Behind Hitler's Lines

by Thomas H. Taylor

  WHEN JOE REACHED STALAG XII-A, he was among some thirty thousand Americans who had been captured so far, more than half of them airmen like the crews who jumped from their B-24s. Joe and fellow Airborne men presented a typological problem for the German bureaucracy: in Hitler's military organization, paratroopers were part of his air force, but in America they were in the army, so how should they be categorized in the stalag system? Unluckily for the Airborne, custody went to the Wehrmacht. Luftwaffe stalags were considered upscale by comparison. The floodlights and police dogs awaiting Joe's train were a statement by the commandant that Stalag XII-A would be no country club.

  Glazed by blood from the ghastly boxcar, survivors were searched one by one and stripped as if a gas chamber would be their next stop. It was, but for delousing. The Germans had developed a deathly fear of typhus, “the Jews' revenge,” they called it, carried by lice that swept through every concentration camp. The lice didn't care if they fed on prisoners or guards, so after fumigation Joe got a shower with industrial-strength lye soap. Their skin scrubbed clean for the first time in months, the POWs welcomed the caustic even when it brought out rashes and boils nearly unnoticed before. While a guard watched to retrieve the razor (one for every five men), new krieges had the painful luxury of a shave.

  In a demonstration of German efficiency, their clothes were laundered and hundreds of odd-lot uniforms unerringly returned in bundles marked with the men's names. XII-A was big, with a fluctuating population of between five and ten thousand prisoners. Joe's group marched several miles through the encampment, then up a small hill to four circus tents. Inside, the ground was lined with straw, clean straw. It was dawn, but they slept for twelve hours, interrupted only when names were called out alphabetically to start processing.

  Processing meant being registered, photographed, vaccinated, and given a POW number stamped on a dog tag. Joe's number was XII-A 80213. Thus identified, the new krieges were allowed to write a postcard (censored, of course) to their families, a Geneva Conventions requirement. Messages that complained about anything had to be rewritten; rejection a second time meant no message went out, so Joe mentioned neither of his wounds in the first postcard, which reached his parents within days after they had mourned at his funeral mass. He had no inkling that the death of the line crosser had been reported as his own, nor that the postcard fulfilled Sister Angelique's prediction from gospel.

  Though the Beyrles knew his handwriting like their own, they compared it with everything they could find that he'd ever written, including his last essay retrieved from student records at Saint Joseph's. Without doubt now it was true that their son was alive in Germany, a fact they assumed known by the army when Major Reidy called Mr. Beyrle from the Pentagon. However, Joe's postcard went through Red Cross channels in Switzerland to enter the U.S. Postal Service like any other piece of international mail, bypassing army cognizance. That was the reason for Secretary Stimson's letter in November awarding Joe a posthumous Purple Heart. Even after the medal was retracted, some bureau of the army continued to carry Joe as KIA rather than POW That error would have stunning consequences.

  Stunned was how Joe felt during his early days at Stalag XII-A. His head reeled from cranial aftershocks that blacked him out without warning. When he revived it was like trying to remember what had happened while drunk. Except for these frightening interludes there was only the continuum of monotony. Little of significance ever changed in the drab list-lessness of the camp. It took energy and initiative, largely drained from Joe since his concussion, to sustain interest in anything. What interest there was—the personalities and outlooks of fellow krieges—was overpowered by the constant gnaw of hunger. Everyone knew what was foremost, even if not expressed, in everyone's mind: food. When would the next scanty ration appear? What could be traded for a little more?

  Joe took courage from watching those in worse shape than he. What was happening at XII-A was triage: the worst off, because of wounds or extreme depression, were removed to die. Other lives ebbed away through malnourishment, but most were felled by diarrhea brought in by each new wave of prisoners with diseases contracted where they had been captured, locations as far apart as Italy and Scandinavia. When disease broke out, quarantines were common, a measure for which captor-captive cooperation was the best.

  Krieges were also segregated by nationality and rank. New arrivals milled around in every sort of uniform—American, British, and Canadian—while the Germans methodically sorted them out. In the U.S. Army, Joe was a technician fourth-class, the equivalent of a buck sergeant. By the Geneva Conventions protocol, sergeants didn't have to do manual labor, which meant that if he were to die a prisoner, it would not be because the Germans worked him to death, as could be the fate of privates and corporals.* A stripe of rank made that difference.

  XII-A was also a Red Cross reception station. For bona fide IRC representatives Joe was now willing to name his prewar occupation: butcher, he said, a white lie. That's what his uncle did, and Joe thought it might help him get a job around the stalag kitchen, where he could scrounge scraps of meat as during the Depression.

  Each day went by in idle talk while krieges waited for the daily ration of black bread, mostly sawdust. Everyone ate very slowly to prolong the sensation. In the British compound was a group of Gurkhas who received little sun-dried bananas in their Red Cross parcels. Joe found Gurkhas to be the kindest people in the world, willing to toss bananas over the fence to new krieges even before the Americans had anything to barter. The nutritious fruit was gummy, with the taste and color of licorice.

  Hunger was relentless, but Joe dreamed of more than a full stomach. Gintjee (the diarist from Starvation Hill), by contrast, visualized eclairs days after someone mentioned them. There were krieges like that who took masochistic pleasure in describing meals to one another. For Joe the worst of stalag existence—hunger excluded—was the knowledge that he was in the bowels of Germany, a dismal world away from the joy-filled liberation back in France. He had served that purpose, risking his life as if it were no more than a poker chip, but what had he accomplished? Not much that his reassembling mind could appreciate.

  It was a month before he began to recover physically and mentally, about the time of his transfer to Stalag IV-B, where there were chaplains of several nationalities who conducted moving services inspired by the Psalms. Not since Wolver-ton's pre-D Night invocation had Joe felt such power from combined prayer, and with it the addition of diverse perspectives of God and His ways. These sermons pointed in rami-form directions: resignation or at least acceptance; hope of ultimate deliverance; strength from spiritual unity. Abstractions abounded, the soul a focus, but Joe was more intent on revivifying his body.

  “The best thing I could do for my soul was to get in shape,” Joe recalls. “The first thing was my butt wound. It was infected and draining. A British doctor [captured by Rommel in North Africa] cleaned it up and removed the last bit of shrapnel. He gave it to me and I still have it, the only thing I carried all the way from Normandy to Muskegon.”

  In an Allied stalag, the margin of survival usually depended on IRC parcels. They came in four brands: American, British, Canadian, and Australian, put together in those countries for their men. If there weren't enough American parcels, the Germans substituted Australian or any other kind that came in, creating an international bazaar for essential trading and dealing, with the additional benefit of being a great time-passer.

  There was supposed to be a parcel for each man, but that never happened, and in a well-provisioned stalag the norm was one parcel for four krieges. Through inter-Allied swapping— also with guards who wanted U.S. cigarettes as much as gold— Rosie found he could have some oat gruel for breakfast, a scrap of bread and a cup of swill for lunch. The Germans considered lunch the main meal, sufficient for compliance with the Geneva Conventions, so nothing else was required the rest of the day, and krieges were on their own.

  That's when barter became overridingly important, and gamblin
g a game of life or death. A stalag was like Las Vegas, with croupiers everywhere. Food items were chips, and everyone played by trading ruthlessly, disregarding the weak for whom a bad trade or bet was worse than worthless—it could drop him to third in the triage of survival. For American krieges, the ultimate dinner was a three-ounce can of Spam and a cracker from an IRC parcel. Parcels also included powdered milk and a bit of rock-hard chocolate, tragic ingredients for a few men who craved to reexperience indulgence even at risk oflife.

  Like a pharaonic scribe, Gintj ee recorded the death of such a man who traded his all for a half-pound each of powdered milk and chocolate. It all blew out in acute diarrhea, then his life squirted and dribbled away as he paled and cut a wide hole from the seat of his pants. His mucker was criticized, but he had done all he could to dissuade the dead man, whose name and face faded in memory, his mucker to be paired with another kriege orphan.

  On their way to other stalags, three forgotten muckers moved in and out of Joe's ken at XII-A. Since his traumatic coma he had found it impossible to consistently interact with anyone (probably why Joe never connected with Rosie). As his mind reassembled, he became appraising and observant, seeking signs from other men that the future could hold more than staying alive and waiting. Naturally he gravitated toward Airborne krieges, in whom that spirit could be expected. What Joe found was not the previous Airborne spirit but a steadfast casualness that was more mature for the situation, for the long term. “We're inside here,” an 82nd sergeant said with a sigh, gesturing to the barbed wire. “The war's way out there.”

  Adjusting to permanent kriege life, the troopers' precom-bat training lapsed. Many had stayed with name, rank, and serial number during interrogations in France, but now they relaxed, knowing that nothing they knew would be of any use to the Germans. So when asked by the Red Cross (with Germans listening) about their previous occupations, krieges were wise guys, coming up with titles like “professional assassin.” That went over well with the Germans, so it was used often. So was “gangster.” Another good response was “student.” For reasons believed only by Goebbels, it was thought a student could be taught the virtues of national socialism. Jim Bradley's answer was “cowboy,” though he had never ridden a horse. That was just written down as if cowboy were a common profession in the States. A New Yorker said “rumrunner.” He was closely questioned about what that meant and had to explain Prohibition and speakeasies. The next trooper wanted no questions, so he answered “pimp.” The Germans laughed and slapped him on the back. After that “pimp” was the favorite item on a kriege's resume. But it must have been difficult for the commandant to report to Berlin that the American Airborne was actually a flying prostitution ring. The occupation Rosie gave was “golf pro,” because once he had shot a ninety.

  One day his and Joe's names were called off among four hundred others. They were deloused once again and marched to a rail spur, where their boots were removed before the POWs were loaded into boxcars. Inside were bread and water for three days. The train included flatbeds for Tiger tanks, so Joe was glad to start off at night, when there was less chance of strafing. The train stopped in the morning to dump out latrine cans and take on more water. Next evening the krieges arrived in Muhlberg (directly south of Berlin), got their boots back, and marched off to Stalag IV-B, the best-run camp Rosie ever saw. The barracks were wooden huts furnished with triple-decker slat bunks and two thin blankets. Each new arrival received twelve precious cigarettes from Red Cross parcels, beginning a game like Monopoly where every player starts with the same amount of play money for trade and in-vestment. Cigarettes were the ultimate currency for everything. Rosie was too much of a smoker to accumulate many. Joe, unaddicted, aspired to be a banker.

  IV-B was like an international convention of NCOs, for all the inmates were sergeants. Guards boasted that this was the oldest, indeed the original stalag. Most of them were pretty old too, veterans of World War I. The camp was divided into nationalities with the most senior Allied sergeant controlling the POW side of it. Joe never figured out if “senior” meant rank, prison time, or a combination. Anyway, the Commonwealth NCO corps ran things. For four years they'd interacted with the camp authorities, and there was mutual respect. The Americans felt like kids entering junior high, not knowing teachers or schoolmates, grimly accepting new-guy status and making the best of it.

  Rosie admired the organizational skill of the Germans, but they had nothing on the British when it came to setting up a prison. There was a formal ceremony at IV-B where the senior NCO of the arriving Americans was received by his Commonwealth counterpart amid salutes and handshakes. The Americans were shown to their huts by British hosts, who the next day held a briefing complete with map and charts. The camp worked this way, said a former announcer for the BBC, to begin a description of the POW organization.

  It was headed by “the Man of Confidence,” or MOC. A Canadian sergeant major, he had been elected by the inmates. Whatever needed to be brought up with the Germans, he was the man to do it, the man in whom fellow prisoners had to have confidence—a confidence that was to undergo more tests than before. Americans proved much more vocal with their complaints than krieges of other nationalities and created many new problems for the MOC, whose interest in what he called stable “kriege-kraut relations” equaled that of the commandant. To Joe, Man of Confidence sounded like a Mafia title, and there was a considerable resemblance. Things went on aboveboard and underground. There seemed to be understandings between the British and Germans that he couldn't understand. They'd been friends and foes for centuries. At his age it was too much to understand. Joe knew himself, denned himself, as a soldier, intent to fit in but only to find a way to get out.

  Eventually the British divulged their sub-rosa infrastructure, which included an escape committee. Any escape plans had to be approved by the committee, or they wouldn't be supported. It seemed a dormant issue. From what Joe could discern, he was the only one thinking about escaping into eastern Germany. As a new guy, Joe was being checked out. Week by week he learned a lot talking with Canadian krieges who'd been in the stalag system for years. His respect for them and the questions Joe asked impressed them that he might be an escape candidate. It was nothing solid or specific, but to Joe it was encouraging to be under consideration to enter a pool of potentials. Slowly the Germans seemed to be taking his measure too, now that he was in a small camp. Stalag authorities knew it took a long period to organize an escape. One of the ways they prevented that was to move krieges from camp to camp so a plan would fall apart when key men were transferred at random. It made sense too to move potential escapees to where they would be the problem of another commandant.

  Yet there was one escape plan with which the Germans would cooperate. If a kriege could accumulate sixty cartons of American cigarettes—in Joe's experience that never happened—he'd go to the escape committee with his wealth. They'd provide him a tutor to learn basic German. His cigarettes would be left in trust with the escape committee, which would give him a civilian ID card provided by cooperating Germans in IV-B. From them he would later receive civilian clothes, a picnic basket of sandwiches, and a train ticket to the Swiss border with appropriate papers. There would also be advice on where to cross. The last step would be his assignment to a work detail in Muhlberg where the guards would arrange for him to change clothes near the Bahnhof. He would have a railway schedule and, with luck, a train within an hour; with more luck he'd make connections to trains that wouldn't be strafed during a four-hundred-mile ride to the border. Getting into Switzerland would be his problem, but if successful, he was to send a postcard to the Man of Confidence, who would then pay off with cigarettes the German accomplices. They'd have received some of the cartons up front for the train ticket and papers, but the basic deal was no postcard, no payoff.

  The “Basel Express” was far beyond Joe's means. With experienced krieges he wasn't yet a gambler superior enough to win many cigarettes, and by just saving them it would take year
s to squirrel away sixty cartons. It did cross his mind to steal them from certain krieges who collaborated with the Germans without approval from the MOC.

  However, Joe had no direct dealings with collaborators because they disgusted him to the point of depression. Collaborators were pretty well identified, so no one had to be with them unless he wanted to. He didn't know the most notorious, Master Sergeant Keating, who accepted favors from guards at the expense of his fellows. A big paratrooper, Keating got extra food from the krauts so that he was the strongest kriege in camp. His instructions were to taunt prisoners to get in the ring with him, that he was Fallschirmjager Max Schmeling, champion of the Reich. Guards had to force most krieges to fight him, but not Jim Bradley, who was willing to take a beating if he could get in one nose-flattening punch. It cost him four rounds of vicious punishment before he did, till Keating snorted gobbets of blood as krieges roared for more. Guards halted the bout while their gladiator recovered, then pounded Bradley into the ground like a pile driver.