When We Were Brave

by Karla M Jay

  Wilhelm Falk

  Sparks POW Camp, New Hampshire - March 1944

  Large snowflakes fell around them as Falk and his group of twenty were nearly to the tree line where they would cut today. This was his third week working in the forest with this team. Today, as they hiked up the north face of the mountain, he was pain-free for the first time and no longer felt winded. The cutting area was too steep for the army vehicles, forcing the men to walk. Scrambling up the snow-packed slopes, carrying axes and two-man saws, was grueling and dangerous work.

  Commander Dobb’s mantra of cutting one cord per man per day was drilled into their heads and weary backs. Falk assumed the camp overseer must receive personal bonuses if he met the quotas for The Brown Paper Company.

  The work area suffered from a fire at some point, leaving the spruce trees stunted and tangled, with bare branches sticking out of the snow, like blackened arms reaching toward the men. Falk’s jacket was sweat-soaked from the climb, and he shivered from periodic chills but pushed on, half dizzy, yet keeping up with the others.

  He was relieved to spend seven hours a day away from the tensions in camp. Ideological differences widened the gap between Nazi and anti-Nazi prisoners, making the camp a dangerous place. Racial purity was a heated topic, and one that couldn’t be resolved. Anti-Nazis argued that, with the way Europe was settled, everyone has a mixed-race heritage. Nazis argued they descended from pure German stock. Arguments that Hitler was shortsighted ended in knife fights. Anti-Nazis claimed that building the Atlantic Wall along the western seaboard of the Netherlands used valuable resources the military needed on the battlefront. Nazis argued the Wall was needed to protect the lands Germany had conquered.

  Snitches gained favor from the Nazi loyalists in the form of extra smokes or canteen scrip. Early this morning, a Hitler supporter engaged Falk in a seemingly innocent conversation, trying to determine whether he was committed to the Führer’s cause. Falk remained neutral, having seen what happened to Nazi traitors. Many suffered savage beatings, and others were often offered broken bottles as substitutes for razor blades to facilitate their suicide. An eighteen-year-old bled to death in the showers, a broken butter knife stuck in his back. An obvious suicide, the Nazis claimed.

  With no reliable information from Germany reaching them, rumors and anxiety filled the POWs’ days. Were their families safe? Who was winning the war? Would anything be left of their homeland when they returned?

  Today, Falk’s group reached the work area and was set to felling fir and hemlock identified with marks of red paint. He breathed in the scent of freshly chopped wood as axes and saws dropped tree after tree. He handled an axe across from Renke Novak. They swung in an alternating pattern, one thunk resounding after the other. Like all the other workers, Falk and Novak wore jackets and trousers emblazoned with the large letters PW stenciled on their pant legs and jacket backs.

  “Got a letter from home,” Renke said, his breath visible in the cold air.

  Falk and Novak bonded over their anti-Nazi sentiments, but spoke of it only when they were far from the group or guards. Novak hailed from a small farming community outside Stuttgart and was married to a neighbor girl, who delivered a daughter he had yet to meet.

  “How’s your little girl?”

  Renke showed the photograph of his two-year-old child to him and anyone who stood still. “Talking up a storm according to my wife.” Then he raised his axe once again. The tree trunk cracked but didn’t fall.

  “That’s good.” Falk fondly recalled Hans talking early but Dietrich allowed his older brother to answer for him until Hans went off to school, leaving Dietrich no choice but to speak.

  “The wife’s not so good. Distraught.” His words came with the rhythm of the axes’ movements. “No milk. Meat. Electricity’s unreliable.”

  “But your mail’s getting through.” This worried Falk. What if their neighbor was collecting their mail in Düsseldorf and decided to forward it to the Netherlands? The possibility hadn’t occurred to him until now.

  “You’ve heard nothing?” Renke asked.

  Falk received the packages all the POWs obtained from the German Red Cross, but he hadn’t written to Klaus Stern’s wife yet because he didn’t know where to begin. All he knew about Stern was he was married. Although if Hartmann could be believed, Stern forgot about his marriage vows when they went whoring. Many soldiers carried letters from home, but in the pockets of Stern’s uniform, Falk only found packets of condoms, foot powder, and a woman’s garter.

  “I guess not every post office is in working order.” Falk swung extra hard and the tree began to tip away from them. “Here she goes!”

  “Timber!” Renke called out, the word the site boss insisted meant clear the hell away. The hollow thuds of axes, and the grunts of the laboring men, echoed through the trees.

  Focusing on hard labor calmed Falk, leaving his mind free to plan his escape. Aboard ship, he’d never solved how he would escape camp once he arrived, but he didn’t think it would take this long. The camp guards seemed less wary of the POWs with the passing of time. They’d become more casual during their patrols, especially in the woods. His barracks was no longer searched. But this harsh winter weather, coupled with rugged terrain, made each escape strategy he devised seem impossible when he planned the details.

  As his frustration grew, he slept less, upset with the passage of time, which meant thousands more were murdered in the extermination camps. When he slept, he had a reoccurring nightmare. His sons stood on a dangerous cliff calling for him. He ran in their direction, his feet slipping on something spilled on the ground. He tried to climb the cliff, only to discover it was made of stacks of naked bodies that rolled under his scrambling feet. He made no progress to reach his sons. They would die. The eyes of the dead followed him. Condemning, accusing. He’d awake in a sweat and check his hands for the blood that should be there.

  “Big bastard,” Renke said, pointing to the next tree in their section, which snapped Falk’s attention back to the forest. “One more to fill the quota.”

  “Let’s do it.” He flexed his cold fingers inside his gloves a few times before grabbing his axe.

  Renke swung and made the first wedge cut.

  This would be Falk’s last quota of pulpwood. He’d wasted enough time planning. The next clear day, he’d wear his uniform under his POW clothes, carry his hoarded food, and disappear into the thickets and underbrush. While on the Algonquin, he tried to picture the United States, the cities, and houses. He planned to hide in dark alleys and abandoned buildings but hadn’t envisioned vast tracts of unoccupied land. From scanning the area, he knew that beyond camp there were trees, lakes, and more mountains, which provided plenty of hiding places.

  He still wrestled with his reasons for wanting to personally deliver the Nazi materials directly to representatives of the president of the United States. Why not ask Pastor Graf to pass them on? Was he trying to redeem himself for not intervening at the death camps, trying to be the hero who informed the world as to what Hitler was really doing? This is what made sense to him. By handing over photographs and documents—many signed by Hitler’s hand—to the United States military, his firsthand accounts and explanations might carry more weight than if the government received the same documents from the pastor. Or anyone else without personal knowledge of the atrocities.

  The storm grew in intensity, and the dark-brown tree trunks around him faded into a blurry backdrop. The clacking of boughs overhead meant the wind had a plan of its own and wouldn’t be denied.

  Without reason, the boy with the shoestrings in Auschwitz, pushed to the forefront of his thoughts. The child’s eyes were unusual—one light brown and the other a piercing blue—both round and full of wonder. The stubble on his shaved head seemed to be the light-colored hair of a German child. When Falk first noticed the young boy handing out lengths of string on the arrival platform at A
uschwitz, the child looked German, but Falk couldn’t imagine a guard had brought his son into that hellish setting.

  When he enquired, an SS officer said, “His grandparents were Jewish, but we like his Aryan looks. Besides, it calms the Jews. They see a healthy child the moment they get off the train. No arguments when we move their younger children off to the left, assuming their child will get a job like this boy.”

  The boy said his mother worked in the building nicknamed Canada. The workers there opened the suitcases and sorted the prisoner’s belongings into huge piles of clothing, valuables, mementos, and toys. The clothing and toys were cleaned and shipped to stores throughout Germany, helping to alleviate shortages in the general population. Did the new owners feel the pain associated with each item? It was nonsense to think so, but he hoped some essence of each Jewish person was imbued in every article of clothing or piece of jewelry stolen from them. Falk was offered gold watches and rings with precious stones on many occasions. He begged off. “They should be saved for officers more notable,” he would say.

  When exhausted passengers reached the train platform, the boy pointed to the pair of shoes set in front of him and mimed tying the shoes together with a string he held. The simplest of deceits. You will get both of your shoes back. Look, we have an orderly process. To help paint an atmosphere of welcoming, the camp band, off to the side of the platform, attempted to play upbeat songs from the deportees’ country of origin. The boy with the strings sang along in a clear voice when the songs were Czechoslovakian. If anyone noticed his stiff, unnatural posture, indicating his act was performed under duress, no one reacted. After the new arrivals were processed and the platform empty, the child spent hours carrying thousands of shoes—forty to fifty pairs at a time slung over his small shoulders—to his mother’s building. Work shoes were thrown into a heap for the enslaved prisoners left alive.

  Falk often spoke to the boy, as much as two people could speak in languages unfamiliar to the other. To keep up his healthy appearance, the child was fed somewhat better than many inmates and dressed in clean clothes. Still, Falk often slipped him a candy bar or a bread roll, whenever possible. The child reminded him of his oldest son, Hans, at age seven, full of ideas and inventions he would work on when he grew up.

  Falk made only four visits to Auschwitz, all devastating, but none as excruciating as his last, just five months ago. He planned to find the child and hire him and his mother on behalf of Herr Schindler’s factory outside of Płaszów. Schindler operated an enamel goods factory seized from a Jewish owner, who was sent to the Kraków Ghetto. Falk knew Schindler was more than a factory owner, but never turned the man in. He would be in grave danger if his lie that Schindler asked to hire the boy and his mother was discovered. But he was willing to take that chance. Saving even one child would matter.

  That rainy day in October, Falk arrived full of optimism for the one good deed he was about to do, only to find the boy with the strings replaced by a much older boy, handing out the dirty twine. No one knew—or was willing to say—what happened to the blond-haired boy with one brown and one blue eye. But on that day, he finally learned the boy’s first name was Hiam.

  The Sparks foreman blew a whistle, startling Falk back to the present. The workday ended. The blizzard won. Was this his chance to disappear into the curtain of white swirling around them? Although he didn’t have his secret store of food, he had gone without food before. That wouldn’t be the problem. He wore a jacket over one layer of clothes and his hands were already frozen in his gloves, so he knew he’d die within hours if he escaped today.

  Knee-high snow made their trip back down the mountain difficult and hazardous. They reached the trucks and Jeeps, their transportation to and from camp. Falk stretched for the sidebar on the back of the truck bed but couldn’t close his hand around it. He stepped back and let others board as he rubbed his thighs to warm his hands. Finally, he pulled himself up and crawled inside, and turned to help the others. The canvas flap at the rear sounded like a cracking whip as it snapped against itself until two MPs set down their machine guns to tie it shut. After the POWs were loaded inside, the guards retrieved their guns and then retreated to the Jeeps with the other guards. He hoped the guards’ lack of concern about leaving an unattended rifle for a moment would soon work in his favor.

  Falk was bumped and jostled against the other POWs on the rough logging road, but relished the reprieve from the cold. Once they entered camp, he stood shivering on the parade ground for the day’s final count.

  Which came up one short.

  He groaned as the tally started again, and shifted his feet in place, thinking he might never walk again if he didn’t get his feet warmed up soon.

  After two additional checks, the guards determined who was missing. Falk knew the guy, a POW with a small head and mean little eyes, who always peered out from under a swath of blond hair. He’d worked like a piston engine, never stopping unless it was for a swallow of water. Obviously, he’d been in training, and his arm muscles had become massive from weeks in the forest.

  Wehrmacht training indoctrinated them with the conviction that prisoners of war were bound by duty to attempt an escape. The bulletin board in the mess hall documented the faces and stories of the eight who tried and failed, but beady eyes was the first to flee since Falk arrived.

  The POWs were ordered to their barracks and placed on lockdown. As Falk’s group passed the watchtower closest to the town, a guard hand-cranked the Klaxon horn, its undulating wail loud enough to warn the villagers of Sparks a prisoner was on the loose. Would the residents panic or sigh, and realize another POW was tempting fate?

  His jaws clamped tight, and he silently cursed. What bad timing. He was within a day of escaping. He’d worked on his English with a few friendly guards, who relaxed the rules of fraternization when they were in the forest. As a teenager, he spoke passable English prodded along by Pastor Graf who led their Christian Teen Group.

  He sat on his cot, and the weight of disappointment rested heavy on his shoulders. They’d be closely supervised again. Each day his escape was delayed, 10,000 more men, women, and children were exterminated for no valid reason other than their audacity to exist.

  Was he foolish to think he could do this without help? He had no way to contact Pastor Graf, with the censoring of the POWs’ letters. If he explained to the camp commander why he was here, he doubted Dobbs would pat him on the back and say, “In that case, let me personally drive you to Washington.” He scrubbed his hands through his hair, knowing if he did that, he’d likely be traded to German high command for an American officer and summarily hanged or shot.

  Disappearing into the forest wouldn’t work. He needed a new plan.

  By the next morning, Falk learned the locals were offered a fifteen-dollar bounty for the return of the missing prisoner of war, Harold Schmidt. The FBI, state police, and local sheriff departments in a fifty-mile radius joined the search. Although the storm ended, three feet of new snow hampered the hunt and surely affected Schmidt’s progress.

  Animated conversation in the showers went so far as to place bets on how long the solider would remain free. Some ventured that the POW was trying to return to Germany. Falk speculated the guy hoped to hide out and eventually blend into the large German population in the United States.

  To discourage others against escape, the camp commander punished everyone. Their diet was changed to bread and water. Commander Dobbs immediately closed their canteen. Well before dawn, Falk and the others were rousted from their warm beds to assemble on the parade ground, shivering in the cold, while the guards searched their barracks.

  An icy fog rolled in, and the lights in the village of Sparks were nearly lost in an eerie blur. The guards were stiff and formal again. All trust was gone. He counted off in the freezing darkness as the searchlight beams crisscrossed the area, making the frozen, white ground resemble a polished dance floor.


  The prisoner count added up, and they returned to barracks just as the guards left, carrying full sacks.

  Falk expected nothing less but felt deflated at the loss of his stash of food. His English dictionary was also gone. The other POWs complained of losing their hard-earned cigarettes and canteen purchases.

  Confined to barracks, Falk couldn’t put it off any longer. It looked suspicious that he wasn’t communicating with his wife. But he had a problem writing to Frau Stern, the wife of the soldier he was impersonating. From Stern’s army papers, he learned Stern had a wife named Helga and no children were listed. He stared at the blank paper, completely baffled as to what to say. Had Helga had a child since this soldbuch was first issued? Did the Sterns live in a house or an apartment? Raise chickens? Have a sick relative? The letter would be censored for any information that might aid the enemy, adding another layer of difficulty. He finally arrived at a solution and wrote about being held in the United States and that he was in good health. Concluding with, he could only pray she and the family were safe and bearing up under the rationing and deprivations. He trusted her to be the brave woman he left behind when he enlisted. He signed it: Your loving husband, Klaus. He used the address from Stern’s identification papers.

  His mind turned to Ilse and their sons. If they were somehow notified of his death, his personal effects and medals most likely arrived in a cardboard box with the army’s condolences. Imagining the pain and emptiness his wife and sons experienced if they received that news, gripped his heart. Would they be questioned by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler’s men? Falk should have been in Berlin, reporting to Himmler or Hitler about his secret postbox when he died in Italy. He’d never told Ilse about any of his experiences in the extermination camps, and said nothing about gathering information to use against Hitler and the SS. She would be clueless as to what he had been doing. Had he protected his family enough?