Chapter 25 ... continued
On Easter Day I was given five beautifully colored hard-boiled eggs and a piece of the blessed cake. The only other dessert we ever had here, the specialty of the house, was a jelly roll that tasted like a potato pancake. The blessed cake was sweet and was wrapped in a thin paper.
In the barracks on Sunday evening one Kriegie said, "Did anyone get thin paper wrapped around your cake today?''
"Yeah, why?" asked someone. "Make maps," he answered. "Hey!" shouted the redheaded Irish-American paratrooper in a mock serious tone. "You can get shot for that." He brought down the house.
We folded the thin papers and put them away. During the first two weeks of April we experienced a mixture of expectation, apprehension, excitement, and frustration. Air activity increased over Hurlach. The tension in town was expressed by the Bauers, who gathered in groups and talked in low voices. A few more soldiers appeared in Hurlach; more and more refugees crowded into the manor house. Red Cross boxes were limited to two for thirty-nine men, which meant that either communication lines were being bombed and strafed or the Germans had helped themselves. Days went by without word on the advancing armies; then suddenly there would be a report of significant advances in our direction. I began to notice, or thought I did, a barely percepti ble difference in my Bauer's relationship to me it seemed more relaxed.
At ten o'clock on the morning of April 9, 1945, American fight ers engaged some German planes over Hurlach. The fight lasted about ten minutes; it was exciting. A plane fell in flames, the pilot parachuting from it. The people of Hurlach were delighted until they discovered that it was a German pilot. An American Kriegie was the first to reach him. The American got the parachute off the pilot and cut away his clothes around a wound. The pilot was dead.
The Kriegie said he was dead when he reached him. The Bauers said the pilot was alive when he landed and told the Kriegie that the pilot was shot while parachuting down.
It was a tense afternoon in Hurlach. The air was charged with excitement. Bauers and slaves went their own way, as it were. In the barracks, there were arguments pro and con, laughter over the Bauers' reaction, rejoicing in the American victory. We had mail call and I got my first piece of mail since I flew from England, September 23. I learned that my prison letters had arrived, that my family and friends were, on February 15, 1945, in good health, and that Mavis knew where I was.
Ivan met me the next day, saying, "Bauers say American pilots shot German parachuting down." I knew what they were saying and tried to explain to Ivan that it was not true. Ivan insisted, "Bauers say so," and added, "Germans and Americans nicht Kommrades, yes?'' I answered, "Yes," to that but was unable to convey to him the subtle difference between being an enemy and shooting a defenseless man. I tried to show him that I did not think our pilots had done that.
Ivan was unconvinced when he went off to plow alongside the Bauer. I heard Ivan explain to him that I had denied the shooting, whereupon the Bauer stopped his plowing and showed Ivan where the pilot was hit. Ivan seemed convinced. I thought, Ivan is no better than the Bauer.
At the end of March and during the first weeks of April 1945, I heard a new sound in the air over Hurlach. It was identified as a jet sound. Planes rose from an airfield near us with a frightening scream and with ominous swiftness, quickly gaining great speed and height. Two days after the dogfight, American fighters appeared over Hurlach and were followed by bombers who blasted a target about two miles from us. The black smoke rising high in the sky was a gorgeous sight so long as it was two miles away. The next day they returned and bombed a town ten miles in the other direction. Each time, the German earth shook and Hurlach had the impression that the war was closing in.
On the morning of Friday, April 13, 1945, I was loafing along with an axe, supposedly cutting wood. The Bauer had been by to sharpen my skills as well as the ax. He still had not discovered that I was a professional POW goldbrick. He looked at my toothpick arms, and I knew he felt again how he had been cheated on Kriegie distribution day. He had work to do, so he left. I sat down to rest.
Just before noon a Kriegie came by and said excitedly, "President Roosevelt died yesterday." It was a shock. "What happened?" I asked him.
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"I don't know," he answered, "but I just heard it on my Bauer's radio."The news went swiftly through Hurlach. They knew Roosevelt. With no facility in German, I had no idea of their reaction. Our first reaction was personal. "Boy, that sure fouls up the war," said one POW. "How d'you mean?" I asked. "I don't know, but we'll never get out of here now," he said.
"I doubt if it has any effect at all on the war," I responded. Another POW said, "I'll bet Truman really makes the war go fast." I had to dig to come up with the vice president's name. In England I had lost interest in the convention, and I had disappeared before the election. I couldn't place Truman.
"That'll sure foul up a square deal for us soldiers when we get back home, won't it?" a Kriegie said.
There was agreement, as we talked about it that night in the barracks, that Roosevelt had been a great president. Some recognized the potential effect of his death on the peace, some felt sadness in the loss of him, and some felt his personal loss at not finishing what he and we had been through together.
Spring was now well underway in Bavaria, and Spring had returned to Washington, as I remembered, and I wrote home in Whitman's words:
When lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed
A great star fell in the western sky in the night
I mourn and yet shall mourn with every returning Spring.
Our thoughts, which were ever westward, were more so that weekend. For every man in prison, for every man in the army, it was not just that Roosevelt was our commander in chief. It was not only that he was the president. It was that he had been the Presence in Washington during thirteen vital years of our lives, the entire last half of most soldiers' lives.
Saturday night, April 21, 1945, the two young Postens came into the barracks and said that our Red Cross boxes and recently arrived comfort boxes must be turned in. We were furious. The comfort box, a sort of suitcase, was distributed one box to five men - they came months late. The Postens left, and we said to ourselves, "What right have they to the boxes? The hell with 'em." We expended our fury by burning up as many as we could and taking an ax to the gift boxes.
