Learning to Survive

I spent some time watching "Hogan's Heros" TV series and the movies "The Great Escape" and "Stalag 17" to get a sense of what it was like to be in prison camp. Red said that "Hogan's Heros" wasn't very accurate, but my father said that some of it was true, especially about the Germans being so rigid with their rules and procedures. 

I'm repeating myself, but I am grateful to have Red McCrocklin’s book “Combat and Capture”  to fill in the blanks my father left about their time in World War II. Here are some of his observations about what it was like to be a Kriegie.

“First and foremost, you must be able to adjust to the radical change in your status. The day before your capture, you were free and honored by your country. Suddenly you are in the hands of the enemy who despises you and would as soon kill you as not. It is quite a shock . . . I realized that although I was unlucky enough to be shot down, it could have worse. I could have been killed, or badly wounded as many others were. I did not allow myself to ‘hate’ the enemy, because hatred consumes you and causes you to act irrational . . . To help me survive and to increase my chances of escaping (The Germans expected the men in the camp to try to escape.), I learned enough German to understand what they were saying and to communicate. I was thankful that I did, because being able to communicate saved my life on several occasions.

“. . . There were two roll calls daily, one in the morning and one each evening. The roll calls, though routine, could be quiet an adventure when we tried to mess them up to cover an escape attempt. The Germans would usually tolerate one, or two miscounts, but if we persisted in screwing up the count, they would bring up the machine guns, fix bayonets and say, ‘Now we will get an accurate count, will you please cooperate?’ We would get the message and cooperate.”

Here’s a poem about the roll call from my father’s war log:

Out for the Count (to the tune of “Give My Regards to Broadway”)

Oh, ven ever I go out for roll call

In zee morning or zee afternoon

I always hear a familiar phase

Straight from the lips of a goon

Spoken aloud in a whisper

And minicked by all Kriegies

Mein, zwei, drei, vier, fumf, sech, zeben,

Please slets zem stands zat ease!

 (Photo above is the "cooler" where prisoners were placed in solitary confinement. My father was there from May 31 to June 14, 1944.)

The Kriegies had many things to keep them busy. They played parlor games; athletic games would burn up needed calories. They had a library, a theater and a camp orchestra and old movies. Red said,“The greatest pastime of all was watching our planes come over. One time, it felt as though the entire 8^th Air Force made a low level pass over Stalag Luft I. They were so low that we could see crew members waving at us. It was glorious. . . .it lifted our morale during those dark days of the winter of 1944-1945.