We went up to
The trip over was an experience in
itself and we ended up staying in the Stromness a couple of days. That first night, one of our guys got a
little wacky - it seemed like he was overcome by emotion because his daughter
was just fixing to get born. It made for
a long night, especially since we had to sleep in an old brick hut that was
just like sleeping in the open.
Remember, this is way up on the
After we landed in
We all wanted to be in
Well, we got there in time....and
stayed there....and waited. Our trouble
was, we didn't have a full combat crew.
Sweeny, the engineer, had gotten into a fix back in the States. We had a furlough. On his way back to camp, Sweeny got into a
big fight with an officer, who wanted to put him off the train for
drinking. He got Court-Marshaled and
they gave him six months; he lost all his rank.
Another crewman, Strayhorne, had fouled up somehow and they both came to
You might have heard of the 100th Bomb
Group - they got wiped out several times.
The way I heard: there was a gentlemen's agreement between the Germans
and us, that if your place was in trouble, you put your wheels down. The story goes that one gunner, after the
wheels came down on his plane, fired on his German escort. He shot that fighter down which was a no-no.
The next day, old Lord Haw-Haw was on
the air and he said "we're going to take care of the 100th Bomb Group;
they could do it - any time they wanted to.
There wasn't no stopping them.
The fact is, that getting shot down
didn't mean that you were inefficient in any way. It just meant that you were in the wrong place
at the wrong time. That's all it
meant. You were up there and like as
not, you were a sitting duck!
We got shot down on the 8th of
February, and the target was
We got knocked down by fighters and
they were "Abbeville-Boys".
That was Goering's pet-squadron - in order to belong to it, you had to
be something else. It was only six miles
to the channels, but we couldn't go no further.
We had battled them all the way back from
I was radio man, but we've got a
flexible gun mounted in a skylight above us.
It looks back out over the airplane and covers the tail. When I looked up through the plexiglass, they
were all yellow noses. Another thing -
Coming back from the mission, we had
to pass over
When fighters come to shoot you down,
you gunners can shoot back and get some of them off you. In the end though, it’s still a case of being
in the right place at the right time or not.
You talk about luck.... take
Strayhorne: He got his arm shot off to the nub that day and we had to put a
tourniquet on him. Then we just threw
him out; he actually survived and was in Camp for a short while. At Luft six, they made one repatriation while
we were there. He came back because the
doctors couldn't cut any farther up on this shoulder. He came back, went to
We had another guy flying with us -
Gillman. He got excited when we got
attacked. Now that was funny, because
he'd been a marine and was over in the Panamanian incident in 1937 - He'd been
in
I walked back along the catwalk and
ran into them. Of course, I'm shot in
the face and bleeding all over. I was
all swollen up when Rosenthal, the other Gunner came in and patched me up. After he poured sulphur on me and I come to,
he asked me if I wanted a shot and I said "No, thanks".
So there's tinker standing over
Gillman and he says "Get-up! Get-up or I'll shoot you!" - I ran over and told him - "Now you
can't shoot him, damn it!" Old
Tink, says "The hell I can't."
Gillman just sat there - it's one
thing, I would have said he'd never do in all his life - but it happened just
that way. When we were up at Heydekrug I
used to have to talk to him. He grew
himself a great big beard and completely isolated himself, over in a corner of
the camp.
By this time, we were going down in a
spin and I tried my best to get off the wall.
Centrifugal force is just terrible.
Now, that's something you live with in your sleep sometimes. You're saying to yourself: "I can't get
up - I've got to get up” Man, you can't get up to save your ass - but somehow,
finally you ease out of it.
Gillman had pulled his chute inside
the plane. A little while later
Rosenthal went out and his chute never opened.
It was a pretty precarious situation in there, but somehow a few of us
got out. They rounded us up and we ended
up in a hospital in
The situation was that we were getting
interrogated by some German Officer. It
was one of those bright rooms with the rows of french windows and we're
standing in front of his desk. There are
other prisoners around and we're all in bad shape. It seemed to me, he knew a lot about me and I
wondered if someone had cracked - he knew plenty.
He seemed to be a nice guy - he talked
nice anyway. When we got settled in
there, he asks me: "How come you over here to bomb us?" About that time I was telling him:
"Well, you and the Japanese are Allies.
He says "We're not friends! - We
didn't bomb you!" But I answered
him back: "You are now. You're both on the same side, sir!" By God, he didn't want to be classified with
them. He just didn't want to be a bad
guy! Finally he said something else and
I could see this wasn't going anywhere.
I'd been hit and I needed medical attention so they brought a bunch of
us into the operating rooms.
I was with Ray Lentz, my Ball Turret
Gunner. He had the whole back of his leg
all shot up. When you're in the Ball
Turret you've got armor plate behind you to protect your body from flak. But that just means that if you get hit it'll
bounce off and spray all over your legs.
Now they were operating on both of us at this point.
The German medics were asking Ray:
"If you name is Lentz, then how come you are over here fighting the
Fatherland?" Old Ray was using his
head - trying to keep things low key.
"Well, I got drafted and I had to go."
I was sitting across the room from
him. At a slow boil. Usually I'm a level headed sort of guy - but
there was suffering all around us and perhaps the shock of the day’s events
started getting to me. There was a
wounded officer - I called him "Purdy" and he was laying on the floor
out near the door. It was cold. Now, mind you, and this guy's bleeding from
some wounds inside his coveralls. Blood
was running out from the bottom of his hands and he was getting whiter all the
time. Just laying there..... dying.
I kept yelling to the orderlies: "Hey, do something - this guy's really
sick!" Nobody even listened! Man, I was just so upset. Finally things come to a head.
I was on the operating table. Across from Ray, and they were poking around
in my mouth for some shrapnel. They'd
been fiddling with it for some time and they weren't even done yet! Something snapped in me and I yelled over to
Ray: "Dammit - why don't you tell
him the truth! That you've come over
here just to blow the living shit out of him and his stinking country!"
Well - you can bet the shit hit the
fan and that medic just about started to raise hell. His voice got higher and he started to
sputter all this German stuff. The
nurses were nuns. I guess because they
all had black habits on with a white collar.
They were all scurrying about, murmuring and looking over at me:
"Get him out of here, quick."
Now this piece of metal in my mouth
was about the size of a stick of chewing gum and it took several days to get it
worked out of my cheek. But in the
meantime, they hurried me out of the infirmary and my jaw was all locked up, so
I couldn't talk much.
Probably was a good thing too. I know them German records probably have it
down about the guy who was wounded at such and such a place - and what a pain
in the ass he was.
When we got up to Heydekrug the camp
was pretty new and we had to make do without much. Our area was all fenced and we were free to
roam around. There was 4 stone barracks
with an alley between each of them and the rooms had one window and a door
opening into the alley. There wasn't
much inside but our bunks, a table, and a stone stove. Out room was F-G and I was still with
Tinker. Old Van (Vanderveldon) was our
barracks leader. He had been in the
Royal Canadian Air Force.
The space between the barracks was
pretty wide - maybe 20 r 30 feet, and then it was a long straight shot up
towards the latrine. Me and Tink would
walk up out of F5 to get our exercise and head down the alley between E and F
towards the quadrangle. I know it had to
be good 275 ft across because one day I hit a softball over the fence, back
behind the latrine of course. That
stopped our game for a couple of days until one of the guards got good and
ready to go between the wires to get the ball.
That's the way things worked in the prison camp.
The main road went back to a ten hole
latrine, where the water and hose were - They had showers in there but we only
used them twice in six months. You could
go in and wash but it was like when I went to elementary school, back in the
twenties. There was a short piece of
iron pipe coming up about two feet off the ground with a slow trickle - that
was for you to drink or wash in. Mind
you now, it was winter and there was no hot water. That, you had to make for yourself back up in
your barracks.
Mom and Pop sent me some long
underwear. They were for me, which I'm
over six feet, but I divided them up with my buddy
In the morning we'd have to fall out
for appell and they'd line us up for the count.
There were times when the weather was good and we'd try to screw the
Germans up on the count. But really it
didn't always work to our advantage. One
of their favorite tricks was to get us all outside and say: "Well - we're
going to have to leave you here."
So we'd stay out there for a good couple of hours and it was colder than
Hell by the time they came back.
One time, this
To me it was senseless... you wasn't
proving anything. Actually the only
thing you were going to do was get a lot of guys hurt. When the goons found it floating in the back
of the latrine, we had to stand outside in that awful cold for a little while.
When rations got passed out, there
wasn't much to it. When the Germans came
around with these bread wagons, they passed the stuff out and it would be only
so many loaves into each barracks. Then
someone would figure out how many you and start to divide it up are. Sawdust bread it was, although up at
Heydekrug it had some barley in it. The
most you'd get at any one time would be about one sixth of a loaf. It might have been good for you, if you had
something to go along with that. For us
it was Kohrabis or Kartofelin (potatoes).
What really got you was that they
issued the biggest damn spoon! Hell -
one good spoonful and you was done with your ration. I always thought: "Hell - look at that
spoon - maybe they're going to give us something to eat!"
There were trees outside the compound
and when you were taking your walk, you might look out there and think about
better times. As it was, we had to get
our own programs going with the little that we had. There was supposed to be a garden. But I don't think I ever ate anything from
it. As you walked up towards the
quadrangle there was a shanty that they used for a "Gym" or if they
wanted to have some kind of church service.
In the summer, Padre Jackson would
stop by pretty regular. He was the
English Chaplain and I remember he'd say: "Anyone who wants to come to
church today, just come around and meet me by the barracks."
We'd just sit on the ground and listen
to him talk. It would pick up your
spirits because those English had been in the can for years already. He'd got captured early in the war and had
the privilege of going home. He gave
that up to stay with the P.O.W.s it seems that earlier on. He'd got in trouble for stealing a loaf of
bread, and had been prosecuted for it.
In some way that led him to being a Padre!
We tried to do what we could to keep
up our moral. There were guys taking
classes, they put on plays. And we
organized a Sports League. We had a Camp
paper that wrote it up like it's really something - but people shouldn't think
we had all that much going. There were
some good athletes there, like Barker and
When we first got up to Heydekrug,
there were a lot of nights when you'd think to yourself: "I might be here for the rest of my
life. I might easily be here!" We was down before
D-Day,
and there wasn't even Allies on the Continent.
We were up at the far end of things, too! I don't know how we could think it would be
over soon, when
That's how I got hooked up with Sandy
Cerneglia. He was a tough little Italian
guy from down in
In the meantime, sports were my
thing. Aside from football and baseball,
one of the biggest sporting events was these boxing matches. This led up to the grand finale on the fourth
of July. It was the Americans against
the British and Canadians. Now, heading
up the alley toward the quadrangle was this shanty I spoke about. That's where we trained. There was no heat, no light and just a bare
wood floor. The only way you kept warm
was to just go at it; and as far as the thing to hit, why it was just a sack
full of rags and sand. There was no
light bag to work out with and that meant you just stood there and plowed into
it.
Steve Swidirski was "the Masked
Marvel" from
Instead of having to swing so many
times, I cut down on my punches and I learned combinations. My brothers, back in
We were up in the shanty and I was
working out with the Masked Marvel. We
were sparring, so he ducked down to get away from my body punch - when
boom! I socked him with my right
hand. There he went, his butt bounced
around a couple of times. We looked at
each other and I stood there and I said, "Well - I didn't know that was
going to happen!" Boy, when you
know you can do these things you get that much more confidence. Of course, I didn't know what I was going to
face.
Gene Boyceberry was French
Canadian. He was big. He'd gone through all the elimination fights
and had everybody convinced that he was the best. Gene was going to be my big test.
My good buddy Tinker had been watching
me and he drags me over to the promoter of these fights, George, and got who'd
won the gold belt in 1937. Old Tink says
to him "Kirby can lick him".
So they said to me "Go in there and try it." Well as big as he was, if he hit you, as hard
as he could, it wouldn't hurt you. So I
moved in the finals.
The boxing ring was out on the edge of
the quadrangle, over near the fence, so that the English could see it as well
as the Americans. They had seats out
there all around the ring and there were rows of Germans watching us; they got
a kick out of the whole thing. It was
July 4th, 1944 and boy, everybody was out there hooting for "American
Day".
It was a beautiful hot day. But felt
some jitters because I realized that good many of the fellows in the barracks
had bet food and cigarettes on our fights.
I would venture to say that most of 'em were betting on the Bearded
Marvel because of the fact that they knew what he could do. Steve Swidirski was facing an Englishman
named Tracey, who was good. Fact is, he
floored Steve right away to start the fight, but couldn't go the distance.
I was facing "Aussie Perry"
and I was questionable. Folks were
almost sure that Perry was going to take me.
He'd been around long enough to fight everyone and he'd won every
match. We were betting the English we
could beat them and there was a lot on the line.
When they were ready to begin the
heavyweight fight, they called us both into the middle of the ring and said:
"OK - Touch gloves and come out fighting.
"When I put my glove out there, he hit me! Boom! Instead of shaking
hands.... Boom!
Well, Brother that's exactly what I
needed! It made me mad. He shouldn't have done that, because before
that I was going to have a boxing match.
Once I got going, I found out that guy
didn't mind doing the hitting. But he
didn't like it at all when he was on the receiving end of things. I can tell you it felt good to win, that day!
It didn't take but a week or two to
pass, before we cleared out that place.
One day we were there, and the next day we weren't. The Germans put us on boxcars heading to
One after another, they stuffed us
down in the hold of that coal boat, until no more of us could fit. Then they stuffed the rest of us down there,
anyway. I remember looking around and
thinking: "Boy, the Russians probably have control of the skies and here
we go on this boat going down the middle of the
On each side of the boat you could see
these booms with wire nets that could catch these mines. After we put out to sea, there were some
tense moments when you'd hear something bang up against the hull or scrape
alongside. You'd say - "Oh Shit -
Here it comes!" But it never
happened of course.
The tension was pretty high. We were all cramped in together so that we
had to take turns sitting up and laying down.
Some guys got to go up on deck to relieve themselves and other guys just
used a bucket they threw down at us.
There was no water and it was mostly dark down in the hold of that rusty
old boat. The only opening up there was
where the ladder went up through the hatch.
All the rest of the time it was covered up. There was this one guy, Delgado, who was an
all around musician, and he started us off on this singing bit, because the
guys were getting a little panicky. We
had to endure this for several days.
I was with Clyde Tinker and Sandy
Cerniglia and Mondo Bongiononi. We stuck
together pretty much throughout the trip and afterward, like I said.
There was one fellow, Getsey, from
around
After we got to Swinemunde, they put
us into boxcars and it was a lot like out trip when we first came up from
When we first pulled up at that train
station in Keifeheide, we were there for quite a while, unloading and what
not. We had been hand cuffed hand and
feet, and there was shackles on our legs.
Some of the fellows had to give up their boots. That was a mistake, making us put them on in
the boxcars.
Now back in them days, there was
always some American, who could do things he wasn't supposed to do. One guy took a wire and helped us work those
shackles free. Clyde Tinker and I were
still chained arm to arm, but we were fortunate enough to get our feet unshackled. We set it us, so that, if the guards came
around to look at us, we could close them up again.
Our new camp was Luft IV and the place
was called Gross Tychow, but Keifeheide was the station near the camp. I would say that it was early afternoon when
they began herding us through the town and up the road to camp. I wasn't in the first group to leave, so
there were some fellows up ahead of us who had started out already. Most of us were wrist to wrist and ankle to
ankle, although my shackles were dangling from my leg. As we started out, we still had our little Red
Cross packs or suitcases of whatever we could carry - it was all that we owned,
and not much at that.
We were coming through this town and
there was kind of turn in the road - People were standing right up against the
buildings - and there wasn't any sidewalk, as I remember it. All of a sudden, this Pickard fellow gets up
on a platform, like they have in a rail station to unload baggage. He was standing up there screaming and you
could tell he was nutty as fruitcake.
"You gentlemen are going to run
from here to that camp." So I heard
some of the guys saying: "Aw shoot - I ain't gonna do it!" Then he said, "Well, we'll see that you
do it!" So it started out that some
of us weren't running. I wasn't going to
run if the rest weren't going to run.
Pretty soon these dogs come up with the guards showing their bayonets.
Now, we were running from there and
All this time, the dogs and guards
were nudging us along so I started carrying him over my left shoulder. Old Tink started to breathe a little
easier. The dogs started to move in on
us. Well, I realized I'm not going to
make it with all this stuff I got. I see
this German guard off to the left hand side and he's running along making noise
- trying to impress this captain. As I
dropped my bag, I swung it down like a cross body block in front of him.
Cripes! His gun went up in the air and
he went over - Boy, Oh Boy - We moved right out of there - a little faster and
farther up the line so we could blend into the crowd.
Just about that time, we were inside
the town and I can remember the narrow little streets kind of curved
around. There was some kind of brick
buildings. I never will understand how a
guy can be going through all this and still be looking around. It was as though I was just watching it all
happen. There are times that I've gone
places and I can still see that brick road and the people lined up on both
sides of us. They was just yelling at
you and cursing and spitting. The dogs
were at you and the guard were jabbing us in the back. Funny though, every now and then I'd see a
face that looked like they felt kind of sorry for us... But I tell you..... not
enough of them.
About that time, we came across an
obstruction in the road - a puddle that we had to go around. There was still this soldier laying in the
middle of the road. He was out of it and
the guards were coming up and the dogs were sniffing around his legs. I looked over at my buddy
We went over and picked him up. My right arm was full of Tinker. Now the soldier (Hy Hatton) wasn't very big
and I was glad of that. I half carried
and half dragged him, so off we went. I'd
say that run took us about a half hour to make it up to the camp and when we
finally got to the entrance, I laid Hatton down. Some of the guys grabbed hold of him; it was
kind of like the end of a running race.
The first ones was waiting for us - standing there cheering us on. They wouldn't let anyone go into the camp at
this time, so we were just sprawled out in the field in front of the gate. I never saw much of that fellow Hatton again.
All along that run, we had our own
guard giving us a real workout on the back.
You know how the stock of a good gun is.
That stock has a big old piece of metal on it. When you hit somebody with that it
hurts. I mean wham! Now I didn't know if he stuck me or the metal
broke - but I wound up with some kind of mean slice. I didn't find out until about two weeks later
- that's the first time I took off my shirt.
The thing was all caked with blood, but I didn't want to tell anybody.
The guards at the camp were all worked
up to begin with, but the ones that brought us up here, were all madder then
get out - about some guard getting splattered back down on the road. They wanted us to line up and see who was
who. They were looking for the P.O.W.
who knocked over a guard - but they must have described Hatton's hair. They were looking for a darker complected
fellow with black hair. "Black
Hair", they shouted out. The Feldwebel
wanted to know who caused such a commotion, so we all said "keep
quiet". The guards came up with the
dogs, sniffed around and looked us over pretty good.
Many of us had these knit caps someone
had made in camp. They looked like a Swiss hat.
Well, I took that off, and my hair wasn't too long - but they were
looking for a curly, black haired guy!
Now, Hatton had that kind of hair, but they weren’t worried about
him. They wanted the guy who turned the
guard bottoms up. Boy, one Kraut came
over and looked me over. You could tell
he was almost positive. But, he couldn't
be quite sure. He came up and looked and
looked while I just stayed stone still.
That lasted for quite a while.
But they finally let up on it and continued with the rest of their nasty
business. "You're not going into
the regular camp", is what they told us.
The rest of the afternoon was spent
sorting things out and trying to set up a big tent. But that fell down, and we ended up just
sleeping under the big canvas. We just
pulled it up over us and slept on the ground.
I never went to see anybody about my back. I figured they might have been saying:
"if anybody shows up here hurting, why just ask him how and where he got
hit". I would say, in my life,
there were no episodes to compare with that run up the road.
When we got settled inside the wire,
they kept us in a king of tent thing in between the barracks. That was from August until almost October or
November. Then they shipped us over into
a regular barracks, in "D" compound.
There was no more free visiting and a lot of our sports organization
broke up. We got split up into different
compounds and the ground wasn't fit for any real activities.
Our area was the last one completed
and the assembly area, the center of the compound, was just sand and rough
gravel. It was like arctic tundra and
wasn't even level. I think the other
compounds were set up a little better, at least you could run without sinking
up to your boots. It was harder to keep
in shape at IV and we were pretty spent after that evacuation. It was harder to keep moral up. We and Cerniglia started to work on an escape
plan. At one time we figured to hide in
this cellar where they kept the Kohlrabies.
We were going to make a break for it after dark; of course, we kept that
plan on ice.
Now, we had a "Big Stoop"
with us and he was something else. He
was a big goon who was maybe seven feet tall.
Looked like Primo Carnera and was all mean. He had hurt my friend Tinker and one time we
came close to a confrontation. One of
"Stoops" favorite things was to grab a hold of your hand and play
like he was just joking - then twist up your thumb or something.
One time on Christmas, when we had
just what little stuff we could put together all set out, he walked in our
barracks and turned over the whole dinner table. Some guy had a couple of little cans of jam
and some special food we'd been saving.
There's time in your life when you
just say, "Now, I'm not going along with this anymore - I'm not putting up
with this shit no more!" We were in
the barracks and I was laying up on my bunk.
Just simmering about something.
Tinker was below me and the word had just spread "Big Stoop is
coming". I was on my back with my
forearm over my face and one arm just dangling over the side of the bunk. Tink said to me: "Kirby, get your hand
up or Stoop will grab it."
I don't know what was in me that day,
but I felt ornery. I said to myself,
"If he does grab it, I'm going to hit the S.O.B. with everything in this
place." There was no doubt in my
mind that I was going to do it. Tinker
whispered "Come on, get it up."
But I let that thing hang down there.
Now here comes that goon. He's sitting around with a couple of Kriegies
over there and the time is just passing.
I felt his glance sweep over towards me a couple of times, but I just
lay there. Whether he just didn't care
or he said "Leave him be, he's got a right to just hang around", I
don't know. Maybe the good Lord was on
my side that day. At any rate, he just
walked on by. But if he'd made a move on
me, so help be God. I would have done
him in. Of course, I'd have gotten shot.
We did have some funerals at Luft IV. One fellow just kept walking towards the
warning wire and everybody was yelling at him.
The closer he got, the louder we yelled.
Until boom! The guards blew him
out of his saddle. There was another
fellow up at Kiefeheide. You weren’t
supposed to go out the window. But he
went out that window and did something, so they shot him too. We had another situation up there at IV,
where they had guys sleeping in "Dog Houses". They were small units built like oversized
huts. I think there was Canadians in them and lightning struck and killed every
one of them. It was right next to the
barbed wire and you could see whenever there was an electrical storm, St.
Elmo's fire just hopping all up and down that wire.
We packed up the camp and headed out
on the 6th of February of 1945. The ones
that was wounded or sick got on a train, a week before. The rest of us walked. When we came out of Kiefeheide that first
day, we walked about 20 kilometers.
Things were well organized and we stayed at a little place called an
Arbeiten Camp. That was a labor camp
where the people worked, but it was a qualified prison area. It had two big fences and was full of Polish
workers. I remember it was a Polish guy
that
Cerniglia and I decided this was our
chance to make a break for it. The
Russians would be closing in soon and if we could get away from the column we
could head for the front lines.
Right off in back was a barn or
stable. We were supposed to sleep in the
barns. Well, Sandy and I went into the
barn and we were going to try to steal some milk. This Polish guy came in and he caught
In the barn, there was a loft that
would help us on our first jump. Unfortunately,
that would put us between the two fences in the same area as the German Guard
House. Needless to say, none of us POW's
were supposed to be anywhere near there.
So we made the jump and so help me God--we're getting across and its
dark--that's really the only thing we've got going for us. That and the fact that the guard who's
supposed to be watching us is the same one who's been marching us all day
long. He had to be really tired. Because I know we were!
It's only a few yards over to the
German barracks and the lights from a doorway and windows are shining out into
the area. It's getting dicey now. If one of them had stepped out the door and
caught us, he could have done anything--there was no cover and nowhere to run.
Well, that's just what happened. The door opened and all that bright light
reached out--but stopped just a few feet before it got to us. Here's where we're standing and right there
is the edge of that shadow, down in front of us. We just stood there; listened to that "Jawohl-Jawohl"
all that horseshit-just froze.
Then, they closed the door a little
and we proceeded to get to the outer fence.
This one was a honey---because it went straight up, and then bent back,
at you. We really had to carry ourselves
up enough to get high up there, hen throw an overcoat on top of the wire and
roll down. It would tear everything up
on you!
No sooner did we get over this
obstacle, then boy--all hell broke loose.
I don't know why we got the idea that, just because we accomplished
this, that we are free. Shit! We're running out and down this grade, when
we hit a little creek. About this time
somebody noticed us. Boy! Those little things started whistling! Whew-whew-whew! Turned out I wasn't near as
tired as I though I was. We run right
through that creek. And it's
COLD-COLD-COLD. We found ourselves in a
heavily forested area, with pines so thick that you could hardly see through
them. We said "Let's go up there
and try to get some sleep". The ice
is frozen all over our clothes, we've got no food, and there's only one thin
"blanket" we've carried for the both of us to share. Things are looking "good",
right. Then down comes this cold-assed
rain. And we're saying: "Whoa--what the hell did we get into
here?"
We tried a couple of barns, way out in
the country, and we couldn't break in.
They were all locked up. We were
determined. Actually, we were desperate,
and just pushed on through a few more towns.
Sandy and I were having a hell of a time even just trying to
survive. Two or three days passed.
We run across three old guys they
called the Volksturm--that's the Peoples Army.
They were guarding the road we were on, and they had shotguns. They seen us and we had to face them--there
wasn't any place for us to go!
"Ich bin begehen zu
lazeretin!" We're telling them all
this crap about us having to go to a hospital.
"Ich bin krank" and all that.
Well, they've got big old shotguns, and they're scared of us. There isn’t anything worse than a guy with a
shotgun, who’s scared of you. Sandy and I
talked it over. We decided to make sure
we know what they're talking about, and give them what they want. Nobody wants to make a mistake and say the
wrong thing! Off we go...
Next thing you know, we're back in the
local jail and a guard shows up. He
takes us right back to those barns we just left. At first we thought we were still going to do
well. It turned out that we had walked
around for several days and wound up one day out of Luft IV. It was just us and the guards.
The guards left and I thought
"Hell, we can stay in here and the Russians will be coming through, they
can liberate us." They came
alright; trouble was, they was captured Russians--POW's, like us. Worse yet, they were Mongols--no discipline
at all. They hadn't been fed, for who
knows how long; they looked and acted terrible.
That first day, the Germans dumped some kartofels (potatoes) out on the
ground. Where as ordinarily, the
English and us might have lined up and everybody would get a potato-by the time
we got lined up, the Mongols had eaten the whole lot.
By golly, the next day, it didn't
happen that way. We were just as mean as
they were. You see, they weren't near as
big as we were, so everybody just shoved their way through. Except for one guy--he was a giant and I'm
glad he wasn't in a fighting mood.
One night shortly after this episode,
I met two guys who would later save my life.
Two Englishmen who'd been captured at
There are no lice in sheep manure--it
would just draw the fever out of you.
I'd lie there and drink hot water.
I didn't even take off my shirt or my shoes.
After the episode of the escape and
return to camp, we spent several more days until they got a gang of these
Russian Mongols together. Otherwise, it
was me and Cerniglia, John Cook and Walter Terry and a few odd English who had
worked on the farm. All the Americans
from Luft IV had gone on after that first night. The Russian Army was advancing and the
Germans were gathering up everybody.
Different groups were on the move.
We started to march again. Boy this was under different rules and
regulations. They can't say, with five
or six guys: "We're going to treat
you different than all the rest".
We actually did get different treatment than the Russians, believe it or
not. The Germans didn't treat them worth
nothing. I mean, every day we'd come out
and there'd be some Russian who didn't make it.
It was February and it was cold.
I don't know whether some had been
hurt previously, but when we stopped in a barn overnight, at least one never
left. The others would strip his clothes
off and when we'd leave, the body would just remain behind. That happened every day.
You'd be walking along the road and
someone behind you would decide:
"This is enough for
me". He'd cut his wrist and fall
down--then off he'd go, rolling down the embankment.
We had two big rivers to cross, the
Oder and the
The way things worked was that, first,
a German goes out on a bicycle and tries to find somebody who'll feed us and put
us up for the night. More than once,
they wouldn't let us. Maybe too many
others had come through before us.
After we crossed that first big river,
the
75 days on that march and I never once
got a Red Cross parcel, or anything in the way of rations. It was only what we could scrounge up. One time a horse was pulling a wagon and it
dropped dead. Believe it or not, we cut
that thing up right then and there. I
tell you I ate that damn horse! You're
supposed to let any animal you eat hang up and bleed out. Hell, we just cut it open and put that thing
in a pot--boiled it up and...Well...I wasn't going to eat any of it, but I got
to smelling that aroma and I said "Boy that smells good to me!" I just grabbed a hunk of that stuff! Another thing was that as you'd go along
you'd drink from streams and wells--but if there was not water--by golly you
bend down on your knees and drink out of water puddles, like the Russians
did. There wasn't much choice right
then.
I think we must have had some
destination, but one by one, guys were dropping by the wayside. By the time it was over, we'd run out of
Russians and just a handful of English, Scots and Polish left. When we left the camp at Kiefeheide it was me
and Sandy Cerniglia, Mondo and Bongiovoni.
That was for one day. Then me and
Sandy started on our own march. Then I
lost
Right after Dulag Luft and a brief
spell of solitary, we were taken over to a place where the Red Cross handed out
stuff. Most of us lost our shoes on the
bail-out, so we needed new ones. I got a
pair of pants, a shirt, and an overcoat--2 sizes too large. I wanted it that way to keep me warm. I got asked for that constantly. Now they had to last, because there was never
any re-issue of clothes. On this march
there was a time I hadn't had my shoes off for 30 or 40 days. I was reaching down to untie them and I was
afraid to take them off, because they were coming apart. There wasn't anything left holding them
together. At the end, when I did remove
those things, my feet looked like I had walked around barefoot in a filling
station.
It was quite a different experience to
be in this small group instead of with the main gang on the march. We had the same guards all the way across and
eventually I got to know one of them.
Towards the end of the war he came up to me and told me it was almost
finished. April first was Easter that
year. He must have realized that the war
was over--because he knew more about the battles that were going on. Us POW's had only one battle to worry
about--survival.
Around the 16th of April I finally had
some good luck. The right place at the
right time, you know. We stumbled onto a
spot where there was some fierce action.
We were in a position where both sides were firing right over the top of
us. We couldn't go forward or
backward. I looked out into the field
and there was this big piece of equipment and I said to myself: "Oh, Oh,
Oh Boy--it's a German tank". Then
there it was--that red, white and blue circle!
What a sight! "It's
English! Hell, that's an
Englishman!"
Then again--You've got a problem. You don't just run out there and say:
"Hey, I'm an American!" You've
got almost two years in the bag and you don't want to get killed. So you hold up--they might think it's
somebody else. The last of us left was
Cooke and Terry, Little Franky, and a guy called Terry Alexander. These last two were American Infantry who'd
just been recently captured.
We put our heads together and started
to look for something white to put together.
We wanted to make sure that tank didn't get away. Man, it was a hell of a position. You're thinking: "I don't want to get
shot or do something stupid--in case he thinks I'm somebody else." I remember there's this little fence out
there and just before this a little bird came over and shit all over me. Some guy told me "Hey--that's good
luck!" I said to him: "Is that
right?" Later on I got to thinking
about it and it seemed to be so. After
that bird shit on me, everything seemed to be going on alright.
Somehow, we got their attention. Slowly, very slowly, I go out and raise up
this stick with some kind of white tied to it.
I walked towards this tank and it came to a stop. The lid raised up on it. "Hey, I'm an American" "An American?" "Yeah". The rest of the guys called out their
nationalities. The guy inside said: "I tell you what. If you want to go back, get up on top of this
thing." I had some possessions in a sack, back in the bushes where we'd
just come from. But I said "To Hell
with it" and I hopped right up on top of the tank.
They went back to the lines and that's
all. He dropped off and there was this
English outfit, where everyone wanted to know who we were. There was a battle going on, so they didn't
have any time to deal with us.
I'll tell you what they did do. They walked over to an old German couple's
house and banged on the door.
BAM-BAM-BAM! When the door opened
it was: "This man's going to sleep in your bed tonight. Get out!" I started to say: "Oh Hell, you don't
have to do that", but I didn't--I just stood there.
As soon as the Sergeant left I told
those folks that I didn't want them put out.
I said "I'll sleep out here in the front". I wasn't really worried about them bothering
me.
My motto--back then--was "Buddy,
if I made this--I can make anything!"
It got me in a lot of trouble, but these folks were the last of my
worries. I managed to get a little food
and rest as the day went on, but that evening got lively. The Germans started a counterattack; I mean,
they were shooting at us again!
I left the house and got in under a
nearby tank. I asked one of the
guys: "What are you shooting at,
Pal?" He says: "Oh, I'm just firing away, Yank! Just letting them know you're here. Just letting them know you're
here!" It was April 16, 1945.
Those of us left made our way back to
the rear to some kind of aide station. A
medic was coming around checking everybody and said "Who from this outfit
and that outfit!" "OK. Bloke-American? Well you can't go back like that". He
noticed how dirty I was. "You get
out of them things and we'll burn them right up". Then they gave me a regular English
outfit--the whole works; and it was a good looking get up. There was a red tam with new boots and I had
a hell of a rank on me--everybody was saluting!
A Sergeant in the British army is really something.
As soon as I got to Hospital in
When you come home from these
things--some guys had the good sense to get a steady job. For me, sports were the best job a man could
ever want. I got scholarships offered
and I got to play pro ball. Thing was, I
had to drink beer to go to sleep when I came back. I went out every night with the fellows,
until I had enough to where I could lay down and fall asleep. I was rooming with them young guys and I'd
have nightmares. The next day they'd
say: "Hey--you scared us half to
death. And kept us up to boot!"
I had a scholarship to go over to
Washington and Jefferson in
Another thing was, I figured I just
couldn't sit in a classroom. I probably
would have gotten up and wandered off somewhere--not being able to be cooped up
again.
I would say there was no episode like
that Run Up The Road. It will never be equaled
in my memory. You never forget. Of course, getting shot down is riveted in
your mind. You start a new life from
then. You say to yourself: "If I
made it through that, then somebody's taking care of me and I can do most
anything." You go from one episode
to another until you're starting a whole new life over and over and over
again. You don't know how long this is
going to last.
Prison camp affected me tremendously
because I always thought I might want to be a policeman. I felt that if I did become one, I was going
to be a good policeman. Someone
who would help people instead of just being one who'd be out there busting guys
up. I knew firsthand, that to mistreat
someone who's under your case is about the worst thing you can do. I made up my mind I'd never be that way.