DAS IST KRIEG

    "Das ist Krieg." These words were repeated endlessly by the Germans to explain and console my suffering as a wounded POW. The original account of my prisoner of war experience was written in 1946 for the benefit of my family because it is so easy to forget details. How quickly the more unpleasant incidents slip from mind -- and there remains only the memory of the more amusing events! Since my story covered eleven legal length pages, it has been condensed to the size more suitable for our newsletter. You might even say I softened it a bit for the benefit of our mellowed readers. Nostalgia has its good points after all these years.

    On 19 May 44 our mission was escorting bombers to Berlin. Since 8th Fighter Command had only four P-51 groups at that time, we had escort duty in the target area and on the way home. Our flight went in over the target with the bombers and suddenly we were up to our ears in flak. We dispersed like ducks under attack. I went north of Berlin to rejoin others in our group. I picked up a flight of four and tacked on as #5 -- and soon had a wingman #6 for the ride home. Shortly after we turned west near the Baltic Sea coast I spotted two FW-190s and called them in and was told to go get them. I did and shot down one; then I discovered that I was alone. I climbed back up and took a heading to intercept the bomber stream, but ME-109s bounced me. I decided to dog fight I was in a left wing-over maneuver when the Mustang flopped over into a spin. I guessed the controls had been hit, and I looked around. All seemed to be OK but then I noticed my hip was bleeding. As I assessed the situation I failed to notice that my oxygen mask had fallen off -- I went to sleep. I woke up at lower altitude still in the spin. I tried to gain control but could not manage it. Besides, my bleeding was too profuse to get to Sweden, let alone England.

    After releasing the canopy and straps, I tightened up the spin, then shoved the stick forward and was sitting in the air. I pulled the rip cord quickly and soon regretted it because a ME-109 was making passes at me. I tried to spill the chute but that was not possible. The ride on down was quiet and peaceful as the German pilot did not shoot. When my chute opened my dinghy fell away in shreds and I was over the Baltic sea northwest of Lubeck. Fortunately, the wind blew me in about 100 yards from the beach, passing over a barbed wire fence by five feet and into a freshly plowed field. In a short time a civilian and a soldier came out of the nearby farm village. With a shotgun trained on me, I was searched and relieved of everything. No first aid was given, and they would not give me my first aid packet. A farm wagon soon arrived. I was placed gently on a board in the conventional three man carry style and put into the wagon. The rough trip into town was followed by local people eager for a glimpse. At the town hall I was roughly dumped onto a pile of straw. I asked for a doctor and one said "Doctor come." The nurse there did nothing except bring me a glass of water when I asked for it. Then an officer came over and started to question me. I refused to answer and he threatened to let me die without hospitalization. Strangely, this did not worry me, and he gave up. An ambulance soon arrived and I was put on a stretcher for a ride to a hospital. There another officer tried his hand at interrogation -- a question followed by a long discourse on the foolishness of the U.S. being at war with Germany. To the question "place of birth" I answered "a hospital" as I jus t couldn't resist the temptation. A string of cuss words marked the end of that attempt. We moved again to another hospital, and my eyesight became hazy. I remember being lifted to an operating table and was asked to write my name but couldn't. Just as I was going under I was told to answer questions truthfully but passed out, and woke up in bed with the leg splinted and a blood transfusion having been given. Then I was given a shot and beautiful oblivion followed.

    The next morning I was operated on and woke to find myself suspended in an awful traction setup with two guards with rifles standing at the foot of my bed. The next week was most painful, but I was assured that the Red Cross would notify my wife that I was a prisoner. Other prisoners working at the hospital were not allowed to communicate with me. However, in afternoons when the nurses were not on the floor, the French labor conscript prisoners came in. It was futile to talk to them as I could recall only a few words of French, but with those and sign language we bartered for needed items such as a toothbrush and half a tube of gritty toothpaste. It was impossible to get razor or blades, and I was shaved weekly by a French conscript with a blade that felt as though used for cutting linoleum.

    After ten days I was taken out of the traction frame and a Stienman pin was incorporated with a body spike cast. The next day the wound got worse and the following day I went down for another operation with the word "amputation" being flung around freely which scared me. When I came out of ether it was pleasing to note that the leg was still intact. The one blood transfusion was inadequate but they insisted I could get along. My hands and arms were blue and my feet cold. My blood total percentage was 34 and death comes at 31, so this retarded my recovery as it was four months before the percentage came up to 50, with 70 percent being low normal. The odor of my wound was so bad that the cleaning girl stuck her head in the door, held her nose and refused to come on in.

    There was a schnapps closet in my room but I could not get near it. Every few days someone would come in for a few bottles. The sign on my bed had "LTN" in large letters and "Amer. Kgf." in small letters (meaning Lt. Amer. POW). One day a patient came along to help carry the bottles, saw the sign and then snapped to the stiffest "Hell Hitler" salute I could ever expect to see. He was confounded when he got no reply. I was moved to another room in about a month, and the guard insisted on moving me with the help of another sick prisoner, with one grabbing my shoulders while the other lifted my feet. Naturally, the cast broke and the pin through the knee pulled with excruciating pain. My French conscript friend, Lucien Bolle, came back about that time and attacked the guard, giving him quite a beating. Other guards arrived to subdue him, and it took three to batter him into the floor with their feet until he was out cold. Rolle was given a six months prison sentence, but the head nurse had the guard transferred. Rolle was given confinement to the room for several weeks when not working. He used the time to teach me some German which I found extremely useful immediately to make known my needs and later as an interpreter. I was the only American patient at the Lubeck hospital most of the time. A Polish prisoner played some checkers with me. He claimed to be French and spoke many languages but none fluently. Life was more bearable with these two to share my misery. The German patients stayed away from my room now. In the former room they pestered me for information, trying their school English on me.

    During the next four months many things happened but it is impossible to put them in chronological order. We followed the war on all fronts on a hidden map, checking German news against BBC. It was most interesting. D-Day had come and gone. A rumor was circulated that landings were being made in Denmark. It made us jubilant as we were about eight miles from the Danish border. German papers carried headlines "Another Dunkirk at Cherbourg" and a huge map showed the tiny insignificant beachhead. As our troops moved across France the maps disappeared and towns lost became farm villages almost impossible to find on a map. It was not until our troops neared Cologne that German masses were aware the Allies were close.

    The hospital food I received was as follows: breakfast -- one hard white roll with butter and two slices of black bread; lunch -- soup and a plate of unseasoned boiled potatoes; tea time -- one slice of black bread with jam; dinner -- two or three slices of bread spread with butter, jam or raw hamburger. Every Wednesday we had a glass of non-alcoholic beer that tasted like rotten home made root beer. Once a week we had a decent meal when Bolle made up some meat and rice -- usually pork sausage or beef from Red Cross parcels. Some weeks on Sunday we were given an egg for breakfast, but they were boiled GI style: the top ones were raw, the middle ones right and the bottom ones very hard boiled.

    On 8 Aug 44 in beautiful weather about 10 a.m. bombers passed over. The raid lasted until 1 p.m. so we missed lunch. Then an alarm sounded followed by a terrific roar. Antiaircraft opened up full blast, and a few minutes later one of the nurses ran in to tell me that seven were kaput. I thought she meant seven planes were shot down, but Bolle told me it was seven parachutes from one B-17. I was sorry they had been downed but joyful in anticipation of American company, being fed up with German, French and Italian jabber. Of the seven, three were alive but wounded, one was unhurt, one died of abdominal wounds on the operating table, another died from a fall off a rooftop and the last one was shot by the Gestapo when he tried to resist capture by unloading his .45 at them. The three were kept in another room for a week before I got to see them. The nurses had been telling me that one was Jewish and one was negro. When they came in I had difficulty in speaking American and they thought I was a German plant. Then I had a time convincing the nurses that the Jew was not Jewish (he surely looked it) and the negro wasn't a negro but Mexican. They finally conceded that Gonzales was a Mexican but nothing could convince them that Grossnickle wasn't a German Jew although his dog tags said "Protestant".

    My leg finally began to close up somewhat but bone splinters were making an appearance. One day a nurse came in and said that I would be going not get adequate treatment for the wound in that bed, so I was moved next to the fellow who cane with me from Lubeck. He had been in range of the terrific stench of my wounds for two months and he protested, but he had to endure it for the next three months.

    We soon learned that repatriation was a slow procedure. The Repatriation Commission was due in ten days, and before they arrived the German soldiers ordered the Italian janitor to clean up the room. He did his usual poor job which was not good enough. Finding it useless to explain, the soldiers did the job themselves, and after many inspections it was declared ready. The commission entered and called three names. The fellow next to me was told by a Swiss doctor that he had not been accepted for rep-triation but his case would be reviewed in six months. Next I was told I was accepted -- what a relief! So was the third POW. Despite the decision of repatriation, we remained at Sanbostel for several months. Toward the end of Nov 44 my cast was removed, and I started to get around on crutches. This opened a broader field of activity for me and made life a little more interesting.

    One evening in Jan 45 a German soldier came in and said we were to be ready to leave in 20 minutes. A German officer then came in and we were literally pushed on our way. We arrived at the station two minutes late but they held the train for us. After a couple chilling layovers and train changes, we bartered with cigarettes to sit in the heated compartment with the guards. Their conversation was most uncomplimentary, and a Luftwaffe officer got on at one stop. He made a few remarks about me, endlessly toying with his pistol. However, he was not too proud to pick up the cigarette butts I had thrown away to smoke in his pipe. It was cold and snowy as we arrived at Meiningen. I collapsed about 100 yards from the hospital entrance and was assisted the rest of the way.

    Three weeks later I was on my way home. The journey was like paradise after we crossed the border into Switzerland. I was repatriated on the M.S. Gripsholm in Feb 45, traveling in cabin A-1, the Greta Garbo Cabin. We were wined and dined like you wouldn't believe. When we arrived off N.Y. my father, a Navy commander in the Eastern Sea Frontier, came out on the pilot ship. He told me that my daughter was born four days after I was shot down and that I was carried as Missing In Action for six months. After six more operations and further hospitalization in the states, I was retired with disability in 1946. By the way, Lucien Bolle now lives in Paris. My family and I have visited him over the years and he is our good friend. We are forever grateful for his kindness during my Lubeck hospitalization.