The Forgotten

by Nathan M. Greenfield

  The latter part of the letter was equally important. After asking for updates on the family, he inquired as to whether his parents had received the $240 he had asked J.C. MacDonald (no relation) in England “to look after” for him. Although the money no doubt helped the MacDonald family’s stretched finances, MacDonald’s question was even more significant as an indicator of his emotional state. It told his family that, despite all he’d been through, he continued to value his role in their welfare.

  LATE OCTOBER 1943, ON THE ROAD SOUTH FROM VILLALAGO, ITALY

  COWAN HEARS HIS FATHER’S VOICE

  Two papers figured prominently in the hours before Cowan and George headed south toward the Allied lines in the company of eight former Italian soldiers making their way home. The first, placed in the pocket of Cowan’s jacket, now buried to keep the Germans from finding it, read: “The occupants of this house have given me food and shelter for a period of two weeks, during which time I was recovering from an injury” and asked the Allied soldiers to show “reciprocal consideration.”145 The second was a card with the picture of St. Domenico Abate, who died in 1031, the patron saint of Villalago, that Signora Iafolla pressed into Cowan’s hand just before he walked out of her house and endangered the entire village. Had the Germans discovered either paper, reprisals would have followed

  The homeward-bound Italians provided some cover, though not enough to obscure the four or five inches the six-foot-tall Canadians had over them, as well as useful information—for example, the spotter plane that alarmed the Canadians was likely searching for cattle or sheep the locals hid up in the mountains. But the Italians’ loud arguing and expressive hand motions that Cowan feared would draw attention to them during their discussion on whether to cross the bare Piano della Cinquemiglia (a five-mile-wide, 4,000-foot-high plain in central Italy) during the day or at night, alarmed Cowan; the opening up of a previously unseen anti-aircraft battery on a Spitfire settled the question in favour of those advocating for a night crossing. Then there was the fact that their leader prepared two fewer corn shucks (which they were to hold so that they might look like peasant farmers) than necessary, with the result that a German patrol noticed George and Cowan and shot at them as they crossed a road. Luckily, in the gathering dusk, the Germans missed the zigzagging airmen. Thus Cowan’s relief when one morning they woke up to find that the Italians had pushed on without him and George.

  After about a week of avoiding increasingly thick German patrols and memorizing landmarks near where anti-aircraft guns were located so that Allied forces could later bomb them, Cowan and George divided their last square of Red Cross chocolate. “Scarcely willing to swallow, I let it melt slowly on my tongue and savoured the last taste before allowing it to trickle into my starving stomach,” recalled Cowan. For days they’d travelled at night and avoided villagers and farmers; now, however, they had no choice but to risk revealing themselves. What struck Cowan about the family standing in their farmyard was their lack of “surprise or alarm” when the two shaved but filthy escapers stepped out of the wood. George explained that they were Canadese and asked for food. The farmer gave them bread and cheese but was too frightened to let them stay.

  Like almost every other Canadian POW, Cowan was not a career soldier. He had stepped onto the stage of history yet remained at heart a civilian, willing if necessary to sacrifice himself to defeat the enemies of his way of life, though when sleeping on the cold, damp Italian ground more likely to dream of being in his sweetheart’s arms than of performing heroic deeds in battle. The ache he felt for her became all the more painful near noon on the next to last day of October when, shortly after the sun began to warm the air, he saw a young couple lingering by the well near a picturesque cottage.

  George timorously approached them, but before he had uttered three Italian words, the young man interrupted, “So you are from England, British 8th Army, I reckon?” Nonplussed, George could only answer “Yes,” with Cowan quickly adding, “I’m a Canadian, RCAF pilot.” If anything, the young couple was in even greater danger than the escapers because the young woman was the daughter of Carlo Bergamini, the Italian admiral who was killed by a German air attack as he sought to surrender the Italian fleet to the Allies; the young man was a Vatican lawyer. He told Cowan that the Canadians had driven the Germans out of Campobasso, some 50 miles to the south, and were now somewhere north of that town.

  The next day, Cowan and George learned that the Canadians weren’t as far north as the Sangro River, but the Germans were. Risking being declared a spy, Cowan made pinpricks on his map to mark the anchor of the Gustav Line. Built by Organisation Todt, this German defensive line cut across the peninsula anchored in the west by the mouth of the Sangro River, which on the night of 31 October, Cowan and George waded across, each holding their clothes above their heads, after they crawled away from a sentry who gave himself away by lighting a cigarette in the moonless night.

  As he dressed, Cowan inexplicably heard in his head his father intoning the familiar line of the 23rd Psalm; the words “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death” never seeming more real to this son of the manse. After the war, Cowan learned that at about the same time as he heard his father’s voice, his father, the pastor of a Methodist church in Manitoba, was, as he was every day, on his knees in his study reciting the psalm “for the boys who went to war.”

  EARLY NOVEMBER 1943, LOURDES, NOVA SCOTIA

  MACDONALD KNOWS HE CANNOT WRITE ABOUT WHAT HE’D SEEN

  If the person who stamped Geprüft 83 at Stalag Luft III, where the airmen’s mail was censored, had a sense of humour, the censor likely cracked a smile upon reading MacDonald’s 23 October postcard, on which he wrote that he was “on the permanent staff here [at the Dulag Luft] for a while.” In fact, what Ian was telling his parents, who wouldn’t receive the card until the following April, was that he had joined the sickbay staff at Dulag Luft.

  Even after seeing at Fresnes Prison how the Gestapo could break a body, MacDonald was astonished at the injuries he saw and about which, of course, he could not write. “It’s the burns that stand out,” he says. “Even though these poor men had already been in hospital for some time, the burns and scars were heartbreaking. In their disfigured faces, many stretched and frozen by scar tissue, the absence of eyebrows and lashes made them seem almost alien.”

  10 NOVEMBER 1943, NEAR CAMPOBASSO, ITALY

  COWAN AND GEORGE MEET A FREELANCER FOR THE CANADIAN ARMY

  At first, George was delighted to meet the two British 8th Army sergeants who had teamed up with several Italians heading for their homes further south. The soldier named “Red” convinced the Italians to allow Cowan and George to join them for the night. Neither their shared nationality nor the fact that the three were all captured at El Alamein was enough to make the two sergeants share their food with George, let alone Cowan. After finishing the little food they had, Cowan and George ate potatoes found in a field and roasted over an open fire. Cowan knew that the code that bound escapers together pertained only to men who had escaped together, so it wasn’t this that made him wary of the desire of Red and the other sergeant for Cowan and George to join them to reach Allied lines.

  Rather, in addition to feeling that four men who didn’t look Italian were more conspicuous than two who didn’t, he was unimpressed with the Tommies’ vigour. Before asking to join him and George, they had decided to wait for the Allied line to come to them. When Cowan asked what Red and the other soldier would add, George answered, “Not a Tinker’s damn.”146 And in the pre-dawn darkness, Cowan and George slipped silently out of the camp.

  Wracked by diarrhea, the acidic remains of which he cleaned as best he could with some of the thousands of surrender leaflets littering the ground, Cowan, who was also infested with fleas, leaned heavily on George and was thankful for his comrade’s willingness to share his water bottle after Cowan emptied his in an effort to ward off dehydration. Toward dusk, they spotted a group of Italians and wondered if t
hey were the same group that had left Villalago with them. Driven by the need to refill their water bottles, George called out, “Inglese … Canadese,” and for the second time in a week was nonplussed by the response: “I am Giovanni; I am working with the Canadians at Campobasso.”

  Had they known that the Germans were offering 1,800 lire for each downed airman (when the average factory worker earned 29 lire per day), the escapers would have been more reticent about trusting this man who said he’d been tasked with picking up escaped POWs and directing them to Canadian lines. But neither was in much shape to refuse Giovanni’s offer to lead them to a safe house. Fortunately, the offer turned out to be genuine, and the farmer and his wife at the house gave them hot soup, bread and clean hay to sleep on, in a loft.

  The next morning they listened intently as Giovanni gave them directions that would take them around villages and German positions; since his directions were based on landmarks, they would have to travel during the day. After arranging for them to spend another night resting, Giovanni asked them for a favour. Cowan readied to write out a paper attesting to the help he’d given them. Instead, the Italian asked that they shave with the razor and basin of water the family had offered to provide. Their gaunt faces and bony cheeks revealed by their razor strokes didn’t surprise them. But neither man was prepared for the pallid skin he saw reflected back in the mirror, nor the deep shadows under his eyes.

  Even though he’d washed the sores on his feet and covered the hole in the sole of his shoe with leather the farmer gave him, Cowan found walking agonizing. Only the promise that each step brought them closer to Canadian lines sustained him through the morning, during which they saw Germans destroy a bridge and even found themselves walking along a road following a German officer. Near midday, Cowan spotted a small white cigarette box on the ground. He didn’t care that it was empty; what mattered were the words “Sweet Caporal,” which told him a Canadian had been there. As dusk fell and Cowan’s strength ebbed, George started to lead him to a stand of trees a few hundred yards away, where they could shelter for the night.

  They had taken only a few steps toward the trees before a voice called out, “Halt!” Recognizing the Canadian accent behind the words “Who are you guys?” Cowan answered “Canadian pilot—British officer.” After confirming their identities with a few random questions, the Canadian sergeant called to his commander some miles back in Campobasso. The officer who agreed to send a Jeep for them was named Captain Farley Mowat.147

  12–13 NOVEMBER 1943, STALAG III-A, LUCKENWALD, GERMANY

  REID TURNS DOWN A GERMAN OFFER

  The two weeks in the hospital during which he slept between clean, white sheets recovering from malaria was now a memory all but obscured by the more recent experience of freezing in a cattle car filled with dysentery-ridden POWs going through the Brenner Pass into captivity in Germany.

  At Stalag III-A, the intelligence officer who came into Reid’s small concrete cell provided the opportunity for Reid to crack a smile when he asked about a new Canadian tank. “How much do German generals tell their privates?” answered Reid. Even more amusing was what the German said after he explained that he spoke English so well because he’d lived in Canada before the war: “Win or lose, I’ll go back to Toronto. I have a corner lot there, and I’m going to build a gas station on it.”148

  His bonhomie evaporated, however, when he threatened to have Reid shot if he didn’t start giving straight answers, and when he tried to entrap Reid by leaving his Luger on the table well within Reid’s reach. Bizarrely, the would-be entrepreneur’s friendliness returned when he offered Reid the opportunity to join in the Reich’s fight against the Russians after having two weeks of leave with good food and all the girls he might want.

  16 NOVEMBER 1943, PARIS

  LUCIEN DUMAIS AND RAYMOND LABROSSE RETURN TO FRANCE AS MI9 AGENTS

  Raymond Labrosse’s first words after stepping onto French soil as “Marcel Desjardins” were “Laissez ça tranquille!” which warded off an overeager MI9 operative who had bent down to pick up the suitcase carrying the nascent Shelburn Line’s link to London.149 Like “Lucien Desbiens,” the erstwhile mortician from Amiens, Desjardins, whose documents attested to his career as an electronics salesman, had been to France before. The first time was as a student before the war, the second time as “Paul,” a radioman and then co-organizer of Oaktree, an escape line affiliated with the same Pat Line that spirited Lucien Dumais out of France not long before it was betrayed by Roger (Leneveu) Le Légionnaire. Because of this, the Gestapo had at least one picture of Labrosse and some information about “Paul,” who, after Oaktree was broken, narrowly avoided being captured in Paris before leading 27 “parcels” through France to Spain.

  The Germans also had Dumais’s picture and name, though they were in the Wehrmacht’s Dieppe files. After returning to England from Dieppe, Dumais served a four-month stint in North Africa as an observer with the British Army before being recruited by MI9. Upon accepting the mission to return to France and establish the Shelburn Line, Dumais’s name joined Labrosse’s on the “Q-List,” servants of His Majesty the King about whom no information was available.

  The former Fusiliers Mont-Royal sergeant major outranked the Ottawa-born Labrosse and would lead their mission, but in the month they had to get to know each other, Dumais had a lot of catching up to do. First, he needed to learn how to fold, then use, a parachute. And each man had to learn his new identity so that it fit like the old suit of clothes he wore when, after what would be three aborted flights, their Lysander touched down in a small field outside Paris on 16 November 1943.

  23 NOVEMBER 1943, BERLIN

  FATHER DESNOYERS SURVIVES A MAJOR BOMBING RAID

  The science of bombing was not taught at the Oblate colleges. Yet after years of newspaper reports of bombing raids pummelling German cities, Father Bernard Desnoyers’s beloved scholasticates likely knew more about what awaited him as he set out from Milag und Marlag Nord with a guard to replace Father Charbonneau (who had been in Poland for 14 months) than did Desnoyers himself. His guard would have told him that the trip would be long because Berlin had been paralyzed by a heavy bombing a few nights earlier. On the 20th, both English and French papers carried Associate Press news that “A record force of nearly 1,000 RAF and RCAF bombers ravaged Berlin and Ludwigshaven [sic] with 2,500 tons of bombs,” causing fires that raged for more than 12 hours. Despite wartime information-misdirection, the reporter was close to the mark; the actual number of bombers was 835 and he had intuited that “an all-out campaign to obliterate Berlin and smash Germany’s war sinews” had begun.

  As Desnoyers’s train neared Berlin at 7:30 p.m. on 22 November, the clouds glowed from the thousands of searchlights that combed the night sky looking for the bomber. The staccato bursts of thousands of anti-aircraft guns and resulting flak in the 40-mile-wide arc around the city washed over Desnoyers’s train as it arrived in the station. Moments after climbing down to the platform, his guard hustled him into the crowd, making for the station’s bomb shelter. Meanwhile, bomb aimers in 750 planes, including those belonging to three Canadian squadrons—428, 429 and 434—counted down the seconds before releasing their payloads.

  Earlier in the war, Desnoyers had been shocked by the power of one bomb exploding several hundred yards away. Now he found himself in a shelter filled with frightened men and women in a city that, in just over 20 minutes, 2,500 tons of high-explosive and incendiary bombs rained down upon. The well-designed shelters offered adequate protection against all but a direct hit, though nothing lessened the terror that began with the roar of the first explosions. Desnoyers emerged into a Berlin that was utterly changed. Some 1,750 people were dead or dying; 7,000 had been injured. Close to 200,000 were homeless, including those who had lived in a six-story building across from the station that, like the far end of the station, “burned like a torch.”150 Such famous areas as the Tiergarten, the fashionable Unter den Linden, the diplomatic quarter and important bui
ldings including the Ministry for Weapons and Munitions and the Waffen-SS’s administrative building were smouldering rubble made darkly visible by the light from thousands of fires reflected down from the clouds. As they made their way through the shattered streets, the priest and millions of Berliners—who, despite a dozen years of Nazi rule, were in the main Lutherans—could not help thinking of the end time foretold in Revelation.

  Told that the station in the eastern part of the city, where they were to board a train to Breslau, Poland, had been destroyed, Desnoyers’s guard decided they should spend the night at a public shelter, which was packed with hundreds of men, women and children, now refugees in their own city. Through the night, the cries of terrified people and the sounds of crumbling buildings filled the air.

  The next morning, Desnoyers and his guard walked through the city. The devastation was so great that even Nazi Propaganda Minister Goebbels said, “Hell itself seems to have broken loose over us.”151 They passed knots of dazed people, many muffled in scarves and covered in grey dust from the collapsed masonry, standing among the ruins in the ravaged cityscape. As they made their way five miles outside the city to a working train station, here and there they saw amid the rubble a facade, its empty windows suggestive of a vulture and its blackened stone recalling the blasted remnants of trees in that place called No Man’s Land.