When We Were Brave

by Karla M Jay

  An hour later, Falk crossed through the gates of Camp Shanks, shivering and stiff-legged. He and the other POWs learned that prior to becoming a camp, Shanks was a small town named Orangeburg. But a few months ago, the residents’ homes, yards, and farms—approximately two thousand acres—were seized for the construction of the prison camp when Ellis Island filled up.

  “Stay away from the fences,” a guard told Falk’s group. Apparently, not all citizens of Orangeburg left quietly. Recently, a POW, lured to the fence with the promise of food, was stabbed to death.

  Falk entered a large building where he was told to strip. Men in medical masks and protective goggles approached him. How strange he was considered toxic. A hospital orderly shouted in German above their complaints. “Spread your arms and legs when we get to you.” He complied. A white powder was puffed onto his groin and under his arms and then above his head.

  “What is this?” he asked, coughing.

  “Delousing powder. D-D-T.”

  The workers sprinkled the powder on Falk’s clothes and belongings. “For good measure.”

  Each German soldier was handed two string bags and an ID disk with a number. He slipped his cyanide pill inside his soldbuch when he saw the bags with clothing being loaded into a laundry bin. Falk’s boots and soldbuch went into the other bag. As they moved toward the sounds of hissing steam and water splashing on tile, Falk’s heart hammered. Scenes from the death camps flashed through his mind. The unsuspecting Jews followed these same types of orders: undress, hang your clothes on a hook, let’s get you disinfected and off to your barracks.

  Was this their captors’ plan? Had the U.S. military already learned of the death camps and the showers, and this was their retaliation?

  Falk tensed at the thought, although it would serve them right. But no shouts came from the line in front of him. It was just a shower. He hung his bag on the hook number matching his ID disk and then walked through the misty veil of welcoming steam. He grabbed a bar of soap from the holder and lathered quickly, the thick haze giving him a modicum of privacy. The hot water ran down his body, pure pleasure after weeks of bathing in cold seawater. As POWs continued to enter the shower, he was pushed along from spigot to spigot, like meat moving along a conveyor belt, and too soon, he was nudged free from the room. He strode down another hallway where a Negro soldier tossed each man a clean white towel.

  “My God,” the soldier next to him muttered into his towel. “More Negers?”

  While a handful of Negroes fought in the Wehrmacht, most soldiers hadn’t seen a colored man in years and believed them to be racially inferior.

  “Keep your towels,” the tall Negro said.

  He and Ilse had good friends who fled to Barbados when Hitler came to power because of the color of their skin.

  Falk wrapped his around his waist and walked to a row of chairs where he received a fast shave and haircut. He felt like a new man, reborn with soap, water, and a razor. While he stood in line for a medical examination, shouting broke out across from him. A POW was refusing to lift his arms for examination, loudly proclaiming enough inspection had been done.

  Medical personnel held the man and forced his left arm above his head. About eight inches up from his elbow, on the underside of his arm, was the Waffen-SS tattoo. The black blood-group tattoo mark was just a single letter, the soldier’s blood type, but it labeled him as an elite Nazi. A marking that would send him back to Europe to an SS prison. They dragged him away, German curses trailing behind him.

  Falk hadn’t recognized the SS soldier. Nor did the man seem to recognize him. That was luck. He turned back to his examiner.

  “Raise your arms,” the doctor said.

  Falk slowly lifted his arms, his ribs screaming from bits of bone digging into nerves. He had no tattoos. Men like Falk, who came late into the SS, weren’t always given the blood-group marking. Even higher-ranking men like Dr. Mengele at Auschwitz was said not to have a mark.

  The medic gently probed his head wound and said it was healing fine. He scribbled on a paper and handed it to Falk, saying he should be reexamined by the physician at his camp destination.

  “With your injuries, you will not be sent on the westbound transports. Those trains take days to arrive. We’ll keep you on the East Coast for now.”

  Exactly what Falk hoped to hear. Trying to find Troy, New York, and Pastor Graf would be hard enough from this coast. He didn’t need to add the difficulty of navigating across the whole interior of the country.

  Falk, still half-naked, was escorted to a group of three hundred in a large open room, waiting for their clothing bags. The group’s mood was subdued. From now on, the POWs would be told where to go and what to do without recourse. What must have felt like failure to the other POWs, Falk celebrated as success. He’d made it to America.

  When the bags finally arrived, his clothing had been miraculously washed and dried. He couldn’t help it, but once he had his pants on, he pressed the shirt to his nose and breathed deeply. It was the scent of an open window on a spring day, of home, of love. The dull ache he carried when he thought about his family bloomed, and he fisted his hands in the shirt to hold back tears. He moved the cyanide pill into his shirt pocket, amazed he’d kept the poison safe this far.

  Once dressed, he and his group crossed the camp to a dining hall, where under the watch of heavily armed soldiers, breakfast was served.

  Each plate contained two pieces of toast, scrambled eggs, and a spoonful of brown paste, something none of them had ever seen, called peanut butter. Coffee was refilled as many times as a man asked. Falk focused on eating every bit of food offered, unsure when he might eat again.

  After breakfast, he washed up, and in groups of one hundred, the prisoners were herded to the nearby train station.

  Falk spotted Eduard in the group in front of him and hurried to catch up. “Hello,” he said as he dropped his hand on the young man’s shoulder.

  Eduard turned then swatted away his hand. “I’ve been warned not to talk to you,” he whispered.

  Falk looked in both directions to see if they were being watched. “Who said that?”

  “Who do you think? The Nazis. They’re spreading the word that you’re an American spy.”

  “You know that’s not true.”

  The boy was clearly frightened—his eyes were huge, and his lips trembled.

  “What happened to Christoph? I briefly saw him in sickbay.”

  Eduard stopped walking. “The night they hauled you off, he stuck up for you. Someone knifed him after the concert.” His forehead was a twist of knotted skin. “He’s dead.” He leaned closer. “You might not be a spy, but there is something off about you. And I’m not about to get killed for it.”

  Falk remained stuck in place as the POWs flowed around and past him. A chill raced up his spine, and he tried to remember how to breathe. Christoph—barely sixteen, who never smoked—just recently forced into service. A high school swimmer. An only son. A boy who hoped to follow in his father’s footsteps as a minister in his small hometown. Dead because Falk befriended him.

  A guard prodded Falk forward. He had failed another child, and although Christoph wasn’t as young as the boy with the strings, the pain that seared through him felt just the same. Thinking himself a father figure to the two young soldiers, he saw how wrong he was. He was no one’s hero. The road blurred as he fought the sting of tears. At that moment, he knew he needed to try to remain invisible and solitary because the next time someone recognized him for the traitor he was, he would be as dead as Christoph.

  Falk waited on the train platform, his hat pulled low over his face. He was notified his group was headed to the northeastern part of the country, to an area called New England to work as laborers for the wood pulp industry. He studied the other POWs in his group, relieved to see that Eduard, Zeigler, and Hartmann were not among the Germans being tra
nsported with him.

  A long suburban train arrived with a dusty gush of cold air and screeching brakes. The group ahead of him boarded quickly. The doors whooshed shut and the train departed. Moments later, the next one arrived. Falk climbed aboard, surprised at the plush seating in the Pullman cars. He stowed his bag on the overhead shelf and slipped into a window seat and sat alone. The train quickly gained speed, racing past industrial areas, sometimes underground and sometimes on elevated tracks, transporting him northward.

  He watched the winter countryside slide past his green velvet-draped window. The clacking of the wheels on the tracks nearly lulled him to sleep. He was tired on so many levels—physically, mentally. But he couldn’t let his guard down. He hadn’t yet figured out how to escape from the camp, and now that he was a marked man, the sooner he put distance between himself and the Nazis, the better.

  Two hours later, they came to a halt at Percy Station outside the village of Sparks, New Hampshire. The POWs climbed off the train and Falk looked around. The station had a tiny platform with two curved-back wooden benches and a small building with a ticket window. Nothing more.

  “Shit! The middle of nowhere,” one man complained. Others grumbled their agreement.

  Rolling hills surrounded the station and were covered with towering trees, the custodians of the mountainside. Bands of pale sun pushed through buffalos of clouds, pointing yellow fingers at the vastness around his new home. The drumming of woodpeckers in the distance meant the POWs would have company while working in the woods.

  Many Germans wanted to be closer to a large city, but Falk couldn’t have wished for a better place to settle into—then escape from.

  Military vehicles arrived and the POWs climbed into canvas-covered truck beds. The bumpy ride in the back of the long bed over rutted dirt roads left Falk gasping and holding his still-tender ribs. A bullet wound would probably have hurt less. The forest peeled back revealing a cleared flat tract of land at the base of the hills. Sparks prison camp was surrounded by fencing and double rows of barbed wire. The black noses of machine guns stuck out from every angle of the four guard towers of the compound. Dozens of long wooden bunk houses filled the POW side of the complex, their stove pipes pushing out wood smoke that hovered along the rooflines.

  He studied the fencing and tried to decide if he could climb the wire. With searchlights at the perimeters, it would be tricky. A double row of barbed fencing ran down the center of the camp, separating the POW side from the guards’ barracks, the kitchen, and camp hospital.

  Falk lined up with the other POWs and waited in the cold for the camp commander’s welcome talk. He scraped his boots back and forth across the ground trying to maintain circulation in his cold feet. The commander couldn’t be far away and must be making them wait, showing them who had the upper hand. Falk had no clue what to expect from an American POW camp. His experience with camp commanders was from watching the cruel SS officers run the concentration camps. Those commanders were handpicked for their ability to torture and kill prisoners as easy as swatting a fly.

  The frail sun lost its hold on the day, and an icy wind picked up. A Jeep pulled to a stop and a man in an army officer uniform stepped out. His hair was grayed at the temples, and there were burn scars across his neck and jawline.

  A soldier beside the officer announced in German this was Major Dobbs, their camp commander.

  Dobbs studied them for a few moments, and then in a voice much louder than suited his small frame, he spoke, and the soldier translated. “Sparks is a dangerous place.” He pointed to the fences. “The wire boundary around the camp is not to keep you in as much as it serves to protect you from the local population.”

  Falk let that sink in because he hadn’t factored hostile locals into his escape plans.

  Dobbs continued. “The people who live in these mountains are half wild, avid hunters, rugged people who currently hate Germans. You’ve killed their fathers, brothers, and sons. If you were to escape into the surrounding forest, you would be shot by one of these gun-toting patriots.”

  He pointed to the hills in all directions. “There are bears out there, too. They often attack at night. My advice, and it’s based on events that happened in camp these last five months, is to stay inside the wire unless you place little value on your life.”

  He continued. “Wake-up call is at six a.m. and roll call is at seven o’clock sharp. Your groups will be counted three times a day.”

  A successful escape meant understanding the camp’s precautions, and right now, as he concentrated on the security procedures, he felt a noose tightening around his neck. The security was stricter than he’d imagined. If he didn’t escape before the Nazis in the camp figured out he was a traitor, this whole plan was for nothing. Pastor Graf would be waiting to hear from him, not knowing what to do with the materials he sent.

  “I assume we will have a productive time together.” Then the major dismissed them. Each POW was handed a number corresponding to his assigned barracks.

  Built out of lightweight construction materials, the buildings had large windows, unglazed glass, and shutters. Falk stepped inside building number three and chose a cot near one of the large stoves, betting he’d be glad for the warmth even though he wouldn’t be staying long. Each camp bed had a towel, two blankets, and a pillow. He unfolded the blankets and moved the pillow to the head of the cot, his way of claiming it while he searched for the toilets.

  The path between the barracks was a wooden walkway, slippery with snow and ice. He passed the POW kitchen and a large mess hall, and farther down the path, found the latrine. Twelve washbasins with mirrors filled one wall across the room from two rows of toilets with no dividers, no stalls. Dobbs announced there were two hundred and fifty POWs in camp. Vying for a toilet and sink might get difficult.

  He washed at a sink. As more men filled the room, not only was German being spoken, but also Russian and Italian. If Falk were in charge, he would have separated them into groups based on their language. Housed together, the pressure of confinement aggravated by misunderstandings could easily lead to a disaster. But he was no longer a leader in charge of anyone.

  Back in his barracks, the men played cards, or wrote letters using supplies stacked on a desk in the corner. Falk traded two packs of cigarettes for a pocket-sized English dictionary. He thumbed through it, surprised by how much of the language he remembered from his school days. He was determined to find someone with whom he could practice speaking English, knowing if he were to blend in, he needed to know more than a few broken phrases.

  A POW entered the barracks. “The camp commander is making the rounds.” Moments later, Major Dobbs entered with three guards and the translator. One guard called everyone to attention.

  “You are here to work for the Brown Paper Company, squeezing all the pulpwood you can from these forests. You’re required to cut a cord per person, per day, for which you will be paid eighty cents in camp scrip. Use that in the canteen.” He unfolded a tan pair of army-issued pants and shirt and held them up, turning them back and forth. “You will wear these garments while on the job.” The pants and shirts were prominently marked on the front and back with PW in white paint. “You will be escorted to and from the cutting sites by armed guards. Once again, you are safer in the camp than you are outside. Failed attempts at escape are posted on the wall in the mess hall if you get curious. Three of those men are dead. Another five are in the stockade on bread and water for sixty days.”

  More obstacles. Wearing marked clothing and armed guard escorts. Falk’s mind spun through different scenarios, but without sleep, he struggled to form a clear path out of the camp. A day or two into the routine would help him make a decision.

  Dobbs looked around the room. “Get some sleep. Your day starts before the sun rises.”

  The men left, and Falk carefully sank back onto his cot. He was in no shape to hack at a tree with an axe. H
is ribs would never heal that way, and he needed to be able to cover a lot of area when he escaped.

  A group of men gathered at one end of the barracks. One called for quiet.

  A beefy-chested POW with a bulldog face spoke. “I am Erich Braun, this barracks’ controller. We were just told we are slave labor for the enemy.”

  Mumblings of agreement rippled through the crowd.

  “Any of you who cooperate with the Americans, or if for any reason you are deemed insufficiently dedicated to Nazism, you will find yourself in front of our internal court. We will honor the Führer’s vision of world dominance, even as we are held here. His ideology must prevail in our every action and thought.”

  He was disgusted. How anyone still followed Hitler’s ideals shocked him.

  Someone yelled “Heil, Hitler” and arms shot up in the gesture of respect. Falk faked a coughing spasm and held his ribs, keeping watch from the corner of his eye.

  Braun approached a man who failed to salute. In fact, he had turned his back on the group. Braun spun him around, and without a second’s warning, punched him in the nose. The cracking bones were heard throughout the barracks. The man grabbed his face as blood poured through his fingers.

  Braun leaned into him. “Heil. Hitler,” he growled, slow and clear. His arm shot out next to the man’s head.

  The soldier switched hands to cover his nose and slowly raised his bloody right hand. “Heil, mien Hitler.”

  Braun studied the soldier for a few minutes longer, and then turned to the others. “Sieg, heil!”

  A chorus returned the victory acclamation while Falk raised his arm and mouthed nonsense words.

  Braun returned to his cot, the closest to the front door.

  Falk hid his English dictionary under his pillow, mulling over this new problem. With rabid Nazis in his barracks, the danger of being killed lurked within the wired enclosure as well as outside. He’d have to walk a fine line in order to survive long enough to escape.