Chronicles of Dixie’s Delight

Part Three – Prison life

 Late in the afternoon of February 14th, the jail door to Bombardier Howard Leach’s cell was opened and a soldier appeared.  “Pointing a rifle at me, he ordered, ‘Raus mit dir’ [out with you], a term, which must have been in every soldier’s vocabulary I encountered in imprisonment.  I was taken by streetcar to a nearby railroad station to await a train to take me to the Luftwaffe Evaluation Center at Oberusel, 12 kilometers from Frankfurt am Main.  This is where all captured allied airmen were taken for interrogation by German intelligence.

 “The train was late. We went downstairs to a room to await the train’s arrival.  A troop train arrived, apparently from the eastern front, discharging the walking wounded, who, attended by nurses, filled the room.  They paid little attention to me.  Seemingly after hours of waiting, the guard motioned me to follow.  We went up to the platform to await arrival of our train.  Two soldiers were alongside us in a disturbed state.  While I could not speak German, I understood what was being said. The one soldier was hysterical.  He was voicing, in no uncertain terms, that he was not going to Berlin, and that if Hitler wanted Berlin, he would have to battle for it himself.  His buddy was attempting to hush him. 

 “The train arrived and we boarded with the guard finding the only vacant seat in a compartment filled with soldiers.  I was left in the corridor outside.  I could not stand the pain of being on my feet, so I found my way to the baggage car and sat down to remove the civilian pants.  An elderly civilian gave me assistance, for which I gave him the three English pounds left in my wallet.  I had used the money to ignite the fires during my attempted escape.

 “Shortly after midnight, the train approached Frankfurt only to come to an abrupt stop.  We could hear the wailing of sirens and see searchlights scanning the sky.  There was a drone of approaching aircraft, the sound of anti-aircraft fire, and then the bombs.  All hell broke loose with the train passengers screaming and scrambling out of the compartments to run up the hillside above the tracks.  I followed the guard, who appeared to care little about me.  I could have easily escaped, but was not physically able to endure another flight. “We sat out the raid until the ‘all clear’ sirens allowed us to return to the train.”

 After being interrogated at Oberusal, Sgt. Tom Ramsey was put on a train to the Dulag-Luft at Wetzlar. “There I was reunited with the rest of the crew.  Officers and enlisted men were kept separate, so I had little contact with them.

 “I have very little memory of the time I spent or the conditions encountered while in the prison camps.  I guess my frozen feet were making me so miserable that I could think of little else.”

 After arriving in Frankfurt, Lt. Leach was marched to Oberusel, where he was interrogated.  On February 16th, he was placed on a train and taken to the Dulag-Luft at Wetzlar, a distribution center to which POWs were sent for processing and transport to the Stalags scattered throughout Germany.

 “They train stopped on the outskirts of Wetzlar and we were taken off the train to be marched to the prison camp some four or five miles distant.  Another prisoner and I could not keep up with the column as we both had difficulty walking. 

 “We came around the road to view a bridge over a river.  The bridge was intact; however, alongside was what was once a house now reduced to smoldering rubble.  One of our fighters had apparently made a pass on the bridge dropping a bomb or bombs, which missed the bridge but scored on the house. 

 “A German couple was pawing through the rubble when they saw the hated American luft gangsters being escorted by three soldiers.  The two of us lagging behind were attended by only one guard.  Centering on me, the German civilian, looking seven foot tall and with eyes full of hate, picked up a brick and began to approach me with intent to stone me to death.  Unable to flee, I had no way of defending myself.  If it weren’t for the guard stepping between us and reasoning with the man, I am sure that I would have been stoned to death.”

 Almost all allied airmen passed through the interrogation center at Oberusal before being transferred to the distribution center at Wetzler.  In late 1943 the average number of POWs per month being processed through these centers was 1000.  This rose in 1944 to an average of 2000, with July of 1944 seeing 3000 POWs. The total number of allied airmen held prisoner in all the Dulag-Lufts in 1942 was 3000, with this number jumping to 29,000 in 1944.

 The main part of the camp at Wetzler consisted of four large wooden barracks.  Two of these were connected by a passage way known to the POWs as the cooler.  One barracks contained the administrative services while the last one was where interrogations were held.  The entire camp was surrounded by barbed wire.

 “Upon approaching the fenced compound, I noted a detachment of soldiers accompanied by dogs entering the compound bearing a body on a stretcher.  I was to learn that there had been an escape attempt.  This particular airman had been accused by his fellow crewmen of not aiding the lower ball gunner when their ship was hit.  He foolishly sought to escape in broad daylight by crossing the warning wire, climbing the fence and was shot.  Electing to go over the fence to certain death, as I learned later, was known as ‘Going over the Bend’.

“Before entering the fenced compound we were taken to an outside building for processing.  Here we were photographed, given German dog tags, and issued clothing.  I was provided a pair of GI shoes, socks, shoe laces, GI overcoat, razor, five blades and a can of shoe polish.  All were American made.  We were given stationery and permitted to write home. My folks had earlier received a notice that I was taken prisoner and was a POW, which must have relieved them greatly.  In my letter I assured them that I was receiving good care and would be home soon.

 “Upon entering the compound and assigned to barracks, I was pleased to encounter Wally (Waldo J. Oldham, Pilot).  He was most happy to see me, too.  Wally informed me that the entire crew had survived and that they had been at Wetzler for a week.  We went to the mess hall for a Kriegie lunch – the only mess hall dinner I had during the whole time of internment.  The wall of the mess hall had a painting of Dagwood with a Dagwood sandwich, which reminded us all of home.”

 “It was in Wetzler that my crew got back together,” wrote Wally Oldham.  “To our relief, Howard showed up in two or three days.  By that time he was looking pretty poor for wear and tear, having very little to eat and being exposed to some fairly rough weather for the previous couple of weeks.  Over all we had become a rather sorry looking lot.”

 “Returning from lunch,” said Howard Leach, “I encountered Tom Ramsey and learned that he had evaded capture for five days.  When asked if he was able to use his prized survival weapon, he sheepishly replied that he had left the Colt-Woodsman in his footlocker for fear of losing it.  I learned that Purdy (Ross F. Purdy, Navigator) and Charlton (William E. Charlton, Waist gunner) had been picked up by the SS and taken to Berlin with other captured airmen to be paraded through the bombed out area.  They were then lined up against a wall to be shot.  Fortunately, in the nick of time, a Luftwaffe officer appeared and took them into custody.”

 While at Wetzler, the POWs were treated to a show.  “We watched a strafing attack by a P-51 on a train in the station.  That was a real show.  He made several passes shooting up the train and then on his final pass he blew up the locomotive,” said Wally.  “The whole camp cheered like we were watching a football game.”

 “I was reunited with the rest of the crew at Wetzler,” said Tom Ramsey.  “Officers and enlisted men were kept separate, so I had little contact with them.

 “I have very little memory of the time I spent or the conditions encountered while in the prison camps.  I guess my frozen feet were making me so miserable that I could think of little else.”

 The men were assembled after roll call and escorted under armed guard to where they boarded a train.  The destination was Stalag 13D at Nürnberg.

 “We arrived early in the morning,” remembers Howard Leach.  “We were taken to the compound after delousing.  This was a huge prison camp having been once a “fairground” housing for Nazi party members attending the Nuremberg rallies frequented by Hitler.  The coliseum was seen as we entered the compound.  The crowded barracks were filthy and infested with lice, fleas and bedbugs. 

 “We joined POWs who had been marched to Nurnberg when the Russians overran Stalag Luft 3A at Sagan near Poland.  Among the prisoners was Colonel Darr H. Alkire who was one of the first group commanders of the 100th.  Col. Alkire, commanding officer of Stalag Luft 3, had assumed the same position at Nurnberg.

 “Carl (Co-Pilot Carl Dunn) and I were assigned to a barracks containing some 40 officers.  We had been issued a ragged blanket apiece at Wetzler, which was totally inadequate to protect us from the cold. Carl and I chose to sleep together covering ourselves with the two blankets and our overcoats. The bed was a bunk with slats covered by a tick of meager straw.  These slats disappeared one by one as they were the only source of wood shavings to cook with.  There was no wood for the small stove in the middle of the room, and we were given little coal to heat the barracks.

 “There were no utensils.  Carl had a can and a spoon which he brought with him.  I had nothing.  Someone told me that there were some old bottles under the barracks.  I was able to retrieve one and then proceed to fashion it into a vessel.  At the suggestion of one of the ‘experienced’ Kriegies, I found a piece of string, saturated it with shoe wax, and set it on fire.  Once it burned completely around the bottle, I immersed it in cold water.  I now had a cup, and with a razorblade, fashioned a spoon.  When the hot soup arrived and we filed past the table to receive a ladle of soup, to my dismay, my glass fell apart and my first meal at Stalag 13D lay on the dirty floor.  There were no seconds, and I went to bed starved.

“The outside privy was denied to us at night.  We were prohibited from leaving the barracks.  The only relief was an overflowing bucket near the door.  Dysentery was rampant and showed no mercy.  I incurred the wrath of a guard who didn’t hesitate pointing his gun at me.  I had given a poor Russian prisoner a cigarette after witnessing him forced to crawl into the filthy pit of the latrine to clear a drain.

 “During the next ten days we endured great deprivation.  If it had not been for the Red Cross officials appearing and getting delivery of Red Cross food parcels to us, I have no doubt that many of us would have starved to death.  Food, what little there was of it, came delivered by horse driven wagon.  The only motorized vehicle appearing in the compound was the “Honey Wagon” painted white with a red cross.  It was used to pump out the sewage to be used as “night soil” on the nearby farms. 

 “At mid morning we would be delivered a limited number of loaves of black bread composed of 1/3 sawdust.  A loaf was issued to seven men for the 24 hour period.  The procedure in my group was to assemble at the table and one of us with a razor blade would accurately divide the loaf into seven pieces.  There were 14 eyeballs critically watching the operation, and one had to be super careful that the pieces were equal.  Then it was up to the individual to ration it out for the 24 hour period.  I preferred to cut my bread ration into five wafers which I dried on the stove.  (Some days we received a coal ration which permitted a fire during the day.)  I would have one wafer for breakfast accompanied by a cup of tea, two for lunch, and the remaining two with dinner.  Dinner was the soup which contained pieces of horse meat, potatoes, cabbage and some kind of pea. Customarily floating on top were cooked beetles of some sort. I observed Carl laboriously picking out the beetles. “Carl,” I said, “you just as well eat the bugs because you will find a beetle entombed in each pea.”  For breakfast we received two or three small potatoes, often too rotten to eat, and a cup of tea.  Occasionally we received a chunk of cheese wrapped in foil smaller than a cube of butter.  You were fortunate if half of it was edible after cutting away the mold with a razor blade.  Once in a great while we received sauerkraut, which was a welcome respite from the soup.

 “We received our first Red Cross parcel on February 27...one parcel to five men.  Thereafter we were given one parcel a week for two.  Carl and I would divide up the food certain that each received equal amounts.  The only exception was the package of M&M candies, which we split 36 for Carl and 35 for me.  Normally a parcel contained: 1 can spam or corned beef, 1 can of tuna or salmon, a can of powdered milk, sugar, jam or peanut butter, a package of crackers or cereal, coffee or tea, raisins or prunes, two packages of cigarettes, Wrigley’s chewing gum, a D bar, a bar of soap, and some C-rations.  The cigarettes proved to be valuable items of trade both with fellow prisoners and German guards.

 “Upon receipt of your share of the Red Cross parcel came the meal preparation.  We fashioned a stove made from the can which contained the powdered milk into which we inserted wood shavings.  By continually stoking the fire, we were able to boil water for tea, coffee or something to eat.”

 “We ate twice a day,” said Ralph Kalberloh.  It was very little...two slices of bread and soup with a little horse meat in it.  We cooked grass and even ate a stray cat that happened into our compound.”

 “Each day before breakfast the guard would enter the barracks rousing us out for “appel” or headcount,” said Howard Leach.  “Since we all slept in our clothing, it was just a matter of drudgingly moving out into the compound and falling into some semblance of formation.  Purposely we made every effort not to be in orderly ranks, which complicated the headcount.  The Hoffman would appear with a sergeant or corporal, whose duty it was to make a count from the rear as the Hoffman proceeded down the front.  Then they would confer and invariably differ in their counts.  The procedure would be done over and over until they resolved their differences.

 “After dismissal we either returned to the barracks or wandered about the compound.  Walking the barbed wire enclosure was our only form of exercise and recreation.  A common greeting to a fellow POW was, “Was ist los Kriegesgefangene?” or “Where are the Goons?”  This was our name for the guards, who were mostly Wehrmacht soldiers.  We were always alert when one would slip into the barracks. 

 “On warm days you could always observe a couple of buddies sitting together searching each others heads for lice.  Occasionally I observed a British airman near the barbed wire writing.  He was a poet.  One evening he spoke to a small group of us gathered together in the barracks.  He had come to the United States to speak to a Chicago Meat Packers Convention to raise War Bonds.  He quoted one of his poems read at the Convention.  The ending refrain was, “There is a two fisted meat packer waiting for me, Ho Ho”.  I pictured a husky, shirtless meatpacker armed with a sledgehammer waiting the arrival of a cow.  I hope the poet made it through the war.

 “There was little regard for rank.  We were all hungry.  Much of our conversation was on food and what we had for dinner at home.  This was particularly popular with the British, Australians, and a Lt. Jose de Asis, a fighter pilot from Argentina.  The subject of Mom serving Thanksgiving dinner was repeated many times.  We also thirsted for news.  At the arrival of new prisoners we would all gather about the gate to see who we knew and to ask for news of the outside world and when the war would end.

“There were also days when we observed formations of B-17s, B-24s and A-26s high overhead heading for Munich or targets eastward.  We lived in constant fear of helplessness if we were bombed.  The guards refused us access to the trenches within the compound, and we were confined to the barracks at night.  Guards and guard dogs patrolled inside and outside the compound. Searchlights covered the perimeter.

 “On February 20 and 21, Nurnberg was flattened in daylight bombing by the 8th Air Force.  We could watch the oncoming formations relieved that the path of the bombers was not overhead.   Nights were particularly frightful as Nurnberg was being bombed regularly by the Royal Air Force.  Such a raid occurred on February 27th.  Commencing with the wailing of sirens, the night sky was lit up with searchlights and with flares as the Germans sought to rendezvous with their fighters.  Then in came the Mosquitoes dropping white and colored flares, some of which burned alongside our barracks.  They were the flares marking the target for the Lancasters with their 1000 pound bombs, which would soon appear.  The English were reported to have the best of navigators.  Among us, huddled down, were British and Canadian airmen who were well aware of the significance of the burning flares but could not offer assurance that the Lancaster’s would not be zeroing in on us.  All we could do was pray and wait.  German anti-aircraft shells filled the sky.  Bombs fell in the nearby coliseum.  There was an explosion of a 1,000 pound bomb in the compound next to us.  Would we be next?  I hastened to give Carl my last package of cigarettes, and we both smoked nervously.  There was no place to run or hide.  Finally the all clear sirens came on and we crawled into our beds.

 “March was extremely cold, and we were often mustered out into the snow.  There was little to do other than to walk the compound keeping clear of the warning wire.  The Krauts were now bringing in captured ground troops, some of whom were billeted in our compound.  I kept looking for the Timber Wolf Division shoulder patch of the 104th Infantry searching faces in the vain hope that my brother was not killed and that he would miraculously appear.

 “At night we would learn of the war news through our underground informants who had access to a radio and the BBC broadcasts.  On March 7, the American 9th Armored Division crossed the Rhine River at Remagen, and on March 22, General Patton’s 3rd Army entered the Rhineland south of Mainz.  Patton was across the Rhine and coming our way.  One of his captured tank crews, which ran out of gas, was brought into our compound.  Hopes were high, particularly on Easter Sunday when low level American fighters frequently appeared overhead with no anti-aircraft fire.

 “We all shared a great depression.  The anxiety of not knowing what would happen the next day was sometimes overwhelming.  We all were going ‘stir crazy’, some more than others.  This I was to witness later on upon entering Stalag 7A at Moosberg.”

 A/N: I would like to thank www.b24.net for the background on the Dulag-lufts.  This site is an excellent source for information on all things POW.

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