Joe Jezioranski

The two carriages rented to transport us to our destination, the training camp for Polish companies somewhere in northern Bavaria, was attached to various trains, not always very fast. Although we changed trains we did get somehow to Frankfurt the same day. On arrival we were told that the next train will leave next day in the afternoon. Now it became apparent that nobody thought about food and lodging. I asked so-called “leaders” what is going to happen next and the answer I got was, “we will just have to wait.” I decided to explore the situation myself: all my friends were hungry and cold, in general a very depressed group. I noticed in the corner of the building an office called RTO [49] and decided to inquire therein. This was just after midnight. I went in and said, “Hello, can you help me?”

49. Railway Travel Office was an army administrative unit dealing with the transportation of military personnel by rail and related transportation services.

“Yes, what would you like?”

“I just came in from the English zone with an intention of joining Polish labor company. I understand that I need to go to … (whatever the name of the place was) and apparently there is no train until tomorrow afternoon. I am tired and hungry and I wonder whether you know of any place I could stay overnight.”

“Well sure, we can call the army hotel for you. Do you need the supper today?” he asked, lifting a phone receiver.

“Yes, but it is a little more complicated. See, there is 196 of us!”

“One hundred and ninety six!” he exclaimed. “Where are they now?”

“In the railway station, just outside the door.”

“Well, let me see what I can do.”

After some telephoning, he got a hotel upper floor opened for us and apologized that we can only have breakfast food tonight because this is all that the hotel has ready to cook at this hour. He also apologized that we will have to go by truck, because there is so many of us. I assured him that the arrangements will suit us fine. I asked him to make sure that the truck will carry us back to the station and thanked him for the group.

I went to tell the others, being sure to advise the “leaders,” who now saw fit to make a speech prior to boarding the trucks which soon started arriving. By three o’clock in the morning we were safely in bed after eating the American breakfast: eggs and bacon and ham and porridge and pancakes with appropriate condiments. I was afraid that Kajtek will burst, since he had about five servings of each dish. Next morning we ate breakfast at 9 am and left for the station in the same convoy of trucks. We arrived in the training camp at night. This time we had to wait till the morning before we got the C rations.

This experience with the group of people being led by inexperienced leaders would always stand in my mind as the example of poor management. I would from that moment be wary of people who took over during the time when an easy decision had to be made, without asking any questions. It caused me to always examine ventures where everybody agreed that no examination seemed to be necessary. This behavior was to be termed trouble-making.

I was not impressed by the training camp to which we arrived in the due course. It was run by the Polish officers, most of them whom have spent five years in POW camps and then a year or so in a DP camp. They revelled in establishing “discipline,” marches, aligning the troops, standing to attention, saluting your elders… It was nauseating. We were issued Italian rifles for some reason and were taken to shoot at “the range.”

The range consisted of a hill in the field with a set of boards on which target posters were placed. Behind the hill there was a German farm. The rifles had a long barrel and pulled upwards at each shot. One had to draw the rifle down onto the target before pulling the trigger, to compensate for the natural upward pull. Thus most of the early shots on the range were always scored high.

An officer who brought us in for the first time and told us to have a series of shots observed that the scores on the first try were low and thought that our drawing the rifles down was at fault. He stopped the exercise, grabbed the rifle and suggested that we should move the rifle upwards and then pull the trigger. Unfortunately as he demonstrated from a standing position and used this type of the rifle for the first time in his life, the rifle pulled much higher than any of ours on the first try. Suddenly there was a shout coming from behind the hill and the farmer came running on the side of the hill. The bullet whizzed above the farmer, frightening him. On our next training a different officer accompanied us.

Apparently we came at the time when there were not many new recruits and shortly after our arrival, a company was formed that included many of my friends. Those that were not included asked to be included through exchange with other men – we wanted to stay together. The company under the command of Lieutenant Zielinski, was sent to guard materiel stored on the Erding Air Base [50].

50. Erding was one of several large air bases situated close to Munich. During the war, this landing field served as a base for the early German jet fighters. Several of them could still be found in the hangars on the base.

The airfield lay some twenty miles north-east from Munich. It was attached to a small town (less than 10.000 people). Our living quarters (camp) was at the side of the field that was the furthest from town.

At first we were impressed with our new green American uniforms, with C rations, with the army clubs we could attend and with the army movie theater, which played different movie every two days. We stood on guard for two weeks and then had a week off. When one stood on guard, one stood guard for four hours and had four hours off. It was very hard on people who could not fall asleep easily. In the middle of the night in some God-forsaken corner there were two problems: how to keep warm and how to keep awake.

Different people had different solutions. For keeping warm of course the usual solution was to build a fire, often with rather exotic materials like aircraft tires, plastic wrappers, clothing… Some tired guardsmen did not even try to keep awake. They planned their sleeping on guard duty with care not to be caught. One had to get into some quiet corner with access from the front only and with some method of creating a lot of noise when an unwanted person (an inspecting officer) was approaching. Those could consist of creaking boards, rustling papers or metal sheets suspended in the air. During the free week after two weeks of standing guard, one relaxed. Besides sleeping, going to a movie and socializing with the town girls, there was little to do. It was the most boring time of my life.

Soon the items with which we were so impressed at first disappeared as well. Gen Clay, who was appointed commander in chief of the US forces in Europe, did not believe in employing the displaced persons (DP). He tried to convince all and sundry that the place of the DPs was at home. To convince the people working in the labor companies to go home, he revoked most privileges. We were no longer able to go to the clubs, movies, etc, which were there for US army personnel. Our uniforms were to be dyed black. There was to be no military training, parades of any kind and a number of the companies were to be disbanded. This treatment persuaded a number of people to go to Poland. One of them was Lieutenant Zielinski.

In some way I liked the change. We were no longer playing at being an army. This was work and we were not being paid very highly for it. An argument was raised that some enhancement of our pay was necessary. We were paid in German marks, which could buy virtually nothing. Thus we were basically worse of than the DPs who stayed in the camps doing nothing. There was some attrition from the ranks. Of course as far as Gen Clay was concerned, this was exactly what his policy should accomplish. On the other hand, he was soon removed or promoted, I can’t remember which, and the man who followed him took a different point of view.

Apparently we were very useful. As the American officer to whom our new commanding officer (Lieutenant Papke) reported said, “Since you guys took over, stealing was reduced to 10% of the previous robbery.”

Apparently we were not as good thieves as the American soldiers who did the “guarding” job before us. And so we were given permission to go to PX [51], go to the movies and so on. Unfortunately the money now has been changed to Occupation dollars and we were paid 5 dollars a month, and some number of marks (RM) for which nothing (or almost nothing) could be bought. We could not buy very much for five dollars either. Fortunately we were also given a certain amount of American cigarettes, I don’t remember the actual amount. Every so often somebody would change their minds and issue tobacco instead of cigarettes; one could not buy much for tobacco.

51. PX I believe stands for private exchange – a kind of the Army store where one could buy various goods.

I became aware that it was much better to become a company official and managed to put in an application for a first aid man. I was sent to Mannheim [52] for training. There I spent pleasant couple of weeks learning how to attend to minor wounds, diagnose simple diseases and attend to heavily wounded. There were two highlights to my excursion. One was, we attended some minor operation and three or four students fainted watching it; and a second one when we got all drunk on the cheap wine. The second one made a bigger impression and had longer lasting effect on me. In fact I had a headache all the way home.

52. Mannheim is one of the large industrial centers in the western part of West Germany. At that time the city was largely destroyed by allied bombing during the war.

My duties as a first aid man were rather light. Every morning there was a sick call: all people who claimed to be sick had to be taken to the hospital, their sickness to be diagnosed by a doctor. I accompanied them and translated the discussion from Polish to English and from English to Polish as required. I looked after medicines and their dispensation. Once a month I inspected all the men for the signs of venereal disease. The last one was the most unpleasant chore; it could put one off sex for a couple of months. Unfortunately the chore was very necessary: out of some 300 men I would find anywhere from one to six infected each month. It always amazed me why the men would not use prophylactics, which were to be obtained free in the showers, and why after contracting the disease they were reluctant to be treated. Those that were sick, had to be taken to a hospital in Munich [53], which was another of my duties.

53. Munich – the largest city in Bavaria and one of the prettiest, was also at the time heavily damaged by the allied bombing. Even at that time, however, it had a population of over 500.000. It was also a busy center of the military government.

Since I was not very busy, I was soon inducted to act as an assistant clerk. One of my friends, Robert, was the chief clerk. Robert always knew how to position himself fairly well for a most lucrative and easiest job. Still I was learning. To enhance my meager qualification, I took a course in driving. I had to be able to drive all the army vehicles in order to get a first class driving license. I spent two weeks attending classes. In between driving classes, the GI’s would play blackjack. I noticed that they would bet with dollars or marks using the standard exchange rate, whereas I could buy marks about ten times cheaper. With conservative play I managed to exchange a fair amount of marks for dollars at this favorable rate. I also did not learn to drive very well, since I spent most of the time playing blackjack.

Now I was fully equipped to work as a company clerk. One of the jobs of the clerk was driving the officer of the guard on his inspection tour. I hated the job as it meant driving around for hours in the middle of the night, often in very poor driving conditions. Luckily both Robert and Joe liked driving and would often drive even when it was my turn.

As I mentioned, the trouble with the labor company was that the work was rather boring. I read a lot while working there and tried writing. I sent a sample of my “creative work” to my father. He advised me not to show it to anybody else, as he saw no writing ability whatever. And so ended my great writing career.

By 1947 the environment was changing. New currency DM (deutsche mark) came into being with a very solid economic support to Germany by the Marshall plan. Finally the prevalent currency was of some value. Coffee, chocolate and cigarettes were no longer the going exchange. US authorities tried very hard to permit the German population to earn a decent living. One of the means of transferring economic value to the German population was to employ them on work related to the US military. Our labor companies were being slowly dissolved and/or replaced by the German labor companies. Since the company was going to be dissolved, we decided to emigrate in a planned way.

Robert found some friend in Frankfurt who helped him get a job with a company that was not going to be dissolved yet. Papke baited the major who commanded the military police to which we were attached to obtain for him a “thank you” note from the congressional commission on military, hence getting a top priority as US emigrant. I had to think of all my friends. Gradually I typed a series of letters to be signed first by Papke and then by the major of the military police. These letters were of the form of recommendation for the bearer and turned out to be quite a hit with most of the international commissions selecting the immigrants to various countries. I was a little worried about the major signing the documents describing the bearer in such glowing terms. I knew, however, that he only looked at the top few documents, the bottom few documents and occasionally at the middle documents. Thus I placed the letters accordingly not quite at the top nor at the bottom or in the middle.

We still had to find a way to apply for the immigration. One of our friends found out that a camp where his relatives were was going to have Canadian commission visiting soon. We liked the idea of going to Canada and therefore all of us went to this camp.

A group of us now went and registered in a displaced persons (DP) camp. I can’t remember any more where the camp was located. I remember that it was not near any large city and that it was rather convenient to the Czech border. We believed that very soon we will emigrate to Canada. Our applications were accepted and we were waiting for a senior Canadian official who was going to perform a final interview and decide on the timing of our departure. Suddenly the conditions changed. This was 1947 and Canada experienced a mild recession. An announcement was made that there will be no more transports to Canada in the foreseeable future.

I was very disappointed and decided that I must look for a job. The most immediate source of employment was IRA [54], where I applied for a job. I was interviewed by a Dutch official and hired on the spot. It was a great pleasant surprise. My job was an interpreter and an examiner of the DP applications. While the war was finished two years before my employment by the IRA, there was a continuous stream of refugees coming to Western Germany and most of them wanted to obtain a DP status, which would then entitle them to be further considered for emigration to other countries. My work involved a thorough examination of recent applications for the DP status.

I took my job very seriously but had difficulty enjoying it. Some rules made no sense to me. If we found that an applicant was obviously an ex-member of the party (Nazi party) or collaborated with Germans, we had to notify CIC which took over the handling of the case from then on. If we felt that a person should not be granted a DP status, it was relatively easy to block his application. The application would then be reviewed by another investigator and if he agreed with the finding, the application was likely rejected. On the other hand if the application was approved by the first investigator, it generally sailed through. Most applications needed a signature of the chief officer of the camp or his assistant. As far as I could make out, the signature was a mere formality.

54. IRA – the International Refugee Organization – was the official arm of the United Nations administering the refugee or displaced persons camps. In each camp there was an office of the IRA, normally under the direction of a person hired in one of the nations belonging to the UN but largely staffed by the displaced persons.

After working for a month, I was informed that I was graded as grade four, which was a grade next to the highest grade possible for the DP. I did not know exactly what it meant, nor did I realize that most of the workers were rather jealously guarding the knowledge about their grades. Thus when I was asked what grade am I, I told everybody that my grade was four.

Apparently there was only two other people who achieved a grade as high as mine. Consequently somebody complained to the second in command who promptly reduced my grade to grade 6. I was very indignant. I really did not care about my grade but felt that there should be some justification for reducing the grade. I went to see the officer who allegedly reduced my grade and asked to see him. I was told that he cannot see me. I said, I will wait until he can see me. The secretary said it is no use, he will not see me. This really got to me. I walked to the door and went in despite her protests. I asked him whether he was the person who reduced my grade. He told me to get out. I said I will get out for good but first will tell him that I consider him a coward, a poor manager of people and a very arbitrary person. I also told him that I see very little difference in his treatment and the treatment I received from the German occupier.