Behind Hitler's Lines

by Thomas H. Taylor

  On and on like that. It is the singular talent of professional interrogators to come up with so many questions to fill so many hours. Joe's had been trained on British POWs and didn't know much about Americans. Late in the sessions Joe would come semiawake and notice silent stares, as if the lieutenants were examining a new, perplexing species.

  Everything in Joe was stiffly hurt. It didn't help to pass out; right afterward the pain was worse. When he fell off the stool, guards were allowed to administer kidney punches, something they enjoyed, if only to break the tedious routine. As hours crept on, the interrogators had to keep deciding whether he was conscious enough to understand questions. If not, there was no point in continuing and it was off to the stall. What the lieutenants wanted of Joe was that he be very weak and agonized but still conscious: a fine line, a close modulation in which their professional pride was expressed in enough stamina to surpass Joe's.

  All Joe prayed for was that it would stop. Half his consciousness was in confrontation, the other in episodic prayer. He'd gone down the “no response” path because any other way meant the pounding questions would continue without end. They would anyway, but he was locked into a position beyond empathy, an unrecoverably altered state of mind.

  THAT'S THE WAY the hunt went for a period of days. They'd revive Joe to a point where he understood questions. Then bad cop would mock him: “What harm is there telling us where your ancestors came from?” “We know you don't have any secrets, a mere technician like you. The guards here have more rank.”

  Then good cop: “I can't stand to see you suffer so much! I taught humanities at Heidelberg. You must be a conscript. Aren't you? I was too. You've been wounded, you've been captured—”

  “Twice!” bad cop interrupts. “He's a bungling fool.”

  “He's right, Joseph. You have been foolish about your situation. If I were captured, I'd tell the Americans anything I've asked you. It's true. My army permits that. They'd want the Americans to understand me, just as I want to understand you. Germany has been at war a long time. We know what's important, what's not. Do you know what's most important? Surviving the war. No matter how it ends, we must survive so that the world can be better afterward. I want you to survive. We've been together a long time now. There's something about you…. I want you to survive!”

  Bad cop rose in a rage. He started arguing with good cop, at first in English, about how Joe should be tied up and thrown into the pigsty. Good cop kept looking at Joe with sad eyes while he held up his hand. He seemed to outrank bad cop. That made bad cop even more angry, and he shouted to the guard, “What would you do?” They stepped forward so Joe could see them give the thumbs-down.

  He became convinced that good cop was his only protector. In a cursing argument bad cop was sent away, then good cop turned to say, “I can't do this any longer. I'm going to get you some food and drink.” He gave that order to a guard. German soldiers don't give their officers any back talk at all, but this one recoiled and muttered something before he left.

  Good cop got Joe off the chair, steered him around the desk to where bad cop had sat. Grumbling, the guard came in with a plate on a tray. He tossed down a knife and fork while Joe stared at steaming heaps of chicken dumplings, baby potatoes, and red cabbage.

  “You need to drink first,” said good cop, setting down a tall cold glass of apple juice.

  Joe feared it was spiked with truth serum but gulped it down. He wanted to drop his face into the food and suck it up, but good cop reluctantly slid the tray to the other side of the desk. He kept his hand on it, as if eager to slide it right back to Joe.

  “I'm taking a great risk to feed you, Joseph. The other lieutenant is going to report this to my superior. I must prove to him that I've acted correctly. Just tell me anything you want: your hometown, your public school, your salary—anything at all.”

  “My name is Joseph Robert—”

  “A little more, please. You see, if I can show my superior that humane treatment works … You're the first prisoner I've acted this way to! That's my meal in front of you. Think of the other prisoners. If my superior sees that there is just a little cooperation from you, he will permit me to feed the others. Joseph,” he said softly, “do it for them.”

  Joe could not help crying. As he rubbed his eyes he realized he must have cried before, but he couldn't remember when. Good cop gripped his shoulder consolingly. He drew the tray over so Joe could smell the rising aroma. Something made him look up at the two guards. They were watching like chemists waiting for titration. That's what made him push the tray away.*

  Good cop's reaction was immediate. Joe was thrown into the pigsty as bad cop had recommended. When he was hauled out for the next session Joe knew there would be a climax because he was in some kind of fever, drained of everything except a wild faith, not a strong faith at all but one combining what he believed about God, his family, his country, his Currahees.

  And he says today, “Some people call that corny. Isn't corny something that's so true no one thinks about it anymore? You do when you're falling over the edge.”

  Joe can't say that he had faith in his faith. Any minute he could have cracked and spilled his guts—that's admitted. What faith did was mute the little voice telling him to compromise: it's not that important; the most important thing is to survive (good cop is right); no one will blame you, no one outside this kitchen need ever know.

  The next session Joe knew he couldn't withstand such temptation again. Caked with pig filth, he faced a new team of interrogators with handkerchiefs around their noses. Early on he fell off the chair and kicked at the guards who put him back. He spit at the good cop, refused to hear any siren song. Bad cop was very much into his role. Joe snarled at him, not giving even name, rank, or serial number. A power emerged in him, a strength like that of a drowning man just before he goes under for the third time.

  The sisters at Saint Joseph's were very strict if he ever used profanity. Joe didn't much, not even in the army. But during that last session he yelled at the interrogators that they were sons of bitches. The next thing he remembered was about a week later.

  * The Gestapo's extensive experience with torture as a means of extracting worthwhile information had proven that insufferable pain was most often counterproductive; that is, that the victim would say anything for relief, whether truth or lies, and the two were nearly impossible to distinguish even by subsequent interrogation. Consequently, a combination of relentless physical and psychological pressure was demonstrably more effective than thumb hanging when information from the victim was the aim—a valuable tip the Gestapo passed on to the Wehrmacht as a professional courtesy. That didn't apply when a confession was the aim, and any combination of medieval and modern methods was recommended to obtain it.

  * Joe still wonders if he should have eaten the food—in return for making up something like the name of his high school was Princeton—talking his way through a meal, rationalizing that the food would have made him stronger, better able to resist. Over the years Joe has thought through that scenario. It might have meant a temporary reprieve, but then the Germans would have put him in a different category and the questioning would have gone on forever, and psychologically he would have been weaker. He faults no other POW who went another route, but for himself he had the great dread that any other way would have led to the paymaster jumps and vitiated all his previous resistance. The bedrock of his mind was an understanding that there is no return to virginity.

  CHAPTER NINE

  MUSKEGON

  THE WAR HAD ALREADY BEEN A FEARFUL ORDEAL FOR JOE'S parents, William and Elizabeth. Son John was wounded on New Guinea, eventually to receive a medical discharge. Bill, in the air corps but on the ground in England, had unknowingly been Joe's cover for the paymaster jumps. The youngest boys, Robert and Richard, lived at home waiting to be caught up in the draft, which lowered the bottom of the age barrel to seventeen as four theaters of war—northern Europe, the Mediterranean, China-Burma-India, an
d the Pacific—demanded an ever-expanding pipeline to replace tens of thousands of Johns and Joes.

  General Marshall made it his practice to submit regularly to President Roosevelt the number of Americans KIA in the previous twenty-four hours. One day that list included Marshall's stepson, killed in Italy. Before V-J Day fifteen million youths would find themselves in uniform; three hundred thousand would appear on Marshall's lists.

  Celia, the remaining Beyrle daughter, married and had two children before Joe went off to war. Besides her, both his grandmothers were in Muskegon to help tend the home fires, where Dad was even more the central family figure. On the living room wall he displayed a world map pinioned with national flags to show fluctuations of the war. From newspapers and radio he became the authority and interpreter of all that happened overseas. As such he was also a buffer between alarming news and the women's worries.

  Despite censorship and because of brother Bill, the family knew Joe was with the 101st and were sure he had taken part in the “mighty endeavor” of Overlord. Like everyone else, they had heard Roosevelt's D Day invocation with that phrase and like all of America had stood silent as bells tolled from every church. The Beyrles hurried to Saint Joseph's to offer prayers. It was so crowded they had to stand.

  THEN BEGAN THE LONG wait of dread. Pre-D Day V-mail had been held up in case the invasion was significantly delayed, but in mid-June letters began trickling back to the States. In Muskegon, a town then of some thirty thousand, the arrival of V-mail was widely and quickly known. There was none from Joe.

  The first communication about him was official, a telegram dated July 7, fully a month after D Day, from the War Department (today the Department of Defense). Mrs. Beyrle couldn't open it; she had to ask Richard.

  “Joe's a prisoner of war, Mom.”

  She sat down with a shudder, read the telegram several times herself before calling her husband at work. The parents reminded each other that they should be thankful and bless God. Then Mom made fitful calls to find out how food could be sent to Joe, whom she remembered as ever hungry. There was a War Department phone number for such requests, but of course they were futile. Only letters could be sent to Joe; and besides, in his case no POW address had yet been provided by the International Red Cross (IRC). That would come, she was assured, once Joe was delivered to a permanent prison camp, what the Germans called a stalag.

  In September, by telegram, came a crushing correction: Tech-4 Joseph Robert Beyrle, Serial Number 16 085 985, previously reported captured on 10 June 1944, had instead on that date been killed in action. Mrs. Beyrle, whose health had weakened since Pearl Harbor, was bedridden for several days. The reason for the contradictory official reports was that Joe's identity had been stolen by the Germans.

  Thanks to Captain Harwich's escape from the marshes, word reached the 101st of Joe's first capture. Paperwork on the status of casualties was not sorted out till the division returned to England in July, at which time Joe was reported captured on 10 June and his family so informed. Then-telegram from the War Department included the caveat that his POW status had not yet been confirmed by the IRC, that is, that the preoccupied Germans hadn't completed their paperwork either.

  It remains unexplained why the 101st considered Joe to be a POW when he was last seen, by Harwick, loose in the marshes. The appropriate status in those circumstances would seem to be “missing in action” (MIA). Probably someone like Jack Brown, after he escaped from Starvation Hill, later confirmed that Joe was again a POW.

  Months passed, the summer months of 1944 when Patton won his fame racing across France. In September, with the Western Front approaching Germany's frontier, the battlefields of Normandy were being cleared of their dead, interred in temporary cemeteries. One such body, shattered by heavy-caliber fire, wore an American uniform and Joe's dog tags. The 101st was about to jump into the Netherlands. In Normandy there was no one from the 506th to confirm or refute that the mangled corpse was Joe's.

  In Muskegon three pennants, each with a blue star, hung proudly in the living room window for view from the street, designating how many Beyrle boys were in uniform. Their father was supervising twelve-hour shifts, seven days a week, at Continental Motors. On his way to work he went down to the draft board that had produced the pennants. He brought a blue-star pennant with him. Very quietly he asked to exchange it for one with a gold star. The draft board workers, all local people, surrounded him in the love of tears. That's how death notices circulated in Muskegon, how “Gold Star Mother” became part of America's World War II lexicon.

  Nothing needed to be said, for the pennant said it all. The war effort was consumingly intense but paused with each appearance of a gold star. A priest was at the Beyrles' door before the tragic symbol had hung for an hour. Every one of the sisters who had taught Joe came around to speak about him. The Muskegon Catholic community was ethnically divided, each with its own parish and school: Irish, Italian, French, and German, the last being the smallest. They united to console the family. The Beyrles spoke at length with clerics they had never met, but it was the teaching sisters who said the most and what was most remembered.

  Neighbors offered words too, and merchants Joe had worked for briefly, nearly unknown by the family. They gave near-eulogies but were frank, as if by describing Joe in living terms they were keeping him alive. He could have been a B or even an A student but didn't apply himself so long as he could get by with C's. Yes, the parents nodded, that was their son. Though he had been voted Most Obvious Temper, he was well behaved in school, Sister Angelique, the mother superior, assured them—Joe took out his temper in athletics. Please tell me more, Mom asked each sister, until memories were exhausted like those of a long-ago movie. To continue talking about Joe kept him here, where he'd started, where he had rooted, where he would return at war's end, under America's flag.

  The parents could delay but not prevent his inevitable slipping away, but not before Muskegon paid its tribute in an expression of unity and finality. The Chronicle requested a picture for the obituary. His parents could not bring themselves to reopen Joe's bedroom, the door to his truncated past. Robert and Richard were sent in instead to retrieve Joe's high school diploma for the funeral mass and the best picture of him they could find. It was Joe in army khakis and tie, featured in a double obituary next to Muskegon Marine Sergeant Emery Reagan, Jr., twenty-four years old, killed on one of the Mariana Islands. Reagan was survived by a son he had never seen. Both his and Joe's pictures were called Hollywood handsome.

  Joe's funeral mass was on September 17,1944, exactly one year after he'd arrived in England. Saint Joseph's Church overflowed. In the homily the priest spoke of how there are words like orphan and widow for the bereaved, but no name for the parent who has lost a child. It wasn't meant for children to die first, but in war they do, and that must be accepted. Each note of “Taps” seemed a tug to let go, acknowledge he was gone, but Mrs. Beyrle clung to Sister Angelique's scriptural reading at the mass: “… though he were dead, yet shall he live.”

  THE PRAYERS HAD BEEN for the repose of Joe's soul. That was premature, as if a reproach from God that the faithful were praying too small. On October 23 Mr. Beyrle was called to the phone at work. He could hardly hear over the roar of his assembly line. A Major Reidy identified himself; he was in some personnel office at the War Department. In bureaucratic language but with a tremor in his voice, Reidy advised that a message had been received from the International Red Cross that Joseph Robert Beyrle, Serial Number 16 085 985, was a prisoner of war held by the Germans.

  Dad had to sit down, as much from anger as shock. No, he replied, that message had been sent before. The War Department had corrected it. Joe had been killed in the cause of the liberating invasion. The secretary of war and General Marshall had so written.

  This was a further correction, Major Reidy assured him, because this latest message was from the IRC, who never confirmed anything unless it came from the captor's government.

  The switchb
oard operator at Continental noticed that Mr. Beyrle was shaking when he put down the phone. He told her why. A replacement supervisor was pulled off the line. Word traveled fast along it. Those who couldn't pat his back pumped their fists and turned renewed to tasks. No, Continental's vice president ordered, don't call home, Bill, go home. Mrs. Beyrle's reaction can only be imagined because no one else was there when he opened the front door at such an unexpected hour.

  Celia recalled how men did not express emotion as openly then as they do now, so Dad must have hidden his tears as he delivered the miraculous news. Mom would never say what she was thinking during that period of terrible confusion from September through November 1944. What she did every day was pray that Joe would survive, or not suffer before he died. It seemed those kinds of prayers shortened her life, as if fulfilling a covenant that if God sent Joe back alive, He could have her at any time.

  No one in the family remembered eating anything for the next twelve hours. When Joe had been reported KIA, friends and neighbors delivered meals to the door for days. Now, during a miracle, no one knew what to do. Nor was there an army protocol for miracles, for on November 16 the Beyrles received a letter from Henry Stimson, secretary of war, that Joe posthumously had been awarded the Purple Heart medal:

  We profoundly appreciate the greatness of your loss, for in a very real sense the loss suffered by any of us in this battle for our country is a loss shared by us all. When the medal, which you will receive shortly, reaches you, I want you to know that it goes with my sincerest sympathy and the hope that time and victory of our cause will finally lighten the burden of your grief.

  A card from General Marshall added, “Your son fought valiantly in a supreme hour of his country's need.”