The Bomber Boys (14 page)

The target, the three ball bearing plants in Schweinfurt, had indeed been hit and badly damaged. Albert Speer, Hitler’s Minister of Armaments and War Production, estimated that 67 percent of German ball bearing production had been lost as a result of the Schweinfurt raid. Speer and the surviving Schweinfurt factory workers braced for the follow-up American raid that would bring the German ball bearing industry and perhaps its military mobility to a halt. But the shaken American Eighth Air Force could not follow up. American newspapers were soon telling the story of the second air raid on Schweinfurt, a city that had spelled disaster to more than one hundred twenty B-17 crews in just two months.

The American bomber airmen in England would gladly wait until the new P-51 long-range escort fighters arrived before resuming their missions deep into Germany. In the meantime, fathers, mothers, families and fiancées waited anxiously for some word from their dear airmen. A letter saying, “I’m alive and okay,” was an answered prayer. Helen had managed to land a job with the telephone company, where war news and gossip was always plentiful and often unreliable. She heard the rumors of the great losses the American Air Force had suffered at a
place named Schweinfurt and tried to tell herself that the numbers were too outlandish to be true. Soon she was reading the front-page newspaper headlines that confirmed what would be called Black Thursday.

Had Peter been on the raid? Had he survived? Helen waited for word from England. A V-letter (censored photocopy) arrived in the last week of October. It was from Peter. Tears of joy began to slip down her cheeks. Then she noticed the date on the letter—October 14, 1943. She guessed Peter had written the letter just before takeoff to Schweinfurt.

Helen touched a fingertip to the “I love you” at the bottom of the page and whispered a prayer. A few days later, on October 28, as her family gathered to celebrate her father’s birthday, the bad news arrived. Peter’s sister Margie had received a notice from the War Department. Peter was “missing in action.”

 

 

 

The sun rose behind Peter on the morning of October 15, casting a soft orange hue across the roofs of the little German village. He had walked through the night and was not sure where he was, but he was at least confident that he was far from where his bomber had gone down. His encounter with the Rhine had not proven insurmountable. What he had seen was merely a bend in the majestic river. Luckily he had landed on the western side of the Rhine.

A few vehicles had passed along the road during the night, forcing him to scurry into the woods. Thankfully none of the cars and trucks had borne any military markings.

The village, a half mile ahead of him, was comprised of a dozen or so houses, all clustered close together on either side of the road. Pastureland covered the remainder of the immediate area. Peter was still damp and almost completely exhausted. Sticking to his plan, he looked around for someplace to hide
where he could sleep through the day. A comfortable-looking haystack in an adjacent field seemed perfect. He could get out of his damp clothes and let the sun dry them while he slept.

The side of the haystack opposite from the village would be best, Peter decided. He soon discovered that although the haystack was soft and dry on the outside, it was wet and firmly packed underneath. Simply sleeping on top of the hay risked a visibility he could not afford. He had no choice but to burrow into the damp hay and cover himself as best he could. He ate a meal of another small piece of the chocolate bar and a condensed-milk cube that he had discovered in the escape kit, and then the weary airman tried to get some sleep.

As tired as he was, sleep came only in short intervals that day. Still in his wet clothes, he was cold and miserable. As dusk began to fall, Peter spread his handkerchief map out and tried to figure out where he might be. It was a hopeless effort. Without numbers for the routes, the road signs he had encountered meant nothing.
Keep heading west,
he thought, as he crammed the handkerchief back into his pants pocket and climbed out of the haystack.

His second night in Germany was much like his first. Peter walked all night. At least his clothes were mostly dry now. The weather was chilly again. During the night he came upon another small village, similar to the first. Taking to the fields, he walked around the village, rejoining the road on the other side.

Early the next morning Peter began to scout the fields for another haystack. None was to be found, but he did spot a small clump of trees in the middle of a field. Peter guessed he could sleep the day away there without being discovered. He was mistaken.

That afternoon two men walked into the woods. Peter got to his feet and sized up the strangers. They looked to be farmers. Neither of them spoke or made an aggressive movement even
though they saw him. Peter used his right arm to shield his hunting knife from their view and with his left hand he made a circular movement over his stomach.

“
Glodny
,” he said, using the Polish word for
hungry
. Peter remembered a little of the language he had learned at his Ukrainian grandmother’s knee.

There was no response. The men looked at one another, then walked away without ever saying a word. Peter watched them leave and resigned himself to capture. German farmers would certainly report such a discovery to the military. He was too exhausted to run, and he would not get far in the daytime wearing his uniform. He sat down and waited.

Half an hour later, Peter spotted two men approaching his clump of trees. It was the same two villagers. They walked up to him, handed him a small flask and walked away, again without speaking. Peter unscrewed the flask’s cap and smelled the contents. It was a sweet alcohol aroma. A short sip revealed it was a rich, smooth whiskey. He wondered about the two men and finally came to the conclusion that they were Polish forced-labor workers. He nursed the whiskey through the rest of the day, napping between drinks.

 

 

 

By his third night in Germany, Peter was having severe hunger pains. He consumed the rest of the chocolate bar as he walked, but when it was gone he felt no relief. Foraging in a farmer’s field, he dug up what appeared to be some kind of turnip. As hungry as he was, Peter could not stand its bitter taste and had to spit it out. Back on the road, he continued west.

On night number four the young airman’s pace slowed as both hunger and thirst began to take their toll. When he came upon a creek, Peter decided to risk getting sick. He just could not go on without water. Filling a rubber pouch from the escape
kit, he dropped in a purification tablet and took a deep drink. The water’s taste was awful and he could not keep it down. Several minutes of heaving left him even weaker. Vowing not to try that again, he made up his mind to find some fresh water, even if he had to risk being seen. His opportunity came later that evening.

Railroad tracks crossed the road, their twin ribbons glowing beneath a bright moon. Peter checked his compass. The tracks ran to the southwest. Up ahead, beyond the tracks, was a crossroads with a single house. A little light was coming from downstairs. He could follow the railroad tracks and avoid the house, but that would not satisfy his thirst. So he kept walking toward the crossroads.

In front of the house there was a hand-cranked water pump. Peter could not resist it. As carefully as he could, he brought the pump handle up and then down. A rusty squeal broke the quietness of the night. He knew it would take two or three pumps of the handle before any water would flow, so he tried again. Again the pump refused to be quiet but a small trickle of water appeared.

Peter was just getting set to give the handle a third try, the one he was sure would send water gushing out of the pipe, when the front door of the house swung open. Light silhouetted a figure in the doorway. It was a woman. She was wearing a military overseas cap. Peter could see its German eagle emblem clearly in the moonlight. She said something to him in German.

“Woda,”
Peter replied in Polish.

She did not answer.

“Français?”
Peter tried.

Again the woman spoke words in German; then she retreated inside the house, closing the door behind her. Peter abandoned the pump and hurried down the road. The woman was either a member of some kind of military unit or the cap belonged to her
husband, brother or some other family member. Peter had no way of knowing if anyone else was in the house. Even if the woman was alone, he had to assume she would be spreading the alarm.

About a mile away from the house, he abandoned the road and cut across a field. He walked until he came to the railroad tracks and followed them southwest. Near daybreak he slipped inside a railroad culvert and was soon asleep.

He was awakened later by the sound of children’s voices. It was a pleasant sound.
German or American, the sound of children at play is a sweet thing,
he thought. Peter smiled and began to drift back into sleep. When the children’s voices grew closer, he sat up and began to listen intently. These kids were having fun at some sort of game, but there was something else going on. They were searching for something. Teenage male voices shouted above the younger ones. It struck Peter with a chill.

For more than an hour, the children searched the surrounding fields and woods, but none of them ever approached the culvert. The young Germans left as they had come, their happy voices trailing into the distance. Peter surmised the woman at the crossroads house had reported their encounter. Luckily there apparently had been no soldiers in the area to search for him. Peter fell back to sleep, grateful he had not seen any enemy soldiers since his narrow escape on the first day. The downed aviator’s luck was about to change.

 

 

 

As darkness fell, Peter crawled out of the railroad culvert and resumed his journey west. His hunger and thirst stalked along the tracks with him, and he tried to put them both out of his mind. Focusing on keeping a slow but steady pace helped a little.
Keep moving. Get out of Germany. Get to France.
Still, the question
kept intruding on his resolve—
Can I do any of these things if I can’t find something to eat?

Late that evening, the American airman followed the railroad tracks into a darkened train yard. Any hope of finding a boxcar full of rations was quickly dispelled. Peter had walked into the middle of an impressive display of German military hardware. Flatbed cars on each side of him were loaded with deadly cargo—artillery, tanks and other armored vehicles.

Peter’s first thought was how he could destroy at least some of the enemy’s war materials. What Kauffman and the boys would have given to get this juicy target beneath their aircraft—but what could he do? His only weapon was his hunting knife and he had absolutely no training in espionage. In fact, Eighth Air Force briefings had instructed airmen who found themselves behind enemy lines not to do anything but try to escape. “Do not try any espionage. Do not do anything you are not supposed to do. Avoid capture—that is your job.” The instructions had been firm.

Hearing the conversation of guards nearby, Peter realized if he stayed in the train yard too long, he would surely be captured. Such a stockpile of military equipment would require a substantial number of soldiers close by. Reluctantly, he walked quietly out of the train yard. He was far away before the first hints of sunrise.

Before it grew dangerously light, Peter spotted a haystack that he hoped might provide a bed for the day. Once he had climbed to the top, he was happy to discover it was pleasantly soft and dry. He covered himself with loose straw in preparation for much-needed sleep.

Forcing himself to stay awake for a few extra minutes, Peter opened the small black prayer book that he always carried. With a stub of a pencil he made a mark on one of the pages. Altogether there were now six marks, one for each day he had been
on the ground in Germany.
Six days,
he thought.
How far have I gone? How much farther to France?
He could not know.

Day six provided Peter the best sleep he had gotten since leaving England. He woke in the late afternoon, still hungry and thirsty but noticeably more rested. His mood was improving. If he was not close to France, he was getting closer each day. Maybe this night he would finally find food. He took out his map and compass to plan the evening’s journey.

Perhaps it was the effects of his ordeal—a man could get jittery from not eating for days—or perhaps he just got careless, but Peter let the little compass slip out of his fingers. He grabbed to save it, but the little compass tumbled down into the hay and disappeared. Peter had been scared when he had parachuted into the farmer’s field, and as he hid behind the tree, eluding the man with the shotgun and the German soldiers, and during his encounter at the water pump, but the thought of losing the compass brought him to near panic. Without the compass, he could wander the German countryside for days on end. His empty stomach was a reminder that he did not have days to spare.

Praying the compass had not fallen too deeply into the straw, Peter gently began digging. He forced himself to remain calm and go slowly. As he concentrated on retrieving the compass he heard someone speaking German. Looking up, he spotted two German soldiers walking across the field and heading right for his haystack. Peter flattened himself on top of the straw. He thought of pushing himself backward to the opposite side of the haystack but he remembered the compass. Any additional movement could send it farther down into oblivion. Peter lay as still and quiet as he could.

The soldiers continued toward the haystack, but Peter could tell from the manner they carried their rifles, slung casually on
their shoulders, that they had not spotted him. Soon they were close enough that he could see their faces. They were young, about his age, he guessed. One took a pack of cigarettes from inside his jacket and offered one to his friend, who produced a book of matches. As they walked the last few feet to the base of the haystack, the two soldiers disappeared from Peter’s line of sight. However, he could still hear their conversation, their friendly laughter and he could smell the aroma of their cigarettes.