The Farm: Interlude Pastorale
Early one morning in the middle of March 1945 I walked out of Stalag
VIIA for the last time. The walk itself was an act of freedom.
Rumor informed us that on joining the Kommando we'd be given
new clothing and two American Red Cross boxes. We were offered
a pair of cotton mittens, two British Red Cross boxes, and 100 cigarettes.
The ten of us argued for American boxes. We took the British
boxes, the mittens, the 100 cigarettes, two Postens, and
headed for the Gates with the double set of guards. In a column of
twos, lugging three precious boxes roped over my shoulder, two in
the front, one in the rear, feeling my notes rubbing next to my skin, I
walked past all guards, a mile beyond the gate, to the Moosburg
railroad station.
I have no remembrance of looking back to Stalag VIIA or of
having any thoughts on the matter. As usual, it was first things first:
roping boxes, forming a column, marching. Reaction to Stalag VIIA,
even a backward glance, like most experiences, had to wait upon
reflection.
I sat down on a bench outside the railroad station and rested in
the early morning sun. Six schoolboys arrived to take the train, possibly
as far as Friesing. They were about twelve years old, dressed
alike in blue serge coats and trousers, each with a small peaked cap.
They spoke English. I asked them where they had learned it. In
grade school, they said. My conversation with the children was
another small step to freedom.
A passenger train arrived, we boarded it, took seats, and rode
in comparative luxury over the familiar route into Munich. Another
small step to freedom. In the battered glass-domed station we transferred
to another train, and we rode out of Munich and transferred
again and then again. By noon it was apparent that our Postens were
lost. That was humorous, except that lugging three heavy boxes
tired me.
In the middle of the afternoon we left the fourth train and
walked about ten miles--in the wrong direction. The twelve of us
wandered through a small German town, winding up at the railroad
station, where we spent the night lying on benches. I ate dinner
from my two British boxes, much to the obvious envy of
civilians who came and went from the station.
The next morning we set out on foot. At 10:30 we arrived at
Hurlach, a village of five hundred. We went immediately to a large
building that was sort of half-castle, half-manor house, located near
the center of town. We met the Kornmunderfiihrer, the German soIdier
in charge of farm Kommando 4065, who took us on to our quarters,
where two American POWs were in bed, feigning a fever. Our
two Postens from Stalag VIIA and the Fiihrer left us and the POWs
took over. Quickly and with relish, they wised us up to life in
Hurlach, our work there, and the news of the world, explaining, as
initiates to novices, what they had picked up in six months onKommundo.
We who were underfed were a scrawny lot. In contrast to us,
they looked like superman.
I came to the Kommandowith with high hopes. In spite of many past
disappointments, I hoped I was going to a farm where there would
be food, sunshine, and a release from confinement. We entered our
new barracks through barbed wire, and that was a disappointment.
The news that we'd be locked up together at night was a disappointment.
But the information that during the day we'd have five
meals(Essens) sounded good. The obvious health of the two Americans
was encouraging.
Our barracks was either a former stable or a carriage house.
There were a number of double bunks, a few chairs and tables. It
was clean and orderly. We ten new men picked out bunks, dumped
our three boxes on them, first testing the beds for comfort. It felt
good.
In the afternoon two young soldiers, our new Postens, came
into the barracks and told us to follow them. Our door led into a
barbed-wire enclosure about twenty feet square. Once we passed
through the enclosure, we were in Hurlach. I followed the guards
through the village, which centered around a Catholic church with
a single four-sided steeple pointed at the top in a triangle-shaped
liI<e praying hands. I was delighted that it was a Catholic community.
That meant many holidays and no work.
The village lay against the side of a small rise in the ground, so
that as I walked through the town I could see stretched out far to the
south a great fertile plain. On clear days, I was told, I would see the
Alps. The church was the pivot of the town. Hugging it and
enclosed by a high brick wall covered with cracked cement was a
graveyard. Moving in concentric circles with interwoven lines were
the farmhouses, barns, stables, and dirt roads or lanes leading out
to all the fields.
As I walked past the houses of Hurlach, they seemed of a pattern,
brick covered with cement and whitewashed or, in some cases,
washed with pastel brown, rose, or cream. Nearly every house had
green shutters and red-tile roofs. The tile, I later discovered, was
laid across rafters and secured by hooks on the reverse side. The
barns, sad ancestors of the great red barns of the United States, were
unpainted.
My first walk continued through the village past a few stores,
but into no store section. The bakery, creamery, blacksmith, and
garage formed a part of the owner's farmhouse and was subsidiary
to his main occupation: farming. All the ground about the house
was cultivated to the last inch in gardens, both flower and vegetable.
A few Windows had pots of flowers, which bloomed later in
March and April. Most farmhouses turned out to have wood piles,
manure dumps, homemade wagons, bicycles, oxen, horses, cows,
chickens, ducks, a great urine pump piped from under the floor of
the stables, pits of potatoes, cabbages, and beets.
There was a schoolhouse separate from the church with two
steeples topped with onion-shaped cupolas. As I walked through
Hurlach, it was clear that the largest building in town, other than
the church, was the one to which our barracks was attached. It had
the appearance of a feudal manor house, although it bore the date
1896. (I have since learned that Hurlach was founded in A.D. 1140.)
It was a three-storied square, awkward building housing a number
of families, most of whom seemed to be refugees from cities. In the
stables or carriage houses were thirty-eight American prisoners of
war forming Kommando 4065.
The two young Postens led us in an informal group past a
dozen farmhouses and finally stopped at one. The Bauer (farmer)
came out from his work dressed in a dark shirt and trousers and
exchanged a few words with the Postens. We lined up and the Bauer
looked us over, like a Roman of old surveying Grecian slaves. In
some ways the world changes but little. What he was looking for in
a slave I don't know, but surely physical strength was important. I
was not selected. We passed on to the next Bauer, who repeated the
actions of his neighbor. Again I was not chosen. Somewhere near
the end of the line a Bauer selected me. On what basis he made his
choice I can't imagine. I was noticeably thin, and if he'd seen my
arms, which resembled straws, he would have been utterly dismayed.
But after all, I was cheap labor - five meals a day.
I followed my Bauer into the barn, where I met a young man,
Ivan, who conveyed to me, in a hodgepodge of German and English,
the Bauer'swishes. Ivan, a Yogoslav slave, and I soon became
acquainted. At five o'clock we moved from the barn into the adjacent
house, sat at a table in the front room, and joined the Bauer at
Brotzeit (a word I learned immediately)-cheese, bread, and butter.
Ivan and I went back to work, and at seven o'clock I was givenEssen
(a word I learned that morning in the barracks)-coffee and bread.
The Bauer gave me a blanket and a large feather comforter. One of
the Postens came by, and I joined other POWs and returned to the
barracks.
By the time I got to the barracks, most of the men were back
from their farms. The room was very much alive. late from my Red
Cross boxes, exchanged experiences, and, from the resident group,
learned that several Bauers had radios and, although strictly forbidden
by the Nazis to do so, were listening to Allied broadcasts. The
U.S. Army was again on the move and one day soon would be at
Hurlach. At nine o'clock I was instructed to put my trousers and
shoes outside the door of the barracks. Who would think of escaping
without his pants? The door was locked, the trousers and shoes
carried into the guard's room, which adjoined ours, and lights
turned off.
It was immediately apparent that the men I now lived with
were in great health. They had plenty of food, cigarettes, and rest.
Consequently, sex was back in the conversation. In fact, I was back
with the same discouraging lot of men that I had known all over the
United States and Europe loud and childish. I was struck by the
fact that this group was a sort of club and that the men were playing
at being grown up, much as children play house. They were men
grown too rapidly old and touched, therefore, with a certain theatricality.
They felt they must be men now that they had truly been
through so much and were so independent. Depending on one's
perspective, they could seem sad or comic.
A young man from North Carolina spoke about his Bauer with
such a mixture of dialect and poor English as to sound almost foreign.
Five or six exuberant men from New York exchanged banter
across the room, delivered at full volume, devastating in its Brooklynese.
All the resident POWs exhibited a certain rambunctious
good fellowship. For the benefit of us anemic ones and to assure us
that good things lay ahead, we were let in on the fact that some of
the local Fraulein were available. But be careful! Life was almost
good again.
At 5:15 A.M. the Postens turned on the lights and came in to
awaken us and return our shoes and pants. We responded slowly
and were finally moving at 6:00. We walked out of the barracks
through the barbed wire in a haphazard column, peeling off at our
Bauer's barns. The Postens, once this duty was completed, disappeared
for the day My daily life was spent with the Bauer and/or
Ivan. Most of the Kriegies (for some reason the word Kriegie, prisoner,
was used more on Kommandothan at the stalag) had been
doing the same thing for six months and were like one of the villagers.
I soon learned my routine of duties. I started the day working
with the Bauer cleaning out the cow pens, gathering some eggs,
pitching hay, or cutting wood. At 7:15 we sat down at the table for
Essen--coffee and bread.
My Bauer was about forty, slender, with hard lines in his
weather-toughened face. I became his greatest disappointment.
Once he had a better look at my arms I could read his thoughtsnicht
arlbeiten, aironworker. He was so right. I did well to pick up a
shovel, much less carry anything on it. He spent a good deal of time
getting and keeping me on the job and stopping me from corrupting
his "hired" hand, Ivan, the Yugoslav.
215
