Wellington HZ355 from 429 Squadron

As I said, we stayed overnight. We were going down. We were walking along a street. Across the street was a large rail road yard with an iron fence along the street. I remember that, those tracks over there. I could probably identify it pretty easily if I ever got back there. I never did. We are walking down to Gare d’ Austerlitz. (Note: He had thought the name of the station was a different one.) We are walking down this street and there was a man leaning against a telephone pole here (points). There was a street that ran this way (across in front of him). We had come down this street, crossed the street, up on the sidewalk again. There was a large building right here (points) and this man was leaning against the pole. I paid no attention to him. There was a kid coming toward us, a young person, walking toward us. This guy pulled a gun, the guy leaning against the pole. And he came toward me. I thought he was going after this kid. I thought that was what this was all about, you know in those times there where all kinds of reasons for shooting somebody down. But anyway the guys came from across the street with guns. Guys came from around the corner; they must have been leaning against the building. I didn’t notice them there. They scooped us right back against this building. Of course, Smitty and I both had the sides of the bag and they just had all of us there. And of course when we looked around there was about 25 people with guns all in civilian clothes by the way. So they handcuffed me and Smitty together. Run us around the corner, all of us, you know the man, the woman, everybody around the corner and there was a German bus sitting there. They ran us up on the bus. And this is another mystery; I hadn’t told anybody in Brussels that I was an American. This is just too complicated for crying out loud. Trying to figure it all out, what are you doing in that outfit, you shouldn’t be. It just didn’t make sense. I didn’t bother with it and as we got started in the bus, this one German shoved me right against the steps of the bus and said “Americana Swine.” Now how did he know I was an American? I didn’t think about that for a while and then finally, wait a minute, then it dawned on me, I don’t get it. I still don’t. They run us out to a place called Fresnes. This is the largest prison in Europe. It’s got 5,000 cells and 3 large divisions. 1st, 2nd and 3rd division. We were in the 3rd division. But the front of the place where all the offices were and everything. They had us in a long corridor. And they had us standing against the wall, about 10 feet apart. Well I never did finish mentioning when we crossed that border in Compiègne. We were sitting in there, the train compartment, and I asked the guide, I said how does it happen that everybody else got off the train but we don’t have to? So he says, money (moves fingers back and forth together). So alright, that could be. He had travel passes for all of us. Well when the rest of the people got back on the train, he was standing in the doorway and he went to put his bag up on the top, he dropped these passes. So he reached over and gathered them up and handed them to me. I was the first person sitting just inside the door. So I had these things in my pocket. Well, when we got into the prison, into Fresnes prison, I asked to go to the latrine. Of course they had the door open, but I was able to pull these papers out of my pocket and drop them down the toilet. Well if you think that didn’t jar those people. They didn’t see me do this, but they couldn’t find the papers. That was when I first began to get suspicious that this guide maybe wasn’t what he said he was. This guide, because he was then standing up there talking with these people, and of course they would turn around and look at me and then when it would come time for me to get interrogated, they wanted me to empty my pockets. No papers. They drilled me and drilled me and they took the rest of the guys off and put them in a holding cell. (Interviewer – How many of you did they capture all at once?) Myself, Smitty, Belgium woman, the Belgium man and 2 other RAF people. (Note: RAF Sgt. William “Bill” E. Cole and RAF Sgt. Frank Hugo – both from Squadron 7.) That would be 7 of us. 7 in the party and the guide. They couldn’t find these papers. They held me long after the rest of these guys. They had these little cells that were that wide (hands out). They were open at the top but they had barbed wire over them. They were about that high (arm up just over head while sitting). (hands out) They were open at the top but they had barbed wire over them and they were about that high (arm just up over head while he was sitting). You couldn’t stand up in them. And then they had pipes, steam pipes running across the top of each one of these rows of cells. And that was the interrogation point. Well they would turn on the heat and it would get stifling hot in there and we were probably like this (bent forward) maybe a little bit more but we couldn’t stand upright. Every time we tried we hit our head against the barbed wire. I was about, well I went in there probably about noon, I suppose and I was in there until the following night, it was dark, I don’t know what time it was but it was dark. They took me out of there. I was ready (Interviewer – did they know your name?) They knew all about you. You know I didn’t piece it all together until later. They finally took us upstairs. Oh I remember the other people, Stuart M. Sharp, no, no scratch that, Stuart M. Sharp was from Decatur, Illinois. He was a B-17 co-pilot and he had been shot down on his first mission over St. Nazaire and they had brought him up there. When they tossed me in the cell, there was him, a guy by the name of Whitney. Whitney was a Ball Turret Gunner on the same aircraft. He came from Erie, Pennsylvania. A guy by the name of Ford. Ford was from Baltimore and he was the Flight Engineer. And they were the three people in the cell that I was put in with. The Stuart M. Sharp, that’s the guy that just use to sit around, extol the virtues of Pomona Valley. He trained there. When this lousy war is over that was where he was going back to, the Pomona Valley. I don’t know if he ever did or not. We were sitting there in the cell one day, the door opens, this guard comes in and he’s got a number 10 can of peas. Del Monte peas. Grown and packed in the USA. He came in and said “Your friends in Paris sent you this.” He handed us this can. You don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. I didn’t go into anything right there but I did, I asked if we could use his bayonet to open the thing. We did and the four of us sat there and ate peas. To this day I don’t know who my “friends in Paris” were. Now where did that number 10, Del Monte peas come from? (Note: The men that he met in Fresnes were from the 379th Squadron, B-17F #42-3113, shot down May 29th, 1943 near Pontivy, France. 2Lt. Stuart M. Sharp ended up in Stalag 7A and work camps Krumbachstrasse and Munich, T/Sgt Charles M. Ford ended up in Stalag Luft 3, moved to Nuremberg-Langwasser, and S/Sgt Chester A. Whitney was at Stalag 17B. NARA)

 

I am still trying to pinpoint the Work camp that he was in and escaped from. He was guessing that it was between Leipzig and Liebertwolkwitz. I couldn't find anything, so I back tracked. My Uncle sent a letter home (wrote it the day he reached the US Army). The return address was from a Capt. Dale S. Jones, 0340313, HQ 953 FA BN APO230. I searched on "HQ 953 FA BN" and found that on April 18th, 1945 they were in Naunhof. From there I searched and located this site: www.heimatvereinerdmannshain.de There is some information in the history on the site which talks about an Inn in Erdmannshain that was used for POW's, mainly French POW's that were used in farming. It goes on to say that the prison housing was confiscated and there was a fire in a barn there.
I emailed the site (hopefully English response!)

My Uncle describes the camp as a "Dance Hall." Bunks for the POW's were set up inside. A large red barn was on the land outside the barbed wire. There was a ravine close by that the three POW's escaped to and hid inside a cave that was used as a air raid shelter. While inside a man and a young boy came in with a latern and then left shortly after. They did not report the POW's to the Germans. There was some little hills in the area that he came up over to reach the main group of the Army units.

Hopefully I can find out for sure. My Uncle must have been further south east of Leipzig than he thought. He was with the US Army when they were in Liebertwolkwitz. He talked about a Nazi warehouse full of liquor and magnums of champagne.

I also have another letter:

Trying to attach them but can't.

 

I put them in my album...

 

FAQ....

 

Cont.

(Interviewer – So how did they execute the lady and) The following day. (Interviewer – And you say you had to watch it?) Yes. They took them out in a compound out back. This was an exercise area and they had these little cubicles. They had a wall, wall and wall (showed with hands). And then the prison itself, they had a catwalk around there where a guy could walk around, the guard could walk around on it. And that was exercise guards. They were suppose to, I never got out to one of them, but they made us go stand on that catwalk and watch them machine gun those two. (Interviewer – Did they blindfold them?) No. They just chased them out into there and let them have it. (Note: He could not tell from the distance whether it was actually the man and woman from the group that he was with.) (Interviewer – Did you ever think that would happen to you?) We were standing there in the cell one day and this guard came, he opened up the door, walked in and he said “Come to tell you, you are to be shot.” You know as I look back on it, what in the hell was I thinking about, these people, they could shoot us anytime. Who was around to stop them? Yet I didn’t panic or anything else. All I did was turn to this guy and asked “Do you think we could get a Priest?” And then he said “I just, I just.” It took me a while for that to sink in. Finally the guy says he’s kidding. Some joke. Of course, obviously it didn’t happen. (Note: He said that the interrogator in Fresnes said he was an American from New Jersey and that he left there and went to Germany to join the Gestapo. He had his own office. He had a “Louisville Slugger” bat and used it during the interrogations. He got a broken clavicle from it. He said the man did not have an accent. No uniform, just street clothes and he would recognize him for sure. When he told the US Intelligence about the man when he was interviewed, he felt they knew about him. Once a Luftwaffe medical type man came to his cell and put black salve on a boil he had on his shoulder. He said he ate cabbage soup there, worms included. You got use to it. He said once he got some cheese and jam, from the Red Cross in France he was told. He said that one time there was bombing close enough to hear and aircraft flying. He got into trouble trying to see out of a corner of a small obscured window in the cell that he broke. He said he was taken way down inside the prison and put in a cell. The cell was dark and damp, no light. While in there he was only given rotten cabbage to eat and no water. The walls were covered with moths and very damp. He said he “patted” the moths and had to lick the walls to get liquid. He was in this cell , he is guessing for about 30 days.
A Luftwaffe Officer came to the cell one time and spoke to him while Russell was there. He did not know the ranking of the German Officer’s at the time. He said it was a bluish-gray uniform with silver epilates, woven cord. He was a big guy and spoke very good English. The Luftwaffe Officer asked him if he was a military man. He said yes RAF. The Luftwaffe Officer said “You shouldn’t be here. We will see about this.” They talked about the war a bit. He told the Officer “You can’t possibly win the war, you have the whole world against you.” He said the Officer looked around and leaned in close and said “Well yes, thinking people in Germany think that way also. You and I are little people, we can’t make these decisions.” Two or three days later, he left the prison.)
(Interviewer – Did you ever get shot?) (Note: In Stalag IVB) This guard walked up to me. I had a cigarette in my mouth and he flipped it out of my mouth. When I reached over to pick up the cigarette, he shot me in the hand. Just plain cussedness. Well they took me over to the Lazerette, what they called the little dispenser we had there. And this Russian Doctor fixed me up. He did a good job. I still have the nerve coming down here, splits right about here (points) and part of it goes on the inside of this finger and part on the inside of this finger. And that’s what is severed. That nerve. Just upstream of the split. So I have no feeling inside of that finger and inside of that finger. Now I have it on the outside of those two fingers because that’s the next nerve over. So that’s still there. This guy did a good job. (Interviewer – Did the bullet go completely through?) Yes, it went through, the jacket, the copper nickel jacket on the round tore loose and that lodged in my hand. It passed these two fingers and broke the bones in those fingers and there’s a lump there now. It didn’t quite set the way they should. (Interviewer – Was it a pistol the guy shot you with?) Yes a Walther 7.65.
(Interviewer – How long in that prison in Paris?) 14 weeks. (Interviewer – And then what?) Well I was sitting there in the cell one day and they moved me from where these other 3 people were into another cell where there was only one fellow, a man by the name of Russell. He was a B-17 Pilot that had been knocked down over Ploeron, in southern France. He came from Texas. (Note: Lt. Colonel James “Jim” Russell Jr., (His first name is Colonel, a family name passed down.) was shot down on May 29th, 1943 over Ploeren, France. He flew in the B-17 named “Concho Clipper.” He left Fresnes and arrived in Stalag Luft 3 sometime in November. He arrived in very bad shape. He was repatriated on the Red Cross ship Gripsholm.) We were sitting there one day and this Luftwaffe Officer arrived. He was talking with us. He said, “You shouldn’t be here.” I think I agreed with that. He said “You should be Prisoners of War in Germany.” About 3 days later, they moved us out. They moved me to a Dulag Luft, which was in a little town called Oberusel, just outside of Frankfurt. That was an interrogation camp. That was the only Luftwaffe camp that I was ever in. (Interviewer – Did they take you by train?) Yes, nice coaches, travelling first class from Paris to Frankfurt! We got there just the day after the Schweinfurt Raid. When the Americans met 1100 fighters and they lost about 60 air craft that day. All these Americans. They had us. They would march us down the street, around a corner and march us back through the same place. And of course that was to impress the Germans. They thought they were different people. And we would go by the same point several times and of course each time, “Look at all the people that were captured.” They did capture a bundle of those B-17’s. We went to this Oberusel, this town. There was a gas house, a bar, like a little hotel there and they had card tables set up in the front yard and they interrogated us there. Well I was in civilian clothes. (Interviewer – Is that a problem? Did that make it rougher because you were not in uniform?) Well they said, “You say you are an American. You say you were in the Canadian Luftwaffe. You say you fly with the English Luftwaffe.” They couldn’t even get British. “You are not American. You are not Canadian. You are not English. You are French!” I said, “How do you get that?” They said, “We heard you speaking French through the ventilator. Well ok, you get a Frenchman in here and I’ll speak about 3 words of French and he’ll know that I am no Frenchman. Well they couldn’t figure this out. They just, I don’t think they ever did down to the end. An American in somebody else’s service and flying with a third outfit. They just couldn’t figure any of this out. This fellow he, (Interviewer – If you’re not in uniform can’t they treat you as a spy?) That’s the general idea. That’s actually not what the Geneva Convention says. What it says is you must be able to readily identify yourself as a military member. And that is some piece of your uniform, possibly a dog tag, identification. But of course, conversely, if they wanted to shoot, who is to stop them. (Interviewer – Did you have anything like that? Did you have your dog tags with you?) I had my dog tags, yes my British dog tags. They were round wafer and one of them was red and the other one was black. The red one was acid proof and the black one was fire proof. And of course we wore both of them. Theoretically, if we got battery acid on us, well the other one would suffice. But that was the system they used. (Interviewer – But you showed these to the Germans?) Yes, Oh yes. I lost those when I got out. When I finally got away. I had this little Italian Army muzette bag and I had a half a dozen little odds and ends in there. And I lost the bag. I was crawling down through this ditch and I had the thing strung around my neck and all of a sudden it wasn’t there. I don’t know where.

 

Through hours of research (to which I owe my first born to) information has been found. The Etienne family that housed my Uncle and John Smith in Liege, Belgium: Dr. Georges Etienne and his wife, Robertine Marie-Pauline Labhaye (Etienne). Their address is listed as 32 Rue Fabry. Their daughter is Ivette Etienne. A woman by the name of Hortense Stassart was also listed as living in the home and helping in the Resistance.

I still have a great deal to learn about the Resistance but it appears that many Evasion groups and sections were intertwined.

 

(Interviewer – I want to back-up just a second to when you were in that prison in Paris. Did you have any thoughts about trying to escape when you were there?) Well first of all we were on the 5th floor. We were not on ground level. Out in back of the prison, I was in the 3rd division, and out in back of the 3rd division were the exercise cells. This was just a walled-in closure right up against the back of the prison with a catwalk around it. Open in the top. There was no roof on it. If I had gotten out of the, if I could have gotten out through the window, each cell had a window. If I could have gotten through the window and got 5 floors to the ground, I would still be in a walled enclosure. The chances of getting away were pretty darn slim. We thought of it. That’s what they had told us in England. That’s your job, if you get captured your number one job is to get away. Now the Americans did not have that training. I thought that was kind of a shame at the time but you got to remember that it wasn’t an air force, it was an Army. Armies traditionally don’t believe that anyone should get captured. That’s not the way it is. I don’t know whether now the US Air forces finally after long years, finally set up an escape and evasion training program. I’ve given them much what I’m saying here. They wanted this several years ago. However, they paid me a speaker’s fee. They also put me up in a hotel, paid air fare to where this place was. I’m not at liberty to say. They are doing quite well. Another thing they did was take a sample of my saliva. I said “What is that all about?” They said “You have multiple escapes and we don’t know whether or not you are unique in anyway. A lot of guys didn’t escape at all and maybe we could find out something.” Whether or not they ever found out anything, I have no idea because I never heard anything more. (Note: When he left Fresnes he was by himself, Jim Russell, his cell mate had stayed behind and the other three guys, Whitney, Sharp and Ford had left a while before he did. When the three left, Russell became his new cell mate. He was guarded on a coach train from Paris. He said the train stopped quite a lot and picked up many Americans from an Operation. )
(Interviewer – Ok so now you are at that Stalag Luft, when you left Paris. Is it a Stalag Luft?) No it’s a Dulag Luft. (Interviewer – What does that mean?) That’s interrogation. (Interviewer – Oh, ok.) And that’s all it was. And they used hunger as a weapon. It kinda feel a little flat on me because I come out of 14 weeks in that hole in Paris, but where the other guys that were in there, these fellows that were on the Schweinfurt raid. They were coming straight out of an American mess hall. So I think the impact on them was a lot greater then on me. I kind of been conditioned by that time. We were at this table, this card table. The fellow next to me, in the card table next to me, the man said, it was an Englishman sitting there being interrogated and this German officer said “What kind of airplane were you flying?” And he said “I don’t know, it was dark when I got in it.” The German thought about that for a minute and it dawned on him how ridiculous this was. He jumped up and he had a pencil in his hand and he’s jamming the eraser into this guys ribs. “You break the rules, you break the rules.” Oh boy. But this guy that was interrogating me, he said “Who was your family dentist?” Well first of all he wanted to know where I was from, I told him that. I figured that wouldn’t make too much difference. So he says “Who is your family dentist?” And I told him. A man by the name of Phillips, Kent Phillips. And he said “Oh yes, upstairs over the Market Basket on Market Street.” I looked at this guy and I’m saying to myself, which I was suppose to think. How in the hell did he know that? Well before I left there I got to talking with this guy and he told me that before the war he had travelled with the Ritter Dental Equipment Corporation. (Note: Checked on the Ritter Dental Equipment Company and indeed this company was in business before the war and still in. No records exist for employees before or during World War 2.) A German company and they had practically a monopoly at that time. We bombed the company out of existence but there is still a Ritter Dental Equipment around. He had travelled all over the United States. He said he had a very retentive memory and that’s why he got this job. Whether or not he had done a little research beforehand, but apparently the guy knew where the dentists where in that little town. It’s only a town of about 16,000 at that time. What 10 to 12 Dentists in town probably. He knew where they were. But they told us back in England, in our training, they said “Now they will hand you a form which they claim was a Red Cross form. You put your name, your rank, and your serial number and that’s all you put on that form because it’s a bogus form.” And they did. They handed it to me and I looked, name, rank, serial number, Squadron, Base you flew from, type of aircraft and so on. Of course when I got the name, rank and serial number, I just handed it back to him. “You didn’t fill it out. Now you don’t fill out this form the International Red Cross won’t have a record of you, so they can’t notify your family. And your family will worry about you not being around.” Of course we knew about that beforehand. So they told us about a British Warrant Officer who had gone over to the Germans. They told us about him. He was on the staff there at Dulag Luft. Of course we avoided him like a dirty shirt. After the war I’m sure the British sorted him out. (Interviewer – How did you know he was British?) They told us back in England. (Interviewer – Oh. Did he pretend he was German?) No. He just operated as a British Warrant Officer. He was legitimately but he was working for the Germans. (Interviewer – He just pretended to be one of the prisoners you mean?) Yes. He was suppose to be a prisoner on the staff of Dulag Luft. (Interviewer – I see.) That’s where we got our equipment. They issued us, it was all American equipment. American Army. I got a pair, brogans, a pair of trousers and a jacket. Not a Ike jacket. This was the old jacket with brass buttons, the one that came before the Ike jacket showed up. No underwear and no socks. We also received something which I thought was unique. You got a little blue box, cardboard box about that square (hands about 10 inches) about that high (2 to 3 inches) and this was a soap dish, comb, toothbrush, a tube of toothpaste called Colgate’s by the way, a razor, a pack of Gillette gold razor blades and this was all in chrome and very nicely done. And when I turned it over “CCC,” remember the Civilian Conservation Corps? These were the things that they had issued to those guys and of course they apparently had a bunch of them hanging around so they sent them to us in Germany. That was kind of unique. Oh yeah, an overcoat. I got an overcoat there, an American Army overcoat. The guys preferred the British equipment, these uniforms. Simply because they were heavier. They were warm. The American uniforms looked a great deal better. That was something the British people have a little hard time figuring out was the very good tailoring that went into these American uniforms. For instance, a seam you know, it was all basted there along the seam. Of course their uniforms had nothing like that. And their uniforms didn’t fit well, they weren’t designed, they were designed for combat. It’s called battle dress. And whereas the American uniform, and another thing was the British uniform was pretty much a satchel in the back end. Where the American is smooth. (Interviewer – So how long did you stay at this Dulag?) I stayed, well I was 2 days in the cells at the interrogation site, by the little hotel and then across the highway and kind of down in a little depression, they had about a half a dozen barracks and there were people who would have gone through the interrogation and they were being held until they could be sent into Germany. Well to other camps in Germany. And most of those guys went into Luft camps but I didn’t. I went to Muhlberg which is an Army camp. Why, I don’t have any idea. We had 1500 RAF personnel in one compound. (Note: In Dulag Luft he does not remember the guys in line, but while he was there he met an American Paratrooper with the last name of Mullaney from Boston. They spent time talking, trying to figure out if they were related. There is a Thomas J. Mullaney Jr. from the US NARA POW list. Private, serial number 11055331, Army, Parachute Infantry, date of report of POW September 15, 1943, from Massachusetts listed in Stalag 17B. He was still wearing the clothes that were given him by Dr. Dexters in Eisden when he arrived at Dulag Luft. “It is not a good thing to stand down-wind of a POW.” In the interrogation room there were Mark XIV Bomb Sights on shelves in the room. The interrogator kept asking about them.) (Interviewer – Let’s take a look over here on the map and show me.) Now there is two Frankfurts. Frankfurt Am Oder and Frankfurt Am Main. (Interviewer – Here is Moosburg.) Moosburg. That was Stalag 7A and that was just outside of Munich. That wound up as an American camp. (Interviewer – Was Dachau in that area?) Yes. Dachau was just up the road. An interesting thing is that after the war with the U.S. Air force, I was stationed at Furstenfeldbruck, just up the road from Dachau. Dachau was our laundry and I was working in supply. I had left the flight line and it was cold weather and I managed to finagle an inside job for a while. And every week I would take the Squadron laundry down to Dachau. Of course the concentration camp area was still there but the U.S. Army 1st Division band was stationed there at that time that I was there. The ovens were there and that was a pretty gloomy place.
The German, he is a contradiction. He can be as fine an individual you would ever want to meet and the next breath, well he could be the snake. Now there is an element in the national character, the element of the strong person and the kids grow up this way. The father is the head of the household, no uncertain terms. The German makes an excellent soldier and of course that background lends itself to that. He is good at it. (Interviewer – Very structured though aren’t they? As I understand it the American soldier has, if the regular GI, if they loose their officers, can kind of think for themselves. Where the Germans sort of needed someone to tell them what to do and to go do it.) I don’t really believe that. I think that the German is perfectly capable of doing his own thinking if it’s necessary.

 

(Interviewer – When did you first hear about D-Day?) There was a false D-Day, about 3 days prior. The French, this Frenchman comes running through the barracks “de bacomo, de bacomo,” (Note: Hard to understand but sounded like “de bacomo.”) that’s French for a landing. That’s where the word “D” comes from in the word D-Day. Of course, we were waiting for that. Everybody was jubilant over that and then about an hour later we found out that it wasn’t the case at all. It had been a false alarm. Within, now the first troops went down about 1:15 in the morning. The Paratroopers, the 82nd and 101st and the British 1st and 2nd Paratroop Divisions. They went in the night before about 1:15 in the morning and I think the Americans dropped first. I think the Americans dropped about 20 minutes ahead of the British. I don’t know why but I think that was the case. By daylight we knew in the camp that they had landed. That was the second biggest day we had. The first biggest day was when we got out of there. Yes, that was quite something. Well you know, they landed on D-Day and they’re coming across France and they push the Germans into Germany. All man, everything is going fine. We are going to get out of here real soon. Well one day, we look down the road and here comes these GI’s, a whole bunch of these GI’s coming up the road. But then we looked a little closer. None of them had guns but there were other guys with other odd ball looking helmets that didn’t have guns. That was the Battle of the Bulge. We got about 1500 Americans into Muhlberg. That was the first time there had been any appreciable number of Americans in that camp. It was mostly British, French, Poles, Russians, Norwegians, Belgians, Dutchman, and Danes, just everything you could think of. (Interviewer – Ok, let’s back up then from the Dulag. Where did you go?) Well as I say, oh this bunch of buildings that was down in that depression, we stayed there about four days and then they moved us. Have you been to Frankfurt in late years? (Interviewer – No I have not.) Well the IG Fireman building, the biggest building in town, I think it’s right at the end of a main street and just to the left of the main entrance to that building is the parking lot. There’s a bunch of concrete squares out in the parking lot and those concrete squares were the floors of the barracks that I was in. And that was the final place where they held us before we got a train going out in Germany.

 

This is great ! It took me about 5 minutes to fid out that "de bacomo" = "debarquement" .

You are still doing a fantastic job with the interview, it must take you days and days ! Thank you for sharing all this with us, your dad's story is fascinating.

 

Thanks Skipper,

I still have a few more things to check on before posting more and Notes to add as we go over in detail.

Jo Ann

 

I will be waiting and be sur ethat I regulary follow this fine thread. When/if I find something new or interesting I will let you know but you are obvioulsy way ahead of me with this story.

 

Ok...still working on obtaining information but I have a lot more done:

This is the parking lot. Later on at the end of the Berlin Airlift, years later, I was in Frankfurt. I was moving from Furstenfeldbruck to England, my family was in England at that time. My wife had gone back there to family and they were living there while I was in Germany. Now they had all this barbed wire they had pushed up in a big snarl. I had chopped off a little piece about that big (3 to 4 inches long) and I still got that. Whenever I feel sorry for myself, I haul that out and look at it and say “You don’t have it so bad.” Directly, diagonally across the street, there was a corner right there, we saw these German Officers going in and out of this one building. It turned out to be an Officer’s Club. And it was called “The Palmengarten.” Well when I got back there during the airlift and I was hanging around Frankfurt trying to get back to England and we got weathered out and couldn’t fly, so they had made an American Enlisted club out of it. So I joined the Palmengarten so I got a chance to hob knob back in to what I had seen as a German Officer’s Club. But that was years later. When we went into Germany that was by 40 and 8 Car. The honeymoon was over and no more first class. We were about three days on that train. (Interviewer – 40 and 8, that was 40 soldiers and 8 horses?) Yeah well, 40 men and 8 horses is what the 40 and 8 stood for and give you an idea how obsolete the French were in that war. They still had those. Now that was a World War 1 designation but they still had those signs on these cars. The Germans had gone around and collected all the rolling stock from all over Europe and a lot of it was French and they still had the 40 and 8 signs. The American Legion has what they call a rowdy part of the American Legion which is the 40 and 8. That’s the fun part of it. (Interviewer – So where did you go in that? Where did they take you?) Well they took us to Muhlberg. We got off the train at the little town of Muhlberg. There’s two towns to the north of town. There’s Muhlberg, to the south of town is a town called Neuburxdorf and there is railroads running into both towns. (Note: When he got to Muhlberg he said there was a building that had a camera in it and they would take x-rays of the lungs of prisoners. He said sometime in 1944, he remembers it being cold; someone set the building on fire at night. He also said that late in 1944 or early 1945, right after a big bombing of Dresden, while he was in Muhlberg, the RAF guys were told to “Saddle up,” that they were going to be moved out to Gorlitz. He did not know why they would be moved close to where the Russians were. They were told “From a High Command” that they were going to be executed. As they lined up with the gates open and ready to head out, the move was cancelled. He found out later that Heinrich Himmler had ordered the execution of all RAF POW’s in retaliation for the bombing of Dresden and that Hermann Goering had stopped it. He remembers a large group of Danish Police prisoners arriving and a group of female Polish fighters. He said that they were ragged and did not have much clothing on when they arrived. Many men gave them clothing to wear and food to eat. He said that 2 or 3 times a year they made “Pumpkin Rum.” They would score a pumpkin from the cook house and pack brown sugar inside it and put it on the flue, from the stove to chimney area where it was warm. They would shake it every now and then and when it got “slushy” they would dump it out and strain it. He said it was very strong stuff. There were many men that he remembers from Stalag 4B, a few were RCAF Earl Warren – 434 Squadron, shot down November 20th, 1943, RCAF A.C. Brown – 427 Squadron, shot down December 21st, 1943, RCAF R.G. “Sugar” Townley – 158 Squadron, shot down August 31st, 1943, RCAF Neal McVicar – 419 Squadron, shot down November 19th, 1943. The German guards that he remembers at Muhlberg; “Twinkle Toes” – because his toes had been frozen off when he was on the Russian front, “Cowboy Charlie” – because he was bow-legged, “Sweetie” – because he was kind of feminine, “Snowflake or just Flake” – he had been with the German Alpine Troops and wore a Adle Vise flower on his cap, another very young guard about 18 or 19 years old, he can’t remember his nick name was in the Straflager. He wanted to be in the Africa Corps and his English was very good. There was another guard that would come around barracks 34B (in early 1945, Walter was the Barracks Chief) and he liked to play chess. Walter set up a chess board and the guard would come around, study the board, make a move and then leave. A few days later or so a Polish POW would come around, study the board, make a move and then leave. Neither the guard or the Polish POW ever spoke to each other he said because there was a very strong hatred between the both. The game at times would last a month or so. He remembers one game ended with the German winning but they played many games this way.)

 

So sometimes our Red Cross parcels would come to one town, sometimes the other. And that kind of brings me up to something that you won’t believe. I was out on an escape. I had been in this salt mine and out on escape, captured and brought back. I got some bad water while I was out so I had dysentery pretty bad. So I had to turn myself in. Now I was, now I don’t mean turn myself in escaping. In the camp itself, I was suppose to be an Englishman by the name of James Whitrick (Note: Unknown spelling) from the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, captured at Casa Forte in Italy, which is near Cassino and I was under his name. It was easier to get away from the work parties but I had too much rank to work so that’s what we do, we change our identity with someone else. He would stay in the camp. Any parcels we got from home, he got and many of these guys were in bad shape when they got there. Well they maybe just had been a prisoner 2 or 3 months. Some of them were banged up pretty bad when they came off the front. They could stay in the main camp, get our parcels, live under our name and maybe get some halfway decent medical treatment. I knew a lot of guys and this guy Whitrick, he’d been hit. He was banged up. I had finally turned myself in and told them who I really was and so of course they were sending me back to Muhlberg. Well of course they had Whitrick in jail, in the clink back in Muhlberg and that’s where I wound up. But there’s a town called Falkenburg, just north of this camp and the two rail lines, the main rail line from Paris to Brussels, crosses the main rail line from Berlin to Dresden but they cross at different levels. Well we came in on the upper level from Torgau, from Tuentenhall where the salt mine was to Torgau. We stayed overnight in Torgau and then on down to Falkenberg. I had gone down to the lower level. I had a guard with me and this woman walked up to me and in flawless English she says, well she asked the guard if she could talk to me and he said yes. “Are you from Muhlberg?” And I said yes. She said “Do you know Sgt. Barrington?” You could have knocked me over with a truck. “Barrington, yes I bunk right down the road from him.” I knew him real well. He was an RAF Flight Engineer in the camp. And this was a good looking girl. One of those “Peaches and Cream” blondes. So about that time our train came in. The guard is hollering at me “Roust, Roust.” I didn’t have a chance to find out what gives with all this. So when I get into camp, you always come through the vorlager and there you get your head shaved, you get deloused and get a shower. Then you stay one night in there and the next day they release you on into the main camp. I made it my business to look up Barrington. And I said “Hey Barry, just what is going on here.” I said “These good looking German girls calling for you by name.” Barry kind of grins and he says “Good looking?” I said “Oh yeah.” I said “She was a good looker.” But I said “What’s happening here? What are you doing at night that we don’t know a thing about?” He kinda laughed. “That’s my mother.” And I said “Yeah sure.” Who is going to believe that? Well it turns out that it was his mother. Before the war he studied Engineering at Heidelberg University in Germany. His father had died and she remarried a German. Now this guy, he had a string of photography shops all over Germany and so that was that. Well of course when the war, they knew the war was coming, so she sent him back to England and she stayed in Germany. They lived in Munich, in the city of Munich. Guess where Barry was shot down? Over Munich. (Note: Actually he was shot down over Belgium but the mission was over Frankfurt close to Heidelberg University.) Anyway that was the first time I saw her. The next time was between Muhlberg between the camp and Neuburxdorf, down in Neubruxdorf. The Germans wanted to have us give our parole and we said no. They told us back in England, “You don’t give parole, because you use up his man power.” If you give parole and you’re out tromping around the local countryside with no guard, that isn’t helping anybody. So you don’t give parole. The exception to this we would give parole for a burial party. If someone died, we took them down to the local area and buried them outside the cemetery, by the way. They wouldn’t have them inside. Then the other one was Red Cross detail. So here we’ve got this great big long two mile line coming and going. Going down to Nuebruxdorf. Getting two of these parcels, tying them together with rope, slinging them over our shoulders and walking back to camp. And we would turn it in to the Germans when we got in camp and they put it in the magazine. They wanted to control these parcels so we didn’t have any access to them except when they issued them to us. Well she was in between the lines. There was this line, endless line if you like. I made two or three trips hauling stuff back but she was walking up and down in between the lines with the guys. That was the second time I saw her. The next time I saw her was in a town called Bitterfeld. Now Bitterfeld is a pretty fair sized city. When I was working with the Military government after I got out of the prison camp and went back to work with the American Army in the city of Leipzig, and while I was there, these two British Officers arrived and they had orders to pick me up and take me up to Bitterfeld, to Halle, to this Air Drome. We were a Supreme Headquarters Rear team. Now Rear was Versailles, outside of Paris. And of course we were on the Elbe River, but we were actually working out of SHAEF Headquarters back in Paris. So what we were doing, we had a yellow form we called IS-9 form. It was a SHAEF form and this was to, while it was still fresh in the guy’s mind, get as much of it down on paper as you could. Well we were particularly interested in War Crimes and things like that. We wanted to know about these things. Well these guys would come out and each one of us had a card table. They would come out to the card table. We would give them this form. Tell them to go back up to the barracks, the Luftwaffe barracks. They must have got out of there in a hurry because the bunks were still made. They still had blankets and pillows on the bunks. We would tell them to go up there, fill out this form as best you can. Come back down tomorrow morning. We would check the form and if it’s ok we’ll give you a ticket on the aircraft. Now the Americans were flying to camp Lucky Strike, which is outside of Cherbourg and the British were flying into Brussels. Well anyway, I am sitting there at my card table and these people keep coming up. Passing out these forms, telling them what they had to know. And this guy says “Hi Pat.” I looked up and it was Barry. “Hey,” I said “You made it over here.” Now Muhlberg is on the east side of the Elbe River. The bridge at Torgau and the bridge at Riesa, the two towns that had a bridge across the Elbe, those bridges had been blown. So the guys coming across, now the Russians had liberated Muhlberg. They put their own guards on. They didn’t want our people, the way they say it. They didn’t want uncontrolled people running around in the Rear areas. Now that didn’t bother the British and Americans but it did the Russians. Well anyway, these guys are getting to the, they weren’t guarded to well because they were getting away from camp. Coming across the blown bridges, sometime swimming across the Elbe River into the American’s sector. And there were signs up all over the place. “Go to the Air Drome in Halle.” So anyway, “Hey” and it hit me you know and I thought, I said, “Hey Barry.” I said “What about your mother?” He goes like this (pointing over his shoulder) and I look at this little, tiny British soldier behind him. Got burnt cork all over the chin you know, and he’s standing there looking at me and Barry says “Am I going to have a problem?” I said “Not from me you aren’t.” So they took there IS-9 form and went up to the barracks and the next morning they come down and I handed him two tickets and away they went. Now that was the last time I ever saw either one of them. He got a job with a British Overseas Operation in Kenya after the war. Years later, I was in England and the Daily Mirror, a large newspaper there, national, much like our USA Today. They had a column in there called “The old Codgers.” People wrote in, you know and all kinds of crazy stuff. And somebody wrote in there and said “I was a Prisoner of War in Stalag 4B at Muhlberg and don’t I remember one of the prisoners whose mother was living, an English mother was living in the town nearby.” And of course I read that and I said, ah ha. So I wrote “The Old Codgers” and “Yes, you certainly do remember the English lady whose son was a prisoner in Muhlberg, whose name was Barrington. And of course, that was, I described Falkenberg and up and down the Red Cross lines and the deal at the Air Drome at Halle. So they researched and some woman wrote in, I have all these clippings at home but I couldn’t find them when I got ready to come up here. (Interviewer – I’d like to see them.) Anyway some woman wrote in and said she had been following this story in “The Old Codgers” and it struck a familiar note and then she remembered a woman that was in an old folk’s home in Cornwall. That’s the extreme southwestern corner of England. And when she was a young girl she use to sit there and listen to this woman tell about her experiences in wartime Germany. And they finally tracked her down, she was still around. I have a picture. They invited her to the British Ex-POW Association Annual get together they have. They always hold it in the Albert Hall in London. And they invited her. She showed up and they took a picture of her. She still looked pretty good. Now she had to be up in her 80’s for crying out loud, when this picture was taken. That was the last that I have. I have no idea what eventually happened to her or him. I didn’t make the reunion. I wasn’t able to get to that one. The Air force had me off in some unpronounceable place. I couldn’t make it so I couldn’t get to see her. (Interviewer – That group was called “The Old Codgers” did you say?) The Old Codgers. It’s a column in the Daily Mirror. I don’t know if they even still have it. They still have a Daily Mirror, I know that.

 

(Interviewer – Now did the Germans care that you guys would switch identities?) Well yes, they weren’t to know this. As far as they were concerned, I was James Whitrick. I came from Coventry in England. (Interviewer – I mean how? Was it that there was so many of you there and so few guards that they couldn’t keep track of who was who or anything like that?) We put the people on these work parties. Now we wanted, we had a hard time getting that, but we finally got to the point. Finally the Germans said, ok we’ll let you guys form the parties. So in the main camps, of course it was a very simple thing for somebody that wanted to go out on commando. So they would grab one of these people that was a new prisoner that was going to go out on it. Change their identity with him. They would go out. This guy would stay in the main camp. Of course the other thing about it is if they didn’t do this somebody would be working for the Germans. The guy that went out. Well we would be working for the Germans temporarily, then we would escape and we would go on down the road. (Interviewer - Now let me ask you. Was there some sort of a hierarchy structure in the camp itself, as far as your prison and if you were gonna bug-out did you have to have permission to go?) No. What there was, the Germans set up a system called the “Man of Confidence.” Now our Man of Confidence at that RAF compound, each compound had a Man of Confidence and he was the head of the compound. (Interviewer – And he was a prisoner?) Yes. The guy that was the Man of Confidence for most of the time I was at Muhlberg was another American in the Canadian Air Force. His name was Myers and they called him Snowshoe. No idea why. (Interviewer-Did he have like the highest rank or did that matter?) Well most of these guys were Warrant Officers. Now this was an enlisted camp. It was not an officer’s camp. There were probably maybe 10 percent of the people in there were actually officers but the Germans didn’t know it. They had passed themselves off as enlisted personnel and the reason for that was that it was easier to get away. They guarded the life out of an officer and they were in separate camps. They were in Oflags. Now of course the Luftwaffe camps, the Stalag Lufts, they all had the same designation. Some of them were, now Sagan, Stalag Luft 3. That’s where the big escape was done. That was an enlisted camp and then it turned into an officer’s camp later. And they had both Americans and British there but primarily British. They were about 25 miles from Muhlberg. (Interviewer – So at any rate, would you have to get permission from the man?) Well you had an escape committee. And if you were a member of the escape committee you couldn’t escape yourself. But your job was to help other people. Everybody that went out or at least as much as we could, we tried to control this because the last thing we wanted was two people falling over each other on an escape. So there was always a cover man. And this cover man, the Germans knew who he was. And of course they thought he was in charge of the escape organization and he wasn’t. He was the cover man. You know the Germans watched him like a hawk but there was some other guy over here that was really. And he was called “Big X.” That was the name they gave him. Big X was, I never was. I was a scrounger. Now he’s the guy that runs around trying to get equipment. Rice paper for making maps, colored inks, magnetized metal and wire. We had direct current in camp and we could take a piece of wire from a light bulb and put a piece of soft iron in that and leave it up there for a couple of weeks and it would be magnetized. A fine old compass and we had compasses. Most of our compasses were match boxes. You know the Germans had the little wooden match boxes. They just made a perfect place to put the compass. We made a lot of them. Every German magazine or newspaper that we could get our hands on, we did. Because you’d be surprised how much information you could get out of things like that. For instance we had a complete map of the entire German Rail Road system that we got out of a magazine, “The Signal.” That was a German Army magazine. (Interviewer – We have a couple of them here in the library.) You got the Signal here? How about that. Well anyway, one of the issues of the Signal had the complete German Railway system. We blew that up. We had maps that big (hands out) that came off a little picture in the magazine. We made rubber stamps. They were made out of the heels off of shoes. We could get a piece of German paper with a rubber stamp on it, then we had people in the camp that were skilled enough, using an edge of a razorblade and a heel to make a rubber stamp. You couldn’t tell the difference. We had a lot of that. Oh we had language classes. Now the language classes were rather brief in as much as we knew we couldn’t pass ourselves off as a German. So we learned quick phrases. For instance, a German will say Guten Abend. Now that’s fast. It doesn’t reveal much of an accent and that is the standard greeting that is used like hi. That kind of thing. And just a fleeting contact with a German but not enough of a contact to reveal who you were. We had that. Oh then there was the chrome, the chrome ore. The Germans had at least one and maybe more chrome mines in Germany. And they were exporting this stuff to Switzerland. It was going in cars, in these small, well you been to Europe. You know the size of the car, a little truncated thing. They would fill up a car with chrome ore, weigh it and then take the car across, say just before they get to Switzerland and weigh it again. And if there was any discrepancy in the weight of that car, they knew that something wasn’t kosher. So what we did, we got some chrome ore in the camp. I don’t remember how they got that but they got a sample of the chrome ore and they weighed it. And they knew exactly how much chrome ore weighs and then we carried a one pound Klim can. Now Klim was milk spelled backwards and that was the dry milk that the Borden Company put out. They were in the American parcel. We use to have what we called a Klim Bash, that would be making a dried milk drink but that was kind of wasteful. Usually we cooked with that stuff and everything else. Good stuff that Klim. But one of these cans of Klim, we knew weighed exactly so much full of chrome ore. We knew our weight so we, when we got ready, before the weighing at Friedrichshafen, which is near Lake Konstanz right down on the Swiss German border. We would get in there then throw out enough can of chrome ore to displace our own weight. Well I did it one time and unfortunately the Germans saw this stuff I kicked out. So they searched the car and of course I was back in the bag. That was one of the dodges that we had.

 

(Interviewer – Was it usually trying to get to Switzerland?) That was one of the places, Switzerland, Sweden, Yugoslavia, Russia or the Ukraine you know Poland and Russia, the coast of France, Holland and Belgium. That was very insecure. An awful lot of people wound up back in the bag trying that one. (Interviewer – Was there any worry about the Germans infiltrating your escape committee?) Well they tried it. Of course there were enough people in Germany that had lived in this country and spoke the language real well. They did have stooges that they tried to plant on us. I don’t remember anybody being terribly successful at it. I do know that there was one man, he was a South African and of course South Africa was, they weren’t all that great. They don’t care that much for the British. As a matter of fact, South Africa went to war by one vote. So she almost didn’t go when the rest of the British Empire went to war. This guy was a poor and he was working for the Germans. We found out about it. Oh how, I don’t know. No one told me that. They executed him and dropped his body down the latrine. That’s what happened to him. (Interviewer – What percentage of escapees were caught? Or else were killed in trying to get away?) Aside from the 50 that were killed going out of Sagan, very, very few. I didn’t know anybody personally that was shot trying to escape. They could do it and of course in the case of..The Germans panicked on that day. The British put, they put what was it 73 I think that they got out? And of course these 73 people are running all over Germany and the Germans just came apart. Well of course Himmler put the order out; as soon as you capture them, kill them. Well of course they shot 50 of them. Why this 50 and why the 30 or 40 more that didn’t get shot, nobody knows any idea why this man and not this man. Several friends of mine bought it in that. Guys that I flew with. (Interviewer – Let’s kind of go back and let’s maybe if you would like to go chronologically and describe each of your attempts and...) Well the first time I didn’t get out the main gate. (Interviewer – And this was in Moosburg?) No. This was Muhlberg. (Interviewer – I’m sorry Muhlberg.) Oh Moosburg is way down the road. But what happened was this camp had two gates, a front gate and a rear gate. And there was a main road that run from one gate to the other. And all the compounds were right and left of this road. Now there were no restrictions on that road. People were walking back and forth and milling around and so on. We had 22,000 people in that camp. (Interviewer – And what was the designation of that camp again?) Stalag 4B, Muhlberg Elbe. Muhlberg on the Elbe. They had a wood gathering detail and the Italians...Now after the Badoglio Government took Italy off the side of the Germans; the Germans went around and wrapped up all the Italian Army. People that wore a star on their lapel. Now that indicated that they were Royalists. If they wore a little battle axe like on the back of a dime, you know that fasces, that’s where the word fascist comes from. If they wore a fasces then they were Fascist. They didn’t make prisoners out of them. They were on the side of the Germans. But the guys with the star, they were Royalists. Imagine a military organization in war time being split right down the middle politically. Great. These Italians that were in the camp, ah they were in bad shape. Their morale was terrible. And Italy got nothing out of that war but grief. They got their country smashed up and the people killed and everything else. They got nothing back for that. The Italian soldier he, well he just didn’t have it. He wasn’t much of a soldier. Now the exception was their Alpine Troops. Alpini they called them and those guys were good. Very good and almost totally fascist. But they were good soldiers. The rest of the Italian Army was useless. But they used those guys on this wood detail. So what they would do, they would man-haul a wagon up to the main gate. They would stand there. There would be maybe 8, 9 or more of the Italian guys standing around this wagon. A guard would come out and they would assign them into the wood detail. He’d count them, ok, 12. You got 12 people. Well they would man-haul that wagon up to this pine forest and pick up all this dead wood laying around, load it up in the wagon, bring it back to Muhlberg. Now the Germans wanted to control this wood. We had a terrible fuel shortage all the time. They gave us this small coal briquette but not many of them. But this was a supplemented thing. So what they would do, they would come in that main gate, go all the way down through this main drag, out the back gate, unload the wood outside the wire, come back through the back gate all the way up to the front gate and then they counted them. Now this was a terrible breach of security because we made arrangements so that when either going down or coming back somebody would join that party in Italian Army Uniform. And of course the count when they got back up to the main gate, the count would be correct. Now of course we got someone sitting out there in the woods. But I used that over and over again. The Germans never seemed to figure it out. We did. And a quite a number of our people got away on that. They didn’t get back to England. I don’t know how many escape POW’s got back but not very many. But that’s ok. There’s no such thing as an unsuccessful escape. If you’re grabbed like I was that time at the gate, that’s ok because you’re using up his man power. If you get away, he’s got to hunt for you. If he catches you, he’s got to assign a guard to guard you. You’re using his transport to haul you back to where ever you came from. And this all costs him. And that was what we were after. And that’s why there is no such thing as an unsuccessful escape. But anyway, this operation, I had made arrangements for a guy to join the party after we come back and I was going to stay out in the woods and break from there. Well while I’m standing there, trying to look as down trodden as I could and look as much as I can as these poor sad Italians. This Dutch fella walks up to me, a fella that I knew quite well and in impeccable English, he says “Excuse me Yank, have you got a light?” Well of course the guard jumped on that right away. He walked over and he was looking at me, grabbed this Italian Army overcoat and ripped it open. I had a civilian jacket on underneath and in the lining of the civilian jacket I had 22 bars of chocolate sewed in and they were so delighted over that. I served 30 days for that one. That was the first time. (Note: He had switched identity with an American POW soldier who was very ill and had lost quite a bit of weight in the short amount of time that he was there. The plan was to have the soldier become him so that he would receive medical treatment in the lazerette and then he would be on the run for a bit before the soldier would be known to be missing. After he was caught at the gate and spent time in the clink, he tried to locate and find information on the ill soldier and could not.)

 

The second time, I teamed up with a man, he was a Czechoslovakian. (Note: Through research it appears that this man was Augustin Šesták from 311 Squadron, RAF. A picture of him was located and he was 99% identified as being the one. Sgt. Augustin Šestákwas a rear gunner on Wellington L7844 Mission Kiel and shot down in October 1940. He was at several camps prior to coming to Stalag 4B.) He spoke several different languages, Eastern European languages, spoke Polish, Czech, Slovene, oh good lord, he knew his way around the languages. And I teamed up with him and in eastern Poland and western Russia, the Ukraine area, there is a marsh called the Pripet. And it was a pretty extensive marsh, several 100 square miles, I guess. You couldn’t operate heavy equipment in there at all. But in the winter time it froze. So both the Germans and the Russians had patrols in there. And our rationale was that maybe we could contact a Russian patrol. So we went to the Pripet marsh. Unfortunately we didn’t contact a Russian patrol, we contacted a German Patrol and we went right back in the bag again.
Now that same individual went with me to Yugoslavia the next attempt and we got out of the camp the same way with this wood detail. In Yugoslavia they had a Civil War going. They had a group called the Chetniks and they were Royalists. And there was a man by the name of Mahailovic who was in charge of them. The other group were the communists and they were backed by the man, Tito in there. Well at that time the British and Americans were trying to placate the Russians and the 2nd front bit was coming all over the place. Joe Stalin was pointing the finger, you know, How come you guys haven’t opened up a 2nd front. So the British appointed Randolph Churchill, who was Winston Churchill’s son as their liaison on to Tito. Of course we were placating the Russians there and Tito was the communist side. Well after the War Tito had Mihailovic executed, treason you know and I have read some of the biggest pack that you ever could think of in this country. Academia about how the Chetnics were on the side of the Germans. Well if they were all on the side of the Germans, how does it happen that we had so many of them in the prison camps? And they did. Now I don’t remember communists in that prison camp from Yugoslavia. But any rate, we got connected with the Chetnics and they passed us along and they came to a place where there were 2 hills that came together, kinda like a gap in there. There was a creek, a small macadam highway and a rail road track at the bottom of these 2 hills. This is in Yugoslavia. (Interviewer – How far from Camp? How long did it take you to get there?) Oh 200 miles. (Interviewer – Well how did you get there?) Well we, Muhlberg is not that far from the point of Czechoslovakia. (Note: One of the other RAF Czechoslovakian POW’s was from Rakovnik and he gave them his address. While they were on the run they went to the home, a farm on the edge of the town and gave a message to the man’s family. They did not stay long but were fed while there.) In fact we got into Czechoslovakia, into Hungary, through Hungary, down into Yugoslavia and then when we got to this place where these 2 hills were together, they told us, they said “Now beyond that stream, that creek, that is Tito’s men. That’s the way they put it. Now we had nothing to do with that side at all. These guys treated us pretty darn nice. And they said we can’t go beyond there. Ok. So we went down and crossed the road and tracks and come up the other side of the mountain and we got surrounded by about 5 or 6 people with guns. They had the guns right on us and they turned us back. They would have no part of us. We told them who we were and told them we wanted to contact Randolph Churchill. No Way. They just didn’t want any part of us. So we went back to the Chetnics side and we decided that we are not going to go anywhere here so we try and go through Austria and get into France. Maybe we can get some help in France. An occupied country is better than one that isn’t occupied. Well we come back into Hungary and when we were there, we now normally the Germans checked all the through trains very carefully but the locals, they didn’t bother the workmen’s trains. But they had a prison break, a civilian prison break, not Military, somewhere in the area of Hungary, they were checking everything, trying to get these civilian prisoners back. They scooped us up in the process. So they put us in this British Work Party and these guys were locked down inside of barracks, about 25 or 30 of them, I guess. And when we got in there, they said “Boy are we glad to see you.” “You got to tell them what’s going on here.” “Well what’s going on?” Well it turns out; this work party….Now the Geneva Convention says you will not use POW’s in direct, to support directly your war effort. That by the way is the reason why when they used German and Italian POW’s in GI mess halls in Texas and in Arizona that was a violation. They weren’t suppose to do that. Well they had a freight car with some shells in it, artillery shells. They wanted these British to unload the freight car. The British refused. Now they had a Corporal in charge and he had a Lance Corporal, which is one stripe. Corporal had got 2. A Lance Corporal’s got 1, he’s like a PFC in the American Service and so they told this guy to order your men to unload the car. “No, that’s a violation of the Geneva Convention and we don’t do that.” “Well you will do that.” “No.” “If you don’t do that, we will shoot you.” So he said, “No.” And they shot him. Killed him. His body was laying out there in the compound when we got there. That brought the Lance Corporal up. The Lance Corporal, they said, “Now you saw what happened to the Corporal.” “We gave him an order and he refused it.” “So we were within our rights to kill him.” This is what I am getting, second hand from these Englishmen. I would like to think I got that kind of courage but I’m not so darn sure but this Lance Jack said “Sorry.” They fired into his shoulder. He had a wound in his shoulder. It didn’t kill him. And they put them all back inside the barracks. That’s what we found when we got there. That’s what they wanted us to tell who ever we contacted when we went on down the line. We knew we were going to be staying there. Anyway about 4 or 5 days later they got us and took us out of there. And whatever eventually happened to these guys I don’t know. I have often thought about that Lance Corporal. What a courageous individual to be able to spit in these people’s eye and say, “Sorry.” (Interviewer – How did you get 200 miles? Who helped you along the way?) We were riding these workmen’s trains. These workmen trains, cars and this guy I was with, his German was pretty good. He was asking and he bought the tickets and that’s how we got down there. Anyway, that was that one and of course they took us to Chemnitz, Stalag 4F. We stayed there 5 or 6 days. Then they run us back to Muhlberg. That was our main camp. Well it takes a while to get things set up for the next attempt. (Note: He was sent to Oflag IVC. He said at this point they were not sure exactly who he was and did not believe that he was a Sergeant. He arrived by train and had to walk up to the castle. There was a dry moat around it with a open courtyard. Treatment there was very good and “hands off.” He said he stayed only a short while, a couple of weeks. He remembers meeting George Lascelles and Douglas Bader. There was a POW that had been in the Olympics and would speed walk around the courtyard area. He said it was funny to watch. He said that the German guards would take Bader’s false legs away from him at night for escape prevention. He and another POW helped make some “legs” out of tin cans while he was there. When the Germans determined that he was enlisted, he was sent back to Stalag IVB. (Interviewer – What time of the year were these 3?) Well (Interviewer – That winter time on the one.) Yeah that was the winter time. Well it was probably mid March I guess when we got grabbed and hauled back. But the Yugoslavia, that was in late summer. The Carpathian Mountains are all granite. They are tough on footwear. These Chetnics gave us boots, our own were coming apart. That was the boots that I had picked up, the American Army boots in Dulag Luft. (Interviewer – When they brought you back, did they give you a bad time?) Oh yeah, they…the German’s had a system, I never knew anybody that went all the way through but the first time you were suppose to get 7 days bread and water. Well seven days in the cooler, in the clink. For some reason and I don’t know why, they held me 30 days that first time. The second time you are suppose to get 30 days. The third time you’re suppose to go to a punishment work party. The fourth time you go to a Concentration Camp and the fifth time you’re executed. Now that is the theory. I never knew anybody that was executed under that system. In fact I never knew anybody that, well I went to Buchenwald and I knew 2 or 3 other people that managed to get into things like that but as far as the execution is concerned I never knew anybody that did get the chop on that. But that was the theory. And the reason we knew that because we had a fella named Stan Eardsley. Stan’s German was just about complete. He had been a Gem salesman all over the continent before the war. He knew his way up one way and down the other in Europe. And Stan was in the Kommandant’s office one day, I don’t remember why, I don’t know if I ever knew why but he was sitting there reading these things in the Kommandant’s desk upside down. So you know that his German is pretty good. He’s reading these things and this list of punishments was one of these things. He told us about them when he came back. (Interviewer – I assume you didn’t take any weapons with you when you went out?) No. (Interviewer – I mean if you would have killed a civilian then…) If you killed a military man, as a prisoner of war, you have lost your right to kill. You don’t have that right. And theoretically, if you killed somebody in an attempt to escape and got back to England, under International Law, the British would send you back to Germany to stand trial. Again I never knew anybody that had any of that happen to. No, we didn’t bother with any weapons at all. (Interviewer – So would they treat you as badly as the Gestapo did when they were interrogating you?) No. The clink in Muhlberg was one of two brick buildings. The other was a latrine, by the way. It had steam heat. It was in pretty good shape that place. The French were operating it. French POW’s. We would sit in there. Now we had our Red Cross parcels inside that clink. We weren’t suppose to but we did. This one guard, a German guard would come around and he’d tell the Frenchman, he’d say “Kommandant come, Kommandant come.” OK. So they would come around, collect all the parcels and hide them in the coal. They had a coal bin there and they had this boiler for the steam heat. (Interviewer – I’m wondering what the cuisine was like?) Well we got dehydrated turnip soup. We got about 4 or 5 small boiled potatoes. We got about a tablespoon of sugar each day. We got some margarine. The margarine was made out of coal. It really was. It wasn’t that bad. We got a piece of bread about that thick. Now if we were doing work like once when I was in the mine, we got 600 grams of bread a day. A piece about that big but when we weren’t doing any work, then we only got 400 grams of bread a day. The bread was German Army bread. It was black; actually it was kind of a tattle tale grey. It was Schwarzbrot you know, black bread. Occasionally they would come up with some kind of another soup. We called it “Skilly.” One time they had pumpkin, I don’t care much for that either. Another time they had peas, yeah I don’t know what happened there. Somebody must have goofed. But anyway, they had peas, only one time. Another time they came around and they issued every man a little can of meat. It was a can, an olive drab can and it was Monkey meat and this was something that they had captured from this French Army in Africa. I suppose it probably sat around forever, who wants to eat Monkey meat, if they don’t have to. So they finally decided they needed the space, so they gave it to us. But that’s the only meat I ever saw other than Cowboy Charlie’s dog. We ate a dog one time. The way that came about, the Vatican use to send us in small tools, seed and so on so we could make a little garden alongside the barracks. Well I was working there in my garden. (Note: He got the seeds late winter of 1943 and late winter 1944. He grew tomatoes, corn, radishes, carrots, turnips, potatoes and lettuce. His combine and muckers enjoyed the produce he said.) This one guard, he had legs, his legs were like parenthesis. He was terribly bow-legged and we called him Cowboy Charlie. He had a dog. I was working in my garden. Now this is right alongside the barracks and there was some swing out windows along the barracks. I was just outside the window. So anyway, here comes the dog around the edge of the barracks and of course Cowboy Charlie wasn’t in sight yet and that dog-gone dog started digging in my garden. I swung at the dog with this little short shovel I had. I caught the dog right on the side of the neck. That was it for the dog. Well I grabbed the dog and dropped him inside the open window. Well here comes Cowboy Charlie, “Poochie, Poochie.” “My Poochie?” No. No. I don’t know anything about your poochie. After a while, of course Cowboy Charlie went on. I suppose he’s still wondering whatever happened to his dog. About that time the guys come to the window and said “Time to eat.” Now we broke up into, we called them combines. That would be maybe 4 or 5 people that would go in together and we would pool our parcels. And of course they went a lot further that way. These guys were referred to as your “Muckers.” British term I guess. One of the guys is usually the cook and he was usually someone with an imagination. But they come to the window and says “Time to eat.” Ok. So when I got in there, they had a little string of meat on the plate. Geeze, I looked at it. You know now that these plates were made out of tin cans. We became very adept at making tin can crafts. I looked down. I said “Where did you get that?” This one guys says “Never ask.” Alright. That was Cowboy Charlie’s dog. It was kind of greasy and kind of stringy but it was meat. (Interviewer – How much did you weigh when you bailed out and how much…) I weighed 182 when I bailed out. Fourteen weeks later I weighed 107. I dropped…When I was in Buchenwald I probably…Well when I came out of there, I didn’t get weighed for about 4 or 5 days. I had a little food in between then. I probably weighed maybe 100 pounds when I come out of there. And by the time I got back, back to England, I had been eating US Army rations, I probably weighed 120.

 

(Interviewer – I meant to ask you a couple of things. First of all you were talking about the Vatican. Had you kept up your Catholic faith during this time?) Well I suppose I’m what is known as a deathbed Catholic. Yes to some extent. We had some French Chaplains in the camp with us. They always had a midnight mass on Christmas. Palm Sunday, and I still have this, instead of a piece of palm, it was a piece of pine. Needles of a pine tree. I still got that at home. A piece of pine. I had a prayer book and a set of Rosary beads. Several medal on it. Now during World War 2 they put out plastic medals. I had some of them on there. I had that with me in a little leather pouch. I still have the pouch. When I was first captured, they took it away from me. When I got ready to leave to go into Germany, they gave it back. Now I also had a small silk American flag about that big (about 12 inches). And I had that in, now this was a flag an uncle of mine had carried in France in World War 1. And they gave this thing to me before I left. I had it in one of these oiled silk tobacco pouches. And I didn’t get that back after. But they did give me back the religious articles, and when they handed it back to me then this guy says “You going church?” I said “Sometimes.” “Ah,” he says. “You go to church then you bombs ladies and children.” I said “You guys have got a belt buckle that says God is with us and from that belt you hang a bayonet.” I’m not sure how much of that he understood. That was the by-play on the belt buckle. And that’s what it says “Got Mit Uns” on the belt buckle. (Interviewer – I assume there must have been Jewish captives, ah prisoners. Did the Germans treat them any differently then you guys?) Oh yeah, Jesus, at Buchenwald. (Interviewer – Well at Buchenwald I know, but I mean at your other, at Muhlberg?) No I didn’t know anybody who made a point of being Jewish. I’m sure that there probably were people in there that were but the Germans didn’t know it. Now the GI dog tag has the religion on it. The British dog tag does not. I always thought to myself, well J on an American dog tag could be a sentence of death. (Interviewer – Actually I interviewed a guy, a B-17 radio operator. He was Jewish and they had issued him 2 sets, one for H for Hebrew, the other for either P or C.) H. Yes. (Interviewer – However he forgot that he had his Jewish one on.) Oh no. (Interviewer – He said that when he went in to be interrogated, this German threw the dog tags down and says Judah. And of course he was scared to death but he said they never did anything. That’s as far as it went. They never bothered him in all the time. And they knew he was Jewish but they didn’t treat him any differently than anybody else or anyone that he knew of that was Jewish either.) No. I don’t remember. Well of course as I say Buchenwald.