Conclusion to Chapter 16, The Box Car Ride in A Shower of Frogs
On the eighth day the train stopped; the guards slid back the door and ordered us to get out. Their insistent repetition of, "Raus; raus," left no doubt that the word meant "get out and hurry up."
But we were no longer in a hurry, no longer in a hurry to get out or to do anything. The guards, each afflicted, it would seem, with high blood pressure, kept repeating that mouthful of repulsive sound: "Raus." Our eagerness to walk about, to stretch our legs, to get some air, to relieve ourselves was subdued by stiffness, depression, contempt building into hatred. Those near the door went out; the rest of us rose from our cramped positions on the floor and moved toward the door. There was a three-foot drop to the wet ground. Some of us climbed down; some jumped. All the while the guards, acting under the influence of superiors walking above them on a small rise, kept hollering and shouting in a demanding voice, "Come! Come! Raus! Raus!"
It was late afternoon, the sky dark and the air damp and heavy, as if it had rained for days. We were bone-tired, dirty, smelly, hungry, with ten days' growth of itchy beard. Some of us were constipated; some had the Gls; all were lousy with fleas. Some had set expressions of determination; a few were still curious, a couple laughing; a proportion were beaten in spirit. However, most of us, each in his own manner, were set for self-preservation. The German guards in their ill-fitting dark gray ankle-length overcoats with ammunition belts buckled over their coats and around their middles, carrying bolt-action rifles, worked furiously to get the ten cars of POWs into a formation. After they assembled us in a column of fours, we right-flanked and in long wavering lines scrambled up a six-foot slimy incline. We slipped and slid clumsily as we climbed to the top, where German noncoms standing on the road above us added their insistent, "Come! Come!" to that of the guards. Once on top, we re-formed into a column. The guards marched us hurriedly along a road a quarter-mile to the entrance of a camp. The view included a complex of high barbed-wire fences with twenty-foot-tall guard towers every fifty yards, each manned by one or two German soldiers with a machine gun. We passed through two gates, each made of logs and barbed wire.
Once inside, we were lined up in a military formation with a front of about forty men. Guards frisked us for weapons, knives, and who knows what else. Smooth-faced, well-groomed, boot-shining Luftwaffe officers, their blue uniforms neat and pressed, stood ramrod straight in front of us. They inspected us, marching smartly up and down our lines. They were so real they looked like actors from central casting, Hollywood. I wanted only to spit upon them. We stood in formation for two or three hours while the Luftwaffe went through the procedures of admitting us to Stalag XIIA.
Speaking English, one informed us, in fact promised us, better treatment if we gave them no trouble: no escaping, doing as ordered, etc. At last we had plenty of air to breathe, but standing up for hours was not our longest suit at the moment. The ground was wet; it was intensely cold. The waiting was insane.
The officers in knife-edged jodhpurs turned us over to the heavy-booted noncoms, who marched us off to a brick building. Inside, we were ordered to remove our clothes, carry them to an adjoining room, and hang them on hooks provided. We were led into another room-a shower room. At that time in my life I was not aware of Nazi gas chambers, so I took the shower offer literally. The water was warm, but there was no soap. Our clothes, which were being deloused, were returned to us, and we marched back outside.
We stood in formation, waiting while the other POWs showered and were deloused. Food finally arrived. We had no mess equipment, and the food was soup-a kind of weak slop. Somehow we got cans and drank some. The griping, quarreling, and pushing among the Americans for food began at the first serving in prison. After we ate the soup, we entered a barracks and were given a blanket. Most of us stretched out our full length on the unmoving brick floor and fell asleep.
