Behind Hitler's Lines (32 page)

“If ten thousand Russians starved to death at III-C,” Joe says, “it wasn't because there was nothing to eat but because the krauts wouldn't feed them. That farmer's parents died when the Wehrmacht took their produce and livestock. Guards told us that all Slavs were to be exterminated. Starving them to death was the most efficient way to do it. When the guards said that, they just looked at us as if we should understand. The farmer's parents understood. They let themselves die while they gave him all their food so he could survive. It was that simple.

“I read that right after the war the U.S. government asked Hollywood to reconstruct the Germans. Please don't make any more movies about nasty Nazis; don't always make the Germans the villains. We need American public opinion to support the new Germany as an ally against the USSR.”

The British felt similarly, that the looming threat from Stalin was justification to sweep the evil of Hitler under the rug. After V-E Day Montgomery said, “Uplifting and enlightening films are needed at once…. He who controls the cinema controls Germany.”

FROM MEMORY JOE CAN
diagram the layout of III-C: railroad track on one side, stone road on the other, with a creek beside it. Within a double fence of barbed wire, German buildings fronted on the road, separating several rows of American huts enclosed in another barbed-wire fence. The Russian compound, also set off by a fence, adjoined. Joe was among the first Americans transferred to III-C. More arrived after Market-Garden, and a flood after the Battle of the Bulge, but the Germans kept them in separate compounds so they could not learn the ropes from the old guys. Eventually the total number of Americans reached two thousand.

In setting up their compound they followed military organization, forming squads, platoons, and companies. Senior NCOs formed the chain of command; the lowest-ranking were hut commanders (six huts to a company), the highest being Master Sergeant Coleman from the 82nd Airborne. Joe never met him. Coleman and his small staff lived outside the compound by the stalag headquarters. That created some resentment at first, but they had to live where the Germans told them to, so if they were better off than other krieges, that was just an example of an old army acronym, RHIP—rank hath its priviliges.

There was another chain of influence, if not command, a democratically capitalist one headed by BTOs—big-time operators. They gained that status by being the shrewdest barterers or biggest winners at gambling. A big loser had nothing to pay off his debts except personal service, so he became what the British back at IV-B called a dog robber or batman.

“I don't know where
batman
came from,” Joe says, “but it wasn't the comic book. You might see a BTO private with a staff-sergeant batman who made his bunk, stood in for him at roll call, swept his hut, brought him chow—did anything else the BTO wanted. Now and then those roles would reverse after a big crap game. Coleman's chain of command had a lot of respect for the BTOs, more so than vice versa.

“Our first concern at III-C was the winter coming on. A
smart thing I did was throw my ditty bag on the top bunk of a three-decker. There was a small stove in the middle of the hut, and I knew the heat would rise. Also no one would climb over me and drop straw. I think it was at that point I considered myself an old kriege.

“I did all right in crap games but wasn't a BTO and, looking back, actually didn't want to be. BTOs pretty much lived in the present, accepted it, made the best of it, enjoyed the status. It could be very different from what they'd been in the army. I understood their point of view: if you had to be a POW, be a BTO. But for me escaping was all that mattered, so I used my hoard of cigarettes to get on the escape committee.”

Word evidently reached Coleman about Joe's efforts to break out of the boxcar. His application for the five-member escape committee was readily accepted. Three of them had to approve any escape plan before it went up to Coleman for the final go-ahead and support from the supply committee. During Joe's first month only three proposals were presented, two for tunnels—the classic British way—and one jail break. None was approved, indeed not a single vote cast in favor of any. Tunnels, the committee felt, were too slow, especially with the ground starting to freeze. Using force (jail break) needed enough “nonescapees” who would risk their lives to support it. To get a few escapees outside the wire required a full-scale riot inside. Lives were sure to be lost and everyone else punished. None of the committee thought krieges would sacrifice the way they had on D Day. Back then their attitude was save the world; now it was save yourself.

“When the Market and Bulge POWs came in we heard their slogan, ‘Win the war in ‘44.’ We told them that here it was’ Stay alive till ‘45.’ ”

Proposals were also rejected for want of an escape strategy when loose in Poland, the inherent problem with III-C. No one had a solution, just as Joe had not when he tried to pry his way out of the boxcar. Nor was there any precedent because no one in institutional memory had ever escaped from III-C. After a while proposals stopped coming in and the escape committee was dormant, but their deliberations had keened
Joe's thinking about the potential and pitfalls of an escape. Just as important, he had identified two men who looked like good escape confederates. Their names, as Joe remembers them, were Brewer and Quinn. He transferred to their hut, though that meant giving up his top bunk.

One of the first essentials for an escape was getting to know the Germans and their routines. The guard shifts were eight hours, one of which was at night when krieges couldn't leave their huts, but shifts rotated, so if Joe wanted to focus on a particular guard, he could talk with him every couple of days. Starting a conversation was no problem. Guards liked to practice English. Word was that several were planning their own escape, to get away from the Red Army and be captured by the Americans. Using his German name and a cigarette, Joe could get along with almost any guard who wasn't SS. The rule was, don't mess with the SS. Don't even try to talk to them, or you might get a smashed mouth. Besides the guards, there was a “ferret” in his compound, Sergeant Schultz, the only German Joe ever got to know. Their introduction was through a warning.

The pitiful Russians were herded around like sheep, taken out to labor details before dawn and returned after dark, worked to death while being starved to death. Schultz advised Joe about a new guard—don't go near the fence when he's on duty. One afternoon the Americans saw him in action. The Russians had been hauling garbage from camp headquarters when a whistle blew, the signal to get back to then-compound or be lashed there with bullwhips.

“One skinny little kid tried to scoop up potato peels from the bottom of a garbage pail and fell behind,” Joe recounts. “The master racist Schultz warned me about was a dog trainer—police dogs. He yelled something, let a German shepherd loose, and it sprang right for the jugular. The dog threw the poor kid's head back and forth till the neck was cut through and his head came out like a wine cork. The new guard had a belly laugh, and the kriege next to me threw up. He was sick all day.”

Schultz's job as a ferret was to roam around the compound
during the day, observe what was going on, and chat with krieges. He had been a World War IPOW himself. He made a daily report to the commandant, so the Americans knew why he was there but didn't mind. Schultz was a shrewd psychologist for offering tips like the one about the sadistic guard both for its apparent generosity and the chilling reminder of the penalty for disobedience. Schultz was a Bavarian, which provided an entree to speak with Joe about possible common ancestors. His wife lived with him in a cottage just outside the camp. They had two sons, one serving in Italy, the other last seen in France. He hadn't heard from either in months.

Joe hadn't received a single letter either. Schultz said he'd look into it and shortly advised that some mail had arrived at XII-A or IV-B (the return address Joe had used on postcards) but for some reason was sent back to the Red Cross. Schultz gave him an extra postcard and offered the hope that with a permanent III-C address he'd get a Christmas package. Schultz had gone outside channels to help Joe, who showed appreciation by giving him some Red Cross chocolate. So it wouldn't be seen as a bribe, Joe gave it to him to give to his wife.

Curfew rules were the same as at previous stalags, but power generators were scarce at III-C, causing frequent outages, so it was hard to keep the fence floodlit throughout a night. Schultz enforced the curfew, however, which was broken usually when diarrhea forced visits to the latrine. He solved the problem by putting a can in each hut. To prevent other curfew violations he loosed a pack of police dogs in the compound at night. If a hut door was closed, there was no problem, just the sound of them sniffing and growling as they roamed around. Brewer and Quinn decided to make friends with them. It took many nights of “Here, boy, nice doggy,” but then they could open the door when it was dark and watch the brutes think about entering. The biggest, a huge Belgian shepherd, was the one Brewer wanted.

They argued some about that. Quinn and Joe said let's take any that'll come in, but Brewer pushed them aside and kept calling for the Belgian shepherd. Because only Brewer was
willing to give up a Red Cross biscuit, he got his pick, one he named Heinz. At last Heinz trotted in, looked around, pissed on the stove, wagged his tail, and almost let Brewer pet him. They planned for the next evening. Quinn smuggled in a small coal shovel, and Joe gathered some kindling during the day. But that night was not Heinz's shift.

“We were sure disappointed, though Brewer didn't give up and spent most of the night calling quietly for the dog. Before I went to sleep I told him he'd have to improve his German because Heinz didn't understand English.”

Early the next evening Heinz came around. Brewer stood well inside the hut and called him. Joe was beside the door ready to slam it. Quinn was on the other side with the coal shovel. Heinz never knew what hit him. Four feet spread like he'd walked on ice. Heinz was still warm when the krieges bled and skinned him. Fur, guts, and bones went down latrines. In a Red Cross can the rest was slivered and broiled. What came out was three jerky steaks for Brewer, two for Quinn and Joe, a half each for their hut mates. The testicles were offered to a West Virginian, but he was insulted, so Heinz's future went into a latrine too.

His meat was stringy and tasteless, even as hungry as they were. Heinz wasn't very filling either, and a full feeling was what krieges craved most of all. As the three dognappers ate they talked about future canine ranching. Was the risk to grab more dogs worth the skimpy reward? Besides, Schultz might notice that Heinz was AWOL, so better to lie low for a while.

“I said Schultz would think Heinz went off with some Polish pooch,” Joe recalls. “Yeah, Quinn came back, but what about the next three or four missing males? I said when there's a bitch in heat, they go off in a pack. Okay, but why would they disappear one by one? I didn't have an answer for that. Then Brewer and Quinn got into it: every mutt removed was one less to guard the fences at night, so don't just think about dogs as food. I gave them each a cigarette because they were thinking about escape as much as I was.

“Schultz … What did he look like? About fifty years old but looked more like seventy. Maybe six foot, thin but with a
paunch. He wasn't a good poster boy for Goebbels. We watched his attitude closely after Heinz disappeared. He acted like nothing had happened. Still I felt he suspected that one hut had chowed down on canine fillets. He knew and we knew that we were not buddies. We were enemies whose job was to attack each other. It took a while before he counterattacked.”

American krieges in III-C, especially Airborne, constantly pushed the limits of camp regulations. Whereas earlier the Germans hadn't been much good at uncovering transgressions, in October 1944 it seemed that no one could get away with anything. Now far too many clandestine meetings were being busted, even those arranged by BTOs, whose security measures were the best. Guards had to be bribed and they could squeal, but the law of averages wasn't working. Men were being thrown into solitary on bread and water. With everyone's health so borderline this was more than punishment—it was life threatening.

The secondary duty of the escape committee was to prevent penetration by the Germans. Ferrets were open penetra-tors, pretty easy to neutralize, but it became clear that Schultz was also running something covert and effective against the Americans. The escape/security committee had a long talk about what could be going on. Krieges who looked like they might be collaborating were the first suspects. Coleman put out the word to rough them up. If they continued to be palsy with the krauts, beat them up. This was done, but the busts and punishments continued as before.

The committee then had to consider that there might be moles in the compound. A Ranger at IV-B had warned that the krauts' best opportunity for mole planting occurred during transfers between stalags. After Joe persuaded the committee that this had happened between IV-B and III-C, they pondered countermeasures. The one approved was to create kriege groups from all regions in the United States, create them openly for an ostensibly benign purpose. With the commandant's acquiescence, Coleman announced that there would be regional meetings to disseminate local news from home. Bring any mail you got, and read it to your buddies.