Chapter 16: The Boxcar Ride

Dear readers -- this is the chaper where my daughter had to stop for a while. For it is where Bill Stigall headed east to the POW camp just as so many others headed for those other camps. Whether he knew the parallels at the time, I don't know. But we do now. -- SGP

The Boxcar Ride

On the third day just before dusk we arrived at a railroad Siding where there were ten small wooden boxcars about half the size of American boxcars. The guards slid back the doors and we were ordered in. About thirty of us climbed into each car. We sat down or lay down, taking up most of the floor space. The guards ordered thirty more into the car. We protested that it would be overcrowded, but thirty more carne in. The door was pulled shut and locked. There were two small windows, with shutters, on either side of the car, eighteen inches square, five and one-half feet up from the floor. The windows were boarded up from the outside; air carne through the cracks in the car. Straw covered a part of the floor. It was getting dark. We had not eaten since noon and were hungry.

We maneuvered about in the car finding a way to sit down or, if possible, lie down. It was apparent that not all could lie down at one time. lt got stuffy in the car, so we called out to the guards, asking for more air. No response. It was night. An hour passed. We waited.

The men in the car were mostly Americans, with a sprinkling of French and English Canadians. One man had an arm in a sling, one a painful jaw injury. Another hour passed. There was constant shuffling for positions in the car, made more difficult by darkness. We sat and we waited.

We were perfectly aware that we were a prime target for Allied aircraft. The fighting in Holland could not be far from us, certainly not far as planes fly. Transportation to and from the battle area was bound to be observed. A switchyard was the worst of all possible places. We sat in the siding near the switchyards. It was a test of nerves. We waited.

Around midnight the train started; we traveled a hundred yards; we stopped. We stood still for another hour. We heard other

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Chapter 10: Interlude

Interlude


It was now the middle of November. We were somewhere in the cold North Atlantic. We heard the high-pitched, pulsating honk of seagulls. They swooped above us crying with delight as they dived into the garbage-filled wake of our ship. Experienced seamen, as we now were, we smelled land. Rumors and guesses got all mixed up with wishes and hopes. The choices were as extravagant as the longings. Scotland, Norway, Ireland, Greenland, Iceland, England, of course, and wistfully, the States. I do not recall the moment of docking on the east coast of North Ireland. But I vividly remember the first images. They persisted and are with me stilI. One visual: the lumbering, ponderous Cydesdale horses pulling small solid wagons loaded with whiskey barrels over the cobbled streets of modern Belfast. One auditory: the joyous and friendly sound of Irish voices speaking the cadences of my native tongue.

The horses astonished me, as did many other things in North Ireland. The voices comforted me, as did many other things in North Ireland. I came to this sweet and soft green land weary from dirt and rubble, frustrated from long confinement in the hold. Depression quite literally hung about me. For seven months I had lived exclusively with American men. Since mid-April I had spoken only to soldiers, lived only with soldiers, even in the center of Naples. I came to North Ireland having almost forgotten about ordinary society.

Whoever chose Ireland chose well. In my veins is a dribble of Irish blood; it was not indifferent to the sights and sounds of North Ireland. If man is distinguished from his fellow animals by his peerless power of speech, he ought to exercise this power. The need to reach out beyond the limits of my associates was great but unfulfilled.

My heart and tongue were starved for fresh communication.

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Chapter 12: This is the Spring (1944)

Chapter 12

This Is the Spring

This is the Spring-the long-awaited Spring.

This the Hour-the breath-abated Hour.

Now is the perilous day approaching,

The waves on the shore encroaching.

This is the Spring, breaking the darkness.

These the Armies, smashing the blackness.

This is the Spring-the long-awaited Spring.

This the Hour-the breath-abated Hour.

3-31-44

It was the spring, and it did lead to a breath-abated hour. But from

early March to June, when my glider was one in a fifty-mile-long

flying train across the Channel, the hundred days were a strange

mixture of impatience, serenity, waste, happiness, boredom, and

beauty. The times bring to mind the analogy of a man's life being

like a tone poem. Various passages of agitation and calm, shifting

moods from vivace to largo, with mucho moderato in the middle. A

series of themes, some abandoned, some recurring. Now and then

passages of intentional monotony, including several beats of

silence. Those hundred days lived at the bottom of the military pile

must have been very different from life at SHAPE Headquarters

and in the United States. Not knowing the date or place of invasion,

making no decisions, seeing no end to repetitive preparations, contrasted

with reams of information, boxes of reports, conferences

galore, and some generally determined week "to go." Or in America,

living under the pressure of newspaper, magazine, and radio

coverage hyped by wild guessing, adding up to plain jitters. The

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