Behind Hitler's Lines

by Thomas H. Taylor

  “If it had occurred then, we'd have had to complete our sentence. God stepped in once again. Whenever I'd called to Him like Job, He responded as if to say, 'Believe it!'

  “Back in the compound, back in a hut, was a very strange experience. My countrymen treated me like a leper: they gave me extra care but also isolated me. Word came down from Coleman to discuss the escape with no one. I received special rations from the PX, but a kriege would accompany me whenever I left the hut. It was like a quarantine. I could understand why the escape committee had to be protected. I was no longer on that committee and not allowed to talk with them at first. I had trouble understanding why because we should be debriefed for information that could help future escapes.”

  From his new hut mates Joe learned why the virgin escape from III-C had been resented in some quarters. The morning after there had been a lockdown of the American compound. No one could leave his hut except for the latrine, roll call, and to pick up meals. The three were gone about two weeks, and the lockdown had continued till recapture. Some krieges fumed at how Joe had changed their lives for the worse. In a way he understood why. They'd had no vote on the committees that had approved and supported the escape plan, which resulted in collective punishment. True enough, Joe concedes, but then tries to remember a saying attributed to Colonel Ewell of the 101 st: Though the U.S. Army is that of a democracy, the army itself is not a democracy.

  “What I really couldn't understand was Quinn's and Brewer's attitude. They kept very much to themselves and away from me. They'd been assigned to different huts. Maybe I had something to do with our separation. I'd been the only one of us who'd had his shoulders dislocated. American medics came around to put hot compresses on them and gave me some ointment, which helped relieve the pain and swelling. Maybe Quinn and Brewer had not suffered quite as much from the Gestapo. Maybe they'd told more than I did. I never asked them and never knew. It wasn't something to talk about, even with your wife after the war.”

  Maybe they were told how Schultz came around and took Joe aside. He put an arm around his shoulder—Joe winced because it was still filled with pain—and counseled him like a father: “Joseph, be a good boy now. The war will be over soon, and you can go home to your family.”

  Slowly recriminations and suspicions faded as stalag life returned to normal and the three were debriefed about the escape. They were not much help in describing the surrounding area because it had been late evening when they got away, and a lot of memory had been erased by torture.

  “III-C began to improve as RC parcels came in every other week. I was paired with a mucker, Johnson, the kriege who had safeguarded the cache of cigarettes I'd left behind. My 'will' was that if I didn't return, he was to get half and the other half go to the escape committee for however they wanted to use it. Their honesty was guaranteed because none of them smoked! Cigarettes kill people these days, but back then they saved a lot of lives.

  “I was having nightmares when hut mates had to grab me in my bunk, but I felt much better as Thanksgiving approached. Only Americans celebrate it, but Coleman convinced the commandant that it would be good for everyone if this was allowed to be a special day. We krieges had little to be thankful for, the Germans less, and the Russians least of all, but we all had our hopes, and hopes are helped along by gratitude.”

  There were some kriege artists who did pictures of turkeys and Pilgrims. Schultz granted an advance IRC allowance of evaporated milk, canned corn, and corned beef. “Before you take this be aware that you'll have less food for Christmas,” he told Coleman.

  Those ingredients went into a kettle, where they were stirred seasoned with mustard, and steeped. The soup-stew that came out was the best-flavored food Joe had tasted since capture. He was much more thankful than in England a year before when the Screaming Eagles had plump turkey, cranberry, stuffing, and all the trimmings.

  Between Thanksgiving and Christmas kriege morale was up, the Germans' down. There was now a clandestine crystal set in the American compound, tuned to the BBC. Coleman sent around couriers, like confidential town criers, who memorized the news and delivered it to every hut. The news was all good. The Russians were coming on like an avalanche, and the Allies had breached the Siegfried Line in some places. Nothing but the Rhine and the Oder looked like major obstacles from here on out. Krieges started talking about a stalag reunion at Times Square this time next year.

  Joe's morale improved with his recovering health but had setbacks whenever he saw cords of freeze-dried corpses carried out of the Russian compound. With the spring thaw they'd become the reason for the wavy earth pointed out by the Polish farmer in 1992.

  “Dear God, how can we give thanks when there is mass murder going on right across the fence? What if they're Communists, not Christians—what does that matter? They're humans, God's children. Having gone through some suffering like theirs, I felt close to them. Hardly anyone else did though when we got extra of anything there was a way to get it over the fence and we shared it with the Russians. But to us they were a different species, people to be pitied but not too much because to relate to them was hard on the emotions. We wanted to preserve our emotions like a stash of cigarettes. The easiest way was to make the Russians separate, almost the way the krauts did.”

  Christmas was coming along, and everyone looked forward to it, something like the old-time feast days in England. Krieges knew they'd hardly feast, but Christmas was something they had in common with the Germans.

  To general surprise the Germans became arrogant and turned up their noses. The commandant, with Schultz nodding beside him, reminded Coleman that Thanksgiving had been the Americans' luxury so there would be nothing extra for Christmas. The clandestine crystal set soon explained the change of German attitude. It was Hitler's surprise offensive, the kickoff of the Battle of the Bulge.

  “Suddenly there were truckloads of new POWs coming in. They went to the 'new' American compound. Remember it was only Normandy POWs in the 'old' compound of III-C. Every American who came in after that went to the 'new' Physically the compounds were the same. The krauts were smart to separate us. We could have given the new guys some confidence and tips on how to survive and endure.”

  Joe was shocked at how the new POWs looked, and he didn't shock easily. They were young but not strong, battle-rattled and forlorn, blitzed. Immediately Coleman worked to establish contact with them, identify their key people, bring them on board. Schultz was alert to this effort and doubled the guard to prevent it, but before long messages were exchanged with the new guys. When trucks unloaded new POWs, Joe went to the fence looking for 101st patches. There were few, and no faces he recognized.

  “The cold in the Ardennes actually helped us in Poland. Piles of winter gear came in with the new POWs. Schultz liked us old guys. I was able to add a layer of wool shirts and pants and make a thick pair of mittens and a warm stocking cap. Actually a kriege who had been a tailor made them in exchange for my last stock of cigarettes.

  “Johnson, my mucker, provided the packs for that trade. My pre-escape 'will' turned over half my stash to him and he had rights to keep it, but he didn't. He is another face, another of God's children I should but can't remember to the point of regaining contact with him. I'm too old now. Too much life has happened since then. This is my thanks and tribute to him.”

  Initial German success in the Bulge changed something in Joe's outlook. The krauts were crowing. Their propaganda was saying that the Allies would break up. The BBC was saying that Montgomery would have things under control, but the krieges weren't believing it, not after Market-Garden.

  With things going badly in the west, the Western prisoners— so the rumor went—would reverse status with the Russian POWs, whose army was still coming on hard from the east. When there's not much information, people in confinement can believe speculation like that. What they knew was that no status could be worse than that of Russian POWs.

  “So Christmas was a big deflation for us, a big inflation for the kr
auts. The fest food didn't taste nearly as good as at Thanksgiving. Over at stalag headquarters we could hear German drinking songs. Around midnight they ended with ‘Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht.’ It's like Beethoven. How could a German have written such music?

  “It was the day after Christmas, and all through the huts only the rats were stirring, but so was I. Over at the fence I saw Quinn. I looked around for krauts. Couldn't see any except in the guard towers, so I went over to him. We had to be careful because if any of the three escapees were seen together, Schultz would investigate. He had some good human qualities, but he also had a job, which was to prevent escapes, especially after ours.”

  Joe and Quinn acted like tourists who didn't know each other, watching Niagara Falls. Ten yards apart and looking in different directions, they talked out the sides of their mouths. Quinn didn't like to look at the Russian compound, so they reversed views. How's Brewer? Joe asked.

  Getting along. He wants out.

  So do I.

  The Bulge had affected all three of them. They decided to investigate possibilities.

  “That was how our second plan was hatched. We knew it would be unsupported because the escape committee couldn't take another chance with us, but what we came up with did require the help of other krieges. Just thinking about escape again made us feel better about ourselves—sort of like a rodeo rider who has to get right back on a horse after he's bucked off. What we'd learned was that if this time we failed, we also died. The first thing we bartered for was small sharp shivs. We wouldn't be taken alive and tortured again. Knowing that calmed us. We were much less nervous planning our second escape than we were before the first.

  “We started off by approaching a few krieges we trusted offered them cigarette rewards for cooperation but were turned down. Only one of them told me that if we were crazy enough to try again, he 'd help just so we would hurry up and get away or get killed and stop upsetting stalag life! I thanked him because we'd need whatever help we could get for any reason.”

  Fights between krieges broke out now and then, not big fights, just a few fisticuffs between men irritated over little things that in other settings wouldn't have mattered. Such fights didn't bother the Germans much; in fact they would watch for a while—it was something to relieve monotony— before breaking them up. A fairly big fight was needed for Joe's plan, something significant enough to get the fighters punished. It took a while to identify a kriege who would take that risk. Worse than that, if the fight turned out to be a distraction for an escape, the punishment would be much worse, surely a month in solitary.

  “Luckily there was one guy, the one who wanted us gone, who'd take that risk after we explained what might happen. His nickname was Weasel, not a very popular animal and not a very popular guy either. The more Weasel thought about our plan, the more he liked it because there were a couple of guys he hated who always went around together. They were a pair of bullies, and Weasel was their favorite target. He was willing to get in a fight with them, even though he'd get beat up, so long as they were also punished by the krauts.”

  Weasel's cooperation was the best aspect of the plan; however, Brewer was afraid that a staged fight would make the Germans suspicious, that they'd sense something was fishy. No, Joe argued. Just talk with Weasel and you'll know that this will be a very authentic fight. To reassure Brewer, Quinn made Weasel a blackjack for which he was grateful even though using a weapon in the fight would probably mean harsher punishment.

  “From my sketch of III-C you can see there was a fence between the exercise area of the old American compound and the Germans' administrative complex, which included the infirmary. After the Red Cross visit that saved us, the guards kept a stretcher at the gate in that fence; maybe the Geneva Conventions called for something like ‘immediate first aid must be available.’ Anyway, that stretcher was a key to our plan.”

  The other key was a farmer's wagon that serviced the German mess hall every afternoon around the time krieges were walking laps and milling around the exercise area. On Tuesday and Friday the wagon came into the outside gate with three huge barrels full of cabbage, turnips, or beets. Brewer had observed that when the wagon departed the barrels tipped a little, showing they were empty. Whether or not they were empty made every difference for the go-or-no-go decision. They had to be empty or nearly so because one of the three would be in each barrel.

  “It was on a Tuesday in January 1945 that we put it to the touch again. Quinn, Brewer, and I were the foolhardy boys. We were relying on Schultz, not on his cooperation but on the reactions we expected from him. He was a humane man in an inhumane army. If we escaped, he'd catch hell. His army had created hell on earth, so it was no problem for us to see him go to hell. He had his job, we had ours.

  “This is what happened. Brewer, who usually walked around the exercise area, started jogging. He sounded gung-ho, upbeat, so people would notice how he was putting out. Then he staggered and clutched his chest. Quinn and I ran over to him. Quinn had been watching where Schultz was and then yelled for the stretcher. Schultz took notice and ordered the guards to open the first gate so we could carry Brewer to the infirmary. Quinn and I ran over, grabbed the stretcher, and rolled Brewer onto it. The main infirmary was on the German side of the interior fence. The guards let us through the gate, and we headed right for the infirmary. Between there and the exterior fence we dumped Brewer out and the three of us hid in a crawl space. Just then, just as we'd asked, Weasel started a fight. This turned Schultz's attention from the medical emergency to the brawl that was the biggest one ever in III-C. We couldn't see it but we heard it, and it was more than we'd hoped. This was in late afternoon, it was nearly dark, and the guards in the towers were focused on the ruckus in the compound. Timing of everything could not have been better.”

  And indeed the wagon was where they'd hoped, with nothing on it except the three barrels—and they were empty. Just before the wagon rolled away they scrambled into them. Many tense minutes waiting to clear the stalag. The horse started up. Joe heard the driver—who had been a big question mark in the plan—cluck to the horse. Fortunately he had been away watching the fight and they were able to slip into the barrels without his noticing. Joe's barrel had carried beets. There was something about the dark red stains on the wood that made him think some blood would spill. The wagon was also moving faster than it had during previous weeks. The driver evidently wanted to get away from the guard towers that might open fire at the brawl.

  Leaving III-C on the stone road, the wagon went down a small incline and also made a right turn. At top speed the left front wheel hit a pretty big stone. Joe felt the jar, then his barrel started to rock. He crouched down lower to stabilize it, but it tipped. The driver reined in. The barrels went over and crashed into a ditch. The three spilled out. The driver saw them and yelled. Bullets started cracking from the gate watchtower.

  They were up, running zigzag into scrub pines. The rifle fire was joined by a machine gun. Bullets struck Brewer on Joe's left, Quinn on his right. The sound was like a hard slap. They'd agreed beforehand that if anyone was hit, the others shouldn't stop to help. So Joe ran on. He had a feeling that they would survive their wounds and be treated back at the stalag. Joe was anaerobic and couldn't think any more about them except that if he got away, it would be escaping for them as well as himself—the way he'd thought about Bray and Vanderpool when learning they'd been killed.

  The next few hours were the most intense of his life, as adrenaline fueled his flight, and mind and muscle worked together as never before. There was a goal ahead. What exactly it would be, how far or how hard, didn't matter for now, but it was out there, up to Joe alone to reach, and within his reach.

  Dogs had been the main concern for this phase of the escape plan. They were soon on his trail, big ones like Heinz. He heard them. They barked and snarled and yowled when they came upon Quinn and Brewer.

  “My high school training as a miler came in handy here,” Joe recollects. “While the
dogs were making the most noise I gained some distance, maybe a quarter mile.

  “What I wanted to find was a stream, and I did. It had a sheet of thin ice with fast water underneath. Big question. Break the ice and get my feet soaked and freezing, or cross the stream on rocks? Throwing off the scent was more important, so I stumbled down the stream for a good ways before jumping off to the side into a smaller stream, which after a hundred yards I left for solid ground.

  “I could no longer hear dogs or see lights behind me. My feet were numb. I knew they were the most important part of my body at this point, so I took off the brogans, dried them as best I could, and massaged my feet off and on for the rest of the night. The experience in solitary was valuable that night. I had a good sense of what my body had gone through so far and what needed to be done to keep it going. Fuel, food was most important if I didn't already have frostbite. I had no idea where I'd find food.”

  What he found in the next few days was almost as good— barns with grain for fuel and hay for some warmth. Joe holed up in hay with at least a foot of it over his face for concealment.

  He was in Poland, but the part that had been repopulated by Germans. There was sure to be a local alert for an escaped prisoner, so he never went near the scattered farmhouses. During that week Joe probably covered no more than thirty miles. Then he started to hear artillery fire, big thundering volleys way to the east.

  “For me it sounded like a welcome from God.”

  HATRED

  See how efficient it is,

  how it keeps itself in shape—

  our century's hatreds.

  How easily it vaults the tallest obstacles.

  How rapidly it pounces, tracks us down.

  It is not like other feelings.

  At once both older and younger.

  It gives birth itself to the reasons

  that give it life.

  When it sleeps, it's never eternal rest.