“Please, Mister Soldier . . .”
by
Jim Bates

Author’s Introduction

The following is a personal experience. Names of individuals have been fictionalized because I long ago forgot specific names. But everything else is real and is basically as it happened. The event was an extraordinary experience for me and has always remained vivid in my memory. However, like many “things” that happen, the majority of people don’t know they happened because little information was made public. No secrecy was intended; it’s just that the thing was considered ordinary, just one more happening in the course of many ordinary occurrences. Thus, before I get into my own tale I ask you to read the following “background information” that sets the scene for a thing that became one of my memorable life experiences...

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The number of DPs in American care was reduced to just under a half million by November 1945, as a result of the heavy summer repatriation...

Thus, my experience...

• • •

In deep night blackness, a long, series of unlighted railroad cars with an appearance of an ordinary freight train rattled across Czechoslovakia, heading toward Poland. Late-September coldness inundated the flat, dark panorama, still except for the moving train.

Worn, uneven steel wheels of a locomotive, a coal tender, a flatcar, and forty freight cars rolled noisily along worn, uneven steel rails. Only a caboose between the coal tender and the flatcar had newer wheels.

Light glowed at the front of the train; some yellowish, from a weakly shimmering headlight in the center of the snout of the locomotive; some light was more a shimmery alternately reddish-orange-yellow illuminating the crew compartment when the stoker opened the heavy firebox door to shovel in coal and heave in stubby lengths of wood. Other minute bits of light were live embers sporadically streaking behind the engine stack, cooling quickly, some of them instantly, all of them ultimately scattering as soot that coated and shaded colors of the cars and the landscape along the roadbed.

On the forward part of the flatcar was a squat motor vehicle tied down by chains and come-alongs at front and rear wheels.

The caboose was a piece of American railroad rolling stock, with a mid-car cupola and an open platform at each end. Like millions of other pieces, it had been transported by ship to Europe as war support equipment. It was painted a peculiar yellowish color. The only break in the broad expanse of that color was in the center of each side of the car, in large white letters:

TRANSPORTATION CORPS
U.S. ARMY

* * *

In a large train yard in Kassel, Germany, First Lieutenant Alvord Jorgensen, U.S. Army, in measured words, told his newly formed detachment — four guards, a medical technician, and a truck driver — that the caboose would be their home for the next two to three weeks, maybe more. The tall, hard-looking, lean lieutenant added, “Or for whatever time it takes to go from here, down through southern Germany — then east along the north of Austria and across Czechoslovakia — across the Polish border until we’re about twenty-five miles into Poland — stay there — in some little town near a big city — for a couple of days — then go back through northern Czechoslovakia into Germany again — back here to Kassel. End of trip. Then you’ll go back to your units.”

Six randomly selected enlisted men from the same infantry battalion sat in a cold train yard office listening to the lieutenant. Each had earlier received orders from noncoms to report to Lt. Jorgensen in the train yard dispatcher’s office in Kassel at 0100 hours in two days for a special assignment for an unspecified period of time, probably not to exceed thirty days.

Two days later, within an hour of one another, four young privates got out of jeeps in which they rode.

I had been driven the farthest, twenty-eight miles, from Hersfeld. A truck driver and a medical technician — a “medic” — each arrived separately.

We six looked much alike: slender, young, tired; dressed in washed, faded, ironed fatigue uniforms, worn over a rumpled Class A uniform shirt and trousers over long underwear, all for warmth in open air. Both pair of trousers were rolled up and under, gathered three to four inches below boot tops, held tightly in place — “bloused” — with several rubber bands. Our combat boots were heavy, worn, scarred. We each wore a steel helmet, chin strap secured above the back rim. Each had a wide web belt cinched tightly about the waist of a field jacket.

Our infantry division’s “uniform of the day” still was what we basically had worn in combat. One reason was to maintain readiness; another reason was the lack of replacement new clothing; though the latter reason did not seem to affect the better-dressed appearance of divisional or regimental headquarters personnel.

Four of us carried a scratched, scraped, worn, cleaned, oiled M-1 Garand rifle, and all of us lugged duffel bags crammed with clothes and things for a long trip. Except for duffel bags and cleaner clothing, each of us infantrymen appeared to have returned to the setting of a few months earlier — war in Europe.

Two privates were twenty-one years old; another was twenty and I was nineteen; the war in Europe ended in early May and I turned nineteen in late July. The lieutenant later told us that everybody in the detachment had combat experience, though appearance and actions and things said led us to think that of one another without being told. The other two enlisted men, both corporals, one the driver, the other the medic, were in their mid-twenties. The driver had a Colt .45 automatic in a leather holster dangling from a cartridge belt that had several pistol magazine pouches mounted on it. The medic was unarmed.

The lieutenant looked mean, unfriendly; but he was friendly. We liked the way he talked to us. It was quickly apparent that the officer had commanded in bad times and knew how to get men’s best. He reminded me of my company commander, Captain Kellogg, whom I had twice seen on the line as a forward observer, sending first-hand information back to company HQ through his radioman. Any doubts we had about this unknown lieutenant quickly dissolved. Judging by people I knew, I was sure the lieutenant was quite a lot older than any of us. I remember thinking: Damn near thirty — if not more.

“Let me read you things out of these orders,” the lieutenant said, pulling a thick sheaf of mimeographed papers from a canvas folder. “What we’ve got to do is right here — in four languages: English, French, Russian, German.” He shook the bundle of papers up and down a couple times. “It’s about four hundred miles from where we are right now — but that’s as the crow flies. Over railroad tracks in the four countries we’ll be in it’s six hundred miles one way, probably more — with a lot of bad railroad track on the last part of the trip out. Are you guys ready for this? After we head south and leave Germany we’ll be going through Austria, Czechoslovakia — then about forty or fifty miles into Poland!” The lieutenant had gotten the attention of the six enlisted men. Three heads nodded approvingly; someone let out a low whistle; someone quietly said, “Good — some action!”

The lieutenant apparently liked our reactions, and kept talking. “We’ll be moving by train all the way outbound. But we’ll be coming back a shorter distance by train. Then the rest of the way home will be on a weapons carrier we’ll be bringing with us. That’s why we’ve got a truck driver along. Whenever I need a messenger, the driver will be the runner. For a lot of the time he’ll have the easiest job of all of you — except maybe for the medic, and the medic’s the guy I hope has nothing to do at all except pass out aspirins.

“Don’t ask me why we’re doing things differently in each direction. Only the army knows. And I’m not sure it does.”

The lieutenant aimed a finger at four of us, the low-ranking privates. “You four were picked by your NCOs because you’re good soldiers — because you do what you’re supposed to — and you’re not trouble-makers. You'll be doing guard duty — ” All of us groaned; so much for something new, something interesting. The lieutenant went on as though he had not heard our reaction.

“All of us make up what these orders call a quote, escort detachment, unquote.”
“Escorting who?” one private asked testily, quickly restraining himself, not knowing how the officer would react.

“Now before you people get too pissed off, listen! We’ll be escorting something like fifteen hundred displaced persons — DPs — to their homeland. As background, I was told that the four occupying powers — Americans, British, French, and the Russians— have decided the German economy can’t support all the DPs of different countries now living all over Germany. First the occupying powers got them all into DP camps, but that didn’t work out to the best. The DPs didn’t like being confined, especially behind barbed wire fences — just like the old days for some of them.

“The Allies now had to feed and care for them, and that wasn’t working out because of shortages of everything. Then it was decided to send all the DPs back to their own countries. So, trainloads of them have been going everywhere in Europe for the last few weeks. I hear some of them don’t want to leave; I guess figuring they're better off in Germany and in DP camps than they would be back home. But there wasn’t any trouble. Most of them couldn’t wait to get where they could start all over again.”

We waited patiently for the lieutenant to finish. “Here’s the kicker,” he went on. “The trip we’re making is the second one to Poland. But it’s the first one going to any country that will have a military detachment going along with it — one with guards! You four.” He pointed at each private again.

“What are we supposed to guard?” someone said.

The lieutenant was slow answering. “First of all, I want you to understand this. I didn’t find much sensible about what I was told we’d be doing when the battalion C.O. gave me the job — but the regimental C.O. gave it to him— division gave it to regiment — and division got it from higher up — and you know the rest. You all know how that stuff goes. And here we are.”

“Yeah — sir. But what are we supposed to guard?”

“Fifteen hundred Polish DPs,” the lieutenant said. “In forty boxcars out in that train yard — from here — from Kassel — to — let me see.”

He scanned the top sheet of the thick sheaf of orders in his hand: “It says here — to —” He spelled the name slowly, enunciating each letter crisply, “D-Z-I-E-D-Z-I-C-E.”

“I was told it’s pronounced --” He turned the papers sideways to look at a note he had written on a margin. “K-A-T-O-W-I-C-E — they tell me that’s Cat-oh-veets-uh — that one they were sure how to say.

“One guard is on four-hour duty at all times. That comes to four on, twelve off.”
I, personally, at that point, didn’t think that was too bad as guard duty went. I remember thinking: Hell, at Hersfeld, where I just left, the PW camp regular guard duty was four on and eight off every day for most of the whole past month. Plus we just finished that four-day spell of a lot of extra guards and everybody doing four on and four off because of the rumors about a prisoner break. This will be like a vacation. And it won’t be as monotonous as staying in one place for long stretches, sitting in a guard tower, or stuck in a one-man guard shed in a far corner of the PW camp, out in the boondocks — trying to stay awake.

The lieutenant kept talking. “Whenever the train stops — that’s any time, any place — the guard is to get off the train and walk alongside the cars, making himself visible to the people in the cars. In open country, the guard is to keep people from foraging — taking anything from farms or gardens along the tracks. If we’re in a train yard or a railroad station, the guard is to keep people from straying from their cars. No one is to be allowed to leave the train between Kassel and that town in Poland.”

“Sir —” a private said, “are you serious? Four of us? — one at a time? — to watch fifteen hundred people? To keep them on the train? Somebody’s kidding somebody!”

The lieutenant raised a hand briefly, to hold off further talk. “That’s what my orders were from the major. And that’s what these orders printed in four languages and printed in purple state. But let me tell you what I was told — off the record — and it’s off the record for all of you.” We looked at one another, puzzled.

“We’re just for show; a little frosting on the cake. It’s to make the DPs feel better. Mostly, it’s to make the Russians behave at the train station in Poland. I’ll tell you why in a minute.

“Since we’re mostly for show, stick closer to the front of the train on most of the walking trips you make at a stop. But once in a while, in daytime only, each of you should go along the whole forty cars, if there’s enough time. But you’re not always going to know if there is enough time. You can check with me about how much time there might be, but my answer won’t be any guarantee. There’s no telling how the train engineer and his people will want to do things.

“At night, when we’re rolling, sit in the front seat of the weapons carrier; be comfortable, if you can — but keep awake! Just don’t do a lot of moving around on the flatcar in the dark. I don’t want anybody falling off the damned train!” None of us said anything, each mulling over the lieutenant’s curious statement about making the Russians behave.

“No comment?” he said. “Good; I’ll go on. I already said that in daylight just walk back and forth for the first few cars most of the time. Make your trip on different sides of the train at each stop. If somebody’s off-duty and wants to go for a walk, do it with your rifle and helmet. Make it look like you’re on guard.” He stood up.
“I’ve already told you we’re taking the second bunch of people back to Poland. The first group — a lot smaller than this one — was taken to the same little town — whatever that name was — a few weeks ago. There was not an Allied Government representative with the train; just somebody from some government department out there in Poland who came to Germany for the purpose of seeing to it that the DPs got across the Czech border into Poland OK.

“Now I know this seems like a damn long story and you haven’t learned much yet, but take it easy.

“Word got back about what happened at the train station in Poland. It must have all been very frightening to the DPs. Those people were hustled out of freight cars by the train crew onto the outdoor platform late in the afternoon and just left there, not knowing what to do, where to go, not knowing anything. Then the train left. That train crew must have known something. And the government representative disappeared too, telling people he’d be back soon.

“Everything those people owned was in old suitcases and pillowcases and laundry bags and shopping bags and cardboard cartons tied with rope and string. In a little while you’ll see what I mean.” The lieutenant jabbed the air over his right shoulder with a thumb. “Our people out there look just the same. I even saw some of them wearing two and three jackets and overcoats because there was no more room in anything they carried.” He paused, slowly and sadly shaking his head from side to side.

“Those people on that platform didn’t know what to do next. They just waited for somebody to tell them something. After years of being ordered around and always afraid of what might happen if they decided something on their own — something terrible maybe — no one would go off into the countryside without being told they could.

“My bet is that some of the rambunctious ones did take off, especially if they were on their own and didn’t have a family to worry about. But no one knew that for certain. It’s just my guess.

“Those people spent the whole damn night out in the open at that station. Some lucky ones got inside a small ticket office after they broke a lock. But for the rest it was miserable. It rained off and on during the night. And it got damn cold. Two old people who made it all the way through the Goddam war died on that train platform because nobody in the government did anything to take care of them. Damned shame, isn’t it? Finally make it home — and all they can do is die!” The six men listened intently to the lieutenant.

“But the crap really hit the fan the next morning. At the crack of dawn a whole slew of Roosky soldiers showed up on the platform. They kicked people to wake them up. They poked them with machine guns to make them open up cases and boxes and bags — and kicked ass if anybody argued. They walked off with whatever looked like it was worth something. They took whatever struck their fancy. They fired machine guns in the air to shut them up. The soldiers sorted through everything, taking what they wanted. Then they left.” The lieutenant’s voice lost its strength. His sitting position sagged slightly and he looked at the floor as he interrupted his talking. He took a deep breath.

“Now, then —” He sat straight again, voice strong. “We’re supposed to see that these people stay with the train — that they don’t try to leave whenever we stop. A lot of them, I’m told, don’t want to go back to Poland — and all for the same reason, I’m also told. Because the Russians are there! And because hard feelings between Poland and Russia go back more than eight hundred years!
“Sure, you all want to get home— as quick as you can. But home to the people out in this train yard is not the same as home to you men.

“You might think this is some sort of shit detail. But I’ve been told — and was instructed to tell you all — that it is an important assignment. I didn’t know anything about Polish history before a couple of weeks ago, but let me tell you what I was given at a long briefing yesterday.

“A lot of Poland is good farming country, and the Russians have been after it for a long time. But the part we’re going to near Katowice is best known as coal-mining country. The southwest region is known as Silesia and we’ll be going into what’s known as the Silesian Coal Basin. But, back to the big picture.

“Every army in history in this part of the world has used Poland to get at somebody else. The Germans sure did it — and so did the Russians driving the Krauts back. There aren’t any natural barriers to help keep invaders out of Poland, except some mountains in the southwest, on the Czech border. You’ll see them; that’s our route east. But invaders always went some other easier way. They didn’t have to try through the mountains.

“The Polish people are stubborn. You might already know that. And they’re really stubborn when it comes to saving their homeland. Whenever they have lost battles or wars it was because they were outnumbered or outgunned. But they don’t quit — they’re fighters. So, there’s still a Poland. End of history lesson.”
The lieutenant walked to one side of the small office, briefly looked out a grimy window, and turned back to face us again. “We’re just for show. I told you that. Keep your rifles slung over your shoulder when you’re standing guard or even if you’re only walking around if you’re off duty. Look like guards, but act friendly. Smile. We’re supposed to be helping these people. If it looks like somebody’s moving away from the train, call ’em back. But take it easy. Don’t start hollering; don’t get mad. Don’t get carried away with authority. Maybe they’re just going off to take a leak, or go crap in the bushes. I can’t tell you what to decide or to do every second. I don’t think I need to. You’ve all got experience. But keep your rifle slung on your shoulder; don’t start waving it around just to look important. I don’t expect any real trouble.

“Anyway, if any of these people make up their mind to cut out, they won’t let you see what they're up to. They’ve been outwitting guards for too long!” The lieutenant quickly looked us each in the eyes, apparently pleased that we still gave him complete attention. I felt he was satisfied that as unknown factors in the mission we would not be cause him any concern.

“When we get to that station in Poland, everybody — repeat, everybody — is on guard duty — all at once — all the time. I want Roosky soldiers and officers in the area to see us! And everybody keeps moving. Nobody sits on his ass. But we’ll work out something for rest periods.

“Driver, in Russian-occupied territory you’ll be a guard, too — you too, medic. I’ve brought along two spare M-1 Garands and ammunition and you’ll each have a weapon. Myself, I’ll have a carbine and a .45 automatic pistol. And another thing, medic, don’t show any red crosses, at any time, not just on guard duty. All of you wear helmets all the time, no fatigue caps. At night, two on duty at the same time, and stay tight together, no wandering off.

The driver asked, “Before we leave there, if we’re inside the city, can we walk around? — do a little sightseeing? How many GIs can say they’ve been to Poland? I’d like to see what it’s like. Maybe these other guys would, too.”
“I’ve got no objection at this minute,” the lieutenant answered. “But I’ll have to decide that later. Let me tell you something more I was told by the major, who got it from somebody else. Keep an eye on the Russians — all of them. We’ve heard that a lot of them are really brutal. Remember — from somewhere in the middle of Czechoslovakia on, the seven of us will be deep inside Russian-occupied territory; something like a hundred miles inside — maybe more — by the time we get into Poland. So don’t flash watches or lots of cigarettes or anything else some of those Rooskies might want.

“At that train station in Poland — or if you do get to walk around in town — nobody goes anywhere alone, not even to a crapper. No place! We’re going to be inside Poland — close to six hundred miles from this place here in the middle of the American-occupied zone. We’ll be far away from thousands of friendly, helpful American GIs.

“That’s the message from the major to me — and from me to you. Got it?”

By three o’clock in the afternoon a team of Allied military government personnel completed loading the train. Curious, I wandered through the milling men, women and children, puzzled by their reluctance and tears. People called out for one another, frightened women wailed loudly, frightened children cried and yowled and screamed. Their emotionalism confused me. I want to go home. Why don't these people? Is that lieutenant right about hard feelings? — for eight hundred years?

The lieutenant was right about the DPs’ belongings. They had bulging luggage; torn, taped, twine-bound cartons; swollen cloth bags of every type; slotted crates; knapsacks. Some had baby carriages to ease transporting possessions. Individuals and couples and small and large families struggled for spaces in each rotting, rusting freight car. In some cars there was angry shouting among strangers. In most cases, patient negotiation and compromise kept friends and families and lovers close.

In the caboose we six enlisted men each claimed one of the double-tiered bunks remaining when the lieutenant tossed his bag on a lower bunk. An empty top corner bunk served as a bin for small sacks of apples and oranges, cartons of 10-in-1 K-rations, and three wire-bound crates of assorted C-rations. Six one-hundred-pound canvas sacks of charcoal briquettes for the potbelly stove in the center of the car were stacked in corners near the door leading to the flatcar. Two forty-gallon cans labeled Drinking Water hung on a wall, spigots at waist height. A bag of Halazone water purification tablets dangled from a nail between the two cans. A case each of M-1 rifle and .45-caliber pistol ammunition was on the floor near the lieutenant’s bunk.

At three-thirty the train engineer yanked an overhead pull-cord in the locomotive’s crew compartment, a large open spaced warmed only by the roaring firebox. Two short, sharp, high-pitched toots sounded. The engineer pulled down a second overhead cord, sounding a low, long, mournful whistle. People who had accompanied those boarding the cars now stood on nearby roadbeds, waving, crying, silent, anguished. The other enlisted men and I crowded the small open platform at the rear of the Transportation Corps car as the old, battered, patched locomotive spewed steam clouds, chugged, sputtered, and screeched. The engine strained against the inertia of heavily laden, worn rolling stock. Huge driving wheels, slipping and sliding in spurts, struggled for grips on the rails, gradually successful. Car couplings jerked convulsively in succession as spinning drivers worked powerfully, wheels ultimately gripping rails, one freight car after another reacting roughly, jolting passengers.

Lt. Jorgensen walked slowly and awkwardly backward along the roadbed, facing the rear of the train, making a final check of the long line of freight cars. He told a couple of us later about some things he’d seen and learned as his unit went about liberating prison camps; that at the moment the train started the departure he was thinking of the agonies of other people in years just past, who had been herded into similar cars strung together in similar trains, going on more unfortunate trips, heading to oppressive conditions that would kill many of them; many unknowingly going to quick extinction; many of them certain of their destination but unable or unmoved to change what was ahead.

A lot of what he said, as stirringly as he told it, was incomprehensible to me. Caught up in the machinery of the Selective Service System, I went straight from high school as an unexceptional student with little real awareness of world matters into a hectic military life of infantry training. Everything happened to me in such quick succession. My interests and worries were limited, about my immediate vicinity, about what would happen tomorrow, not about the state of European affairs nor the history of that part of the world. I had just never had experiences like his.

As the train speed increased, the lieutenant turned to trot forward, still looking over his shoulder, keeping pace with the caboose steps, ready to clamber aboard. I looked back along the train from the rear of the caboose, and could see arms protruding from boxcar doors, giving final waves to spectators, stretching to keep contact. The train picked up speed and the lieutenant hopped up onto the bottom step of the metal stairs. With a last look along the train, he climbed up.

Through days and nights the train clattered and clanked toward Dziedzice, Poland. Some three hundred miles of track from central through southern Europe and the lower elevations of the Bavarian Alps were in good condition. War-damaged sections had been quickly repaired in brief spells of peace so traffic could now often flow on parallel roadbeds in two directions at the same time.

I remembered how swiftly the Germans had worked at night in the Saar Basin bordering France during the previous March to mend rails and roadbeds destroyed by artillery during daylight. Infantry soldiers in holes in the earth at scattered positions on high ground overlooking Saarbrücken smiled when puffs of smoke and earth rose on the distant roadbeds below. But we sighed and cursed in disappointment each next day for several days when locomotives and boxcars and flatcars nightly chugged over the same rails, moving troops and supplies in and out of the sprawling city until daylight artillery again tore up steel, wood, and rock.

Names I didn’t know flashed in train yards and on signs on buildings in towns and cities as they progressed south. My diligence in an army German-language basic course ordered by the company commander for all his men helped me learn the alphabet, numbers through one hundred, and a fairly sizable vocabulary of word and phrases. (My diligence had been unusual. Remember that I said in high school I had been an unexceptional student. I was, in fact, an indifferent student, many times a poor student, not lacking abilities, but simply disinterested. But the course in German language had, for some reason I didn’t understand, thoroughly interested me and I paid a lot of attention.I knew sometime later that my maturing process was increasing momentum. I just didn’t recognize it in that army class.)

Though I didn’t know where in Germany our train was just by reading signs — not until looking at the lieutenant’s map — I did well pronouncing names correctly. My limited skill was quickly discovered by the lieutenant and he lost no time appointing me the detachment’s “German interpreter.”

Lt. Jorgensen complained, “That’s another damn dumb thing they did when putting us together in a hurry. None of us can speak the language of places we’re passing through or where we’re going! But now we have somebody who should be of some help one of us. Most places will probably have somebody who can talk Kraut, since the Germans have been all over Europe for the last few years. I guess we’re a little lucky we’ve got somebody who can at least speak some of that language. He certainly knows more of it than I do — or more than all of us put together.”

The train rattled through a large city. Lofty snow-covered mountains rose on the horizon miles ahead to the south. The word München was conspicuous on several buildings and it was on large signs at boundaries of a sprawling rail junction with dozens of parallel tracks. “That’s Munich in English,” the lieutenant translated. “I know that much,” he said. “And it means we don’t have far to go to Austria. We’ll only be here for an hour or so while a different locomotive is hooked up and the crew is changed.”

We were only at a standstill for some ten minutes at a far side of the train yard when the medic complained of severe pain in his lower right abdomen. Lt. Jorgensen walked through the train yard to the main building, made contact with an American unit, and that unit sent a doctor to the train.

We were all surprised how quickly he arrived. The army, to us, never seemed to work that well that often. It took the doctor less than thirty seconds to diagnose the medic’s serious appendicitis. In five minutes the medic and his belongings were bundled into the doctor’s jeep and he was on the way out of the train yard. With no way of getting a replacement, that was the end of medical care for our small detachment. Several of us crossed fingers for good luck.

It was the next morning before the train reached the Austrian border. I was reading a paperback book in my bunk when the locomotive stopped at a fragile-looking sawhorse barrier straddling the railroad tracks at the frontier. I went outside to see what was happening. Lt. Jorgensen showed the sheaf of four-language orders to a British officer who perfunctorily riffled the pages, directed the barricade be pulled aside, then returned to the warm interior of his trackside tent.

Austria geographically appeared the same as Germany. I was able to read signs as easily in the new country as I could before. Listening to people speak I surmised the language of the Austrians was the same as the Germans; and the lieutenant said that as far as he knew, it was, even if the Austrians said theirs was different.

To us in the detachment, the population of the train didn’t seem to dwindle, despite many stops in several days, but we never knew for certain. Half-hearted spot-checks of the freight cars — always seemingly casual, with slight hand waves, with spoken greetings the DPs couldn’t understand but recognized as in friendly tones, and with smiles — showed the cars each to be as full as before, as overcrowded. Older women with faded babushkas framing their faces were the first to offer smiles in return. Most of the children, when released from restraint by women, smiled too, then giggled, then laughed. Some children never laughed, some didn’t even smile. The men and the youths and the boys were the last to let go of sullenness and anger and mistrust. Some didn’t.

We, being young men, lost little time covertly looking for young females. But finding bodily attractiveness through swelling, bulging layers of clothing was difficult; facial prettiness was hidden in shadows of hats and hoods and bandanas and kerchiefs. However, the search steadily continued.

The journey settled into a hodgepodge of small towns, farm plots; day; rail stations, large towns, farmlands; dusk and starry, moonlit nights and dark horizons; cold with biting wind; warm, oh so warm bunk; LINZ printed on a large sign along the railway; long, long dark nights; innumerable seemingly endless waits; boredom; talk, talk, talk; no talk, not a word, damn it; back-bruising discomfort of a functional, uncomfortable weapons carrier seat; WIEN — “That’s Vienna,” the lieutenant said, explaining a sign; screaming, crying, wailing children in the boxcar hooked to the flatcar — inescapable, saddening, wrenching night-darkness sounds; dark looks on broad faces, on hollow-cheeked faces; plaintive songs of home and family and love; more miles of countryside, looking woefully similar, looking so foreign to young, puzzled men who urgently wanted to go to their own homes. Another national border was crossed while I slept for an hour during an afternoon. I was told it was marked only by a trackside sign in several languages. “Yessir,” someone later said to the lieutenant, “it’s Czechoslovakia, if you say so. So what? Doesn’t look any different than anywhere else we’ve been so far. How much longer?”

We encountered Russian soldiers at nearly ten o’clock one night in a small train station in central Czechoslovakia. There were tense moments while our lieutenant argued with a short, thin Russian office over whom he towered.
I had been sleeping when the guard on duty shook me roughly, urging, “You’d better get your butt out of that sack in a hurry — now! The lieutenant wants us all out there. We’ve got some Russians who might not want to let us through.”
In a floodlighted area, the other enlisted men were standing in a short rank behind Lt. Jorgensen, with M-1 Garand rifles slung over shoulders, trying to appear non-threatening, facing a greater number of stocky Russian infantry soldiers with machine guns across their chests, hanging from webbing looped behind their necks, also trying to appear non-threatening as they stood about behind their officer. Someone whispered to me, “The lieutenant wants you to keep your German handy, in case he needs you up there.” I groaned, but only mentally, hoping I did not grimace enough to bother someone on the other side.
The lieutenant spent several minutes speaking to the Russian officer in low, intense tones, sometimes harshly. The Russian acknowledged nothing. He stood erect, stone-faced, for a while standing with legs spread, hands clasped behind his back; for a while feet firmly together, arms folded across his chest, chin tucked into his tunic, eyes glowering beneath his cap visor.

As our lieutenant talked with intensity and deliberateness, he now and then poked the bundle of Allied orders with a jabbing forefinger, now and then holding them toward the Russian at his eye level, slightly raising his voice, letting anger tinge his tones. Abruptly, the Russian turned his back to the lieutenant and waved an arm vigorously, saying something loudly and harshly. We quickly felt relieved when Russian soldiers moved the red and white pole from across the tracks.

"Well, I guess we whipped his ass that time,” the lieutenant turned to us and said. “But let’s all be careful that we don’t show it — too much, anyway. That Roosky officer might not like it. Good job, men!"

The engineer tooted the high-pitched whistle twice. The engine again pulled the long train back into darkness, toward the Polish border.

The lieutenant said the long remainder of the trip would continue in Russian-occupied territory. He added, “Even when we’re finished in Poland, it won’t be until somewhere about halfway back through Czech-land when we’re between Pardubice” — he pronounced it par-doo-beet-suh — “and Pilzen before there won’t be any more Russians. So stay alert all that time,” he sternly ordered.
The route through Czechoslovakia took a wearying, slow time to travel. More than half the journey was made on stretches of single usable roadbed, with more frustratingly short stretches than long ones. Many times the train stayed on a siding for an hour or more as faster eastbound trains passed or to allow trains to go in the opposite direction. When there was movement again, it was often slow, the train sometimes barely rolling ahead.

Occasionally, for no apparent reason, the train moved backward; at times as little as a hundred or two hundred feet, usually a greater distance, and once, more than half a mile, alternately slowly and quickly. The train crew always ignored the lieutenant’s hard-toned questions about delays and directions, answering him unintelligibly. The engineer and I had great difficulty making our German language understandable to each other, and the train proceeded according to the will and wishes of the engineer.

One morning I slept until ten o'clock. When I slowly came out of my slumber I heard a voice admiring mountains. I opened my eyes listening to the lieutenant say to someone else in the caboose, “ — through these mountains — we’re in far eastern Czechoslovakia now — and soon we’ll be into Poland; then a short way through open country until that town — Juh-jeets-uh. I think I’ll be right with my noontime guess; maybe even a little sooner — if the goddam engineer keeps rolling ahead instead of jerking this train back and forth.”

The rest of the day was depressingly long. Only the lieutenant seemed to have an air of anticipation as the train moved on winding tracks through mountains that became lower in height and less steep, changing into rolling, gently sloped hills that became flat terrain, where tracks aimed straight into the distance. At four in the afternoon I relieved Lopez on the flatcar. Two hours later the train clanked to a stop as dusk settled on open fields and sporadic clumps of trees. Looking ahead into the gloom in the east, I could see nothing that might cause the halt. A parallel track showed no signs of imminent traffic in either direction, no sooty pall of engine smoke spewed by an unseen locomotive ahead or behind. I angrily wondered what was happening this time.

Equally curious, accepting every opportunity, to escape noisy, rattling cars and jostling, unwelcome intimacy, people in every freight car leaped to the ground on each side of the train, moving about, exercising stiffened limbs. In the thin, scattered woods and clumps of bushes bordering the right-of-way people got rid of body wastes. Following standard orders, the other enlisted men left the caboose and started walking guard duty. I jumped from the front of the flatcar to the ground and slowly walked toward the rear. Then, fed up with annoying and futile foot-patrolling, I stopped there and leaned against the corner of the flatcar, watching men, women, and children drift into and out of brush and trees.
I heard a quiet voice, although I barely heard it, my attention on the scores of people standing or moving about as I looked along the length of the train.

“Zolnierz — czy moge cie prosic o przysluge.” The quiet voice was a strong whisper. I thought the words sounded Polish — they weren’t German. They sounded like what I’d heard the DPs speaking. But I thought the words were directed at someone else; all the DPs should know by now that no one in the detachment spoke their language.

“Bitte — Herr soldat —” I recognized German words.

“Bitte — Herr soldat —” I turned quickly, gripping my rifle tightly, suspicious of the increasingly louder whisper.

“Bitte — Herr soldat —” It was a female-sounding voice, and as I turned toward it I could see a bulky figure with a slim face shrouded by a red and white kerchief. I sensed she was slender in body too, but that she was made thick-looking by the long, heavy overcoat she wore. She stood in the shadows between the flatcar and the first boxcar, the train coupling between us. She’s saying “Please, Mister soldier.” Who the hell is she?

“What do you want?” I said angrily. “What are you doing standing there? What? Huh?” She stared at me, her eyes looking into mine. “Hey, you scared the hell outta me for a second there!”

“Jadem tym samem pociagiem w, trzecim wagonie z tylu.”

I couldn’t understand her words. “What is it?” I asked sharply. “What do you want?” I bent forward, cautiously, staring, trying to make out her facial features.
“Prosze zolnierzu potszebuje twojej pomocy.”

“Lady,” I said, “I don’t understand Polish. I guess that’s what you’re talking.”
She was young; I could tell that, looking closer. Not bad looking, either, I thought, wondering why hadn't seen her before. I moved nearer, to study her more closely. Yeah — not bad. Probably not built too bad, either, I’ll bet — under that overcoat.

“Prosze,” the girl said. “Ja mam bardzo wasno spawe — btagam ciebie.”
I threw up my hands — the rifle tightly gripped in one of them — stepped back, feeling frustrated. “You’ve got to talk in English if you want me to understand you. Do you speak any English? Even a little bit?”

The girl jerked at the sight of the upraised weapon. “Nie! Nie! Prosze.”

Oh, Christ! What the hell’s the matter with her? Suddenly realizing, I dropped my arms and spoke quickly. “No — no! Don’t worry! I’m not going to shoot you.”

I remembered she’d spoken German and quickly added, “Nicht schiessen — not shoot! Do you understand me? Verstehen Sie? Not shoot — nicht schiessen!” I smiled to make her feel better.

Slowly, she smiled too; tentatively, then widely, plainly relieved. She's got nice teeth.

“Du bist der soldat wer spricht ein bischen Deutsch. Jemand in meinem Wagen sagte einer kann Deutsch sprechen. Kannst du mir helfen?”

I listened intently. That’s German! Soldat — sprechen — Deutsch — helfen — you help me, she wants to know. My answer was halting, spoken as my mind raced, sifting through my German vocabulary. “Ich kann — sprechen — nur sprechen — kleine — klein bischen — Ich kann nur — ein bischen — Deutsch sprechen,” grouping and regrouping words to let her know I could speak only a little of the language.

The girl smiled again, happily, excitedly. She spoke in breathless spurts, more and more quickly, words strung together, soon indistinguishable to me. “Whoa, girl. Slow down. Langsam. Gehen Sie langsam. Got it? Slow — langsam; langsam — slow. My German is not that good. I can only say the alphabet and numbers fast.” My mind juggled words to repeat in German what I had said in English. I felt better saying things in English first before attempting translations.
The girl’s smile weakened; I guessed that she was uncertain of what to say or do, uncertain of my tone, the words in English. I spoke carefully: “Sprechen Sie langsam. Ich kann nur — nur etwas Deutsch sprechen. Aber langsam, bitte; langsam.”

She quietly, slowly said, “Ach, Ich freue mich das Du der richtige bist — den ersten den Ich gefragte habe. Ich hatte so viel Angst das Ich keinen finden wurde, der mir helfen kann.”

I thought intensely about what she was saying. I’m the one, she says — something, something. I didn’t understand that middle part — Angst, that means afraid.

Slowly, carefully, suspicions retreating, impatient with myself about my German, I listened to the girl. Now and then I glanced about, looking for other guards who were supposed to also patrol during stops, but I saw no one on my side of the train.

I reminded the girl to speak slowly each time rising excitement made her hurry. I had her repeat words and phrases. I had her use different words and phrases when I didn't understand. I kept her searching for the simplest terms for delivering her messages to me. My mind raced in the German language I knew; sifting, sorting, arranging, rearranging. I felt annoyed with myself for not paying more attention to the language instructor. However, in halting, clumsily expressed language of a nationality not that of either young person, we laboriously communicated.

She said, “I am from another place in Poland, nowhere near where we are going — to Dziedzice, to the little town close to Katowice. I was in Germany with my mother and father and a brother for more than three years. We were all taken there to work on farms, because we had our own small farm, before it was destroyed by tanks and soldiers — German tanks, and Russian tanks later; and by German soldiers first, and next by Russian soldiers. When it was destroyed, our small buildings and pigstys and our barn knocked down and ground into frozen dirt and snow in the winter — when it was all destroyed, we left to find a place where there were no soldiers or tanks. But far from our home, where Germans still held the land, while we looked for relatives who had left months before, the Germans put is into cars like these and took us to their Bavaria, in the south, to work on one farm, then another, then another.” The girl periodically wiped at her eyes with a finger or the back of her hand or a threadbare cuff of her coat.

I suddenly worried that the train would start. Despite our language difficulties, I was now very interested in her story. I wanted to hear more. I kept looking about, for other guards heading for the caboose, for some signal from the lieutenant or the the locomotive engineer.

“When they knew they were losing the war, and as crops failed, we were sent away — pushed out into village streets — pushed to the edge of the village — threatened — yelled at — left on the roads — warned to go away! We lived in the open cold air along roads, in the edge of trees by the roadside. We foraged; we stole. Then the war was over in a few weeks; and your soldiers and other soldiers gathered us with people like us from other countries. They put us into those camps — those terrible camps with tents and old, little, cold buildings, with barbed wire around us in high fences. We knew we were prisoners, that we still weren’t free. Soldiers wore different uniforms, and most of them smiled and laughed, and sometimes gave us cigarettes and chocolate and soap and other things they seemed to have so much of. But we weren’t free. We worried about what was to happen — on the next day, if there was to be one — many people were very ill — what would happen in a week or month.”

The girl was patient with my limited understanding and expression. She worried when I said I would leave her for a moment. I searched the caboose for a pencil and found one. Outside, I sharpened it with a pocket knife and I and the girl drew diagrams and sketches to elaborate our words.

She talked as clearly as she could in her excitement. “I am going to someplace in Poland — with my mother, looking for relatives. It is just the two of us now, and she is sickly. My father died on a very cold night in winter. My brother and I buried him in a small meadow, in a corner near a road and a small forest.
“One day we wanted to find that place again and take him home. Then my brother was taken into the German army. I have not known anything of him for more than a year. We will try, my mother and I, to get to our farm, hoping my brother will find his way to our old home, to us. We will all try, however many there are of us, to start our lives again on our small farm, if it has not been stolen from us. It is because we are going back to Poland that I have something to ask of you — to beg of you.”

I held up a hand, palm toward her, to stop her words. “Hold it. I don’t know what I can do for you in Poland. We’re only staying one or two days and then going back to Kassel. Besides, I’m just an ordinary soldier — just a little guy in a big army. I’m the wrong person to be asking for help. Maybe the lieutenant?”
“No, no,” she said hurriedly. “You could be the one. I would be afraid to ask your officer. Officers are very important; and they must always do things the right way. He might report me to the authorities in Poland — to the Russians there.”

“Hey — not this guy,” I said. “You should have seen him back there when we crossed into Russian territory and he—”

“No, I cannot talk to him. You are more like I am. Soon you will be going to your country — to America — to homeland. It will be over for you. You will be with your family. You will work. You will marry. You will be home!”

“OK,” I said. “I guess you’re right — but I don’t know when that will be. Not very soon for me. And I still don’t know what you want!”

The girl asked, “How long since you have seen your family?”

I paused, thought, remembered. “Last December.” Aloud, I named months. “ — August, this is September. That’s nine months.”

“When did you last receive a letter?”

“I’d say it was — I — a letter home on May eighth, the day the war ended here in Europe — and they wrote back. I got their letter in the middle of June sometime.” “That is my favor,” the girl said fervently. She unbuttoned the top two buttons of the long, bulky overcoat, unbuttoned another coat beneath, pulled aside a scarf, then tugged down on the neck of a sweater. As she pushed a hand deeper into layers of clothing, I tightened my grip on the M-1 rifle, tightened my body, ready to bring up the weapon, ready to push the trigger device off safe. My suspicions flared, making me nervous. Other than in early exhilaration when war’s end was announced or sporadic, brief proficiency practice, I had not fired a weapon in months. The girl’s head was bowed as she fumbled in her clothing. She looked up and sensed my tension. “I have it. It is only this.”

In her hand, held toward me, was a squarish, thin package, wrapped in wrinkled white paper, tied with light string. She reached her hand closer to me, abruptly pulling it back, ready to thrust it into her clothes if I moved for the slim package too quickly to suit her.

“It’s all right,” I said. “Take it easy. I’ll look at whatever it is you want me to see. Let me have it. I’ll be —” I couldn’t think of how to say careful.

The girl carefully undid a small bow knot and pulled off the string, putting it in a coat pocket. She unwrapped thin wrinkled moisture-proof butcher paper that had become dingy from handling. She hesitantly placed the paper on the bulky coupling joining the flatcar and the boxcar, a barrier still separating us. From between two thick sheets of gray cardboard she gingerly extracted a light-blue envelope, turning its front to me, holding it closer to herself than to me, out of my reach.

It appeared to be an air mail letter; it had wide angular blue and red marks along the four edges. There was a foreign postage stamp in the upper right corner — and a name and address in the middle of the envelope. I reached for the letter to take a closer look, but she snatched it away, only again holding the onionskin envelope before me at eye level when I said I wanted to look at the address. I couldn’t decipher scrawled European handwriting, but I could understand large block letters on the bottom line: TRENTON, NEW JERSEY, U.S.A.

Puzzled, I said, “What are you doing with that? That’s a letter — and it’s to somebody in the States. How come you have it?”

“I said to you before — it is my favor. Will you send it to America for me? For my mother? It is to people of my father’s family who went to America before the war.” She looked at me intensely. “I will repay you.” She looked at the ground between us. “I will repay you — in any way I can — in any way you wish.”

“Wait! No letter-mailing! I can’t do anything like that. I’m not allowed — allowed to —” I searched for descriptive words. “None of us are allowed — to — uh — not even the lieutenant.”

I explained that soldiers’ mail to America was still being censored by military authorities. The active GI rumor mill had it that censoring would stop any day, now that the war in the Pacific was over. But censoring had not yet stopped. I got her to understand I would not accept the letter, but failed to translate the word censor. I felt I succeeded when I scrawled words on a page, then used the pocket knife to cut out words and phrases, a couple times saying “Censor.” I elaborated the mutilations by acting as an officer reading a letter. I poked my chest with a thumb, saying, “Offizier — offizier!”; reading, frowning, reading more, using a pencil to cross out words and phrases, repeating the word censor, then excising those deletions with the knife, saying harshly, “Nein!, nein. Er kannst diese nicht sagen!”

Throughout my act the girl listened closely, the letter behind her back. She didn’t question me, but in her eyes I read disbelief.

“Believe me,” I said slowly, carefully. “You should believe me. If I could mail your letter, I would.” A second later I realized I wasn’t sincere. I was still suspicious of her. How do I know who she really is? Maybe she’s not a DP. Suppose she’s some kind of spy? Suppose she’s trying to trap me? Paranoia overwhelmed me briefly, until I persuaded myself I was thinking foolishly. Who the hell would put a spy in a place like this? Why? For what reason? What is there to spy on? The war is over everywhere! C’mon, c’mon — think straight!

The girl stepped closer to the coupling between us, the letter still behind her. “The people in America — our family in America, they have not known anything of what has happened to us for more than three years, almost four years. They do not know if we are still in Poland. They do not know if we are still alive! We had no way of writing — no way to send even one letter. We knew no one could safely make their way to a free country anywhere near. We could trust no one to give a letter for America. We were afraid we would be reported and sent to a death camp. We were afraid for our lives every minute.”

As the girl slowly made her plea, I grew uncomfortable. Dusk was nearly complete, daylight was ending. I was getting chilly in the gloominess. The girl’s eyes were watery, her face sorrowful, her words halting as she sought to overcome frustration at not finding words to persuade me. She reached out and touched me. I thought of her words, “I will repay you — in any way I can — in any way you wish.”

I squinted at the girl standing in shadows that were rapidly deepening. She really means it. Her eyes filled with tears, leaking slowly onto her cheeks. Quit it! Don’t fall for the tears! They’re probably phony! I stepped back, shaking my head from side to side.

My voice was almost a growl as I spoke angrily to her in low tones. “If I get caught with that thing, I’ll be in trouble — kaput! They could shoot me as a —” I had no idea of the word for spy, nor how to explain it. “If the lieutenant sees that letter — if any of the others see it —” I looked about nervously, suddenly aware that I had looked nowhere but at the girl for several moments, eerily feeling we were being watched, feeling that I was being watched. The girl remained stolidly in place beyond the barrier of the coupling. I could see no one else.

Abruptly, I blurted, “Give me that damn thing!” I looked about quickly again, then worried that my nervous eye-searching might be apparent to someone, enough to create suspicion. I tried to calm myself. I put out my hand a short distance toward her. “Come on — schnell — schnell!”

She pressed herself against the coupling, quickly passing the envelope to me. She blinked rapidly, frowning. She seemed, I sensed, ready to say something more. Then it struck me. She does mean it!

I thrust the envelope into the neck opening of my field jacket, pulled aside the wool sweater underneath, and put the lightweight paper inside my shirt. The girl’s lips stretched into a thin line as tears escaped her eyes. She looked at me intensely.

“Weg — go away,” I said softly. “Gehen Sie weg — schnell!” I hissed. She looked puzzled.

She spoke quietly. “Aber — Ich — Ich will —”

I stepped back, lifting my rifle butt several inches off the ground. She frowned. “Geht weg,” I said, without anger, softly again. I smiled slightly, hoping it would reassure her.

The girl took a step backward, blinking, moving back more until she was out of the space between the cars. Her mouth remained a thin line, but her frown was gone. She lifted a hand, as though to wave, moving out of my sight, past the corner of the freight car.

Damn! Now what do I do? I picked up the wrinkled butcher’s paper from the coupling, crumpled it into a tight ball, and threw it between the tracks under the flatcar I aimlessly walked back and forth along several of the boxcars, paying no attention to people. Ten minutes later the train got under way.

When my guard duty ended, I opened my duffel bag in the caboose, with my back needlessly turned to the others, even though I had made sure no one was paying attention to me. I slid the letter between pages of a small Pocket Book detective story I’d been reading, wrapped the book in a pair of O.D cotton undershorts, and closed the bag. I hoisted the bulky bag onto the foot of my upper bunk rather than stowing it back under the lower bunk with others. I wanted it in plain sight. This way, while I was on guard duty, no one would inadvertently pull a wrong bag from under the bunk and find the letter by chance, as improbable as that might be.

I searched for the girl each time the train stopped. The next morning, as the freight cars unloaded in Dziedzice I walked the length of the station platform several times, examining every cluster of people.

Lt. Jorgensen obtained his official receipt from a Polish government representative — there was not one sight of Russians at the station — and the escort detachment’s mission ended. The great number of DPs, lugging their precious cargoes, started dispersing into their homeland. It would be the next afternoon before the last of them melted into the countryside, in search of a new existence.

All of us had our chance to look at life in Dziedzice, Poland. With another guard I only briefly and quickly roamed for two or three blocks through demolished areas near the station. Small groups of local people, curious about us as different-appearing soldiers, keeping their distance, stared at us as we strolled casually, as we peered this way and that way for something unusual, something of interest. Twice we saw pairs of short, stocky Russian soldiers in quilted field uniforms, machine guns slung across their chests, hanging from straps about the necks, slowly walking aimlessly about, seemingly unaware of us. When we returned to the train the other three enlisted men and the officer went visiting themselves. I wandered the long platform, slowly working my way through the thinning, but still dense crowd, thinking, hoping the girl might appear. The roaming GIs and Lt. Jorgensen were back in a short time, disappointed. The consensus was the area was just one more war-torn section of Europe that looked like every other we had seen. Next was heading home, starting by train, uncomfortably completing the trip in a small army truck.

The next day, on the afternoon of the detachment’s departure toward American-occupied Germany, I slowly made my way to the far end of the platform and back to the caboose, studying every face. I worried because I couldn’t find her. The word spy kept flashing in my mind. I thought of giving the letter to the lieutenant, saying I was doing my duty by turning in contraband. I’d just tell him I didn’t get a good look at the girl who gave it to me No, no — instead, I’d just say somebody gave it to me, someone I couldn’t identify in the dark.

I wanted to tear the envelope open and examine the contents. I thought of tearing it to shreds, unopened, and scattering the scraps from the train as it headed back to Germany. I thought of putting the letter into the flames of the potbelly stove in the caboose. But I left it in the pages of the book, straining to not let others sense my worries. I kept reexamining my remembrance of her face. As the train of empty boxcars rolled west toward Pilzen, Czechoslovakia I tried to forget the meeting. I tried to forget I still had the letter.

Late the night before we reached Pilzen, where the weapons carrier would be unloaded and the long, uncomfortable road trip would begin, I woke suddenly woke from a fitful sleep, frightened. Damn her! I’ve got to tell the lieutenant — in the morning.

By eleven a.m. the truck was on the pavement beside the empty train. Alone in the caboose, making certain I was the last one to retrieve belongings, I tugged my duffel bag from the upper bunk, letting the cumbersome container thud onto the floor. I can turn it in now. I don’t think anybody will do anything to me — not just for taking nothing but a letter from someone. Not for a little thing like that. I opened the bag, reached deep into the wide mouth, fumbled for a moment, and felt the underwear-wrapped book.

At least her frown was gone when she left. I could see that even in the shadow. She looked happy when she disappeared around the corner of that boxcar.
She was starting to smile.

I pushed the bundle in my hand deeper, shoving the book beneath my belongings, and closed the mouth of the duffel bag.

* * *

The letter stayed deep inside my duffel bag even after I returned to my infantry squad in Hersfeld and again got into the routine of guard duty. One day a notice was posted on a bulletin board that mail censorship was ended. But by then I had forgotten the letter to Trenton, New Jersey.

Troops in Europe were being sent home every day, and in large numbers, but I never had enough points to be rotated back to the States early, even as requirements were steadily made more liberal. I kept falling short. Then prisoners of war in our camp rapidly started being released or transferred and long hours of guard duty eased. We had more free time and spent much of it sightseeing. I wondered if I now really wanted to get out of the army. I didn't know what I would do in civilian life. I didn’t think I wanted to go back to high school — not after my eventful life of the past year; not just to get a diploma I didn’t think I would ever need. I had no interest in going to college.

One day, searching my belongings for something, I discovered the hidden letter. Now that there were no longer any worries about censorship, I included it in my own letter home and, hoping the people in Trenton were still there, asked that someone in my family in Bridgeport, Connecticut remail it to New Jersey. I promptly forgot the incident.

When the military offered 60-day furloughs in the States and reassignment in Europe as reenlistment bonuses, I decided to “re-up” for three years. What the hell! I didn’t have any other plans, and I liked being in Germany. I didn’t care for the duty the army had to offer for European duty — guard duty and bivouacs — so I switched to the Army Air Corps (which became the U.S. Air Force the following year). On October 15, 1945 I was sworn into the Air Force and a month later I was packing for an ocean voyage, to be followed by two months in the States — with Christmas at home.

The day before the end of my 60-day leave in Bridgeport I received my only piece of mail in my whole time at home. The envelope had a light smell of perfume, the handwritten address appeared to be feminine. I was puzzled when I looked at the postmark. I didn’t know anyone in Trenton, New Jersey.

I was still puzzled as I read the letter from a young woman, describing the arrival of a letter from people in Europe that she and her family had not heard from in years. I wondered who this girl in New Jersey was and why she was writing me. Her letter went on to express thanks and praise and more thanks. Suddenly it dawned on me that the Polish girl’s letter, covertly taken in an unknown train yard in Russian-occupied territory somewhere near the Czechoslovakia-Poland border, the letter I had “smuggled” back to Germany, and much later had been forwarded in a roundabout way, had ultimately reached its destination in the United States.
The girl in Trenton was effusive in her family’s gratitude. I was invited to visit Trenton right away so her family could see me, so I could tell about the train experience, so the elated family could personally offer its thanks. The letter included a telephone number, asking me to please call.

But I felt the letter of thanks was enough. At the age of nineteen, the significance of my role in reestablishing a family contact did not seem great to me (despite the worry and fear I’d felt in the train yard). I now settled for having really only done a small helpful thing. I was pleased that someone else was happy. That was enough. Besides, that afternoon I had something to do with my high school pal who was home on leave from the Navy, and there was to be a small family farewell party for me. The next morning I would be gone.

I never took the time to at least make the phone call, and didn’t answer the Trenton girl’s letter until weeks later when I was again in Germany, settled into a routine in which I could find time for letter-writing.

The girl in Trenton occasionally sent me a letter all the while I was stationed in Germany, with bits of news about the relatives in Europe, always reminding me to please visit her and her family in Trenton. More than two years later a letter from her excitedly told about some relatives on the DP train to Dziedzice finally arriving in Trenton; and again she asked me to visit her home and family when I returned home. Later, while I was still overseas, but soon to leave for brief reassignment stateside before discharge from service, she also told me of her impending marriage and invited me to her wedding. However, I did not return to the States until after the ceremony.

When I did return to the States, and soon thereafter to civilian life, I occasionally thought about visiting Trenton. I often wondered what became of the Polish girl in the train yard who risked approaching me. But the circumstances of my own life always unfortunately put aside the notion of trying to learn about her in Trenton.

The recollections of the train episode have receded into the background of my life. But they never go away.

Epilogue

General Orders - 274th Honor Roll