Behind Hitler's Lines (18 page)

Hours and hours of instruction like that, hours with a question now and then to which Joe said nothing or recited name, rank, and serial number. His butt wound was agonizing, but he wouldn't let them see him squirm. It was early morning when he'd gone onto the high chair, nearly morning when they took him back to his stall.

He'd been without food or water for more than twelve hours, and lay in the straw in a stupor till he was hauled back to the chateau. The next session, he guesses, lasted about eight hours. Joe was hit a few times but only when he passed out and fell off the high chair. During the first session he'd always kept eye contact with the interrogator. The second and third sessions he couldn't keep his eyes open.

Randomly, like flashes back to consciousness, he heard “What is your name, rank, and serial number?” determining if Joe understood where he was, what was transpiring. His rote reply reestablished a rough equipoise between him and the lieutenants. To all other questions he'd shake his head, so crumplingly tired and weak that the threat of beating didn't matter, but he was not beaten.
^*
If there was any strength in
him, it was to not say anything or these professionals could lead him to the paymaster jumps. What had happened to him after D Night would be of no value to them. I Company's radio frequencies must have long since been changed. So it was the paymaster jumps that were his inner-sanctum secrets. There were times in those sessions when Joe imagined that they were learning about the FFI by monitoring his thoughts. The interrogators' alien voices were in his mind, the only thing in his mind, so it seemed they knew everything in there.

Most of his misery was an aching haze, but some moments were vivid. Once or twice the lieutenant would rise, push his face closer to say something very slowly. That jolted Joe awake. He'd stare and wonder if he'd babbled something. There was a gush of fear and bile whenever an interrogator's breath was close enough to smell. Joe's high chair was slippery with urine, one of the reasons he kept sliding off. What Joe had going for him was the way he stunk—even Germans couldn't stay close to him for long. He wore the same begrimed clothing of his capture last month; the closest he'd come to having a bath had been sitting in the rain in what he was now wearing, in a small room incomparably foul where prisoners equally filthy had been interrogated around the clock.

“Does your girlfriend write to you?” “How long do you think she will be faithful?” “Are you the only soldier in your family?” “Who will take care of your parents now?”

On and on like that. It is the singular talent of professional interrogators to come up with so many questions to fill so many hours. Joe's had been trained on British POWs and didn't know much about Americans. Late in the sessions Joe would come semiawake and notice silent stares, as if the lieutenants were examining a new, perplexing species.

Everything in Joe was stiffly hurt. It didn't help to pass out; right afterward the pain was worse. When he fell off the stool, guards were allowed to administer kidney punches, something they enjoyed, if only to break the tedious routine. As hours crept on, the interrogators had to keep deciding whether he was conscious enough to understand questions. If not, there
was no point in continuing and it was off to the stall. What the lieutenants wanted of Joe was that he be very weak and agonized but still conscious: a fine line, a close modulation in which their professional pride was expressed in enough stamina to surpass Joe's.

All Joe prayed for was that it would stop. Half his consciousness was in confrontation, the other in episodic prayer. He'd gone down the “no response” path because any other way meant the pounding questions would continue without end. They would anyway, but he was locked into a position beyond empathy, an unrecoverably altered state of mind.

THAT'S THE WAY
the hunt went for a period of days. They'd revive Joe to a point where he understood questions. Then bad cop would mock him: “What harm is there telling us where your ancestors came from?” “We know you don't have any secrets, a mere technician like you. The guards here have more rank.”

Then good cop: “I can't stand to see you suffer so much! I taught humanities at Heidelberg. You must be a conscript. Aren't you? I was too. You've been wounded, you've been captured—”

“Twice!” bad cop interrupts. “He's a bungling fool.”

“He's right, Joseph. You have been foolish about your situation. If I were captured, I'd tell the Americans anything I've asked you. It's true. My army permits that. They'd want the Americans to understand me, just as I want to understand you. Germany has been at war a long time. We know what's important, what's not. Do you know what's most important? Surviving the war. No matter how it ends, we must survive so that the world can be better afterward. I want you to survive. We've been together a long time now. There's something about you…. I want you to survive!”

Bad cop rose in a rage. He started arguing with good cop, at first in English, about how Joe should be tied up and thrown into the pigsty. Good cop kept looking at Joe with sad eyes while he held up his hand. He seemed to outrank bad cop. That made bad cop even more angry, and he shouted to
the guard, “What would you do?” They stepped forward so Joe could see them give the thumbs-down.

He became convinced that good cop was his only protector. In a cursing argument bad cop was sent away, then good cop turned to say, “I can't do this any longer. I'm going to get you some food and drink.” He gave that order to a guard. German soldiers don't give their officers any back talk at all, but this one recoiled and muttered something before he left.

Good cop got Joe off the chair, steered him around the desk to where bad cop had sat. Grumbling, the guard came in with a plate on a tray. He tossed down a knife and fork while Joe stared at steaming heaps of chicken dumplings, baby potatoes, and red cabbage.

“You need to drink first,” said good cop, setting down a tall cold glass of apple juice.

Joe feared it was spiked with truth serum but gulped it down. He wanted to drop his face into the food and suck it up, but good cop reluctantly slid the tray to the other side of the desk. He kept his hand on it, as if eager to slide it right back to Joe.

“I'm taking a great risk to feed you, Joseph. The other lieutenant is going to report this to my superior. I must prove to him that I've acted correctly. Just tell me anything you want: your hometown, your public school, your salary—anything at all.”

“My name is Joseph Robert—”

“A little more, please. You see, if I can show my superior that humane treatment works … You're the first prisoner I've acted this way to! That's
my
meal in front of you. Think of the other prisoners. If my superior sees that there is just a little cooperation from you, he will permit me to feed the others. Joseph,” he said softly, “do it for them.”

Joe could not help crying. As he rubbed his eyes he realized he must have cried before, but he couldn't remember when. Good cop gripped his shoulder consolingly. He drew the tray over so Joe could smell the rising aroma. Something made him look up at the two guards. They were watching like
chemists waiting for titration. That's what made him push the tray away.
^*

Good cop's reaction was immediate. Joe was thrown into the pigsty as bad cop had recommended. When he was hauled out for the next session Joe knew there would be a climax because he was in some kind of fever, drained of everything except a wild faith, not a strong faith at all but one combining what he believed about God, his family, his country, his Currahees.

And he says today, “Some people call that corny. Isn't corny something that's so true no one thinks about it anymore? You do when you're falling over the edge.”

Joe can't say that he had faith in his faith. Any minute he could have cracked and spilled his guts—that's admitted. What faith did was mute the little voice telling him to compromise: it's not that important; the most important thing is to survive (good cop is right); no one will blame you, no one outside this kitchen need ever know.

The next session Joe knew he couldn't withstand such temptation again. Caked with pig filth, he faced a new team of interrogators with handkerchiefs around their noses. Early on he fell off the chair and kicked at the guards who put him back. He spit at the good cop, refused to hear any siren song. Bad cop was very much into his role. Joe snarled at him, not giving even name, rank, or serial number. A power emerged in him, a strength like that of a drowning man just before he goes under for the third time.

The sisters at Saint Joseph's were very strict if he ever used
profanity. Joe didn't much, not even in the army. But during that last session he yelled at the interrogators that they were sons of bitches. The next thing he remembered was about a week later.

THE WAR HAD ALREADY BEEN A FEARFUL ORDEAL FOR JOE'S
parents, William and Elizabeth. Son John was wounded on New Guinea, eventually to receive a medical discharge. Bill, in the air corps but on the ground in England, had unknowingly been Joe's cover for the paymaster jumps. The youngest boys, Robert and Richard, lived at home waiting to be caught up in the draft, which lowered the bottom of the age barrel to seventeen as four theaters of war—northern Europe, the Mediterranean, China-Burma-India, and the Pacific—demanded an ever-expanding pipeline to replace tens of thousands of Johns and Joes.

General Marshall made it his practice to submit regularly to President Roosevelt the number of Americans KIA in the previous twenty-four hours. One day that list included Marshall's stepson, killed in Italy. Before V-J Day fifteen million youths would find themselves in uniform; three hundred thousand would appear on Marshall's lists.

Celia, the remaining Beyrle daughter, married and had two children before Joe went off to war. Besides her, both his grandmothers were in Muskegon to help tend the home fires, where Dad was even more the central family figure. On the living room wall he displayed a world map pinioned with national flags to show fluctuations of the war. From newspapers and radio he became the authority and interpreter of all that
happened overseas. As such he was also a buffer between alarming news and the women's worries.

Despite censorship and because of brother Bill, the family knew Joe was with the 101st and were sure he had taken part in the “mighty endeavor” of Overlord. Like everyone else, they had heard Roosevelt's D Day invocation with that phrase and like all of America had stood silent as bells tolled from every church. The Beyrles hurried to Saint Joseph's to offer prayers. It was so crowded they had to stand.

THEN BEGAN THE LONG
wait of dread. Pre-D Day V-mail had been held up in case the invasion was significantly delayed, but in mid-June letters began trickling back to the States. In Muskegon, a town then of some thirty thousand, the arrival of V-mail was widely and quickly known. There was none from Joe.

The first communication about him was official, a telegram dated July 7, fully a month after D Day, from the War Department (today the Department of Defense). Mrs. Beyrle couldn't open it; she had to ask Richard.

“Joe's a prisoner of war, Mom.”

She sat down with a shudder, read the telegram several times herself before calling her husband at work. The parents reminded each other that they should be thankful and bless God. Then Mom made fitful calls to find out how food could be sent to Joe, whom she remembered as ever hungry. There was a War Department phone number for such requests, but of course they were futile. Only letters could be sent to Joe; and besides, in his case no POW address had yet been provided by the International Red Cross (IRC). That would come, she was assured, once Joe was delivered to a permanent prison camp, what the Germans called a stalag.

In September, by telegram, came a crushing correction: Tech-4 Joseph Robert Beyrle, Serial Number 16 085 985, previously reported captured on 10 June 1944, had instead on that date been killed in action. Mrs. Beyrle, whose health had weakened since Pearl Harbor, was bedridden for several days.
The reason for the contradictory official reports was that Joe's identity had been stolen by the Germans.

Thanks to Captain Harwich's escape from the marshes, word reached the 101st of Joe's first capture. Paperwork on the status of casualties was not sorted out till the division returned to England in July, at which time Joe was reported captured on 10 June and his family so informed. Then-telegram from the War Department included the caveat that his POW status had not yet been confirmed by the IRC, that is, that the preoccupied Germans hadn't completed their paperwork either.