"I'll Take the Night Train, Bitte (Please)"
In the next eight hours came my strangest war experience. Each time the train halted people boarded. As our compartment was soon overfilled the Sergeant told me to go to the vestibule. Gradually, the vestibule filled, so we moved to the boarding area to smoke. Then that area filled. People fought to board quietly but determinedly. Soon bodies were pressed together. In the crouded darkness I lost contact with my escort. Impossibly, more got on. Finally, I could no longer move my body upward or downward, or barely breath! What a miserable trip for all! Of course daytime travel was so easy because no one carred to expose themselves to American fighter pilots--the "Terror fliegers". In darkness, trains were safe from these relentless attacks. With first light people began to leave. When we arrived in Frankfort an hour or so later, it was considerably less crowded as we walked from the train to the badly-damaged station's Men's Room for much needed relief, the thought entered my head: Why don't I walk away? Escaping into the crowd would be a relativly simple thing. That thought left almost as quickly as it had entered. I simply wasn't up to it.
Boarding still another streetcar, we rode to a nearby village, which I later learned was Obereursel, the Luftwaffe's Interrogation Camp. A tiny cell was to be my "home" for another eleven days. Except for numerous sessions in the office of one Hans Scharf, the Chief Interrogator. One bowl of soup and two slices of a most indigestible gas-producing Ersatz bread for dinner and two slices plus Ersatz coffee in the morning was my daily sustenance the entire stay. During that time, a trainload of Allied airmen had been rounded up and proccessed. After my first shower and dull-razor shave, I has escorted aboard. On each car's roof was painted a large white cross to ward off Allied air attacks, hopefully. Finaly it was official: I was a Pirsoner of War, "signed, sealed and delivered".
The Induction Camp
From Obereusel we traveled north by train half a day to Wexlar. Here we were recived into the International Red Cross's POW Processing Center. I was more appreciative of the three meals provided us each day than in anything else. Here I was permitted to send my first letter to my wife anouncing my capture. Here we were issued clothing--some American, some Brittish, some Canadian, and some left over from WWI, I so believe. All Allied airmen prisoners were outfitted here, and the International Red Cross played a big role in helping us get ready for our ultimate POW camp. There were many of these of course. How the Germans determined where to go, I haven't the faintest idea. Anyway, we went to Stalag I, Barth, Germany, up on the Baltic Sea. (This turned out to be the most fortunate of cicumstances. Many of the other POW camps suffered tremendously as the Eastern Front moved westward because the Germans made thier prisoners march rearward also, living off the land.)
The train arrived after three days of locked-in travel. Six POW's were jammed into each compartment, together with the Red Cross food parcels on which they were to subsist. It was so crowded that two fellows in our compartment tried crawling up into the overhead luggage rack. Impossible! There was a largely sleepless night in the train yard in Berlin. Our great fear was that our train was intentionally placed in the center of the Berlin railroard yard to ward off Allied bombers, but would be hit anyway. (Our train had the large White Crosses on every car, for which we were most grateful. We were not bombed.)
Eraly morning on October 16, 1944 we arived at our camp just a mile or two from the Barth station. The events of camp life and our repatriation on May 1, 1945 is another story. But one with a happy ending. It is yet to be written. Dont miss seeing the Slide Show of Life in Stalag I.