Betrayed: Secrecy, Lies, and Consequences

by Frederic Martini

  107 The horse could no longer pull the heavily laden wagon in the bitter cold, so most of the bread was distributed to the POWs. Prisoners unable to continue were loaded into the near empty wagon for brief periods to recover their strength.

  108 The guards at the rear collected those unable to continue and loaded them onto empty wagons. There is disagreement over the casualty count during the march, but it was probably very low.

  109 This spared him the pain that he otherwise would have experienced from the blisters and raw, chafed areas on his feet.

  110 This was in the small town of Gross Selten. The POWs were there only because the German officer at the lead got confused and took the wrong road at Priebus.

  111 When evacuating POW camps, the Germans routinely ignored Article 7 of the Geneva Conventions, which prohibited forcing prisoners to march more than 12.5 miles per day. Col. Goodrich estimated that 15% of the men (an estimated 300 POWs) from South Compound arriving at Muskau could not walk without assistance. Sixty prisoners were left in Muskau, too sick and weak to continue.

  112 The medics in the group were kept busy — 1,500 blisters were dressed. Thus far there had been an average weight loss of 10-20 pounds per POW on the march; Fred’s weight would have been roughly 100 pounds.

  113 Each of the camps had taken a slightly different route and some had different destinations. American prisoners from South and Center Compounds were destined to Stalag VIIA, but those from West Compound went to Stalag XIIID, near Nürnberg. British prisoners from North and East Compounds primarily went to Marlag-Milag, a large camp near Tarmstedt, although some from East Compound wound up at Stalag Luft IIIA, near Luckenwalde. The reasons for this distribution are unknown.

  114 At the train, the men from South Compound were joined by 200 POWs from West Compound who had taken a different route to Spremberg.

  115 Thirty-two POWs managed to escape from the train en route; all were recaptured but delivered to Stalag VIIA rather than executed.

  CHAPTER 14

  Stalag VIIA

  SHORTLY AFTER DAWN ON 4 February 1945, the boxcars at Moosburg were opened, and the weary men helped one another climb down onto the tracks. Slowly, the prisoners moved onto the adjacent dirt road that ran between the train tracks and a tall guard fence and formed a marching column. It was a gray day. A chill, misty fog covered the flat and open ground.

  Fred marched down the road from the train station, eventually arriving at the main gate of the prison camp. A prominent placard announced that this was Kriegsgefangenen-Mannschafts-Stammlagger VIIA (“POW-crew main camp,” abbreviated as Stalag VIIA).116 A wide road ran through the center of the camp, and ahead he could see a tall, four-storey wooden watchtower unlike any he had seen at Stalag Luft III. Beyond that, he could see fences separated by continuous coils of barbed wire. Their destination was a small, fenced compound at the northwest corner of the camp, where processing and initial medical checks were performed. All of the staff Fred could see wore gray-green uniforms, which indicated to Fred that the camp was run by the German Army rather than the Luftwaffe. At least it wasn’t run by the SS.

  Fred was searched as he entered, and what little he had was returned. He then stood with Ed and the rest in the drizzling rain within an open area that smelled of rot and waste. A POW in an adjacent compound, who had watched their arrival with interest, called out “Welcome to the Snake Pit.” Fred couldn’t tell if that was the name of the place they were standing or the camp in general, but “Snake Pit” didn’t seem like much of an improvement over “Rock Pile.” The compound they were in had a long slit-trench latrine and four large buildings. Guards escorted small batches of men to one of the buildings for processing. When it was Fred’s turn, he found that processing began with delousing (a dusting of insecticide powder) and a warm shower. After showering, he was given back his uniform, smelling of insecticide, and was sent back to a building that was completely empty. There was no furniture, no water, no food, no stove, and a dirty, cold concrete floor. He soon realized that it was also infested with voracious fleas and lice.

  Fred and the other airmen spent four long days in that building, cold, damp, and miserable. There wasn’t enough floor space for everyone to lie down at once, so while Fred awaited his turn for floor space, he looked for an open corner. When one was available, he wedged himself in and caught a few moments of sleep. Fred put off visits to the uncovered slit-trench latrine as long as possible, as using it in the cold rain was an awful experience. A single, outside faucet was the only water supply, and he drank from it fully expecting the dysentery that followed. He had no other options.

  After this period in limbo, Fred was assigned to a barracks in the main compound. Probably for clerical convenience, men who had roomed together at Stalag Luft III were kept together in groups called “combines.” Fred’s combine was put in a relatively small area for enlisted men that was connected to the compound designated for British and American officers.117 The barracks was a long, rectangular, wooden building, approximately 150’ x 50’, with stucco exterior walls and barred windows. An entrance at each end led to a central hallway with triple-decker wooden bunks on either side. The hallways met at a common room in the center of the building, where Fred found a few tables and a water faucet with a hand pump. There was no sink, no toilet, and no stove in the building.

  Back in the US, a barracks like that would have held 120 men, but Fred thought there might be as many as 400 men in his building. Bunks were in short supply — if one was empty when you were ready to sleep, you could grab it. Each had a burlap mattress stuffed with straw, as well as a thriving population of lice and fleas. Fred was soon covered in bites, itching and scratching constantly, just like the other men in the barracks. Men slept on the floor, in chairs, and on tables. Fred never figured out if that was because they hadn’t been assigned a bunk, or if they were trying to get away from the associated vermin.

  The POWs in this camp weren’t paranoid about Gestapo spies, and although they grumbled a bit over the increase in numbers, Fred’s barracks mates were congenial. They told him that the most important rule was to stay in the barracks from 0900-0930 and 2100-2130 each day, and to return to the barracks during an air raid. Fred soon learned that the Germans were serious about the rules — an Army private with severe dysentery who left the barracks to get to the latrine during an air raid was shot and killed.

  There was very little to eat, even less than the worst days at Stalag Luft III. The POWs were almost totally reliant on Red Cross parcels. The allocation of parcels, cut in half the previous September, was steadily decreasing as Allied air strikes cut transportation lines, destroyed bridges, and blew trains and tracks to smithereens. With no stove in the barracks, Ed, Fred, and Stan, all in the same combine, built fires outside to provide warmth, heat water, and cook whatever they could scrounge. There was no firewood in the camp, so they burned bed slats, planks from the walls and ceilings, table legs, shingles pilfered from outbuildings, and anything else they could get their hands on. The guards were too few and too distracted to prevent the repurposing of camp property.

  Under the terms of the Geneva Conventions, officers could not be used for work details, but those protections did not extend to NCOs and enlisted men. From mid-February through mid-April, Fred and others in his combine found themselves on such details with depressing regularity.118 Each morning before dawn, guards with barely controlled dogs entered the compound and collected them for work kommandos that each required from 10-30 men. The guards stood outside the door and called for the men to join them. If the response was inadequate or too slow, the dogs were sent in to drive the men out. Fred, unwilling to face the dogs, always emerged promptly. By 0500 each morning, he was marching to the train station to be crammed into boxcars for a one-hour ride to Landshut or, more often, a two-hour ride to Munich.

  There were no markings on the cars to indicate that they contained POWs, and Fred’s train was occasionally strafed by Allied fighters. Several POWs were wou
nded or killed in these attacks, and although Fred escaped injury, each attack left him shaking, his heart pounding. He could not bear the thought that after all of the misery he’d endured, he might be killed by friendly fire. Oh, how he hated the sight of boxcars!

  Fred could stand and walk, but it wasn’t comfortable. After 30 minutes standing in a swaying boxcar, the fires inside his feet were burning. By the time he was let out of the boxcar, every step was painful. He did his best, but he moved slowly when crossing uneven ground, because he had to decide where to place his numb feet. The ill-tempered guards were already furious and frustrated by the continuous bombing and strafing runs by Allied planes, angry with the Luftwaffe for not defending them, and terrified by the prospect that Germany could lose another war. They vented their frustrations on their charges, clubbing Fred for not walking fast enough, or poking him with a bayonet to keep him moving. He was also cuffed for not working hard enough, for insubordinate looks, and for various other offenses. He had to mutely accept it all, with his head lowered and his eyes on the ground, just as he’d been taught at Buchenwald.

  Lethal force was used at the slightest provocation. While on a labor detail, a guard approached a POW working next to Fred. The guard had his hand open and extended, as if to shake hands. When the prisoner turned toward the guard, he was shot through the trunk with a small-caliber palm gun. Fred was splattered with blood as a hole exploded through the man’s back. As far as Fred could tell this was an experiment to test an easily concealed palm gun. The guard was clearly unhappy that the collapsed prisoner was still alive. He shook his head, pulled his Luger, and finished the man with a bullet in the forehead. He then sauntered off without a glance at Fred, who stood frozen on the spot.

  Fred spent the hours until nightfall clearing rubble and bomb debris. He worried most about the guards, but the work itself was hazardous. The risk of detonating unexploded ordinance was a constant threat. Fred saw several POWs killed that way.

  There were other worries as well. On one kommando, two men working nearby clearing rubble were killed by a German civilian armed with a pitchfork. The guards paid little attention, and did not intervene. When Allied fighters or bombers attacked the city, Fred was forced to remain in the open and to keep working rather than seek shelter — anyone running for cover was shot. He worked throughout the day, usually with no food or water provided. Fred came to hate and fear the Army guards almost as much as he had the SS guards at Buchenwald. Forced to stand in the open during a bombing, he rejoiced at the damage done by the bombs. He only hoped that any bombs that fell on him would blow up his guards, too. Fred spent each of these days in a constant state of nervous anxiety, watching the guards, watching for murderous civilians, watching the skies for fighters or bombers, all the while staying alert for unexploded bombs covered by shifting rubble. At the end of each day, bruised and beaten, hobbling on his burning feet, Fred was marched back to the boxcars for the return to the stalag, arriving at the barracks around 2200. It was a horrifying commute.

  When he got back to the barracks, Fred still had to find something to eat and drink before seeking a place to sleep. In late February and early March, this was very difficult, as no Red Cross parcels were delivered, and the camp was on starvation rations. Things got a little better after that, but it was never enough.119 When no bunks were open, Fred slept on straw scattered on the floor of the barracks or outside in a makeshift shelter, shivering in the cold, infested by fleas and lice, haunted by nightmares, and dreading the day to come. Fred felt like he was slowly fading away. Something had to change, or he wouldn’t make it through this.

  Fred found that he could avoid the labor kommandos by hiding before the roundup and spending the day slowly carrying small items — a straw mattress, a chair, or anything else light and portable — from one place to another within the compound. When he reached a good out-of-the-way spot, he would find a place to sit and rest his feet before carrying them back again. Ed and Stan caught on, and soon they had a little work party organized. Fred acted as the leader, which meant he no longer had to carry anything, which was much easier on his feet. The trick was to always look serious and busy, much as they had done when working in the rubble of the Gustloff Works. Any guard that noticed them would automatically assume that they were working under orders. Fred had come up with the idea after hearing about two POWs who escaped using a pencil, a small notebook, and a long measuring tape. One man would stop and hold one end of the tape while the other moved along the curb, calling out measurements that were dutifully recorded. The men had been ignored by the guards as they carefully measured their way along the curb, through the gate, and down the road to freedom.

  The main problem Fred faced was that he had no alarm clock, and if they weren’t up, out, and hidden by 0500, they would find themselves shuffling off to Munich or Landshut. It was a tremendous incentive for him to develop an internal clock.120 In the moments before sleep, he wondered how Eddie and Lucille were doing, and if anybody knew where he was. The camp was so disorganized and so overcrowded that he hadn’t found a way to send letters home, and he no longer expected to receive any mail. He was resigned to the fact that he would only know how everyone was doing after the war ended. He just wished the Nazi bastards would give up sooner rather than later.

  Spring came early, and the thawing ground turned into a shallow sea of mud. As German forces continued to retreat, additional POW camps were emptied and the prisoners sent to Stalag VIIA. The camp population grew to an estimated 120,000 POWs, and things became more crowded and chaotic than ever before. There was no room in the overcrowded barracks, so POWs were housed in grubby tents or left to fend for themselves in lean-tos cobbled together from scrounged boards, pieces of roofing, and other debris. An estimated 90 percent of the POWs had dysentery, and the latrines, which needed a pumpout every two or three days, frequently overflowed.

  Fred was pulled into local kommandos sent outside the camp to gather firewood. He figured that the camp administrators must have realized, rather belatedly, that the POWs were disassembling the camp for cooking and heating fuel. Fred was also recruited to help excavate deep trenches between and around the barracks buildings. The guards told the officers in the barracks that the trenches were for protection during air raids, but Fred didn’t believe that for a moment. The trenches made him very nervous, as he’d seen them used as mass graves when the Buchenwald crematorium was overloaded. Apparently LtC. Clark was equally suspicious, for word soon spread through the barracks that they should prepare for the worst. Each man was to remove a bed slat and shave it into a makeshift dagger that could be hidden in their clothing. If the Germans tried to line them up by the trenches, they would face a mass attack from the entire prison population. Fred heartily approved. If they were going down, they would go down swinging.

  The camp had a small library. Fred dropped by one day and grabbed a couple of small softcover booklets. One was an illustrated book of heroic Luftwaffe songs, and the other an educational volume called The Germany Book. He found that the latter provided a good look at the propaganda that was part of the foundation of the Third Reich. He was particularly bemused by the following passage:

  THE DICTATED PEACE OF VERSAILLES LEFT GERMANY MUTILATED AND CRIPPLED, AND WITHOUT THE MEANS OF MAINTAINING A LIFE OF ITS OWN. BUT THE SEEDS OF A NEW BEGINNING WERE ALREADY SOWN. THE GREAT BATTLE FOR SURVIVAL WHICH THE GERMANS HAD WAGED DURING THE WAR HAD CONFIRMED AND STRENGTHENED THEM IN THE DESIRE FOR UNITY. ADOLF HITLER BECAME THE SYMBOL AND THE INSTRUMENT OF THIS DESIRE. . . . THE CUTTING-UP OF THE GERMAN PEOPLE, WHICH HAD BEEN DICTATED AT VERSAILLES, WAS REVERSED. THE SUDETENLAND (1938), BOHEMIA AND MORAVIA (1939), MEMEL (1939), DANZIP (1939), EUPEN-MALMEDY (1940), LUXEMBURG (1940), AND ALSACE-LORRAINE (1940) WERE JOINED AGAIN TO THE REICH; THE DESIRE OF THE DIMINISHED STATE OF AUSTRIA FOR REUNION WITH THE REICH WAS FULFILLED AS EARLY AS 1938.

  THE GERMAN GOVERNMENT NEVER LEFT ANY DOUBT AS TO ITS PACIFIC INTENTIONS. . . . THE NEW GERMAN SOCIAL STATE WAS TOO BUSY WITH INTER
NAL REFORMS TO HAVE MORE THAN ONE AIM FOR ITS FOREIGN POLICY: THE SECURING OF PEACE FOR A LONG PERIOD. NONAGGRESSION PACTS WITH NEIGHBOURING STATES, MAGNANIMOUS PROPOSALS FOR DISARMAMENT AND CONSTRUCTIVE SUGGESTIONS FOR THE MAINTENANCE OF PEACE PROVED THE SINCERITY OF THIS AIM. NEVERTHELESS, CERTAIN CIRCLES ABROAD AGITATED AGAINST THE PEACEFULLY WORKING REICH UNTIL WAR FLARED UP. SINCE THEN GERMANY HAS BEEN FIGHTING FOR ITS SOCIAL ACHIEVEMENTS, FOR ITS INDEPENDENCE AND ITS NATIONAL EXISTENCE.

  Fred thought so highly of the educational content of this work that he wrote all over it. Around the Table of Contents, he wrote an abbreviated timeline of his experiences, under the heading A Tale of Woe in the ETO. Inside of the front and the back covers, he recorded the names and home addresses of men in his combine. The list of names was a mixture of men from Buchenwald, men from Stalag Luft III, and men from Stalag VIIA.121 There were many other men for whom he really wished he had contact information, but finding a particular individual in a mass of over 100,000 hungry and frustrated men was almost impossible. So he settled for those in his immediate area.

  Fred had grown used to Allied fighters flashing overhead on their way to strafe targets around Moosburg and in the Munich suburbs. Oddly enough, they never bothered him when he was in the POW camp, whereas they terrified him when he was on a kommando in Munich. In early April, on one of the rare days he overslept, he was in Munich once again, clearing debris at the Munich train station when a staggering number of B-17s rumbled overhead, dropping their bomb loads on the city. Fred had nowhere to hide and simply hugged the ground and hoped for the best while the entire city bounced and shook around him. It seemed like the end of the world.

  Stalag VIIA was more chaotic than ever. Thousands of additional POWs had arrived, and the camp was awash with prisoners. There was debris and rubbish everywhere, and although it was late when he returned from Munich, there were POWs squatting by makeshift fires, while others slept on tarps spread on the ground.