The Biography of a Rabbit Part 7

They must have had a lot of beehives in this area of Germany because when we got honey, we got three gallons at a time. We carried it back to the barracks in a wash basin. This amount was for just the twelve of us! Once a week we got a ration of German black bread which I believe was one loaf per man a week. It was very dark with a sour taste and was baked on a layer of sawdust about 1/4 inch deep an the bottom of the loaf. We tried at first to sc.r.a.pe it off but it was so hard we gave up, left it on and ate it. As it was so heavy, each loaf weighing about five pounds, when we went to the cook house to got it we took along a door off one of the lockers. It took two men to carry the twelve loaves back on the door. We had one sharp butcher knife for slicing and I got so I could get 60 slices out of each loaf. The bread was so hard, you could slice it paper thin and could almost see through it. We sliced it this way so we could have enough for breakfast, dinner and supper, as well as a snack before bedtime. When we had honey there usually was so much of it that we would have a paper thin slice of bread with at least 1/2 inch of honey on it.

We tried all combinations of whatever food we had and most were better at it than I was. The prunes could be cooked and whipped with powdered milk to make a topping for our attempts at desserts. We tried Peanut b.u.t.ter pie which was made with a cracker crust with the prune whip mixed with the peanut b.u.t.ter for the filling It tasted good then but I tried it once after I got home and couldn't eat it. The Canadian crackers were large round ones and we would soak them in water until they swelled to three or four times their dry size, then fry them on a hot stove. This way they were more filling. The kohlrabi were grown extensively in Germany and tasted alright but were very woody in texture.

The blood sausage was another story and it was a long while before I could eat it. You might say I needed to be starving first. It came like salami, in a tube, and was nothing but congealed blood from animals. If you could stand the smell of it cooking, you fried it in a pan until it was black and as hard as grape nuts. You could eat it by was.h.i.+ng it down with a hot drink. The powdered milk was in a can with the word KLIM written on the side. After we had been there about six months one of the guys was laying on the top bunk with his head upside down. He looked across the room at the KLIM can and suddenly jumped up yelling "KLIM" is milk spelled backwards". It was amazing that we had gone this long without anyone noticing this.

It may sound like we were getting a lot of food, but it was just enough to keep us going and most of the time we were hungry but not starving. It was interesting that talk did not include girls wives or girl friends. The main topic of conversation was food. We talked food, thought food, and dreamed food all of the time. We were surprised to learn that food preferences were so different in the areas of the U. S. represented by the prisoners. One guy in our room was from Kentucky and he had never heard of goulash (but couldn't wait to try it when he got home.) We were always discussing recipes and ingredients of different dishes. The girls were not talked about, although they were on our minds all the time. Several times there were work groups of Russian prisoners that pa.s.sed by outside the fence and among them were women. They didn't appeal to us as they were all short and heavy and wore old brown overcoats that reached the ground. It was wintertime and they were just plodding along in a line.

The indoor toilet in our barracks was very interesting. It was used from 10PM till 6AM. There was a trough down one side and seats at the far end. When sitting there you would have a line of guys standing right in front of you. One had to get used to them all standing there yelling at you to hurry. Between ten and midnight the lights were on and some characters had the nerve to sit there reading a book while ignoring all the others standing in line swearing. After midnight it was totally dark and you had to feel your way around to keep from b.u.mping into someone. Neil Ullo had gotten himself a pair of wooden slippers and one time in the middle of the night we heard him clomping down the hall on his way to the bathroom. The next thing we heard was a lot of yelling and swearing and the clomp, clomp, clomp of the slippers going at a high rate of speed down the hall. The next day Neil secretly told us that he had gone down there in the dark in such a hurry and thinking it was the trough, got on the back of a fellow standing there! At night in Germany it was total blackness and you could see absolutely nothing. Most people have no idea of the many good things that the Red Cross does. Without them we would really have had a terrible time. Besides the food which we couldn't have done without, we were supplied with sports equipment musical instruments and books. You could even order things through them and it was not long before they would be delivered. Some of the boys were in the middle of their education when they were drafted and they ordered books to help them continue their college education. I remember one who was studying to become a mortician and he got several very expensive books on the subject. We also received playing cards.

Although I didn't play, several in my room played bridge day after day. One I'll never forget was Robert Ripstein from New York City who whistled "Holiday for Strings" through his teeth a11 the time he was playing cards. He nearly drove us all nuts! Even today I can't bear to hear that music! He was the only one in camp that irritated the fellows in our room and to me all of them were just great guys to be around.

I was always telling jokes, playing practical jokes and seemed to have a happy outlook on life ... maybe just because I still had it. I knew a lot of jokes from the days with the old gang back at home and every night just after the lights went out and we were all in our bunks, I would tell a joke. I told a different one every night of the eight months we were in this camp. It got to be like a bedtime story and they expected it.

Murphy was another boy in our room and sometimes he would get a package from home with cigars in it. He would be so happy he'd put two cigars in his mouth with a cigarette between them and smoke all three at once. When he got letters from his girl back home, who was receiving all his allotment checks, he would hear of all the things she was buying with his money to furnish their home when they got married. I remember there was a piano bought along with all the other furniture. When we were back in Atlantic City waiting for discharge, I met him standing on a street corner looking very dejected. His girl had married someone else and used his money to furnish their home.

I can't remember receiving much mail but I must have gotten some.

About once a month we were allowed to send a letter home through the Red Cross, but I didn't know whether they went through or not. My father sent me two cartons of cigarettes every week but I never received a single one of them. I imagine that they were taken by the Germans as they opened our parcels before they came into camp. There was so much dehydrated food that seasoning was one of the things we missed the most. One time the two higher ranking officers in our barracks had received a parcel with some dried onion flakes in it.

When they cooked with them about a 100 guys would go stand in the hall outside the room to enjoy the smell. It was almost as good as eating them!

It was too bad that there was no way to tell the people back home about the things that we would really like instead of cigarettes, soap and other non-essentials. The parcels had to travel so far with so much handling that very few ever reached the camp. By this time the German people were so short of everything, including food, that they must have made off with a lot of it.

The washroom in our barracks contained a row of sinks where we washed and shaved. The water was from underground springs and was a hundred times colder than ice water. it made your hands and face numb so we got as little as possible on us and did it quickly! When we got so bad that we just had to bathe (not very often) we did it when there was still some heat in the stove in the communal kitchen. We would heat up a tin can of water on the stove, go into the washroom and splash on Just enough ice water to make suds then have a friend pour the can of warm water over you and hope it was enough to get the soap off. Even in the summer time the water was just as cold so one or two baths a month was enough. There was a building in camp for doing laundry, but there was no hot water so n.o.body ever used it much.

We washed our clothes in an old pail with a plunger we made from a three foot piece of tree root that was fairly straight and nailed to a powdered milk can at the end. The can made good suction and by pulling it up and down we could get our clothes fairly clean. Our pants would get so stiff with grease and dirt that we could stand them up in a corner. The last four or five months it was winter and we didn't wash any clothes, at least not after we left this camp.

A monetary system was set up with each item in the food parcels having a value of a given number of points. Food could be exchanged for D-bars or cigarettes used to pay debts. The army hard chocolate D-bar was the most prized and valuable item besides being our only candy and was nutritious. It was considered to be worth five dollars and some fellows sold all they could get for IOU notes and planned on collecting the money when they got home. I knew these guys were honest and no doubt some made several hundred dollars this way. This system worked very well and points were given to every article in camp. even clothing was sometimes traded for D-bars.

The enterprising guys were keeping busy with different projects like the one from Pennsylvania who wrote the book about the prison camp. Ht had a rough draft and went all through the camp taking advanced orders for it. He had it printed after the war and contacted everyone. He made three dollars a book. Someone else drew a poster of a pilots head in uniform with the left side all gears, wheels and levers depicting the makeup of a pilots head. It was an exceptional picture poster.

At one of the camps we were in one of the guys bribed a guard to get a camera and film. He took several rolls of pictures and also took orders for $5 and I signed up for them. I received these without any problem after the war. Another fellow had a real business going. He melted the solder off the bottom of the cans which held the "church key'. He made a smal1 ball of this solder and took a three inch piece off your dog tags chain and soldered it to your pilots wings, then soldering it to the ball. This signified your inability to fly with the old ball and chain symbol. He would do this for a certain number of D-bars in payment. This way he had more to eat or to sell for IOU's to collect later.

The making of the athletic field was a major accomplishment which we undertook in the early summer. This large area at one end of the compound was Just the way they had left it after clearing away the forest. Hundreds of stumps of pine trees in neat rows covered the entire area. The Germans gave us one ax, a telephone pole and one guard with a rifle. About two thousand of us each took an empty powdered milk can and we looked like a colony of ants digging the dirt away from the stumps and roots. It was sandy soi1 and dug quite easily. Wt took turns using the ax and cut all the roots from each stump as fast as we could. Then, with the guard watching us, we put the telephone pole under each stump and all the guys that could get onto the pole would Jump on and pry the stump out of the ground. I don't remember what happened to the stumps, but we had no tools to cut them up for firewood so the Germans must have hauled them out of camp.

Each man then took a bed slat from his bunk, a board about four inches wide and three feet long and we used this to level the soft dirt as there were no rocks. It is amazing that it only took us two days and there was room enough for a football field and two softball diamonds.

The football field was seldom used but there was always someone playing softball. The Red Cross furnished the b.a.l.l.s, gloves and bats.

Naturally I played baseball and as a shortstop most of the time. We had some good games as the talent in camp was exceptional. One of the pitchers had been the national softball champion of the U.S. and he threw the ball so fast that you could hardly see it. I just took a chance and started swinging the bat when he started his windings. I didn't get many hits as they were too good for me! There was one pitcher by the name of Brown who acted nervous all the time and wou1d fidget on the mound, shake his arms and keep leaning down to pick up pebbles while getting ready to pitch. There were usually several hundred of us standing watching the game and just as he would get ready to pitch someone in the crowd would yell "What's the color of a horse?" and everyone would yell 'Brown!' We did this several times each game and it really got him rattled!

That summer was hot and the summer clothes were a sight to see. Paul Duncan from my room pitched on a softball team and all he were was a small piece of cloth in front tied around the waist with a shoestring. We used to play catch a lot for exercise And to keep busy. Sometimes we played a different game of softball which was probably thought up by someone in camp as I had never heard of it before. When you got a hit you could run either way, to first or third base, but you had to continue in that direction all the way around. Sometimes there would be six men on base and it made for a lot of activity when there was a hit!

One day I leaned across the table to lift a pitcher of water and that was the first time my back went out. The pain was so severe and I didn't know what had happened. I didn't go outside to the hospital but saw the two pilots who had had two years of chiropractor schooling before being drafted. They were our medical team. There were no supplies, other than aspirin and band aids. They did help me with ma.s.sage and they decided it was caused by the jolt when my parachute had opened. When this happened, several times while in prison camp, I would lay on my stomach on a bench with my arms around under the bench and sweat. After a couple of hours this way I could get up and move around some. A couple of times I could not get out for morning roll call count and a guard was sent in to check on me.

This is the only medical problem I had in camp, except for hunger and, later, dysentery.

We fixed a place between the barracks to play volleyball and played occasionally. We also made a boxing ring and got the padded gloves from the Red Cross. We didn't allow any fighting in camp so when there was an argument, those involved were scheduled for three one minute rounds in the ring. We would gather around for these events and usually no one got hurt, but this was the way to settle arguments. Neil Ullo was a very serious type and did a lot of studying. Being in another room he made friends with a different group and spent less time with Bruce and I. We did everything together and I did learn a little from Ullo about the stars. We would go outside after dark and he would point out the primary stars. I remember learning about Orion a formation of Seven stars and I still look for it in the night sky today. I always think of Ullo and that time in our lives when I see it.

We had one Black pilot in camp and one day we were at the main gate watching another group of now prisoners being brought into camp and he saw another Black pilot he had flown with. They were only about 100 feet away so we could talk to them as they went by. The fellow was so excited to see his friend he yelled "What did you do with my clothes?" and the new man replied "I sold them!" To this day I can still hear them saying that in their deep southern drawl.

The best Joke of all was the one that I played on Bruce. Every time that my back hurt or I didn't feel well I would ask Bruce to do my work for me like getting meals, was.h.i.+ng dishes, peeling potatoes or carrying the hot water. I was very generous in paying him back with packs of cigarettes, which I had because I didn't smoke. I even got so I would try to convince him I was sick when there was a dirty job to do and he would do it. The important thing (to me at least) was that I was paying him with packs of cigarettes I was taking out of his locker. This went on for about five months and all the guys in the room knew it and were really enjoying it. One day he noticed everyone laughing and you could see the wheels turning in his head as he finally figured it out. He started for me and I went out the window with him right behind. He chased me around the camp for hours before he finally gave up and forgave me.

Bruce's bunk was just inside the door and he was in the middle bunk with his head next to the door. I used to get up first in the morning, go across the hall and hold my hand under that cold ice water till it was numb. I would throw open the door and stick my cold hand down his back and wake him up. My hand was so cold he would lay stiff as a board and couldn't even move, which was better than jumping up and hitting his head on the bunk above. It was a wonder that we remained such good buddies.

There was a Catholic priest in camp and I believe he came by way of the Red Cross from Switzerland. We had church services every Sunday outside the cookhouse. We had one tenor with a beautiful voice and he would sing "Danny Boy" after church. That is the song I remember him best for. Some of the guys tried to have a small garden, but the soil was just sand and pine needles and wouldn't grow anything. It was possible to get seeds and some other items by bribing the guards with cigarettes. The guards were usually older men, to old to fight, and they were glad to get food or cigarettes.

The guards lived in a building just outside the main gate and they raised chickens. Sometimes the birds would wander into the area we could see but not go into. One of the guys got a few kernels of corn and tied them at the end of a long string. He would throw it out near the chickens and slowly pull it back trying to got a chicken to follow. He did this for hours and finally caught one. We heard all the commotion and ran down to see what was going on. He had the chicken tucked under his arm, it was squawking like crazy and he was running in one end of each barracks and out the other with a German guard chasing him. After going through five or six barracks, the chicken was silent and the guard lost them. The guard searched awhile then gave up. Somewhere along the way the chicken had been hidden and some POWs had a chicken dinner that night.

Many of us tried to catch birds, mostly sparrows, which we intended to eat if we could catch them. We put out a cardboard box with one end propped up with a stick and attached was a string that led in the window. We put bread crumbs under the box and took, turns watching from the window. The birds were so fast that they always got away before the box fell. We never got any but we never gave up trying. Another way we pa.s.sed the time was by laying on our bunks and watching flies light on the ceiling. How do they get their feet on the ceiling? Do they do a loop the loop, half roll or flip? We spent hours arguing about this but we never solved the puzzle.

Another interesting story was about Paul Duncan, a guy in our room who was from Kentucky, where he had been studying to become a physical education teacher. He had been shot down over the Mediterranean Sea and had floated for several days in his life raft near the coast of Italy. When he got to camp with us he was very skinny and shriveled up from being so long in the salt water. He and another boy from the next room got some cement from the guards and a metal pole and built weight lifting equipment. The weights on the ends were tin cans filled with cement. They would exercise for hours each day and it was amazing how he built up his body. He could squat down with his hands an his hips and hop like a frog. The two of them were a sight, hopping around the perimeter of the camp this way. By late summer they could go 3/4 of a mile around the compound in that position. He would do 100 pushups at a time and would lay on a bench with his ankles tied to the end of the bench raised up then touch his elbows to his knees. At one time he did several hundred of those before we made him stop. He was the one who wore just the loin cloth all summer and he would shave all the hair off his legs and body so he could tan all over. He was not in the cooking group that I was, but when I was sick and couldn't eat my share I would give it to him as he was exercising and needed the extra food.

Supplies were brought into camp by a big old wood burning truck. It didn't go very fast and after unloading the two Germans would try to get it going again. Several hundred of us would watch them and give advice. The boiler was on one side of the truck and they had to keep throwing wood in it to get a good fire going. When they finally got it started we would all cheer add clap our hands as the truck slowly chugged its way out of camp.

We had many styles of haircuts and some shaved their heads or wore a Mohawk. A lot of the men grew mustaches and we even had a contest for the longest one measured tip to tip, with a prize for the winner.

When the mustache got long enough they would melt the wax off waxed paper from the Red Cross parcel and make the hair pointed or curled.

A man named Irons won the contest with a mustache nearly a foot wide.

There was an in ground cement swimming pool in the center of camp but we couldn't swim in it as it was to save water in case of a fire.

Several guys built boats out of the metal cans using only a knife and fork for tools. We were told that someone in the English camp had built a grandfather's clock that way and it really worked. These boats were as much as a foot long and waterproofed. A boiler was made out of a tin can with a metal tube to throw the steam against a paddlewheel. The can was filled with water and the rancid b.u.t.ter that came in the Canadian parcels burned in a tray under the can of water to make steam. Everything we received was used for something. If the b.u.t.ter burned well the boat would go about 30 feet across the pool.

Some of these boats were masterpieces with a rudder for steering and a cabin on the deck. I remember having a big race an the Fourth of July with betting on the boat of your choice. If you were wealthy, you could bet a D-bar. It took a lot of patience to build anything this good with the material and tools we had, but it kept us occupied.

One of the barracks down by the main gate had two young cats that had wandered into the compound and been kept as pets. They talked about eating them if they got hungry enough. Later in the summer one of the cats died and they decided to have a military funeral for it. It took several days to make preparations for this big event. The grave was dug and a small wooden casket was built. In the English compound next to us was a British, naval officer who happened to be in Europe when the Germans first started war activities it 1939. He was the first one captured and had been in prison camps for six years. During all that time he had received many packages from home and had a complete English Naval uniform with al1 the ribbons and insignia on a white uniform. He wore it every Sunday while walking around his compound.

The German guards allowed him to bring a delegation to the funeral and he led the procession in full uniform. It was a half day event with the Catholic priest giving the eulogy. There were even pall bearers. Several days later some of the men killed the remaining cat and ate it. Probably it was not from hunger, but just to say they had eaten a cat in prison camp.

We had a room in the theatre building for a news room where we had maps of Germany and two German newspapers were posted which gave some information (even if you didn't understand German). I remember seeing a copy of the paper on the day the Allied invasion began. It said 'Die invasion is begun'. If I could have gotten a copy I would have liked to bring it home. The maps in the news room had to have the front marked according to the German news we got the correct version from the BBC.

The British in the next compound had a radio which they took apart And different men carried the parts. They put it back together Just for the broadcasts. The news was written down and pa.s.sed to the other compounds by way of the hospital building. Usually someone had to make a trip there each day and It was read to us in the newsroom after making certain that there were no guards in or around the barracks. The one who read the news was Abe (I forget his last name) who was Jewish and always afraid of what the Germans might do to him.

Ht would break out in a sweat while reading, but refused to give up the job to anyone else. He never lost the fear that the guards would find out what he was reading and how he got it. This news was the way I kept the map by my bunk up to date. We had a camp newsletter each week that was posted in the newsroom and contained news from home which came from prisoner's letters from home. We also had a wonderful cartoonist in camp and he had a comic strip posted every week. The heroine's name was "Needa Leigh" so you can guess what the cartoon was about. The newsroom posted this cartoon each Sunday and It was the highlight of the day. Guys would come by the hundreds to see the new episode. The age group represented was of college men and there was no end of talent.

The theatre had been built with a stage and a large auditorium. There were no seats so we built two hundred seats out of the wooden boxes the Red Cross parcels came in. They were like orange crates and by cutting part of it out it made a seat with a back. As the theatre only held two hundred, each program had to play several times. Some guys had theatrical experience and several plays were done. The German camp officers and some guards came to the shows and sat in the front row. Some of the entertainers made jokes about them, but they laughed right along with the rest of us. We soon received musical instruments through Switzerland and an orchestra was formed. Again, the exceptional talent of so many gave us good musicals. The Germans always came to the musical performances. I remember one fellow had a baseball uniform and a bat and he would recite "Casey at the Bat"

with all the appropriate motions. It was great entertainment.

Fall weather arrived and we were not looking forward to the cold weather as we only got enough coal to use while cooking. All the sports ended and we had to find things to do indoors. Some of the musicians formed small groups of four or five with banjos or guitars and provided entertainment to the rooms. You would ask them to come to the room in the evening and they would play sing and tell Jokes.

After an hour and a half we would pay them by feeding them our late evening snack. We would try to have some special dessert for them. It gave us entertainment and them food.

Two or three guys had been out to the hospital and were suspected of having TB. They were taken out of camp and we had no idea what became of them. We were told that there was no TB in Germany and they were anxious to get rid of them. We also had a few guy's who couldn't stand the captivity and began to act very strange. As we said in the service: they went "round the bend". I know of a couple like this and they disappeared. They were perhaps sent home through the Red Cross in Switzerland.

One day the Germans told us they were going to give us a horse to eat and we were all looking forward to having some meat. We saw the wagon coming and all rushed down to the cookhouse to climb up and look in the wagon. It was a horse alright, the head, four feet and the tail.

Wt all went back to our barracks and forgot about meat and German promises.

The German pilots knew our location and would fly over our camp often and very low. One day we saw a large bomber go over with a smaller plane sitting on top of it. They were probably testing something new as none of us had ever seen anything like that. Another day a plane flew very low over us at very high speed and it mystified us. After the war we learned that the Germans were testing Jet planes and these were the early ones undergoing testing. One day one flew very low over us and just after it disappeared over the treetops there was a loud explosion, a ball of fire and smoke going up. We knew it had crashed and we yelled and clapped... just trying to let the German guards know how we still felt about it.

It was getting to be colder weather and the Red Cross sent us warmer clothing. I got a GI overcoat which was very heavy and came down to my ankles. I also got two blankets, one a beautiful British Royal Air Force blanket. It was dark blue and very thick, With the air force insignia in the center. There was snow and that part of Germany had weather about the same as upstate New York. We were cold most of the time. I put my flannel pajamas on under my clothes and didn't take them off for several months. It was too cold to bathe very often and our clothes were getting quite dirty. I was still wearing the logging boots I had bought in California and my feet were always cold. I was again wearing the orange sweater that came down to my knees so I must have been a sight. I took some cloth, perhaps from one of my s.h.i.+rts, and made a pair of booties the size of my feet and another larger pair. I cut a German newspaper in narrow strips and packed it about three inches thick between the cloth booties and sowed them up. They were big and bulky, but I wore them in the barracks and they kept my feet warm. The Red Cross sent us some hockey sticks and skates so we decided to build a hockey rink. In an open s.p.a.ce where the ground was level we smoothed a large area with the bed slats and piled up dirt about four inches high around the sides.

We carried cold water in our water pitchers and poured it on the rink. Each night it would freeze and we'd put more on the next day.

After a few days and thousands of trips with the water, we had a real nice rink. We made a puck out of a piece of tree root and teams were formed. The Canadians in the next compound had a very good team and we challenged them to a game. The big day arrived and our team was ready. The goalie was a tall red headed guy from our room and he slept in the bunk above me. The day before the game we all gave him some of our food so that he could build up his strength enough to play the entire game. I think the Canadians won but we had a lot of fun watching the game. The guards in the towers also watched the game of course. After a couple of months of hockey playing the sticks were broken off at the end and we had to play with them that way.

Soon it was Christmas and my third away from home. Under such bad conditions it was very hard to be cheerful. We did the best we could with decorations. Even though we were in a forest of pine trees, we couldn't get any inside the compound. We mixed the gritty powder that the Germans gave us for toothpaste with water and pasted it in the corner of the windows like snow. We also saved up a little extra food so we could have one good meal. The Germans had promised us each a bottle of beer for Christmas and we were eagerly looking forward to that. We each got a bottle, to our surprise, but when we got back to the barracks and opened it we found it was only a bottle of charged water, not beer. The only thing we could do was dump it out and save the bottle. Our spirits were low and this didn't help any. We spent the rest of the day thanking of our loved ones at home and wis.h.i.+ng we were with them.

In January 1945 we began to hear the big guns from the east and we knew the Russians were advancing from that direction. On January 23 we were notified by the camp commander that the Germans had told him to prepare to leave this camp before the Russians came. They didn't want any of the highly trained airman to be liberated and have the chance to fight against them again. We were instructed to walk 10 laps around the perimeter each day for a total of 7 and 1/2 miles.

This was not easy due to the weather and our weakened conditions, but we knew it was necessary to build up our bodies for long marches. We discussed different ways in which to carry our belongings and food.

We had large safety pins and a s.h.i.+rt could be pinned up at the bottom with the arms tied around the neck, thus forming a sack. Another carrying device was to pin up the bottom of our heavy army coat and put everything inside. This was the method which I chose.

Our biggest problem was to eat more food and try to build up our strength for what lay ahead, while saving some food to take with us.