Five Days That Shocked the World: Eyewitness Accounts from Europe at the End of World War II (31 page)

It heightened for us the happy sense of liberation that filled the air, as the war news poured in, and made the pulses beat faster to see our own men going home, freed from the miseries of captivity and knowing that soon they would be with their families again after the long and bitter separation.

We also went to a camp of one thousand French civilians who had been deported into Germany to do forced labour. These poor fellows were in sorry straits after years of hardship, slave work and poor rations. Many of them had been tattooed for identification purposes.
4

Clementine was shocked to meet a Frenchwoman so brutalized by the Germans that she was no longer sure of her own name. “I think I know it now,” she told Clementine, after some thought, “but up to a week ago I used to think of myself by my number only.”
5
She showed Clementine her arm, with her camp number tattooed on it. Plenty of other women were in the same state, reduced to mere ciphers after years of slave labor for the Germans. As a major embarkation port, Odessa was full of such people as the war came to an end: Dutch and Belgian prisoners newly liberated from the Nazis, disparate Czechs and Slovaks, captured Hungarian and Romanian troops, Germans in ragged uniforms, Jews from Auschwitz. The camps were overflowing with displaced persons from all over Europe. Most were in a splendid mood that day, happy and cheerful as May Day was celebrated and the war was over and the news filtered through of Mrs. Churchill’s visit. All they needed now was a ship to take them home.

*   *   *

OTTO FRANK
was not one of those who met Mrs. Churchill, but he took great comfort from her arrival. Everyone in his camp was given thirty cigarettes in honor of her visit, and a double ration of chocolate. The cigarettes were particularly welcome, because they could be traded outside the camp for supplies of white bread.

Frank had been in Odessa since April 24. After their arrest in Amsterdam the previous August, he and his family had been deported to Auschwitz, where they had been separated on arrival. His wife had later been selected for the gas chamber, but had managed to escape to another barrack block, dying eventually of disease. His two daughters had been sent to Bergen-Belsen. Frank himself had been lucky to escape execution. He had been in the camp hospital, weighing just over a hundred pounds, when the Russians liberated Auschwitz in January.

The long journey home had begun in March. Frank had been taken initially to a refugee camp at Katowice, where he had enjoyed his first decent bath in months. There he had learned from another inmate of his wife’s death. No one knew anything of his children, so he presumed they were still in Germany somewhere, perhaps already on their way home.

The onward journey to Odessa had taken three weeks by train, meandering past the Carpathians via Tarnow and Czernowitz. Frank had traded a shirt for bread at one point and a blanket for apples. At other times he had been well fed by local people, Jews and Gentiles alike, who had given him what they had and refused any payment. He had been irritated to learn on April 17 that he was not to proceed to Odessa with the other refugees because he was German born (and had fought for the Kaiser on the Western Front). But the order had been rescinded a few days later and Frank had arrived in the port without further delay.

One of his shoes had split during the walk to the refugee camp, but Frank had taken it in his stride. With his bartering skills, he would soon find another from somewhere. He had had a bath and been deloused again when he arrived, and then fed by the Red Cross: “Butter, meat, cheese, jam, soap, egg, salmon, chocolate, tea, milk, oatmeal.” It all seemed like a dream, after Auschwitz.

Best of all, though, better even than Mrs. Churchill’s visit or the chocolate or the cigarettes, was the news that Otto Frank was about to go home. A ship was sailing in two days’ time, and his name was on the list. Another forty-eight hours and he would be on the Black Sea. A few days after that he would be back in Europe somewhere, liberated Europe, on his way to Amsterdam.

“I only hope to find my children back at home!” he had just told Swiss relations in a letter.
6
Still numb from the death of his wife, Otto Frank had nothing left now except his children. He missed them dreadfully, especially his younger daughter, Anne. It was only the thought of Anne and Margot that had kept him going during the last, bitter months at Auschwitz. Frank was praying to his God and keeping his fingers crossed that they would both be there, waiting for him, when at last he got back to Amsterdam.

19

OPERATION CHOWHOUND

OVER THE NORTH SEA,
Operation Chowhound had just begun, the American version of Operation Manna. The sky was full of Flying Fortresses heading for Holland with a cargo of food for the Dutch. After waiting so long for the weather to improve, the Americans were raring to go. Like the RAF, they had had enough of dealing out death and destruction over Europe. Dropping food to starving people was much more to their liking.

There was still heavy cloud over East Anglia as they took off, but the operation couldn’t be delayed any longer. Assured that the skies were clearer over Holland, the bombers formed up at low altitude and crossed the North Sea a few hundred feet above sea level. Their crews scanned the Dutch coast nervously as they approached, well aware that the Germans were still manning their antiaircraft defenses. As with the RAF, it had been arranged that a couple of bombers should fly ahead of the rest to test the Germans’ reactions before giving the all-clear. German guns tracked the aircraft closely to ensure that the Americans kept to the agreed route, but no shots were fired. Operation Chowhound went ahead as planned.

Flying from Snetterton Heath in Norfolk, Max Krell of the Ninety-sixth Bomb Group found it an unnerving experience. His aircraft came in so low over the Dutch coast that he could see the German gunners staring up at him as he passed. They could almost have thrown rocks, let alone fired their guns. The aircraft was flying even lower by the time it reached the drop zone at Ypenburg, an airfield near The Hague. It came down to four hundred feet, lowering its wheels and wing flaps at the same time to bring the speed down to a hundred and thirty miles per hour, about as slow as a Flying Fortress could go without stalling. The Dutch were pleased to see it, as Krell recalled:

Such signs of celebration we had never seen before nor since as the people hurried to retrieve their food from the sky. People waved at the planes, flags were everywhere and we had no doubt that the effort had been appreciated. Because of the unwieldy nature of the load, some packages didn’t drop cleanly and had to be kicked out of the bomb bay by our crew. Each package seemed to have a recipient soon after it hit the ground, no matter where it landed. A few were even observed being recovered from canals.
1

The Americans were dropping ten-in-one rations, boxes of military ration packs containing ten meals each for one man. Claude Hill, a member of the 390th ground crew, had persuaded the pilot of
Hotter ’n Hell
to take him along as a waist gunner on his first flight over enemy territory. He watched fascinated as the cardboard boxes fell into a canal, closely followed by the Dutch, who dived straight in after them. Others saw the boxes smashing into greenhouses or crashing through tiled roofs, a danger to life and limb. But the Dutch didn’t mind. Waving sheets and tablecloths, anything they could find, they were just happy to see the Americans as the Fortresses roared overhead.

After flying his share of combat missions, turret gunner Bernie Behrman was happy in turn to see the Dutch. Everyone in his crew felt good about it as they opened the bomb bays over Valkenburg airfield and dropped food instead of high explosives:

I could see German soldiers walking their station. We dropped the food. Because the food was in burlap bags, some got hung up on the shackles in the bay. This didn’t cause trouble, however, so we closed the bay and returned to base with a good feeling. The crew that was on board was a combat crew and did its share of blowing up things. After all the destructive missions we all felt very good about this mission.
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Ralph DiSpirito, a waist gunner on the
Maiden Prayer
, shared their enthusiasm. Holland at low altitude had lived up to his every expectation: all canals, windmills, and tulip fields on the way to Valkenburg. He remembered the tulips best, a wonderful sight from above.

“THANKS, YANKS.” The Dutch had spelled it out in flowers, clipping the fields of tulips into capital letters to show their appreciation. Some of the most hard-bitten airmen had tears in their eyes as they read the words and saw the waving crowds, so obviously glad to see them. But the most heartfelt response from the Dutch was spotted by a vigilant ball gunner, who immediately got on to his tailman over the intercom. “Close your eyes,” he told him. “You’re much too young to see this.”
3
On the ground below, already vanishing into the distance, a young Dutch woman had lifted the front of her dress and was waving it cheerfully at the Americans. She wore nothing underneath.

*   *   *

FOUR HUNDRED MILES AWAY,
General George Patton was en route to the newly liberated prison camp at Moosburg, just north of Munich. Flying down from Nuremberg, he had landed at an airstrip behind the front line and was driving the rest of the way in a Jeep. Moosburg was a prison camp for Allied officers and others, perhaps a hundred thousand in all, from a myriad of different nations. Thirty thousand of them were American.

The nearby town had been taken by the U.S. Army on April 29. The prisoners had watched ecstatically as what looked like U.S. tanks appeared in the distance, checking the camp out before returning to their own lines. The prisoners had known for sure that liberation was at hand when Mustang fighters from the U.S. Air Force flew low overhead, waggling their wings to let the prisoners know they were not forgotten. Cameron Garrett, a B-24 tail gunner before being shot down, had been one of the American prisoners longing for their own people to arrive:

All through the night we heard the sounds of loaded German trucks leaving the compound. They didn’t get far before there was a single explosion. No one could sleep, there was an unmistakable air of expectancy among every one of the 110,000 prisoners. German SS troops moved under cover outside the city in an effort to set up a defensive perimeter against the American attack.

Somewhere the German SS opened fire with small arms, the return volley comprised of heavy automatic weapons that dominated the confrontation. Having been ordered to stay in barracks, we needed no encouragement to remain low and keep our helmets on. Approximately one hour later, an eerie silence perforated the explosive air. I held my breath when I felt the vibration in the ground when our army tanks hit the ridge overlooking the camp and headed in our direction. Soon the sounds of the moving Sherman tanks could no longer be heard over the noise of screaming, cheering, crying and yelling in a dozen different languages.

The Sherman tanks of the Third Army came crashing through the fences of the compound. Every tank was immediately barraged by a ragged, emaciated, filthy multitude of POWs. When the German flag at the top of the Moosburg church was lowered, the men yelled at the top of their voices in jubilation. Just as quickly as they had begun, the entire mass fell silent when “Old Glory” was hoisted in its place. The newly ex-POWs immediately came to attention and saluted the American flag, regardless of their nationality.
4

Food had followed, showering down on the prisoners from the Sherman tanks. The crews pitched K-rations into the crowd like candy at a parade. It was as good as a Thanksgiving feast to Garrett and his friends. The Germans had surrendered, the prisoners were free again, the war was almost over. And now here was General Patton, old Blood and Guts himself, striding around the camp in his famous silver-buckled belt with an ivory-handled six-gun on each hip.

He had arrived at lunchtime, standing erect in his Jeep as it drove in through the gate. The whole camp cheered and didn’t stop until the old showman lowered his arms for silence. He gave them a short speech, the usual one about whipping the Germans all the way to Berlin. Then he descended from his Jeep and set off on a tour of the camp, meeting the prisoners and seeing the conditions for himself.

What he found did not please him. Conditions at Moosburg were nowhere near as bad as Belsen or Buchenwald, but they weren’t good, either. The camp was horribly overcrowded, and the only food in the past few weeks had come from American Red Cross parcels. Walking from hut to hut, stopping every now and then to talk to the men, Patton was not impressed. “I’m going to kill those sons of bitches for this,” he told one group of prisoners.
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He was sufficiently moved to shake hands with some of them, which he very rarely did.

Patton stayed half an hour and then went back to the war. The last the prisoners saw of him, he was on his way to Landshut, where one of his staff officers had been a prisoner during the First World War. From there, he was planning to push forward into Austria and Czechoslovakia, if Eisenhower would let him, seeing how far he could take his conquering army before the final whistle blew and the greatest days of his military career and perhaps also of his life came to a triumphant end.

*   *   *

TWENTY MILES
to the south, Lee Miller and Dave Scherman had arrived from Dachau to find that Munich had already surrendered to the Americans and the troops were busy settling in. There was no fighting to photograph, so they found their way instead to Prinzregentenplatz 16, a big old apartment building near the river. It was where Hitler had lived since the 1920s, whenever he was in Munich.

As Eisenhower had just said in a message of congratulation to the army, Prinzregentenplatz 16 was “the lair of the beast,” the place from which Hitler had built up the Nazi Party before coming to power. It was also where his niece Geli Raubal had killed herself rather than go on living with a monster. Overlooking a cobbled square, the building was comfortable, but nothing out of the ordinary. Hitler had occupied a single room at first, but later acquired the entire building. He had established himself in a nine-room apartment on the second floor, with his SS guards on the ground floor, next to the entrance. The basement had been turned into kitchens for the staff, with a bombproof air raid shelter beneath.