt with harshly with clubs and kicks. Fred saw Lamason step up to the plate yet again, protesting the treatment and the use of POWs as hostages and baggage carriers. But this time he was thwarted by a burly SS-Scharführer (staff sergeant) who kept Lamason from “bothering” an officer, by clubbing him to the ground. Lamason was kicked repeatedly, hauled to his feet, and shoved back into the line.
The marching prisoners followed the sweeping curve of the river until the ground leveled out, and followed the edge of the river as it turned to the north. They soon took a road heading east, marching through a small village where the occupants attempted to pass apples and other treats to the prisoners over the strenuous and sometimes violent objections of the SS guards.
After another three miles, they crossed the Marne River on an elevated roadway leading into the town of Saacy. As in the smaller village they had passed through, the townspeople did their best to assist them by tossing bits of fruit or bread to the prisoners. Once through the village, the procession turned north and continued for another mile to the train station at Nanteuil-sur-Marne.
It was late afternoon, and the prisoners were exhausted. The guards and SS officers were tired, nervous about possible FFI attacks, and heavily armed. It was a bad combination. Somehow, French Red Cross workers had learned about the train, and they tried to distribute sandwiches and lemonade to the prisoners. The Germans made it extremely difficult, blocking their access and shoving them out of the way. By the time Fred and Sam had arrived, the opportunity for either food or drink had almost passed.
As the duo approached the boxcar, a pregnant volunteer working with the Red Cross saw them and started in their direction. An SS officer called to her, ordering her to stop and give him the lemonade she was carrying. When she ignored him and tried to walk past, he pulled his pistol, pressed it to her chest, and fired, killing her on the spot. Guards dragged her body off the platform as if she were a sack of potatoes. The airmen turned to each other in mute distress. Confronted with such stark violence, Fred could only wonder “What kind of people were they dealing with? What consideration could they expect from officers with so little concern for human life and common decency?”
The train loading began again, with the prisoners being stuffed into the filthy boxcars. Fred saw Lamason protesting to a guard about the condition of the boxcar he was to be loaded into. Three times he was clubbed to the ground, and three times he got back up and protested, after which he was forced into Fred’s boxcar at gunpoint. Several other airmen boarded as well.53 One of them questioned the stationmaster as he passed by and was told that they would be leaving the train in Frankfurt. The information, quickly relayed from boxcar to boxcar, made sense because Frankfurt was near Dulag Luft, the Luftwaffe processing center for captured airmen and a relay station to POW camps. This was welcome news — at least they could look forward to being treated like military men rather than spies or criminals. Fred had been told that conditions in POW camps weren’t too bad. Prisoners got fed and clothed, received Red Cross packages, and could send and receive mail from home.
But for the moment, things were looking grim. Their new train had been passing through Nanteuil-Saarcy, the local station servicing the two villages of Nanteuil-sur-Marne, a few hundred yards away on the opposite (north) side of the river, and Saarcy-sur-Marne, a half-mile away but on the same (south) side. When it arrived at the station, the train had been carrying cattle. The animals had been hastily removed in preparation for the arrival of the SS and their prisoners, and the stench radiating from the boxcars was palpable.
Before boarding the boxcars, they were ordered to relieve themselves at the sides of the tracks. Men and women alike had no choice but to do as instructed, or either hold it in for an unknown length of time or foul the interior of their boxcar, much to the amusement of the laughing guards. Fred, his mind still struggling to deal with the shock of witnessing the Frenchwoman’s brutal murder, climbed into the car without a saying a word. Sam and the rest followed, equally somber.
As before, each boxcar was equipped with a bucket for water and one for waste. Late in the loading process, Leo Grenon and Les Whellum, two men from Fred’s boxcar, were assigned to fill the water buckets at the river before the train departed. That was the first and last time that the water buckets were refilled on the entire trip.
The new boxcars differed from the old ones in two respects. First, the floors had a thin layer of straw mixed with manure from the recently departed occupants. Second, because cows are not escape artists, the ventilation holes were not secured by strands of barbed wire. So as the prisoners were counted and loaded into a boxcar, one man was pulled aside and given a claw hammer, some nails, and a small spool of barbed wire, and ordered to secure the windows. The process was carefully monitored and the tools recovered after the job was done. But in Fred’s boxcar, with the chaotic boarding process underway, the Frenchman assigned to barbed-wire duty was able to lean down and pull the nails from one end of two floor planks before returning the hammer to the waiting guard.
It was evening before the train was ready to depart, with boxcars locked, searchlights manned, and guards warily trying to look in all directions. By midnight, 24 hours after leaving Paris, the prisoner train had managed to cover just over 45 miles.
Just after midnight on 17 August, Fred became aware that something was going on. The French prisoners had managed to pry up the two loosened boards. They planned to attempt an escape the next time the train slowed on an upgrade or accelerated from a stop. Nobody knew whether or not a barbed-wire tail had been affixed to the last car, so the plan was to drop to the tracks and roll between the wheels to cover in the brush o
r down the embankment. The Frenchmen setting up the escape would go first, followed by Allied officers, as they were considered to be the most valuable to the war effort. Fred, as a noncom, was near the end of the list.
The train progressed slowly, not only because its inherent speed was unimpressive but because it stopped every hour or so, to let the SS guards check for signs of escape attempts. The train also stopped when fired upon, which happened often, as the FFI was determined to stop the prison train from crossing the border into Germany.
After a routine stop, as the guards clambered onboard, Fred heard the excited chatter as two Frenchmen dropped through the floor to the tracks below. After the next stop, another pair left, and as the train slowed for a climb, the last of the Frenchmen went out, followed by the first two Allied officers.54 But suddenly, the train screeched to a halt, shots were fired, and guards sounded the alarm. The escape had been discovered. The boards were hastily pushed back into position as the guards closest to each boxcar began using their flashlights to search the walls and floors for anything out of place. Unfortunately, in their haste to replace the planks, one of them had hung up on its neighbor, creating a gap that was all too easy to spot from below.
The guards were furious. The doors were opened, and under the guns of the guards the occupants were ordered out of the boxcar, counted, and names ticked off the master list. The water and waste buckets were taken from the boxcar, and the men were stripped and returned to the boxcar naked. This was not the end of the incident, as the guards said that there would be more-severe punishment in the morning. The men stood within the car for an interminable period until the search for escapees ended and the train again got underway. In the long night hours, the men talked about what their fate might be. They decided that if they were to be executed, they would rush the guns and the guards and hope for a miracle, rather than stand and wait to be slaughtered.
Shortly after dawn on the morning of 17 August, the train stopped and the boxcar doors were opened. Splinter Spierenburg, a Dutch RAF officer who could understand German, acted as translator. He told the men that 35 of them were to be executed for attempting to escape. Fred was one of the men selected for the fatal punishment. After he and the others were removed from the boxcar, they faced an arc formed by guards with machine guns at the ready. Although naked and unarmed, Fred and the others were ready to rush the guards if they heard the guns racked into firing position. There was a long pause while the men stood, hearts racing. Spierenburg then relayed the order for the men to turn around and face the boxcars, which they did rather reluctantly. After another agonizing pause, a heavily accented voice called in clear English, “Take a leak!” The SS officer in charge had decided not to shoot them after all. He told Spierenburg that he felt the men had learned their lesson, but he assured them that any further escape attempts would result in the deaths of all of the prisoners in the boxcar.
The naked airmen climbed back into the boxcar, and the train began rolling. It had gone only twelve miles when, on the outskirts of Dormans, it was ambushed by the FFI in another attempt to stop the train. The attempt, like the others, was unsuccessful. The SS drove off the attackers, and the guards, using prisoner labor, were soon able to repair the minor damage to the train tracks. When the repairs were done and the prisoners were back in their boxcars, Spierenburg related that the guards were reminding everyone that any attempts to escape would be dealt with harshly. It was almost noon, and the Germans knew that they had to pick up the pace. After 36 hours, the train was only 60 miles from Paris.
The men learned the fate of only one of the escapees. Dave High was recaptured, beaten with rubber-wrapped batons until he was a mass of livid bruises, and returned to the boxcar later that day. It was several more days before he could drink, breathe, or move a limb without pain, and he said very little to anyone.
At a security stop in the early afternoon, a young French boy about 17 years of age put his hand on the lip of one of the ventilation holes to pull himself up and peer out. Fred, leaning against the forward wall of the boxcar, saw him and thought nothing of it. But outside, one of the SS guards, perhaps still smarting from the embarrassment of an escape from that car, saw movement at the opening and shot into the boxcar. The bullet slammed across the back of the boy’s hand, opening the skin and breaking the bones before continuing into the car, where it grazed Bill Gibson’s forehead near his right eye.
Fred stood by as Harry Bastable, who had some medical training, quickly assessed the damage. With the bones broken and the open wound bleeding, the boy needed professional attention and treatment. So when the guards opened the car door and, via Spierenburg, asked if anyone was injured, Bastable called out, and the French lad was assisted to the doorway. After climbing down, the boy, cradling his injured hand, was asked by an SS officer if he was English. When he responded that he was French, the officer motioned that he should descend the low embankment to where a small stream ran alongside the tracks.
As the boy turned and started hesitantly walking downslope on the sharp cinders, the officer made a gesture to the nearest guard, who shot the boy in the back. Two other shots followed before the officer pulled his Luger, walked down the slope to where the boy lay, and put a round into the back of his head. Stunned, Fred watched as Leo Grenon and Andrew Rowe were ordered out of the boxcar, given shovels, and told to bury the body. They were given so little time to do it that, when ordered back into the boxcar, the boy’s hands and feet were still visible, projecting from an uneven pile of cinders. Fred now had a very clear picture of the value the SS placed on life, and their willingness to use lethal force without hesitation. He would be relieved when they were transferred to Luftwaffe control at Frankfurt.
The train continued westward. No additional rations had been provided in an organized fashion since the train left Paris more than two days before, and the prisoners were both famished and dehydrated. A few hours after the death of the French boy, driven by a combination of sleep deprivation, stress, dehydration, and hunger, James Prudham, who had been leaning against Fred, toppled to the floor of the boxcar and went into convulsions. When Spierenburg called to the SS guards for assistance, the request was ignored. Nothing could be done other than physically restraining him to prevent injury to himself or others until the seizure passed. Fred was relieved when the seizures stopped and Prudham seemed to be sleeping quietly.
The train arrived in the town of Bar-le-Duc late that night. The French Red Cross was ready for the arrival and did their best to pass drinks and food parcels to the occupants, although time was limited and the demand far exceeded the supply. Only a few parcels made it into the boxcar, but everything arriving was shared. Fred got a couple of crackers and a small slice of cheese. It seemed just enough to whet his appetite, but he was grateful for it. After this brief pause, the train proceeded in a series of fits and starts, despite all that diplomacy and force of arms could do to prevent it. By the time the train reached Nancy near noon on 18 August, Fred could tell that the guards were on edge, as they were firing their machine guns to clear people from walkways and overpasses.
The third day in the boxcars was uneventful. Beaten down by fatigue and deprivation, Fred began to wonder if he would survive the transport. The only good news he heard that day was that at the Nancy station, the Red Cross had managed to remove one more woman from the train, and that two other women had somehow managed to escape. The Germans had apparently underestimated the determination and abilities of the female prisoners.
Late on August 18th, the train stopped for several hours in Strasbourg, where Fred saw that the Red Cross had peaches and tins of meat ready for distribution to those fortunate enough to be able to reach around the barbed wire and claim them. Fred was at the far corner of the boxcar, so he wasn’t one of the lucky ones — there were too few to share among so many prisoners. By now, conditions inside the boxcars were virtually indescribable: filth, fleas, lice, dysentery, thirst, and hunger; swollen ankles from standing for days; sweltering
by day and shivering, naked, at night. Fred was in a haze of exhaustion and despair. It had been days since anyone around him had thought of, let alone spoken of, making an escape attempt.
That night, the train crossed the Rhine River and entered Germany, and on the morning of 19 August, the train was running parallel with the Rhine. The German guards seemed more relaxed, and they were no longer shooting at anything that moved. There were still security stops, but at intervals, individual boxcars were opened and the prisoners allowed to relieve themselves by the tracks.
As the train rumbled through small German towns, Fred saw signs of Allied air strikes, but the intervening rural areas looked calm and normal, as if the war was underway in some remote location, rather than approaching at a rapid pace. But he was totally unprepared for what greeted them at the stop in Frankfurt. When the boxcar doors were opened and Fred climbed down to be counted for the nth time, the city lay in ruins as far as he could see. The sight brought home in graphic terms the devastating power of the Army Air Corps.
Frankfurt was the stop Fred had been eagerly awaiting, as the airmen expected to be taken off the train and delivered to Dulag Luft for POW processing. Fred’s spirits lifted further as his clothing was returned, along with a full water bucket and an empty waste pail. Their treatment was already improving! Fred waited anxiously as he heard boxcars uncoupling and shifting. With his head at the wall, he could see that the five cars behind theirs, the ones holding female prisoners, were being shuttled onto a siding. It was exciting — clearly their turn would come next. But he waited in vain, and when the guard cars at the end of the train were brought up and coupled onto his boxcar, Fred’s optimism evaporated, to be replaced by despondency. Fred felt terribly disappointed and lost, and he could tell that he wasn’t alone in that regard. His exchanges with Sam, Paul, and the other airmen all centered around uncertainties. Who knew they were on the train? Where were they being taken, and what would become of them? If they were executed, would their families ever learn what happened to them, or would they lie in shallow unmarked graves like the young Frenchman?
Betrayed: Secrecy, Lies, and Consequences Page 12
