A POW's First Impressions
by tallsunshine12
As the truck with the four prisoners pulled into the compound through the gates, Cpl. Peter Newkirk glanced out of a hole in the canvas tarp covering the truck. He saw bleakness all around, bleak, gray buildings, a lifeless compound where grass would be ashamed to grow, and an iced-over barbwire fence.
A total of twenty bomb runs at night had upped the chances that he would end up in a place like this, if not worse. It was long odds that he would get out of this predicament any time soon. He hoped to God he wasn't going to be here for the duration.
He had to pull himself together, but after parachuting in the dark out of a flaming wreck, being shot at as he fell, his emotions were as muddled as his thoughts. He was no longer the high-spirited part-time thief, part-time entertainer he had been before the war.
"Raus, raus!" came an unearthly cry, and with it the back flaps of the tarp were thrown back and the prisoners were hurried out of the truck, which had been their cold, bumpy home for the past three hours, give or take. He couldn't know how long it had been—one of the patrol had taken his wristwatch.
His first step onto the hard parade ground of the camp had been pretty nearly his last. He tripped against the legs of a guard and felt the tip of his rifle in his back. Quietly throwing his hands up, he got on his feet, slowly, slowly. He knew how trigger-happy the Aryans could be. Hadn't one of the guards on the truck shot poor Freestone to death? His dash into the woods to answer a call of nature had been his undoing.
The remaining four airmen from the Lancaster stood in a huddle, shivering even in their flight uniforms, while the guards, armed with 5-round carbines, encircled them. Steam blew out of every mouth. The frozen tableau lasted until a thickset man in a German major's uniform stepped out of the Kommandantur and strode down the wooden steps.
One of the two truck guards stepped up with the papers on the newly-arrived prisoners. The major took them and glanced at each page hastily, then he lifted his pudgy eyes and looked at each man individually.
"You've been brought here as prisoners of war. I run a tight camp," he said in accented English. "Any man who breaks any of my rules will suffer for it." It was the same speech he always gave.
He turned to a sergeant, a round-shaped man with a short, clipped moustache right under his nose. He looked like a baker who had eaten too many of his own biscuits, Newkirk thought to himself. It was the only lighthearted thought he'd had that whole terrible day …
"We're going down!" yelled the pilot, Blythe. Two of the Lanc's four engines were aflame, a man-sized hole had been ripped out of the fuselage, the tail turret and its gunner had been blown away, and the plane was in a deep dive that she was unlikely to recover from. "Bail out! Bail out!" screamed the twenty-two year old.
Once he was assured that all of his remaining live crewmen were out, Blythe himself climbed out through the panel above the cockpit and jumped. On his way down, ack-ack fire lit up the sky with tracer bullets, and the pilot was hit. He died instantly.
Newkirk didn't know any of this, of course, for the same tracers poked dozens of holes in the sky around him. The Lancaster's mid-upper gunner hit the night-shrouded ground with teeth-jarring force. Rolling over, he struggled out of his parachute, which he balled up and hid behind a huge tree.
He had managed to drop into a small clearing, and not into one of the tall pines surrounding it. Snow lay under the trees in high drifts, and the cold air cut to the bone. Then he looked around, not expecting to see much.
A section of the woods off to his right was in flames, and two uniformed Krauts had positioned themselves directly in front of him, rifles waist-high. He'd have gotten a bullet in the back if he'd tried to run, so he raised his hands and asked, "Got a light, mate?"
Humor didn't work with these poker-faces, he told himself. From there, it was off to a troop truck and then to the nearest POW camp. Now here he was—in a group of the luckiest men in Germany, for not many bomber crews survived being shot down. He didn't see Flight Lieutenant Blythe, the pilot. He figured he was dead—though both sides frowned on the practice, the Krauts had a way of shooting the enemy in the sky, he'd heard.
The hefty guard, by name of Schultz, herded the four men into the commandant's office, where they stood at attention before Major Kleinfeld and received 'instructions' about how to behave in a POW camp in Germany. Obey all the rules, or visit the Cooler. How could any place be colder than the outside, Newkirk wondered.
The men were ushered out, clutching shaving razor and soap and a single blanket apiece, and then shown to their respective barracks. Abner Jones was taken to Barracks 3, Newkirk observed, Clark and Poole with their guards disappeared around a corner of Barracks 3, while he himself, accompanied by the big sergeant of the guard, went to Barracks 2.
He didn't know what he would find there, but he anticipated a long acquaintance.
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