Behind Hitler's Lines (39 page)

IN MARCH OF
1945 the 101st was back in Mourmelon. Word got around that some Currahees whose stalag had just been liberated were in a nearby hospital. Bullying the hospital staff, Albers's squad obtained the names. Among them were
Jankoviac and Clever, whose capture had been recorded in the bloodied snow near Foy.

“We got their ward number, charged in there with muddy boots, told the head nurse to go to hell.” They were going to see their buddies even if that meant the staff became patients in the hospital. “We looked around, went down the rows of beds. They all looked at us and we looked at them but didn't recognize anybody. Then one of them said, ‘Ed!’”

Albers stared at him, but it still didn't register—Jankoviac, a buddy from Michigan. He was a skeleton, with hair like mutant crabgrass, lice bites that looked like smallpox. Next to him was Clever. He'd been a pretty big guy; now he was nothing. Their eyes were like goggles, bulging and watery. Albers could identify them only by their voices, raspy but still Currahee.

“I'd seen a lot of combat by then, but seeing them I knew I hadn't seen the worst of the war.”

THE CELL WAS ABOUT SIX FEET BY EIGHT, NO WINDOWS OR
can, and it smelled like the last prisoner had died in there. Joe was shackled to the wall by a hasp, halfway between kneeling and standing, semiconscious and praying to die before they started in again. It was a prayer that reversed every value in his life, but he thinks God understood.

Overhead hung a grimy lightbulb that never went out; it reminded Joe of himself, weak and dim. At least once a day he was dragged upstairs, shackled in a chair, told to confess or be shot as a spy, then tortured till his screams became too hoarse to hear. The Germans doing this wore white shirts they managed to keep spotless despite spraying blood. Back in his cell, left without food or water, Joe would revive, hearing himself groan as if he were another person.

This went on for maybe four days. When he came to one time two men in Gestapo uniforms were bending over him. They gave him water and said they'd help do something for his dislocated shoulders.

“They picked me up. There was an almighty pain, then I passed out again. When I came to this time my arms were back in their sockets but the pain was out of control and I screamed and prayed out loud. They said in a couple of days it wouldn't hurt so much. I'm pretty sure they were Gestapo medics; their job was to keep me sane for the next session. They left me with scraps of black bread on the floor and a pan
of water. I couldn't use my arms but crawled over and ate and drank just with my mouth.”

Joe was not hoping or praying anymore, just cowering and shaking, trying not to think of the next time the cell door opened. There was nothing in his stomach, but he'd vomit bile whenever a guard walked by to peek in on him as part of a routine suicide watch. Intermittently between torture, memories came back like some substitute for hope: good memories like family gatherings in Muskegon, baseball and basketball games he'd done well in, the camaraderie at Toc-coa and Camp Mackall, the good times with Bray and Van-derpool. It seemed Joe was reviewing his life, the best parts of it, in preparation to die. He was ready to go as if death would be his cherry jump and he was eager to get it over with; he would feel content if only he could die quickly.

In that state he was taken to a much bigger cell. It was like a hallucination. Quinn and Brewer, their faces the size of basketballs, were slumped in chairs, and a third one was for Joe. This was it, he was sure. They'd be given a last chance to confess, then, if lucky, get a bullet in the head. Okay, commence fire. He'd done his best, been true to his country, church, and family. He'd hold his head high when a Gestapo goon shot it. Joe had surrendered, surrendered everything, but only to God.

The hallucination continued. A Gestapo officer studied the three as he walked around smoking Joe's cigarettes while waiting for the goons who had originally captured them to arrive. Joe couldn't figure out why they needed to be present for the execution—German procedures and witness records, he supposed, or perhaps a mock trial.

The hallucination grew extreme when a German soldier stepped in, followed by a second, machine pistols across then-chests, and stood at attention beside the door. Through swollen eyes Joe glanced at his buddies, tried to smile, and mumbled that they rated a firing squad.

The Gestapo group stepped back, pretending to ignore the soldiers. Joe became fascinated by the contrast in uniforms—
black for the Gestapo, gray-green for the Wehrmacht—and gaped when they ended a brief conversation and started to look daggers at each other. In the tense silence he could hear Brewer wheezing through a broken nose. It seemed to Joe that there could only be a disagreement about who would execute the execution. He was thinking about some last words to tell them in German.

“Something like I regret having just one life to give for my country,” Joe says. “A lot of Americans had already given theirs. I was ready to join their ranks on the other side of life.

“My German was pretty good in those days. Today I can't even order off a German menu. I understand the words, but they don't come out. But when you forced me back into that cell I understand what went on as if it had been in English.”

A Wehrmacht lieutenant colonel strode in. He exchanged formal heel clicks and Heil Hitlers with the Gestapo officer. There was an unresolved point of protocol about who ranked whom. That struck Joe as very funny, and he started heaving in his chair. He looked over at Quinn and Brewer, but they didn't have any idea what was going on.

Essentially the colonel, with due respect, requested that the three prisoners be turned over to his custody.
Entschuldigung bitte aber nein,
said Gestapo (“Excuse me, please, but no”): they're admitted paratroopers, and where they were caught their mission could only be assassination and sabotage— typical jobs of spies—so, with equal respect, in the name of Himmler, the Wehrmacht's request must be denied and the spies retained.

Regretfully there is a contradiction, the colonel replied— these Amis have been confirmed as stalag escapees, so they could not be recent parachutists.

A clever Allied ruse, was Gestapo's answer; from the International Red Cross the OSS knew there were three paratrooper POWs named Beyrle, Brewer, and Quinn. It would be a simple matter to have IDs forged for their impersonators. Furthermore, Beyrle didn't even have Ami dog tags, so he will be executed first.

Unlikely, said Wehrmacht. From the Berliners they contacted you know that the three asked for nothing except help to escape. Does this sound like spies, assassins, or saboteurs trying to accomplish their mission? This brought a sniff from Gestapo—who indicated that he understood these matters much better—and assurance that further questioning would confirm the three to be dangerous spies. The colonel was invited to attend their interrogation.

Entschuldigung,
but so far your thorough interrogation has resulted in little more than gradual execution. These men wore American uniforms. (They were presently stripped to their underwear.) Even if they had parachuted over Berlin, they are protected by the Geneva Conventions like the Allied bomber crews.

It surprised and disappointed Gestapo that his counterpart was unfamiliar with Der Fuhrer's “Commando Order”—in effect since the Dieppe raid in 1942—which required immediate execution of behind-the-lines combatants like these three, no matter how they came to be behind the lines. If the colonel was reluctant to accept Heinrich Himmler's jurisdiction, there certainly could be no disagreement about Adolf Hitler's edict.

The lieutenant colonel looked at his watch, perhaps estimating what time remained between the daylight American bombings and the nighttime bombing by the British. Both, at this point in the war, were as certain as a chronometer.

Enough, he said; jurisdictional questions can be reexam-ined later. You have my personal assurance that these three will be available for further interrogation by the Gestapo when we hold them in maximum security. Here is my receipt for them. Please unshackle the prisoners from their chairs. The two Wehrmacht guards produced handcuffs so that the Gestapo irons could be left with their owners.

Hallucination now became a scene fantastic for its reality. The prisoners were his property, said Gestapo. The steam of shit, said Wehrmacht, then cooled off enough to promise that the three would never set foot outside a stalag again. Joe couldn't tell who had the upper hand. It went on like this:

GESTAPO:
They're mine! You were not invited here. I must ask you to leave now.

WEHRMACHT:
With pleasure, and with our prisoners.
GESTAPO:
You defy the highest authorities in the Fatherland! This will be reported.

WEHRMACHT:
Show them my receipt… and transfer these three to me.

GESTAPO:
What nerve. You say they're yours but admit you lost them! Such laxity. No one escapes from the Gestapo. [Indeed, kriege escapes became so frequent toward the end of the war that Hitler turned over jurisdiction of the stalags from the armed forces to Himmler, who ordered recaptured escapees to be summarily shot.]
WEHRMACHT:
With authority of the Abwehr I'm prepared to use force.

GESTAPO:
Use it against the Bolshi! What soldiers are you who cannot defend the Fatherland's frontiers?

The lieutenant colonel was a veteran of fighting against the Bolshi (Bolsheviks), as the Russians were called, and limped from a serious wound they had inflicted. Gestapo's remark about defending the Fatherland incensed him. He unhol-stered a Luger. His guards brought their machine pistols to horizontal. The Gestapo goons were unarmed except for truncheons.

“Shoot 'em!” Joe yelled like a drunk.
“Mal halten!”
the colonel shouted back, and Joe shut up as Quinn glared at him through the puffed slits of his eyes, a silent message that there could be no worse time for Joe to display his Most Obvious Temper. Because the Wehrmacht had won. A goon came over and unshackled Joe from the chair, then a soldier cuffed his hands in back. He, Quinn, and Brewer were on their feet but so shaky they had to be helped into convict clothes. The Wehrmacht shoved them out the door as roughly as the Gestapo had shoved them in.

They were in a staff car, three Americans in back, the lieutenant colonel next to the driver, who drove slowly with just cat's-eyes blackout lights. The colonel was smoldering.

“I could tell he was pissed,” Joe recollects, “mostly at the Gestapo, but also at us for causing all this trouble. I thought it would be a good idea to approach him. He'd been our 'rescuer' and would probably have a lot to do with what happened to us.

“The only lieutenant colonel I'd ever addressed was Wolver-ton. I thought about him when I very respectfully asked, in German, from the backseat if he had been in combat. He turned and smiled and began talking a mile a minute, faster than I could understand, but yes, he'd seen plenty of action while invading Russia. He wanted to know about Normandy. I told him a little and how I'd been hit by friendly fire while a prisoner. He nodded and said he'd lost most of a shin near the town of Demyansk, and the foot was frostbitten in the winter of 1941-42.”

The colonel related that he was now commanding garrison troops in Berlin. Joe could tell he didn't think much of the job but that it sure beat fighting Russians in the snow for the third winter in a row.

“Where were you trying to go?” the colonel asked casually, “if you'd gotten out of Berlin?” The question caught Joe short, and he immediately felt compromised when he answered, “East.” The colonel nodded slowly as the staff car crept around bomb craters and rubble. “We soldiers must do what we must do.” Joe felt great respect for him, almost as great as his gratitude.

Somewhere in Berlin they arrived at a garrison headquarters. Here the three were not enemy celebrities the way they were with the Gestapo; instead they were a problem. The old question of categorizing paratroopers came up again, and initially Joe's destination was to be Luft Stalag III at Sagan, in kriege circles reputed to be a country club. Wherever he was to go, the Wehrmacht cleaned him up first, reviving the eradicated pleasure of just being alive.

There was a perfunctory interrogation. The three confessed that their escape had been from III-C (known in Berlin as Kustrin). For some reason the Wehrmacht knew they had escaped but not from where. Perhaps the III-C commandant
had not reported it. Anyway, tough luck, Joe was informed his destination is changed—no Luft stalag—Kustrin was where they'd be returned. It was a long ride bound and blindfolded but in a way it was going home.