Desert Run
Page 36
The last prisoner was returned to custody on January 28, 1945. It was Kapitan Jurgen Wattenberg himself. For weeks Wattenberg had been hiding with two other POWs—and a bottle of camp-brewed schnapps—in a cave near Phoenix’s famed Biltmore Resort. Eventually tiring of his rugged quarters (his companions had already surrendered), Wattenberg walked to downtown Phoenix and rested for a while in the lobby of the Adams Hotel, where he attracted the attention of a bellhop. Realizing the bellhop was growing suspicious, Wattenberg left the hotel and asked the foreman of a street work crew for directions to the local railroad station. Upon hearing Wattenberg’s German accent, the foreman summoned the police, and what soon came to be known as “Arizona’s Great Escape” was ended.
In contrast to the actions of the three fictional POWs in Desert Run, the real German POWs harmed no one during their weeks on the lam. Other than a few petty thefts of food and clothing, the only destruction they wreaked was in a Phoenix elementary school basement where two of them had taken shelter. In a jesting mood, Heinrich Palmer wrote the following words in a school textbook: “This is a nice house for a prisoner of war on his way back to Germany!”
While those twenty-five Germans were on the run in the Arizona desert, the wheels of American justice were slowly grinding on seven other Camp Papago POWs—the confessed murderers of fellow POW Werner Dreschler. On August 25, 1945, at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, Helmut Fischer, Fritz Franke, Guenther Kuelsen, Otto Stengel, Heinrich Ludwig, Bernard Ryak, and Rolf Wizuy were hanged for Dreschler’s murder in the last mass execution to take place in the U.S.
NOTE: Relations between the prisoners and their captives were so warm at Camp Papago that several former POWs moved to Arizona after the war. In 1985 others flew back from Germany for a reunion dinner and tour of the former camp grounds. Several POWs still correspond with their old captors. Although an Oakland Athletics training field now occupies a portion of the former prison site, some of the German officer’s quarters used at Camp Papago still exist and are in use in various locations throughout Scottsdale, Arizona, mere blocks from the author’s home. They have become rental units, offices, and storage buildings for the Phoenix Zoo.
This former Camp Papago German officer’s barracks sat behind a McDonald’s fast food restaurant on Scottsdale Road for several years until it was purchased by a local historian. Along with other Camp Papago buildings, it is now being restored.
Sources
Wily Germans Elude Chase. Phoenix Gazette, Dec. 28, 1944
Arizona Walls: If Only They Could Speak, Judy Martin. Double B Publication, 1977
The Faustball Tunnel: German POWs in America and Their Great Escape, John Hammond Moore. Random House, 1978
The Crazy Boatmen of Arizona, Marshall Trimble. Crossroads, Vol. VII, No. 5. May 2000
“Flight from Phoenix,” Robert L. Pela, New Times, March 8-14, 2001
Tour of Papago Park POW Camp Site. (Brochure) March 31, 2001
“Christmas Memories of POW Escape,” Thomas Ropp. Arizona Republic, December 25, 2003
Papago Scout, newsletter of the Papago Trackers. No. 25. March, 2004
“Vet Traces POW Camp’s Lore,” John Leptich. Scottsdale Tribune, June 23, 2004
“One German POW’s Story,” Leigh Smith. Borderlands, El Paso Community College. September 24, 2004
“POWs in Papago Park,” Tammy Leroy. Phoenix Magazine, December 2004
Also of great use were the memoirs of R. James LeGros, of Prescott, Arizona, a former guard at Camp Papago.
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