When darkness fell, Münkel went into the camp. Since, before the escape, he had performed sexton’s duties for the camp’s Catholic chaplain, he slipped between the tents to the priest’s accommodation, then to the kitchen and from there brought a bag full of food to our hiding place. On his return he had considerable problems getting past the Polish sentries, who had just started their guard duty. But now we were glad of his additional contribution to our provisions. With this store we could hold out for another five days, he said, but, after some thought, we decided finally to break off the attempt if the train didn’t set off tomorrow.
The hours passed in desperate waiting. Our nerves were raw. Toward evening, when we wanted to check whether we could leave our hiding place without risk, the guards moved up. Until then the three double sentries had always taken up positions at the front, the end, and the middle of the train, and our wagon had always been about fifty yards from the rear sentries. That evening, however, the two guards came to a halt in front of the very wagon where our box was. All night we heard them talking unintelligibly right beside us—their jokes, their suppressed laughter—and heard them puffing on their cigarettes. We were forced to be completely silent and denied ourselves any cough, the least movement, even a couple of whispered words. At most we could use the brief minute when at intervals of just under an hour the passenger train went past; but these trains stopped just after midnight. Even the sleep into which we fell from time to time was only possible by turns.
Unnerved by the strain of the night, our limbs almost paralyzed, we deliberated in the morning how and when we should give up our plan. We had now spent six days in the wooden box and there was no end in sight to the adventure. Finally, as the shunting of the wagons began again, we agreed to give it one more day. And then, for the first time, the train didn’t go just the annoying eighty yards before coming to a stop again, as on previous days. Instead, this time it went about three hundred yards. After it came to a halt with a loud clatter, we were able to tell from the echoing sound that we were in one of the roofed depots at the end of the loading area.
We remained there for about an hour, during which orders sounded and sliding doors banged. After a lengthy pause, steps came closer. Suddenly, there were American voices above us. Several men were busy with some kind of equipment. One of them complained that the wagons were not sealed, while another said that as a result the gas would only have half the effect and make escape easier for the “German bastards.”
We gathered from the remarks of the two soldiers that our departure was imminent: from previous information, we knew that the gas was released at the last control point. Minutes later we heard a repeated clicking noise gradually coming closer and closer, which was each time followed by a hiss; it obviously came from the gas cartridges which had been thrown in among the cases of each wagon. After about four minutes the sounds stopped, and we spent another hour motionless in our box. Then, talking loudly, members of the special unit came up and evidently listened at the sides of the trucks with special instruments whether any coughing or suppressed groaning could be heard. Münkel had put on the gas mask. I pressed a damp cloth to my nose and mouth. Finally, we heard the members of the squad called together and, squealing, the almost ten-yards-wide sliding doors of the depot were pushed apart. Hardly was that noise over when one of the officers shouted a command. There was the sound of hurried steps and a little later the train left the depot.
We can only have got as far as the loading area outside the depot, when to our dismay it once again came to a halt. We heard another locomotive being coupled up; after that, however, as the half-mile-long train got up steam, we knew that the period of painful waiting was at an end. Overjoyed, we nudged each other and realized that we were talking at normal volume once again. It was freedom at last, we said simultaneously, no matter where we got to now. We had a bottle of cognac or something similar with us; we now drank a toast to each other.
At that very moment our box was thrown high, fell down, bounced again and yet again, before giving way to a crashing rumble. The thick boards of our case cracked open, the piercing whistle of the locomotive sounded nearby, and as our box began to break up under the pressure of the asbestos boxes, the wagon tilted to the side, stumbled over a couple of sleepers, and toppled down the a gentle slope. In our box everything turned topsy-turvy. The heavy water canister fell on my right knee and as I was still rubbing at the painful spot, complete silence fell.
It must have been about ten minutes before we recovered from our dazed state. My first thought was to get rid of the illegally obtained discharge papers, since their discovery could have the most unpleasant consequences not only for ourselves, but also for the helpful Frenchman who had obtained them for us. After a brief discussion we tore up the documents, which were printed on stiff, heavy paper, into small pieces, in order to swallow down the scraps with the help of water.
We had just begun the difficult business of swallowing the paper when, with a lot of commotion, helpers and onlookers came up and began to pull at our box. No more than six hundred yards from the camp entrance the train had come off the rails because of spilled ballast. We choked down the paper and were just chewing on the last shreds as the box was opened with a crowbar. As we raised ourselves up we saw right in front of us the powerful figure of First Sergeant Driffel, who rubbed his fists and with fat cheeks shouted that he had rarely been so pleased to see someone again. Then he held out his hands in an inviting gesture and when we reached out for him, still in a daze, he punched us with great force and said, “No kidding, boys! Off to the cage!” After that he handed us over to the guards.
The “cage” was a space of about thirty square yards fenced in on all sides with heavy wire. It was situated outside the camp close to the gate. When we were put in it we were greeted by two prisoners who had already been incarcerated for a long time for theft; a little later, two more escapees were brought in; they had been picked up on the same train. As darkness began to fall, Lieutenant Dillon came by and explained that we would be tried by court-martial in Rheims. To my question whether, according to the Hague Convention, a prisoner was not allowed to try to escape, he looked at me ill-temperedly, responded with a curt “No!” and turned on his heel.
In the morning we were led to the Barber’s Room. The corporal on duty asked us whether we wanted to keep our hair long or—as was usual in the army—wanted it clipped back to one centimeter. When I decided to keep it long, he remarked with false friendliness, “Aye aye, sir!,” but in accordance with regulations, he said, he would have to trim a narrow strip through my hair. I shrugged my shoulders and said, “Fine. Go ahead!” So he picked up the electric clippers from the shelf and cut an approximately one-and-a-half-inch-wide, ridiculous-looking path across my head. So as not to give him any chance to gloat, when he asked if it was okay like that, I replied, “It’s fine.” But the following day, when another barber was on duty, I had the one-centimeter crew cut. My fellow prisoners, including Münkel, did the same.
The barber led us to the camp of the Polish guards and each of us was assigned two guards, who had orders to keep us busy. They were tirelessly inventive in thinking up new ways to harass us. I was ordered to dig a hole two by two yards, and when the work was done an “inspection” was conducted with a ruler. One demanded the perimeter be straightened at points, and finally said, “Not good! German and bad! But good for me!” Then he threw one of the stubbed-out cigarettes lying on the ground beside him into the hole and ordered, “Bury it. But faster!” and added that he had at least ten cigarette butts to bury. “Camp should be clean. Captain Donaldson always says so!”
So it went day after day. The temperature at that time of the year was tolerable; what was harder for us to bear with the open-grated roof was the rain. Sometimes a storm or gusting wind drove us all together, wet and freezing, into one corner. Even more unpleasant was the harassment by the guards. I had no idea until then how much humiliation can be inflicted with a wheelbarrow, a
couple of buckets of water, and a spade. Nevertheless, when we returned to the cage in the evening, we assured each other that we would not make any laments, never mind complain.
On one of the first days of imprisonment Captain Donaldson had appeared at the wire fence and had addressed me reproachfully: “Why did you do it?” For a moment I thought of holding out my bloody—in places suppurating—hands with the reply, “And why do you do this?” Instead, I merely replied that he knew my reasons. We had often talked about them. He was not allowed to hand us over to the French, besides which it was the attested right of every prisoner of war to try to escape. At that the captain blankly twisted one of his mustache ends and walked off with stiff strides.
The accusation in my words evidently bothered him. At any rate, the next day First Sergeant Driffel turned up and let me know from the captain that according to international agreements prisoners of war did, indeed, have the right to escape attempts. However, the charge against us was not simply escape, but “conspiracy to escape,” because there had been two of us. Furthermore, we would be accused of theft—after all, we were wearing American army jackets. He himself, said Driffel, would add that the sentence would certainly not be imposed for the escape, but because we had let ourselves be caught. When I asked the sergeant whether the captain had really come up with that nonsense about a “conspiracy,” he barked that he always told the truth. I retorted that he should, then, on his word of honor, assure me that he had my manuscripts, which had no doubt been found in the box, in safekeeping. They were in the hands of the court for examination, came the answer, and would be returned to me at the end of my period of imprisonment. “Possibly!” added Driffel.
Almost six weeks passed with the same unpleasantness every day. One evening a Polish NCO came toward the cage, arguing with a prisoner, whom he repeatedly kicked and then knocked to the ground. Then the prisoner, who did not dare defend himself, was further beaten with a rifle butt. We shouted at the NCO to stop mistreating the defenseless man. Instead of stopping, almost blind with rage, he struck the man on the ground even harder. The prisoner’s attempts to protect himself grew weaker and his body became no more than a limp heap. Just then, Captain Grey happened to pass. He instantly put a stop to the beating and sent the NCO back to his quarters. The very next day he had the cage opened and sent both us and the other prisoners back to the camp.
The court-martial in Rheims—about which there had been so much talk—never took place. After Captain Grey’s intervention and the emptying of the cage, I was detailed to duty in the quartermaster’s office of the Polish camp. When I met Captain Donaldson on one of the camp streets he greeted me sternly. Yet with a hint of a smile, I couldn’t help but say to him, while displaying the palms of my hands on which scars had scarcely formed, “You punished us without a formal sentence. That’s still unfinished business between us.”
Donaldson appeared stunned at the accusation in my words and evidently had no answer. As I remained standing there, he responded something like this: At the beginning, back then on the camp street, he had taken me for a young German of a familiar type—romantic, open, earnest. He had perhaps put this picture together himself. There were crazy ideas about the Germans in circulation; he had taken them for propaganda. Now he knew he had been mistaken. I, too, was just a German like all the rest. He had already told me how deep his disappointment was. Then he added, somewhat contradictorily, “Sorry not to have you at headquarters anymore!” Now I did not know how to reply, and for a long time afterward asked myself what I should have said. Then, after staring into midair for a little while, he forestalled me by saying, “Take care of yourself, Joachim!” It was the first time he had addressed me by my first name. Shaking his head, he left me standing.
One September day in 1946 First Sergeant Walker, who, during my time at headquarters, had often liked to drop by for a chat, came to see me in the quartermaster’s office. He had been posted elsewhere for several months and I greeted him by remarking lightly that if he had been preparing the charge against me in Rheims, then I could understand why the trial had not taken place. He merely laughed and said he thought that there really had been a problem. Then he added that he had had nothing to do with my case and had been busy most of the time with duties in Le Havre, and was now glad that he would soon be returning home to Chicago. I said that I envied him, especially as I had recently heard of my father’s return from a Russian prisoner of war camp, in one piece but in very poor health.
“Perhaps you’ll see your father again soon,” said Walker. When I asked in a slightly irritated tone of voice what he had done to make that happen, he replied, “I’m doing just that, my friend.” In the last few days he had been able to look at official correspondence marked TOP SECRET. He was letting me know now and announced, as if he were talking about the most obvious thing in the world, “The matter is decided. You guys, at least, won’t be handed over to the French. You’re going home.” When I looked at him with some astonishment, he added: “And another bit of confidential information. I’m very pleased about that!” And then, “most confidential of all,” he said finally, “not a word to the others!”
Nevertheless, it was five months before the train to Germany arrived in the marshaling yard of the depot. We had no idea where it was taking us. It seemed likely that it would be a place in the American Zone. I had given Freiburg as my hometown, because I had friends there and Berlin seemed unsafe to me, and, in fact, after two days the train taking us to Germany stopped in a camp at Heilbronn, near Stuttgart. In a moment the good-humored atmosphere and the singing about all the Rosemaries, Erikas, and Heidis6 evaporated, because everyone assumed that our camp had simply been transferred from Laon to Heilbronn. But then word quickly got around that Heilbronn was a transit camp for release.
I stood in line for more than two hours before it was my turn. A paunchy sergeant wearing spectacles asked me to stand at attention while he checked my papers, and in high spirits at imminent freedom I asked him in German: Strammstehen? (Stand at attention?) In a few words rasped in a strong Hamburg accent, he reprimanded me. So at the end of my time as a prisoner here is yet another former German, I said to myself, while he went through my belongings. Luckily, he left me the three books I had managed to hold on to through all the perils of captivity. Scratching his head, he looked carefully at my diaries, laughed at a few passages in my text about the Renaissance, and asked about the Castruccio story, “What’s the point of that?” I tried to give a short explanation, but the fat man waved his hand dismissively, “Forget It!” Then he threw everything handwritten onto the pile of rubbish behind him and said, “You don’t need that anymore!” I tried to make him change his mind with a couple of friendly remarks, but he grew irritated and cut me short: “That’s it! Here are your papers! Now get out!”
At first I was unable to think of a retort. I simply stood there, motionless, while the sergeant waved me away. Finally, I made what seemed to me to be a quick-witted response: “In ten minutes I’ll be going through the camp gate over there. From then on I’ll be very happy that people like you will have to address me courteously again!”
He stopped short. Then he angrily threw the leather-bound volume with my favorite poems at me. I held the book tight and paid no attention to his shouting. My first taste of freedom was to act as if I couldn’t hear him. The last time I glanced back, he was still looking at me, open-mouthed, even as he waved the next prisoner over. For a moment I thought that I had opened his eyes. Not until some time later did it occur to me that he had not understood at all what I wanted to tell him.
In another ten minutes I was out of the gate.
1 The German armed forces surrendered in Rheims on May 7, 1945, and in Karlshorst, Berlin, where the Russians were headquartered, on May 9.—Trans.
2 This library of small-format paperbacks made available to GIs and, later, interested Germans, literary works that had been unavailable in Nazi Germany.
3 Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen, a Germa
n writer who, among other things, analyzed the effects of mass hysteria in his writings, was born in East Prussia in 1884 and died in Dachau concentration camp on February 17, 1945, shortly before the camp was liberated by the Allies.
Reinhold Schneider (1903–58) dealt extensively with issues of power and religious belief and the conflict between earthly power and divine providence in numerous essays, dramas, and narratives.
Romano Guardini (1885–1968) was a most influential Catholic theologian and youth leader after 1945; the Nazis had forced him into early retirement in 1939, but he returned to teach at Munich University.
4 After Germany’s military defeat in 1945, its territory—except for those parts permanently detached and given to other states like Poland or the Soviet Union, for example—was occupied by the Allied forces and initially divided into four occupation zones: American, British, Soviet, and French. Different laws, rules, and regulations pertained in all four and travel and commerce were severely limited, hampering the reconstruction effort. These zones only ceased to exist in 1949 with the formation of the two German states, the Federal Republic of Germany in the West (i.e., the three zones occupied by the United States, Great Britain, and France) and the German Democratic Republic in the East (the former Soviet Zone). But all foreign powers retained a military presence well into the 1990s, and the United States does so to this day.
5 Cigarettes were the most sought-after fungible commodity after 1945. Since the old Reichsmark was completely devalued, a black market featuring direct exchanges of commodities took the place of the monetary economy, and cigarettes, especially American brands, became the new money. This situation was ended by the introduction of a new currency, the Deutschmark, in 1948.
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