The Bomber Boys (17 page)

“American aviator.” Peter spoke the words with his hand flattened on his chest. The man’s reaction was immediate. He nearly shoved the airman off of his bike and once Peter had relinquished it, he hurried away, taking both bicycles with him.

“You son of a bitch!” Peter yelled after the frightened Frenchman. He could only hope the cyclist would not report the incident to any German border patrols. Peter found a grassy shade near the side of the road and sat down to give his feet a short rest. Only a few minutes had passed when he heard the sound of singing. It was a German song.

Up the road, Peter could see the soldiers marching in two columns. There looked to be about a dozen or so. It was too late for him to hide. If he could see them, then they had also spotted him. If he tried to walk away, it would seem suspicious and he would not get far in his condition.

It was almost a certainty that the soldiers had passed the French cyclist along the road. Had he talked? Peter guessed he had not. If the patrol was searching for him, then why were they singing? Peter picked up a piece of grass straw, stuck it between his teeth and tried to look like a local. The Germans smiled and waved to him as they marched past. Peter smiled and waved back.

After putting a few more hard miles behind him, Peter spent the night in some woods near the road. He had been unable to find any food and woke the next morning with pains in his belly. Continuing into the mountains, he came to a farmhouse. It was not a peasant dwelling but rather a comfortable-looking home. Cattle grazed in an adjacent pasture. Peter was sure he could find something to eat at such a place.

He knocked. When a man opened the door, Peter smiled and got right to the point.
“Faim . . . faim.”

The man answered his request quickly, reaching behind the door and brandishing a large club. The hostile rebuff shocked and angered Peter. As hungry as he was, it crossed his mind to try to overpower the farmer and take what food he needed. A combination of exhaustion and moral conviction stopped him. Peter left with anger and an empty stomach.

Later in the day the young airman stumbled into a mountain crossroads village of about thirty dwellings, one of them housing a restaurant. Peter ordered bouillon from an elderly waitress, but when she returned, she placed a large plate of kidney stew and fresh bread in front of him. Peter looked into her kind eyes. She smiled at his surprised expression. He thanked her and wasted no time in devouring his meal.

As he left, the old woman was standing at the restaurant’s door. Again, she smiled and then pointed to a small road leading deeper into the mountains.

“Thank you,” Peter said to his benefactor. She squeezed his hand and made the sign of the cross. Peter knew he would never forget her wrinkled face. The meal she had provided in a simple act of kindness had given him the strength he needed to complete his journey.

Peter walked for hours. The little road became a mere path. Darkness fell on the mountains and still he walked on. When he had nothing left in him, he lay down by the path and fell asleep, wondering how close he was to the border.

Sunshine spread across the Pyrenees the next morning, and Peter awoke to a spectacular vista. His resting place was right on the crest of one of the highest peaks in the area. Looking in one direction, far below, he could see the little village where the old woman had befriended him. That was France. Turning the other way, he gazed on the smaller mountains and lush valleys of what
he knew must be Spain. He had spent the night sleeping right on the border of the two countries.

 

 

 

A grateful young American aviator kneeled at the top of the Pyrenees Mountains to thank God for his deliverance from the hands of his enemies. After his prayer, Peter took out his little prayer book and turned to the page where he had made a mark for each day of his journey. He placed the fourteenth mark on the page. It was October 28. He had escaped from Germany and made his way through enemy-held France in just fourteen days.

Peter wiped away a last tear of joy and started down the mountain into Spain. Barcelona was somewhere fifty or sixty miles south of him. There he hoped to find an American or British consulate and Allied officials who could help him. As the sun set to the west of the Spanish Pyrenees, he came to a small cabin tucked into the forest. The occupants turned out to be an old woodcutter and his striking teenage granddaughter.

The two showed him warm hospitality, including a hot meal and fresh goat’s milk. He spent a comfortable night sleeping on the floor close to the cabin’s fireplace. Early the next day, he was off again with directions from the woodcutter on the shortest route to Barcelona. Before long he came to the town of Gerona, just as the old man had told him.

Peter decided it was best to leave the road and take a wide route around Gerona, in the same manner he had avoided German villages. Spain was neutral, but she did not enjoy the friendly reputation of countries such as Sweden. It was a good decision, but he was not quite careful enough.

When he rejoined the road on the other side of Gerona he encountered a military guard. Peter was not sure if the soldier was a member of the local militia or part of the Spanish Army,
but he was smartly dressed and looked official. The man wore a three-sided hat and black knee-high boots. He was armed with a heavy-looking bolt-action rifle. Peter nodded in the soldier’s direction and turned to head south again.

Peter continued down the road.

“Señor, alto!”
The soldier’s voice was louder than before.

Peter kept walking, pretending not to hear. But he did hear and the next sound was unmistakable. It was the sound of metal sliding across metal . . . followed by the distinctive sound of a rifle bolt inserting a bullet into a firing chamber. Peter stopped in his tracks.

Once he had explained that he was an American aviator, he hoped the soldier would lower his weapon. Instead, Peter was marched into Gerona and locked in a tiny cell. No bigger than eight feet by eight feet, the cell had a dirt floor and no furniture at all. The only light came through a small window with bars. Peter spent the night there without being offered anything to eat.

The next day, two soldiers escorted him via a log truck to a prison about forty kilometers from Gerona. A man in civilian clothing was the first to interrogate the American airman. Peter’s feeling of relief that he might finally have found a friendly official evaporated as soon as the stranger spoke. He asked questions in English, but his accent was German. Peter refused to say anything but, “I’m Peter Seniawsky. I’m a sergeant in the U.S. Army. My serial number is 12060630.”

The German soon gave up. After he had left, Spanish guards came into the room and cut off all of Peter’s hair and then took him to a twelve-by-eight-foot cell. There were two other men already occupying the cell. One claimed to be a deserter from the Italian Army, and the other was a Frenchman. Peter did not trust either.

The guards provided two blankets to their new prisoner and a meal of thin soup. It tasted so awful that Peter could barely keep it down. There were no bunks, so the prisoners slept on the floor. In the middle of the night, the Frenchman quietly woke Peter and gave him a small piece of banana. He whispered that he did not trust the Italian. Peter gladly accepted the morsel of food but secretly he still did not trust either of his cell mates.

Coffee and bread were provided as breakfast. The Frenchman and the Italian were taken out for fresh air and exercise, but it was three days before Peter was allowed to leave the dark cell. Outside, he walked about a small walled-in yard. There were bullet holes in one section of the stone wall, where he guessed many men had been victims of firing squads. He could only hope that the executions went back to the days of the Spanish Civil War and that none had been conducted recently.

After a week of imprisonment, Peter reached the conclusion that his captors were making no effort to report him to the Allies. Unless a miracle happened, he might spend the remainder of the war in a Spanish prison. Thin and weakened from his escape from Germany and France, and living on the sparse prison food, Peter’s health was quickly going downhill. He tried to keep his spirits up, but as day after day dragged by his hope was also growing weaker.

On the seventh or eighth day, Peter, the Italian and the Frenchman were joined by a fourth prisoner. He was a British officer of the Royal Air Force—a wing commander by the name of Griffin. The commander’s airplane had been shot down on a mission over France while dropping supplies to the resistance. On the ground he had been luckier than Peter, being picked up quickly by the same underground forces he had been aiding.

When the prisoners were allowed to go into the yard, Peter stayed behind in the cell to talk with Griffin.

“I think that Frenchman is very likely a spy,” the commander said.

“I don’t know, I sort of like him,” Peter replied, not mentioning that he had wondered the same thing.

“What’s your story, Yank?” the Englishman wanted to know.

When Peter related the highlights of his long journey, the British officer shook his head in amazement. Then he told Peter why he was probably in deep trouble. “My guess is the Americans don’t know you are here . . . or even alive.” Griffin went on to explain that the French resistance workers who had smuggled him across the border had by then already radioed the details of his situation to Allied authorities in London. Since Peter had been unable to make contact with the resistance movement, those same authorities were most certainly unaware of his incredible escape or his present whereabouts. To them, Peter Seniawsky was one of hundreds of American airmen who had either died over Schweinfurt or who had been captured during the raid.

Commander Griffin expected he would be freed from the prison in a few days. He promised Peter that he would make sure the Eighth Air Force was informed that one of their own was wasting away in a Spanish cell. Two days later, people came to get the English officer out and, good to his word, he told of Peter’s plight as soon as he reached the British consulate.

When American officials in England heard the story of an American airman who had escaped from Germany and then evaded capture unassisted on a six-hundred-mile adventure through western Germany and France, they were more than skeptical. For one thing, it had never been done before, at least not by an American. Only two members of the British military held the distinction of having escaped from behind the German border to make it back to freedom, without receiving any help from the French resistance.

If the Peter Seniawsky in the Spanish prison was really one of their airmen, then the Americans wanted him back, but the belief of at least some of the American officials was that he was something else entirely . . . a German spy. They sent a man to investigate.

A few days after the departure of Commander Griffin, Peter was interrogated again. Peter could not determine whether the questioner was British or American, but he sensed the stranger was legitimate, so he told his story freely. As the interrogator finished the session and turned to leave, he hesitated and looked directly into Peter’s eyes.

“Tell me, Sergeant Seniawsky, do you think Daisy Mae will ever catch Li’l Abner?”

The question made Peter chuckle. “You mean the comic strip? No, she doesn’t have a chance.”

The man smiled. “We will be in touch.” Three days later, a Spanish Air Force officer arrived to escort Peter out of the prison. He gave the American airman some Spanish currency. Peter slipped a few bills to the French prisoner as he shook the man’s hand. Maybe the Frenchman was a spy, like Griffin thought. Maybe not. He had been kind to him; that was all Peter knew for sure.

The Spanish escort officer took Peter to a respectable hotel in Gerona. Two Canadian servicemen and a British officer were already there. After a long-awaited bath, Peter put on clean clothes that were provided. The four allies were allowed to roam the town freely that afternoon. In the evening, their Spanish hosts treated them to an expensive seafood dinner. All four men ate with abandon, but Peter’s body had grown unaccustomed to fare of such quantity and richness. He became very sick after dinner.

The four escapees spent about a week enjoying the hotel and its restaurant as guests of the Spanish government; then they
were escorted by train to Madrid. There they were welcomed like heroes by the staff of the British consulate. Several days and nights of wine, fine food and festivities followed. Peter was enjoying his new freedom, but his body had not recovered from almost a month of near starvation. What he needed was rest.

The last leg of the allies’ tour of Spain was a long trip to Gibraltar, the gateway city of the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. In Gibraltar, the Spanish relinquished control of the four men to a group of Royal Air Force officers. Peter felt a rush of relief.
Finally, I’m free.
The feeling was short-lived.

The RAF officers quizzed Peter about every detail of his story and then told him they did not believe him. The odds were too long for a man to make such a perilous escape and in only two weeks’ time. They suggested the real Peter Seniawsky was locked away in a German stalag.

“I’m Peter Seniawsky, and if you get me back to Grafton Underwood, I will prove it.” Peter was beginning to realize he was in reality still a prisoner. In the next few days, his health declined dramatically. The RAF men became alarmed. He could very well be who he said he was. If he was telling the truth, they had damned well better get him back to England alive. On December 1, 1943, a month and a half after his bomber had been shot down, Peter was put on a flight to the United Kingdom.

By the time his airplane landed in London, Peter was very ill. An ambulance was waiting to take him to a hospital. Under the watchful eyes and care of English doctors and nurses, his health rebounded in a matter of days. He began to count his blessings. He was back on Allied soil. He was beginning to feel rested and stronger. He had been able to write short letters to his sister Margaret and his fiancée, Helen, to let them know he was alive and safe. Only one thing bothered him. There was a U.S. Army military policeman stationed just outside his hospital room.