The two gunmen escorted
me into an enclosed farm yard—one of those European farms where the house, the fence, and the outhouses join to make
a complete enclosure. Then the man with the shotgun, by far the most unfriendly
of the two, told me to back up against a stone wall, and he took his gun off his shoulder.
For a fleeting moment, I was sure he was going to shoot me; and I determined instantly not to show him I was feeling
any fear.
Almost as quickly
I realized he hadn’t intended to shoot me after all. This was a tiny community,
and I was an instant curiosity. Among the handful of people who came to look
was a jovial gentleman who seemed to be a man of some influence. With him was
a young girl, perhaps 16 years old. We had a pleasant little conversation while
the man with the shotgun glowered. The man asked where I was from in the States. Aware that I shouldn’t really tell him the truth, I said “San Francisco.” The girl admired the shiny green nylon that covered the wiring in my electrically
heated vest. I took it off and gave it to her.
She put it on and preened like any American teenager. A young woman in
the farmhouse wanted to bring me a chair, but the shotgun guy wouldn’t let her.
After an hour or
two of standing in the yard, I was taken to what appeared to be a little home guard station just outside the village. I was to be kept there until transportation to a larger center arrived—Dessau,
I believe. While I was there, a sympathetic soldier, several years older than
I, took from his footlocker a cookie and gave it to me. He let me know that his
mother, who lived in Hamburg, had made them. I was touched by his compassion,
the more so because the 8th Air Force had bombed Hamburg relentelessly. The
man told me was a veteran of the fighting on the eastern front (Russia). When
I offered to share a bite of chocolate from my flying suit, he refused. I thought
he was telling me that I would need it.
A badly wounded
airman was brought in, his face covered with blood so I couldn’t recognize him.
He knew me, though, and told me he had survived the explosion that took Rusty’s life. He had flown his first combat mission with me as navigator. I
had done an outstanding job on that day, and he thought I was something special. I
gave him a blanket that the soldier-guard had given me and tried to make him as comfortable as possible. Besides the head injuries he had a broken arm. (The guard
brought me another blanket.) A young nurse came in to tend, as best she could,
to the wounded airman—a sling for his arm, a bandage for his head. She
asked if I had been wounded, and with my left shoulder still smarting a bit, I said that was minor damage to that area.
When I peeled back
my shirt so we could see the shoulder, we burst out laughing. The only visible
wound was three tiny punctures that had bled maybe a drop or two each. I hastily
covered my shoulder, considerably embarrassed; but the girl said, “Nein, nein,” and directed me to uncover my
“wounds” again so she could put disinfectant on them. I hated to
see her go.
Some time after
dark, a truck came to transport us to a larger “collection center,” Several
other captured airmen were already in the truck. The guards took us to a basement
in the downtown district of what I believe was Dessau. More than 100 prisoners
were already there. The following day they put us on a train, and we were taken
to Dulagt Luft, a notorious interrogation center. We were too many to allow for
the full treatment of incoming prisoners, so some of us were lucky and were not kept very long at Dulag Luft. I was one of the lucky ones; after three days, I moved on to a sort of clean-up delousing center in Wetzlar
along with many other prisoners. There we were given showers and new GI clothing,
Red Cross food parcels (with cigarettes), and felt generally comfortable. We
were there a week. My pilot, O.J. Snow, and I and a man who could play the saxophone
formed a little band and entertained the other troops for three or four nights of the week we spent there. O.J. played piano, and I played guitar.
Our next move took
us by train east across Germany to Stalag Luft III at Sagan, near the Polish border.
Six American airmen were moved into a large room with six RAF flyers. The
British already had things pretty well organized, and we were comfortable in Stalag Luft III.
We were only there two months, though, before orders came to pack up and prepare to hit the road. The Russians were coming in from the east, and the Germans didn’t want us to be liberated. We marched for five bitter winter days in January, 1945, along snow-covered roads, sleeping in whatever
makeshift accommodations the German guards could find. We spent at least one
night in a barn. Another was in a bomb-out glass factory. We carried as much food from our Red Cross food parcels as we could—and as many cigarettes. Cigarettes were like money. They could
be traded with the Germans for items of food or, on at least one occasion that I remember, a canteen full of beer.
The march was brutal
for some. Those who couldn’t make it were loaded onto wagons and trundled
along at the rear of the column. After five days we were loaded—crammed-into
the little box cars that were called “40 and 8s” in World War I and hauled southwest to Stalag VII-A. It was just outside of the little city of Moosburg, not far from Munich.
Stalag VII-A was
desperately overcrowded and with very few comforts. There were no baths to be
had there, though a very few hardier prisoners than I stripped in the cold and sponged off with cold water from the only tap
available for a prison hut with two or three hundred or more airmen “making do.”
We had a large, pit-type outdoor toilet—perhaps a 10-holer. We wore
the same clothes that we arrived in during our stay in VII-A—about four months.
I was interned in
an officers’ section of Stalag VII-A, and we suffered more from neglect than from any real ill treatment. However, I have read real horror stories told by enlisted prisoners in other sections of the camp.
I believe that the
degree of “horror” the prison camp had for individuals depended a great deal
upon the individual’s perception of it. So the same conditions that
were uncomfortable and inconvenient for me, essentially an optimist, might have seemed horrible to another person.
I lost about 20
pounds during my six months as a prisoner, weighing about 115 when we were liberated by Gen. George Patton’s Third Army. Bigger guys lost a lot more weight.
My experiences in the prison camp, from my capture Nov. 2,, 1944,
until the liberation April 29, 1945 are detailed in my book “P.O.W. – A Kriegie’s Story.” My training and preparation for combat are described in my second book, “B-17 Navigator.” A third book, when it's done, will fill in the gap and deal with my experiences
flying combat out of Bassingbourn, England, where the 91st was based.
These books may be ordered from the author (frank_farr@usa.net), from the publisher (<authorhouse.com>) or from amazon.com.
