CHAPTER EIGHT
AS HIS TRUCK, PACKED TWO DEEP WITH POWS, CONVOYED south, Joe had little idea if the semidarkness was twilight or dawn. Far-off U.S. artillery howled out projectiles from three sides like wolves converging on St.-Lo. Everyone could hear that the biggest inland battle so far was under way. The POWs prayed for their buddies' victory but prayed harder not to be caught where Americans would be killed by Americans. Indeed, just outside St.-Lo the guards yelled, “Jabo!” then-word for fighter-bomber. They had well learned Allied strafing procedure: first the flight makes a pass to judge the target, then it either turns off or starts a hot run. This flight of three P-47s returned.
To hear their first burst was almost too late. Moments before, guards and the guarded dove for cover as Jabos rolled back to strafe from the other direction. Joe scrambled out, but there was no one to help the immovable wounded. Fifty-calibers blasted away canvas, hugely gouging truck beds and the stretcher cases on them. Joe trembled and crossed himself as a jaw, shin, ribs, and guts fountained onto the road. To see dead men had been melancholy, but to watch them killed like that was another shock like his chute opening on D Night. He tried to collect himself, tried to imagine that each soul was now with God, so it didn't matter what was left of his body.
The Germans were also hyperventilating. They collected themselves by ordering POWs to pile up remains in a ditch for the French to view. The convoy was now smoking and disabled. Ambulatory prisoners were marched through St.-Lo toward a town called Tessy-sur-Vire. Joe noticed the sign. North in the combat zone the Wehrmacht had removed all road signs. Seeing one alerted him that he was farther back in the German rear and closer to the FFI. He began thinking about escape again when his group was quartered in a stable with just a couple of tired guards.
But that night he doubted there would be a next morning. The whole town of St.-Lo surged with explosions. Under pass after pass of medium bombers, buildings fell as in movies of an earthquake. Rolled by each tembler and showered with falling plaster, even exhausted POWs couldn't sleep, so Joe watched the guards. One was a teenager, scared to death and just as pale, perhaps not even German because he kept doing laps on a rosary, which Joe had never seen Germans do before nor would again. Both sides used “walking wounded” as temporary guards. The other wore a Fallschirm-jager helmet, and there was blood on his camouflage smock. He looked prematurely old, maybe twenty-five: months, perhaps years, of combat had accelerated his age.
Joe was semicomatose; his eyes kept closing as he watched this guard. Their glances crossed when a string of bombs rocked the stable. They could each be the last person the other saw before being killed, but that did not bond them. Fighting for one's country was understandable, respectable—but for the Nazis? Though his guard was a fellow paratrooper, if they both died that night, Joe was sure they would go in different directions. He said that with his eyes, and the German seemed to feel similarly toward him.
At dawn Joe saw few structures standing except his stable and a church across the street. The POWs were marched through the burning rubble and ruin of St.-Lo. When they passed dazed Frenchmen the guards pointed and said how this was all the Americans' fault. It took about seven hours— they frequently pulled off the road to avoid strafing—to reach their destination, a walled monastery named La Madeleine, previously a sanctuary for the blind. It was set atop a promontory. The monks had been run out of a three-story stone building strewn with books in braille. It was now the principal compound for American prisoners in Normandy—thousands of them—and they called it Starvation Hill.
When there was any food at all, it was a kettle of swill POWs called “whisper soup.” Tom Gintjee, a man of wry humor, wrote in his memoir of captivity that when he first tasted it he had no idea that water could be diluted. With only two small bowls per day, prisoners weren't just weak, they were collapsing. Joe spent most of his time in a stuporous sprawl, and blacked out if he had to rise quickly for the air-raid siren.
Fortunately it sounded only false alarms. The monastery had been identified by the Germans with a huge POW lettered on the roof, saving it from the pelt of bombs nearby. Indeed when P-47s finished their passes some would pull off and waggle wings as POWs waved feebly, a charged space between men in the air and those on the ground, expressing some kind of common will.
At all other times the slowly milling prisoners were as heartsick as they were hungry. Evidently Rommel had the invasion bottled up. The Germans, now that their panzers had joined the battle, seemed to have stopped the British at Caen and were holding around St.-Lo. French farmers confirmed this as each day more POWs of every kind trekked into the compound, Airborne and Rangers, infantrymen from the beaches, and a few British. Ironically, though salutes from fighter-bombers had caused weeping, a pilot was shoved through the gate, bringing tears of laughter.
Under his flight suit he wore a Class A uniform—”pinks and greens”—complete with ribbons and necktie. The famished, filthy GIs gawked at him. This lieutenant had a very sad story. Last night he was going to propose to his English girlfriend in London at a supper club where reservations had to be made a month in advance. His strafing mission was at six, his reservation for seven, not enough time to change uniform after landing. What made matters worse was that he knew of fellow pilots who coveted his fiancee-to-be. This he related to the POWs, whose reaction was such that the lieutenant was grateful to be taken away to a Luftwaffe camp before the Americans on Starvation Hill tossed him into the swill kettle, necktie and all.
Eventually a few cows were led into the compound and milked, providing a half cup per prisoner every third day. To Joe it tasted like the richest cream, even after being cut with an equal quantity of water. But the protein of meat was what was needed most. To get it, the milk had to be sacrificed, a decision made by the senior POW (a lieutenant colonel) and approved by the Germans; so for a few days the whisper soup had a taste of cowhide and contained tiny slivers of beef. Then two old horses, wounded in action, were brought in and slaughtered. No one had ever eaten horse meat before, but at the time it tasted like T-bone steak. Cuts from the butt were called “sirgroin.”
With Joe on Starvation Hill was Jack Brown from I Company. Like Private Ryan of movie fame, Jack and his twin brother were “sole surviving sons.” They hailed from Alaska. Wolverton had given them a couple of extra days' leave after Toccoa so they could get home and back. In the D Night marshaling area he summoned the Browns because a new War Department directive had come out prohibiting one or the other of them from going into combat. The brothers looked at each other and told him that if they both didn't go, neither would. What could Wolverton do—court-martial one of them for refusing an order? But which one? He took it upon himself to disobey the War Department and let them both jump on D Night. Jim Brown made it through Normandy and the Netherlands but was killed near Bastogne.
On Starvation Hill Jack Brown plotted escape with another trooper as Joe listened. The plan was to go over the wall. That didn't make sense to Joe, who was too addled to understand but he stood watch for the attempt, much as he had for the brandy heist. Brown got up on the wall during a guard shift and lay there for hours in the ivy. At dark someone threw a sheet rope up to him so he could go down the other side.
Currahee! Jack got away.
Joe thought about that a lot, wondered if he was losing it: the daring and determination, even the physical ability, to escape—the will and guile to gauge the odds, then put it to the touch. This became a persistent uneasiness for him, like the compulsion of a race driver to take the wheel again after a near-fatal crash. He tried to collect some sheets to make a rope, but they were scarce and valued on Starvation Hill as bandages for the wounded. He was told no, but the asking helped him psychologically.
Anyway, whatever ambition Joe had to follow Jack Brown over the wall was short-circuited a few days later when he was pulled out, with a score of other troopers and glider men, to be packed onto another convoy. From time and direction he figured their arrival was around Alengon and mentioned it to the guards, but they said nothing and seemed to know no more about locations than the Americans did. Joe was developing an appreciation of the strata within the Wehrmacht— whom to fear, whom to test, who could be ignored. Watch, wait, pray, learn: these became articles of practice that induced patience. Patience did not come naturally to the Most Obvious Temper of his class; he would still seethe with anger, but indulging it was now a deprived luxury.
He was delivered to another stable, a small one, three POWs in each stall. Food was a little better than on Starvation Hill: cabbage in the whisper soup, a crust of black bread, sometimes something from a K ration. Whatever there was the POWs divided equally. Sharing hardship that way thwarted German policy to split solidarity among the prisoners by presenting food so that they had to divide it up themselves. With less resolute POWs the strong would take advantage of the weak, and that pointed out potential collaborators for the Germans. In Joe's stall, equal division was guaranteed because the man who did the dividing got last choice of the thirds.
The stable (probably about halfway between St.-Lo and Alengon) was a temporary respite from the war now evident only in the sky. A German medic pulled the shell fragment out of Joe's butt and patched him up pretty well, though recuperation weakened him. The relatively decent handling meant his group of POWs had been selected and collected by a high echelon of the Wehrmacht. Joe's comrades in the stable had reason, and some extra calories, to feel lucky, but his nervousness grew about the improved treatment; he dreaded Greta walking in and saying, “Joe, are you ready to dance?”
But she was not to be the celebrity.
The staff began looking their prisoners over, standing them up, sitting them down, moving them around like there was to be a big inspection. There was. At dawn they fell out into the courtyard while the guards kept talking about Feldmarschall while polishing boots and hand-pressing high-collar uniforms. The prisoners assembled as if it were their first day in the army. A parade-perfect Oberleutnant addressed them quickly, announcing that a preeminent visitor was about to arrive, that talking was strictly forbidden unless he asked a question. Now stand at attention to await the next order. The Americans ignored him, slouching till a Wehrmacht sergeant with a burp gun bellowed to march into the courtyard and form three ranks, schnelll
Minutes later they heard trucks. A flak (antiaircraft) wagon rolled in, its four-barrel machine gun trained on the POWs. Then a couple of Mercedes limos followed by another flak wagon. Generals and high-ranking staff piled out of the cars. The senior colonel adjusted his uniform and opened the back door. A small, very Prussian-looking officer stepped out and glanced at his watch. He wore a visored cap and carried a baton. Joe watched from the corner of his eye, and it was the baton that identified this impressive inspector. “Rommel,” he whispered, and spontaneously the prisoners beside him came to attention. For Joe it was a strange feeling, showing respect for a great commander, at the same time showing him that here were soldiers for him to respect.
Starting in North Africa, Feldmarschall Erwin Rommel had obtained a feeling for the enemy by sizing up their prisoners. Joe squared his shoulders and popped his chest as if Colonel Sink were trooping the line. With head up he almost missed seeing Rommel, who was short like Montgomery (whose height had prevented Joe from seeing him when he went by during a regimental review in England).
Rommel trooped the POW platoon rapidly. Reading from a roster, his aide-de-camp mentioned each man's name going by. “Beyrle” drew a twitch of a smile but not a glance from the field marshal, who was said to ignore tall people unless he was far enough from them to neutralize their height. His momentary smile at Joe's name may have been from the thought that Rommel's family was living in Bayern; in fact he had been visiting them on D Night.
Rommel didn't say anything till he went around to the rank behind Joe where a trooper was barely able to stand because of a head wound. From what Joe could hear, Rommel asked the man if he was receiving medical treatment. Joe couldn't understand the answer.
The field marshal's visit lasted less than ten minutes. His motorcade roared away, and the prisoners were shoved back into their stalls. In a few days they were taken back to Tessy Not long after Rommel's inspection he was out of the war himself, strafed and wounded. Not long after that he committed suicide rather than face trial for participating in the July plot to assassinate Hitler.
In the weeks without a calendar, Rommel's wounding (July 17,1944) became a time marker for Joe's future experience and those of fellow “prisoners of the second front,” as Germans called POWs from Normandy. The second and universally remembered milestone was the carpet bombing just west of St.-Lo (July 24-25), the decisive factor in enabling Patton's breakout into open terrain.
At Tessy, what Joe saw of the carpet bombing was the sky full of B-17s after they'd dropped their bombs in such tight clusters that craters overlapped. The bombers came on in waves, double the number in the D Night armada, using Tessy as their landmark to turn north back to England. For hours the ground shuddered and the air rumbled, as dust and smoke rose like a pall over some gigantic forest fire, the crematorium for thousands of German soldiers whose destruction opened a five-mile rent in the front lines. Joe's stable was solid stone, but he felt it would tip over. The POWs began to talk escape: if they could just get out and hide, Patton would overrun Tessy in a few days. In fact the general arrived the next week, but by then Joe was gone.
FOR THE FIRST TIME he was blindfolded, put in a truck with ten others, and driven east to a chateau estate (probably around Falaise) housing a high-level interrogation center. Again prisoners were stabled; this time each was put in a separate stall and told not to talk. Naturally they whispered at night or when vehicles went by, but for the most part there was only the quiet of the countryside, the war far away.
From the number of guards and staff, there must have been a hundred priority prisoners on this estate. All day long Joe could see them being led off to the chateau. It was several days before it was his turn. He knew it was coming when men in the first five stalls were taken away individually, an hour or so in between. Their stalls remained empty, and Joe's was the sixth.
Before the morning bread and water, a guard opened Joe's gate. Like a judge pronouncing sentence, he called out, “Beyrle.” Handcuffing him, he asked with a laugh, “Bist du aus Bay em? “ (Are you from Bavaria?) Joe was led to the basement of the chateau, into the servants' kitchen. It was about twenty feet square, and all the cookery had been removed. It surprised him that the kitchen, appearing tidy, smelled like a public urinal. He was turned over to two guards, who gestured for him to sit on a stool high enough so that his feet dangled. They leaned their rifles in a corner and conversed while waiting for the interrogators, two lieutenants who came in and took comfortable seats behind an ornate desk (furniture no doubt from upstairs) facing Joe in the weak light of a dangling lightbulb.
The first lieutenant asked for name, rank, serial number, then continued with questions to which he already knew the answers, like “Where were you captured?” and progressing subtly to answers he in all probability knew, like “When did your division arrive in England?” Joe's steady reply was, “Sir, I'm required to tell you only my name, rank, and serial number.”
This went on for an hour, then another. The lieutenant was not at all discouraged, his questions more probing (for example, “Where were you trained?”), as if Joe had answered earlier ones. As he grew more weary Joe began to wonder if he had. He lost much sense of the time but tried to keep track of how often the door opened and closed behind him when the guards went to chow or to take a piss. The first lieutenant slowly grew annoyed. Joe could feel a guard close behind, ready for the order to strike. It never came, and the first lieutenant got up, as if insulted by Joe's stupidity, and left in disgust.
The second lieutenant, the good cop, took over. His questions were to put Joe at ease. Nothing military, but rather “Where's your hometown?” “What did you do before the war?” As bored as he was tired, Joe was tempted to get into a casual conversation like that but decided against it. He had to convince them they were wasting their time with him. To the second lieutenant he either said nothing or repeated name, rank, and serial number.
Then sometime during the hours Joe said something else (he can't remember what) because the good cop started in with a new approach, how he was a Bavarian like Joe and couldn't understand why he would fight his own people.
His own people! Fury rose in Joe's gorge as he thought of Wolverton's throat cut almost in two. Good cop homed in on the new reaction but followed up all wrong by asking how Joe could have been “traduced”—Joe savors the word because he didn't know what it meant then—traduced by Roosevelt, Morgenthau, and all the other Jews who ran America. The lieutenant had a well-rehearsed pitch about the worldwide Jewish conspiracy. Listening to it gave Joe time to settle himself and go back to silence. Finally good cop tossed out a few common German phrases to note whether Joe showed some understanding, but he appeared as dumb as the FFFs horse.
At last the first interrogation shift went off-duty, turning Joe over to two other lieutenants. They took up the theme of how we westerners were killing one another while the mutual enemy was Russia. What do you know about communism? We will tell you. Marx was a renegade German, not a patriot for his country like us—like me and you, Beyrle. You're a patriot too, just a misguided one. We understand how you feel about America. We understand how democracy could appeal to you, but that's because there's no hostile nation next door, one that takes everything you have and calls it property of the people.
Hours and hours of instruction like that, hours with a question now and then to which Joe said nothing or recited name, rank, and serial number. His butt wound was agonizing, but he wouldn't let them see him squirm. It was early morning when he'd gone onto the high chair, nearly morning when they took him back to his stall.
He'd been without food or water for more than twelve hours, and lay in the straw in a stupor till he was hauled back to the chateau. The next session, he guesses, lasted about eight hours. Joe was hit a few times but only when he passed out and fell off the high chair. During the first session he'd always kept eye contact with the interrogator. The second and third sessions he couldn't keep his eyes open.
Randomly, like flashes back to consciousness, he heard “What is your name, rank, and serial number?” determining if Joe understood where he was, what was transpiring. His rote reply reestablished a rough equipoise between him and the lieutenants. To all other questions he'd shake his head, so crumplingly tired and weak that the threat of beating didn't matter, but he was not beaten.* If there was any strength in him, it was to not say anything or these professionals could lead him to the paymaster jumps. What had happened to him after D Night would be of no value to them. I Company's radio frequencies must have long since been changed. So it was the paymaster jumps that were his inner-sanctum secrets. There were times in those sessions when Joe imagined that they were learning about the FFI by monitoring his thoughts. The interrogators' alien voices were in his mind, the only thing in his mind, so it seemed they knew everything in there.
Most of his misery was an aching haze, but some moments were vivid. Once or twice the lieutenant would rise, push his face closer to say something very slowly. That jolted Joe awake. He'd stare and wonder if he'd babbled something. There was a gush of fear and bile whenever an interrogator's breath was close enough to smell. Joe's high chair was slippery with urine, one of the reasons he kept sliding off. What Joe had going for him was the way he stunk—even Germans couldn't stay close to him for long. He wore the same begrimed clothing of his capture last month; the closest he'd come to having a bath had been sitting in the rain in what he was now wearing, in a small room incomparably foul where prisoners equally filthy had been interrogated around the clock.
“Does your girlfriend write to you?” “How long do you think she will be faithful?” “Are you the only soldier in your family?” “Who will take care of your parents now?”
On and on like that. It is the singular talent of professional interrogators to come up with so many questions to fill so many hours. Joe's had been trained on British POWs and didn't know much about Americans. Late in the sessions Joe would come semiawake and notice silent stares, as if the lieutenants were examining a new, perplexing species.
Everything in Joe was stiffly hurt. It didn't help to pass out; right afterward the pain was worse. When he fell off the stool, guards were allowed to administer kidney punches, something they enjoyed, if only to break the tedious routine. As hours crept on, the interrogators had to keep deciding whether he was conscious enough to understand questions. If not, there was no point in continuing and it was off to the stall. What the lieutenants wanted of Joe was that he be very weak and agonized but still conscious: a fine line, a close modulation in which their professional pride was expressed in enough stamina to surpass Joe's.
All Joe prayed for was that it would stop. Half his consciousness was in confrontation, the other in episodic prayer. He'd gone down the “no response” path because any other way meant the pounding questions would continue without end. They would anyway, but he was locked into a position beyond empathy, an unrecoverably altered state of mind.
THAT'S THE WAY the hunt went for a period of days. They'd revive Joe to a point where he understood questions. Then bad cop would mock him: “What harm is there telling us where your ancestors came from?” “We know you don't have any secrets, a mere technician like you. The guards here have more rank.”
Then good cop: “I can't stand to see you suffer so much! I taught humanities at Heidelberg. You must be a conscript. Aren't you? I was too. You've been wounded, you've been captured—”
“Twice!” bad cop interrupts. “He's a bungling fool.”
“He's right, Joseph. You have been foolish about your situation. If I were captured, I'd tell the Americans anything I've asked you. It's true. My army permits that. They'd want the Americans to understand me, just as I want to understand you. Germany has been at war a long time. We know what's important, what's not. Do you know what's most important? Surviving the war. No matter how it ends, we must survive so that the world can be better afterward. I want you to survive. We've been together a long time now. There's something about you…. I want you to survive!”
Bad cop rose in a rage. He started arguing with good cop, at first in English, about how Joe should be tied up and thrown into the pigsty. Good cop kept looking at Joe with sad eyes while he held up his hand. He seemed to outrank bad cop. That made bad cop even more angry, and he shouted to the guard, “What would you do?” They stepped forward so Joe could see them give the thumbs-down.
He became convinced that good cop was his only protector. In a cursing argument bad cop was sent away, then good cop turned to say, “I can't do this any longer. I'm going to get you some food and drink.” He gave that order to a guard. German soldiers don't give their officers any back talk at all, but this one recoiled and muttered something before he left.
Good cop got Joe off the chair, steered him around the desk to where bad cop had sat. Grumbling, the guard came in with a plate on a tray. He tossed down a knife and fork while Joe stared at steaming heaps of chicken dumplings, baby potatoes, and red cabbage.
“You need to drink first,” said good cop, setting down a tall cold glass of apple juice.
Joe feared it was spiked with truth serum but gulped it down. He wanted to drop his face into the food and suck it up, but good cop reluctantly slid the tray to the other side of the desk. He kept his hand on it, as if eager to slide it right back to Joe.
“I'm taking a great risk to feed you, Joseph. The other lieutenant is going to report this to my superior. I must prove to him that I've acted correctly. Just tell me anything you want: your hometown, your public school, your salary—anything at all.”
“My name is Joseph Robert—”
“A little more, please. You see, if I can show my superior that humane treatment works … You're the first prisoner I've acted this way to! That's my meal in front of you. Think of the other prisoners. If my superior sees that there is just a little cooperation from you, he will permit me to feed the others. Joseph,” he said softly, “do it for them.”
Joe could not help crying. As he rubbed his eyes he realized he must have cried before, but he couldn't remember when. Good cop gripped his shoulder consolingly. He drew the tray over so Joe could smell the rising aroma. Something made him look up at the two guards. They were watching like chemists waiting for titration. That's what made him push the tray away.*
Good cop's reaction was immediate. Joe was thrown into the pigsty as bad cop had recommended. When he was hauled out for the next session Joe knew there would be a climax because he was in some kind of fever, drained of everything except a wild faith, not a strong faith at all but one combining what he believed about God, his family, his country, his Currahees.
And he says today, “Some people call that corny. Isn't corny something that's so true no one thinks about it anymore? You do when you're falling over the edge.”
Joe can't say that he had faith in his faith. Any minute he could have cracked and spilled his guts—that's admitted. What faith did was mute the little voice telling him to compromise: it's not that important; the most important thing is to survive (good cop is right); no one will blame you, no one outside this kitchen need ever know.
The next session Joe knew he couldn't withstand such temptation again. Caked with pig filth, he faced a new team of interrogators with handkerchiefs around their noses. Early on he fell off the chair and kicked at the guards who put him back. He spit at the good cop, refused to hear any siren song. Bad cop was very much into his role. Joe snarled at him, not giving even name, rank, or serial number. A power emerged in him, a strength like that of a drowning man just before he goes under for the third time.
The sisters at Saint Joseph's were very strict if he ever used profanity. Joe didn't much, not even in the army. But during that last session he yelled at the interrogators that they were sons of bitches. The next thing he remembered was about a week later.
* The Gestapo's extensive experience with torture as a means of extracting worthwhile information had proven that insufferable pain was most often counterproductive; that is, that the victim would say anything for relief, whether truth or lies, and the two were nearly impossible to distinguish even by subsequent interrogation. Consequently, a combination of relentless physical and psychological pressure was demonstrably more effective than thumb hanging when information from the victim was the aim—a valuable tip the Gestapo passed on to the Wehrmacht as a professional courtesy. That didn't apply when a confession was the aim, and any combination of medieval and modern methods was recommended to obtain it.
* Joe still wonders if he should have eaten the food—in return for making up something like the name of his high school was Princeton—talking his way through a meal, rationalizing that the food would have made him stronger, better able to resist. Over the years Joe has thought through that scenario. It might have meant a temporary reprieve, but then the Germans would have put him in a different category and the questioning would have gone on forever, and psychologically he would have been weaker. He faults no other POW who went another route, but for himself he had the great dread that any other way would have led to the paymaster jumps and vitiated all his previous resistance. The bedrock of his mind was an understanding that there is no return to virginity.