Escape From A German Prison Train
In the heart of Nazi Germany, 1943
About 10 hours after leaving Dulag Luft,
an interrogation camp where most
downed airmen during the early part of the war were sent for
questioning before they were shipped to
various designated prison camps) in Europe (Stalag XVII-B, Stalag
VII-A, Stalag IV, and others. It was just
after midnight, May 1943. We were on a prison train with forty other
POWs. Most of us were still supporting bandages from wounds we had
received only weeks before when we were shot down, and crashed or
parachuted into the hands of the Germans.
It was an old, European passenger train,
with staggered compartments that could accommodate about three adults
on each side, facing each other, and luggage racks overhead. The
windows could be lowered or raised by using a thick canvas strap, very
much like the ones that American old steam engine trains had in the
U.S. during those
days – But to prevent us from opening these windows, the straps where
nailed down with three nails to the wooden frame of the coach…
Several of us were
secretly planning an escape, preferably near midnight. Some of the
more seriously wounded, would try to block the guards from shooting,
or try in some way attempt to get in their way. The rest of us would -
at the sound of the signal "TALLY HO!" - jump out one of the windows!
It was a slow process using our fingers to
pull out the three nails holding down the window straps, then very slowly
lowering the windows so that the guards would not hear the sudden
outside noises of the train…
We were in luck. Just before midnight the
train came to a water stop, and we waited while the engine’s tank was
being filled. When the horn broke the silence, the train began to
move. We were ready.
Someone
hollered "Tally HO!"
Up went the
windows, and out we dove into the blackness of the night!
Then all hell
broke loose.
My jump from the
train carried me just over the rocky ballast of the track bed and I
rolled over some soft ground into some sort of a hedge that had grown
around a barbed wire fence. I was trapped!
By this time, the wheels of the train were
screeching to a halt. Searchlights were everywhere. The German guards
where screaming and shooting. Bullets were zinging all around us. And
I was helplessly trying to fee myself from the barbed wire.
"Bob, I’m stuck. See if you can pull me out
of this damn stuff," I yelled.
We didn’t know it at the time, but Bob
Hansen and I were the only ones who got out of the train. He and I
were shot down together on the Bremen raid, April 17, 1943.
Almost immediately, I saw Bob's 6'
4" frame reaching into the hedge, and after a few seconds of twisting
and pulling, he managed to pull me through the barbed wire – but my
pants, and part of my shorts, were still clinging to the wire in the
hedges. I was practically naked from my waist down, and bleeding from
the barbed wire. By this time, many of the German
Guards were all over the place, but we had made it to the other side
of the hedge, and were running full speed into the night. I swear that
I was more embarrassed than I was frightened.
It must have been around 5 a.m. when we
dropped from exhaustion. It was still dark when we crawled under some
bushes, and curled up together to help keep warm, and went to sleep.
Just after daylight, we were awakened by
the sound of voices. Two German soldiers were walking along a bicycle
path that would bring them within yards from where we were hiding. And
because of the leafless bushes, in a few seconds, they couldn’t help
but see us.
Bob and I must have had the same idea at the
same time, because we reacted accordingly.
Bob rolled on top of me,
I raised a bare leg in the air, and tried to giggle like a girl.
It worked!
The two soldiers made several
remarks in German that we could not understand, laughed and joked for
a few seconds, and went on their way.
We had escaped.
By Roy Livingstone
(What happened later? Also See:
"Life and
Death of POWs)
Obviously, this story isn’t over. The
days and months (two years) that followed were not so funny. I did
manage to find an old pair of pants (infected with lice, and other
creatures) in an
abandoned chicken coop. We found one chicken egg that we sucked dry.
The only other food we found during those fourteen days were bugs that
we got out of a spring. Fourteen days later, we were recaptured trying
to cross a river. We were put into a civilian jail for a few days.
Later, we were shackled, and moved to what seemed like an old French
Bastile, were we had separate cells. Some weeks later, we two Guards transported us to Stalag
7-A in Munich, where we were thrown into a Suderbarakie (detention
camp) with all Russian prisoners. While there, we never saw a Red Cross
food package. (Please click on Stalag VII-A on this web site and
see what that camp was like in those early days of the war.)
Months later, after we were moved to Stalag XVII-B in Krems, we
learned about “Barbed Wire Johnson.” It seemed that at the time of our
escape from the prison train, Johnson had been sitting or laying on
the luggage rack above the seats in our compartment on the train.
After Bob and I went through the window, in an effort to keep the
guard from shooting us through the window, Johnson “fell” on top of
the guard. When the guard got back on his feet, he whacked Johnson in
the head with the butt end of his rifle. Evidentially, that seriously
damaged Johnson’s mind. Later, in the American Compound, Johnson
habitually would be seen counting the barbs on the barbed wire fence,
hence the name, “Barbed Wire Johnson.” Before we were released from
the detention camp, one day Johnson stepped over the warning wire,
which was about ten yards from the main fence which guarded us from
the outside world. The guards called "Halt," but Johnson kept going
towards the main fence...Other POWs called "Forickt, Forickt," meaning
"crazy, crazy." It was too late. The guards shot and killed him,
anyway.
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