Behind Hitler's Lines (41 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

JOE KEPT MOVING EAST TO THE THUNDER OF BIG GUNS, WHICH
rumbled several times a day like a distant storm. The terrain was open farmland with clumps of trees stripped of branches for firewood. In the big snowfields any moving figure stood out, so most of his progress was at night. By day he piled up boughs, crawled under them, and tried to sleep while the cold kept waking him, a reminder to massage his feet. He traveled the dirt roads only when the moon was down. A frigid wind blew constantly, numbing his face till it felt like a board.

Joe kept expecting to come across bivouacs of Wehrmacht rear units. In England he'd been taught what they looked like because the D Night jump was supposed to land on top of them. Though it had only been seven months since he'd been there, England seemed very long ago, and what had changed completely since then was his ideas about capture: he'd be KIA before being a POW again, the reverse of his attitude in Normandy. Joe feels his attitude was right both times. This time, even more than beefsteaks and blankets, he wanted a firearm; and there must be some kraut out there who wouldn't need his after Joe found him in the dark.

But there were scant signs of the Wehrmacht. For days he'd eaten nothing but cold grain and was desperate to find some of their garbage. Now and then there was a truck driving on blackout, during the day some horse-drawn ammo wagons. Once or twice he'd seen a formation of light bombers way off
in the distance, but otherwise the Red air force wasn't around and neither was the Luftwaffe. Normandy had been densely concentrated fighting on the land and in the air. Joe was learning about a different war on the Eastern Front.

German troops didn't leave stuff lying around like GIs do. Joe found a few apple cores, potato peels, and chicken bones—all frozen, petrified—and some empty ammo boxes, but that's all. His energy fuel tank read empty, and the pain echoes from the Gestapo affected his mind. Crossing snow-fields, he scuffed his tracks. That started him laughing—the last thing the Germans would recognize were footprints of American brogans on the Eastern Front. Or maybe they'd think that Eisenhower was attacking them from the rear! He had periods of silly thoughts like that. In his mind a song reprised maddeningly: “Move it over, move it over, move it over….” He couldn't remember the rest but imagined Bray jitterbuggingtoit.

When Joe slipped too far into thoughts like that, something caught him up. He'd sit down, bring his rational mind over like a passenger taking the wheel from a tipsy driver. He remembers thinking there was a dragnet trolling behind him from III-C. Did that make sense? he 'd ask himself. Do I really need to continue watching my rear? It took a long time to register again that III-C was now more than thirty miles distant. What's more, the commandant wouldn't put out a long-range alert for an escapee—an admission that there had been an escape, and by a second-timer at that. Thus confirming the irrationality of such fear, Joe got up and pushed on, only to have to review it again hours later. Over and over he had to bring two internal voices together like focusing binoculars.

On his journey to the east there were fewer buildings to be seen. All were silent, without a light or chimney smoke. By the fifth day Joe knew he'd have to enter one of those buildings, get out of the wind, and beg, steal, or kill for some food. He trudged through a wide stretch of woods and came up to the edge of a clearing that opened into fields. Fences were all down, but no recent tire tracks led up to his target, a small stone farmhouse.

There was a sagging barn on the edge of the woods where he could watch for activity from the hayloft. He did for half a day, munching straw till it liquefied enough to swallow. In late afternoon a candle was lit on the bottom floor of the farmhouse.

He climbed down, left the barn, and checked around for commo wires leading into the house. Not finding any, he went right up to the door and knocked hard. After a while an old Silesian German and his wife opened it a crack. A few chickens were cackling, and hogs grunted weakly inside.

As he had with Kamerad, Joe frankly introduced himself as an American soldier who needed help. Through the crack he could tell the farmer was looking him over and realized Joe was different from anyone he had ever seen before. From back in the room his wife called innocently, “Are the Amis here already?”

Joe began sobbing with laughter. The farmer closed the door on him. It later reopened, with an answer that respectfully conveyed that he couldn't help and please go away because if Joe were found here, the couple would be shot. No they wouldn't, Joe said—the Russians are coming. You could hear their artillery. When they come, I'll help you if you help me now.