Behind Hitler's Lines

by Thomas H. Taylor

  On November 28 a brigadier general sent Mr. Beyrle the ultimate good-news/bad-news advisory. Joe's Purple Heart had been awarded

  … based on a report of death submitted from the theater of operations and, at that time, believed to be correct. In view of more recent reports showing that your son is a prisoner of war, I am happy to advise that award of the Purple Heart is erroneous.

  I would appreciate your returning the decoration and certificate to this office for cancellation. Inclosed are government franks for your use in mailing them postage-free.

  Shortly there was more, this time from the army's Office of Special Settlement Accounts, which for reasons defying research was in 1944 located at 27 Pine Street, New York City.

  Dear Mrs. Beyrle:

  Reference is made to payment of the six months' death gratuity made to you in the amount of $861.60 on 12 October 1944 in the case of your son, Technician Fourth Class Joseph R. Beyrle.

  Information received from the Adjutant General is to the effect that your aforementioned son is a prisoner of war, and that previous notification of his death was in error….

  Therefore it is respectfully requested that you make refund to this office in the amount of $861.60, by personal check or money order drawn in favor of the Treasurer of the United States, using the enclosed envelope which requires no postage.

  The Beyrles were never so happy writing a check as when they dutifully made refund to the secretary of the treasury, Mr. Morgenthau, better known to Joe, after the interrogators' indictment, as an archvillain in the global Jewish conspiracy to rule the world in league with the Bolsheviks.

  THERE WAS A MUSKEGON youngster named Ed Albers, a sophomore at Saint Jean's when Joe was a senior at Saint Joseph's. They were athletic rivals, especially in basketball, where people would remark on their similar physiques. As teenagers of the Catholic community they hung out in the same social group, often at the Hubb Recreation Center, an approved pool hall.

  Ed's dad had the curious distinction of having been the first American POW to be captured by the Bolsheviks when a regiment of U.S. infantry was sent to Archangel as part of an interventionary force in the Russian civil war. He was treated pretty well, as his captors were eager to win over proletarians in America. The draft soon blew Ed into uniform. His dad was stoic, only wishing at the bus station that he could go in Ed's stead. “Be a good soldier” were his parting words before another Greyhound took another Muskegon boy off to Fort Custer, which would later become a camp for German POWs.

  From there Ed went to the San Diego County coast, where he was trained as a 40mm antiaircraft gunner bound for the Pacific. Week after week there was nothing to his duties except digging gun emplacements in ground so hard that shovels constantly struck sparks. One day Ed entered the company orderly room to ask for Merthiolate for blisters that had popped on his callused hands. On the bulletin board next to duty rosters he saw a newly tacked poster. It showed an exultant paratrooper—tommy gun cradled in one arm, the other gripping his parachute riser—descending from a Venetian blue sky. The poster was captioned JUMP INTO THE FIGHT ? Ed was more than ready to jump out of an antiaircraft pit. The army quickly obliged, and within days of volunteering for the Airborne he was on a train to Fort Benning, Georgia, for parachute training.

  On June 1,1944, he embarked on the Queen Elizabeth, one among seventeen thousand troopers, quadruple the ship's peacetime capacity, so the swimming pools had been drained and filled with stacks of bunks, a desirable location for being airy. Ed was not so lucky; his assigned bunk was way down on R Deck, the most remote bowel of the ship, formerly quarters of busboys, the last living area below the waterline and the depth at which U-boat torpedoes were aimed. So Ed moved his sleeping bag to the promenade deck, even though it was a kaleidoscope of crap and poker games, but he had to leave his duffel bag on R Deck, where unbeknownst to him it was rifled.

  In mid-Atlantic, weaving along the main deck, he heard “Hey, Albers!” It was a buddy from antiaircraft training on the other ocean.

  “Tim! Whaddya doin' here?”

  “Manning this forty-millimeter.”

  “You still in the army?” Tim was in dungarees.

  “Yeah, but I'm workin' for the navy. This is the ninth time I've crossed the pond.”

  “Any action?”

  “Nope. But I'm ready to shoot a U-boat if it surfaces!”

  Outrunning any U-boat by a factor of three, the Queen Elizabeth zigged and zagged at thirty-five knots, speed rather than a convoy, her protection, and steamed into Liverpool on June 5, the originally scheduled D Day. Before she moored, a scow came alongside to take off priority cargo— less than a tenth of the passengers—fifteen hundred paratroopers. Arbitrarily, half were assigned to the 82nd (Ed's bunk mate became Major General Gavin's jeep driver), half to the 101st.

  The 506th rookies pitched pup tents on a cow pasture near Ramsbury, where they were all temporarily assigned to Second Battalion under Lieutenant Tanin, the “rear detachment” commander.* All other Currahees were fighting and dying in Normandy. Out on the pasture Lieutenant Tanin was like a personal trainer, a brutal one pushing the rookies to get in shape as never before. He formed them up and announced they were reinforcements rather than replacements; in other words, they would be going in shortly to tip the battle rather than replace casualties from it. For at that point in the second week of June there were only estimates of casualties as Screaming Eagles literally kept coming out of the woods after scattered drops. So as the war for Western civilization raged two hundred miles away, Ed and his cohort did calisthenics by day, pulled guard by night, and kept their powder very dry.

  England bubbled with news and rumors as the Allied foothold strengthened and expanded during the ides of June. For the reinforcements it was a singular sensation to be part of a team winning world-class laurels but not to have met their teammates. That began to change as the wounded and escaped POWs like Brown and Harwick returned to England before the rest of the division. The reinforcements (a term soon to be dropped) felt like freshman pledges to a fraternity whose seniors suddenly appeared for the first time, then as suddenly disappeared to carouse off campus. They looked at one another, the faces of veterans and those who had not yet seen the elephant, then quickly parted as the vets took London passes to forget, the rookies to wonder and aspire. David Webster, he who had pleaded that D Night never arrive, described them in reflection as half of a symbiosis: “And so we went forward together, one regiment, filled up with replacements, the dead as fine and strong a part of us as the living men, so fresh and new, who had come to take their place.”

  In their introduction there was a provisional schism expressed in how the vets called themselves “originals,” those who had been Currahees since Toccoa. With some wariness they began training with the replacements, who by and large were physically heftier and showed more stamina, facts from which originals excused themselves by reason of lingering exhaustion from Normandy. The predominant attitude developed among originals was that these new guys hadn't shown them yet but looked like they could.

  No other regiment in Overlord had lost a larger percentage of officers than the 506th. As the bulk of Currahees dribbled back around the Fourth of July—more than three weeks after General Taylor had promised, before D Day, that they would be relieved—Sink was intent on reestablishing his chain of command. Regenerate the regiment, integrate our replacements, and revive Currahee standards, he directed. Eyewash and horseshit, this amounted to for the troopers, including battalion guard mounts.

  There had not been such formality since Toccoa. Mounting the guard fell to Sergeant Engelbrecht of Third Battalion, to which Albers had been assigned. Engelbrecht ordered Ed to fall out in class-A uniform, and though only a private he was to be corporal of the guard. Ed went to his duffel bag, unopened since the Queen Elizabeth. The contents had been stirred, and his two dress shirts were missing. With trepidation he reported the loss to Engelbrecht, who swore like a trooper, a paratrooper. Gruffly he dir
ected Ed toward the I Company supply room.

  “Turn out in a nice pressed shirt, Albers.”

  Luteran, the supply sergeant, was uneasy. The only source for such items of uniform was the duffel bags of Blues who had not made it back from Normandy. There were several hundred, stacked in bins marked KIA, MIA, POW. No one but duly designated officers was authorized to open these bags, which regulations required be sorted through for personal effects to be returned to next of kin.

  “Make it snappy,” Luteran muttered, trying to remember which of the casualties was about Albers's size. He retrieved a bag, flung it on the counter for Ed to open. “This guy's shirt might be a little big,” said the supply sergeant, glancing at the door. “Try it.” At the top of the bag was a dress shirt neatly folded, if not pressed. Ed held it up by the sleeves to drape on his body. “Good enough,” he heard Luteran pronounce, but Ed's attention was on the name stenciled inside the collar.

  “Did you know ‘Buy-early’ Sarge?” he asked with wide eyes.

  “Sure did. Company radio operator. How did you know how to say his name right?”

  “Where was he from?”

  “Someplace in Michigan.”

  * Tanin was killed two days after jumping into the Netherlands.

  CHAPTER TEN

  ANGELS DON'T SPEAK GERMAN

  THE BLOW OF A RIFLE BUTT CAME FROM OVER JOE'S RIGHT shoulder. Behind him the guard must have raised his weapon high, awaiting a signal to strike. He did with a cross-body sweep like the paddling lunge of a canoe racer—down, back, and deep.

  The indentation of Joe's skull fracture is like a heel print, tapering upward parallel to the angle of the blow. He fell backward off the high chair, sustaining a secondary concussion upon hitting the floor. That much has been established by forensic surgery; what happened during his coma can only be inferred. Among the scores of POWs interrogated in the chateau, Joe by then must have been labeled a waste of time, or why else club him with such finality? So his overall resistance strategy succeeded, his paymaster secrets remained secure. Indeed, within a week of being bludgeoned, all FFI territory in which he'd jumped was liberated.

  Unconquered but unconscious, Joe presented something of a problem for the interrogators. There on the floor, bleeding slightly from nose and ears, was this stinking, low-rank prisoner about to die. He had a previous wound, but it could hardly be blamed for his death. To avoid an investigation, the interrogators would have moved him into medical channels at once, perhaps citing serious infection of his butt as the reason. They no doubt hoped that hobnailed boot prints on his torso would go unnoticed in a German field hospital, rife with horrific wounds.

  Joe had been kicked viciously while he was down, while he was comatose. Permanent damage resulted from scar tissue that pressures the top of the sciatic nerve. On occasion it has caused him to black out. The skull fracture remains sensitive to barometric changes, especially with high humidity, another reason why Joe lives in Muskegon with its cool lake breezes.

  FOR ABOUT A WEEK he was in and out of consciousness, hearing things the way music can be heard, not with the ears but in the mind. At the same time Joe visualized things that didn't relate to what was heard. Body sensations were the last to check in, not preferable to delusions that made him feel as if he were in the afterlife. The transition to reality came when he focused on two white figures hovering over him, talking about him. It was then he knew this wasn't heaven because angels don't speak German.

  Coming back was very much coming down. There was the body pain, pulsing headaches, but mostly a woozy feeling like the worst case of flu times ten. Joe realized he was back when his senses became continuous and connected, as when he perceived that one of the “angels” was a doctor, the other a male nurse. An interpreter came over and asked him how he was. Sore all over, was his response, especially where my ribs were kicked in.

  Joe was sat up to take pills. During his unconsciousness he'd been washed down and put in a hospital smock. The ever-efficient Germans had laundered his underwear and tattered uniform—nothing left of it except jump pants and khaki shirt—which was labeled with his name and left on a chair by his bed. The ward was crowded. Every time an orderly came around he asked if Joe could get up. Foolishly Joe did as soon as his legs could support him. A doctor watched him totter around, then told Joe to get dressed. Shortly afterward he was returned to a stable by the chateau.

  It would have been entirely natural to fear more interrogation, but Joe's reasoning faculties had not been impaired: he was sure that he now had a medical entry in the punctilious German records, so it looked as though he wouldn't be put through life-threatening interrogation again (unless perhaps Greta reappeared). Rommel's question to the prisoner with a head wound—”Are you receiving medical treatment?”—was an encouragement for Joe. He was beginning to learn that humane treatment was sometimes employed by the Wehrmacht under certain circumstances. Joe made the best of that possibility, seeming slightly loony, drooling when appropriate, mumbling when guards could hear him. Eventually a couple of other wounded POWs were shoved into his stall.

  “Tell them what happened to you, Beyrle!” the guard yelled. Though Joe craved companionship, he continued to act like a dazed dunce even with his stablemates. They didn't want to talk about their interrogations and asked Joe nothing about his. They were reinterrogated; he was not.

  The Allied advance was approaching the chateau, and the Wehrmacht evacuated POWs in the bow wave of retreat. One evening they were loaded onto trucks for Alengon, then on to Chartres—so said the ones unwounded and alert. Joe listened to them appreciatively. He had been acting demented for the krauts, but now it seemed impossible to drop the role with his countrymen, who apparently were as convinced as his captors that a screw had been knocked loose in Joe's head. It had not to be rethreaded for several weeks, during which time he was pretty much like a drunken spectator of his life.

  The drive to Alengon took all night. The destination did not register with Joe as the region he knew from paymaster jumps. He was disgorged into a huge warehouse with hundreds of other prisoners, most from Starvation Hill, including a Currahee, George Rosie, who shared many POW experiences with Joe, although they were never to meet till after the war. Rosie's memories are of rain that soaked and resoaked. The French blamed the monsoon on all the combat dust and gunpowder in the air, the same as in World War I, when it rained for months.

  The German commandant of Alengon decreed that if one man escaped from the warehouse, ten of his fellows would be shot in reprisal. That night POWs huddled to discuss the seriousness of such a threat. Unacquainted with Geneva Conventions that absolutely banned reprisals, they dispersed from the huddle with no consensus. Rosie felt that the commandant was full of typical kraut bluff and bluster. If he had a chance to escape, he'd take it. That was the Currahee way. The next day he was put on a work detail to dig up dud bombs, told to dig down in a crater till they found a bomb, then the Germans would haul it out with a winch or detonate in place. The craters were on city streets. Guards provided picks and shovels, then went behind buildings, which they could peek around to see if the prisoners were working. They were, digging very softly and slowly. When the guards weren't looking, they broke tool handles. After his first sabotage Rosie strolled up to a guard and said, Sorry, Fritz, but we can't dig anymore. The guards provided more handles, with advice as to where they would be shoved if they were broken again. Even so, Rosie never dug down far enough to uncover a bomb. But the detail on another street did, and a huge explosion rocked the block. It jarred Joe back in the warehouse where he was splinting handles like those Rosie had sabotaged.

  The warehouse had been used to store coal, so the POWs were covered with a black dusty film. The straw on the cement floor was full of fleas and lice, and soon so were the prisoners. There was barely room for everyone to lie down at night. Turning over started a chain reaction. Scuttlebutt was that, as soon as the krauts repaired the railroad, POWs would be shipped to Germany. Furthermore, the
y'd go through Paris, the ultimate tourist destination. From the way railroads were being bombed, Rosie figured the line to Germany would be repaired shortly after Christ's reappearance, but sure enough, the Paris part came true.

  The August 1944 triumphal march of the American infantry down the Champs Elysees became one of the most famous and photographed events of World War II. Earlier that month American troops had made another march on the streets of Paris, this time for Nazi cameras. Joe and Rosie were part of that spectacle of humiliation. Filthy and famished, they were trucked into Paris. The Germans must have wanted them that way because at other times they could make prisoners look presentable, as they were for Rommel or for a visit by the International Red Cross.

  Rosie remembers standing in formation till “the Huns' Hollywood got everything ready.” He was confused. For whom was this film being shot? France was being liberated a mile a minute, so there didn't seem much use in convincing the French they were better off under Hitler. Slowly it became apparent that there was another purpose: to show Americans as a contemptible presence in Europe. The miserable POWs surely looked the part.

  Loudspeakers announced the start of a parade of murderers and rapists paroled from U.S. prisons to attack Franco-German civilization. French collaborators took up a chorus of hisses and jeers, then began to throw garbage at POWs shuffling by, some of whom were so hungry they caught and ate it.

  Joe's heightmade him stand out, a magnet for abuse. Aftereffects of his six-day coma had turned him into a zombie in this zombie jamboree. Rosie was on an edge of the column closest to the collaborators, a number of whom took pleasure in tripping the wounded on canes. There was also a Nazi whore drunk enough to run up and spit. She got to Rosie's buddy, Jim Bradley, and started to spit in his face when he blew a huge honker into hers. Rosie muttered, “Boy, are we going to catch hell now!” But a guard pushed her back into the crowd and nodded at Bradley approvingly.