I was frequently joined in Munich by Coppola. We talked endlessly in an effort to pass the agonizing hours in the boxcar. Coppola was rugged, but he did come from below Tucson and the severity of Munich's winter was no treat. We walked together through the snow-sloppy streets of Munich with the black snow, wet and cold, sucked into our shoes. We passed many elaborate Catholic churches, some battered, some with full rococo fronts untouched.
Coppola entertained me with stories of a former archbishop of Arizona. "He was a scoundrel," said Leonardo. He went on to tell me about his wonderful collection of old books, volumes in Spanish and English. While walking the battered streets of Munich, Coppola and I made plans for the future.
"When we get released," he said, "let's go to Paris." "I'm with you," I said. "We can simply disappear for a couple of weeks and see Paris. It's too good an opportunity to miss." I spoke nothing but English and a few words of Spanish. Coppola could get us around in French without any trouble. This conversation was elaborated upon many times in the long days in prison.
Coppola said, 'We'II get a room somewhere, eat bread, buy wine by the case."
I asked, "What'll we use for money?"
"We'll get it," he replied.
I later discovered that Coppola, on his way through France, had decided that he could afford a few days away from his outfit and gone to Paris until he ran out of money. He left friends there. Coppola also had obtained, someplace between Paris and prison, a flamboyant Hungarian cavalryman's overcoat, whose wide sldrts marvelously concealed as many as ten kilos of bread from Munich. Practical as that may be, it was the picturesque quality of the apparel that far outweighed its usefulness. His heavy head of hair, shaggy red beard, and elongated mustache, all covered with the dirt of ages and punctuated with strong white teeth, completed the picture.
In Munich around one o'clock there was usually an air raid or air-raid warning. When the sirens sang we were hustled off to cellars, strong brick buildings, or the basements of bombed buildings. We never stayed out in the open. The guards were always interested in shelter. A few times during the winter of 1944-45 the bombings were heavy. The English and Americans took turns plastering the railroad yard and the city. Usually I delighted in the raids. Some does I was dreadfully afraid.
One day we were worldng on the second floor of a building recently hit, clearing away bricks and rubbish, collecting our piles of splintered wood, when the air-raid siren screamed its warning. The two German guards led the ten American POWs down the staircase to the cellar of the building. In a few minutes five or six male and female German civilians came down the stairs, shutting the door after them. The women lived in the two-story brick building next to our building. The shelter was small, barely accommodating the sixteen or seventeen of us. It was equipped with tools, water, and seats. It had been quickly and crudely constructed, or reinforced, from the original basement.
In a few minutes the planes in waves passed over us, dropping bombs that seemed to fall close to us. A small amount of white dust filtered down the staircase. More waves of planes followed, dropping bombs now unmistakably close. The shelter shook with the shock of nearby explosions. Dust covered us all. The noise of the siren and the exploding bombs was terrifying. The fear of death was mixed with the complexity of sitting in a German air-raid shelter with German soldiers and civilians while my air force blasted us. I wanted them to ruin Munich, Idle Germans, but not kill me. It was the old situation of whether one was willing and able to pay the price for the experience.
I watched the civilians for signs of their reaction to the bombing. I could determine nothing from their stony expressions. I often wondered what would happen should the guards desert us. The shelter rattled with near-hits, the shock and vibration of which loosened a couple of the wooden pillars supporting the roof. I was frightened to death. I loathed the idea of having to die in a lousy German air-raid shelter, never having the chance to get home, never seeing again the people I loved, never telling them what I had seen and done. Even my notes I could not bring back; they were hidden in the barracks. I had come so far a distance, through so much, and then to die so miserably, so near the end of the journey.
One American soldier, with unbelievable nerve or unstrung from shock, kept a running solo, shouting, almost in rhythm with the shock waves, "Hit 'em. Whambo! Hit 'err; whambo!" He kept up this verbal pounding until the German civilians were obviously angry. He then increased the tempo. While they may or may not have understood his words (and many of them understood English, although they seldom spoke to us), there was no mistaldng his meaning. He continued his psychotic actions until the guards ordered him to stop. I had already screamed at him to shut up. My nerves were not that good, and in my extreme fear I joined the guards in shouting at him to cut it out. He subsided, grinning. The raid lasted two hours, until finally we heard the all-clear.
***
The distribution of food among 150 grumbling, distempered, cold, tired, and hungry men was a frightfully disorderly mess.
"Got it all ready, Bill!" Stubby called out.
We sat down at one of the tables to eat. "Where did you work?" he asked. "Some land of school, a university, in fact. It was blasted. Same job. Passing bricks." "It was cold, eh?" Stubby asked. "Yeah, except that we got inside some of the time. No air raid, but a long damn wait," I answered.
Down the aisle of the barracks a POW passed us calling in a firm voice, "Catholic rosary will be recited in Barracks Six A1 now." He repeated his announcement twice before he got out of the barracks.
Stubby said, "We had mail call today. Two letters and one package. The package was for one of the guys from Brooklyn. You should have been here when he opened it. The box was about twelve inches square. When he shook it, it made a noise. It was ten phonograph records. They were all smashed. His friends from the Bronx razzed the hell out of him. It was sad." Of course we didn't have a phonograph anyhow. Mail call was almost nonexistent, but every once in a while two letters came for 200 POWs. These always intensified thoughts of home. Food and serious illness were our first concerns. After them, most men worried about the effect of their disappearance at home. From men recently in the States, men like Stubbs, we heard about the procedures of informing next of kin.
A form telegram reached a soldier's family a month after a soldier was reported missing from his unit. Certainly all such telegrams were worded the same-which is understandable. But the contents overran the form; key words lifted the impersonal wording out of the message. Postmen on the route, knowing the situation in the home, knew the telegrams and sometimes took special precautions in delivering such messages.
I later read one received at my home on October 25, 1944.
-end of chapter 19-
