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11. New Orders
- State University of New York Press
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11 NEW ORDERS DPs are being discovered all over. Reports arrive of ten Poles in a barn, forty Russians in the hills, some Italians in town and on the roads, seven Frenchmen in a field-and our men go out to bring them in, or the Military Police collect them. One day the CO tells me that 200 Ckrainians are living in a farm about 5 kilometers from Schwabach. After the German troops fled the area, they organized themselves into a small farming community. They were given, or somehow acquired, cows, pigs, and chickens. They make their own bread and are now living independently. My medical-sanitary inspection reveals no major problems, but I advise attention to their latrines and promise them garbage pails. Their leader is a tall, handsome young man. I inform him that when we have space we will move his people into one of our camps, and I arrange with him to return that evening with our crew for a delousing session at 7:00 P.M. The young man accepts the appointment but says his people will not be happy about moving into a new camp. They like it where they are, and, furthermore, our camps have Russians, and they do not like Russians. Now I become aware of people living in Russia, and part of Poland, who do not consider themselves Russian or Polish. The Ckrainians seem to have their own traditions . They fought everyone for hundreds of years and regard themselves as a distinct national entity. This is informative, but not ou; problem. If the Russians, Poles, and Czechs could not resolve the problem of the lTkrainians in 800 years, it is unlikely that we can in the next few days. Our concern is with health and sanitation. At 7:00 P.M. I return with my crew, and there are only ten people in the camp. The others have gone into town for a night 68 I of carousing. A middle-aged woman greets me. Neither she nor the others know they are to be dusted. We have wasted our time. Out of humor, we drive back to Schwabach. At our regular staff meeting that night I inform Rosenbloom of the bungled arrangements. He is not upset. He tells me that the man I talked to earlier is not the leader. The woman I talked to is! Most likely she had not received any message from the man. No great harm done. The dusting will be rescheduled. After supper, a young British officer arrives as our guest for the night. He has been in a German prison camp for a long time, and has just escaped. Aricer brings him some reheated supper and apologizes. "Lieutenant, this is all I have left, this poor plate of salmon croquettes. That's the God's honest truth." "I'll bet it has not been waiting for me as long as I have been waiting for it," says our guest, who seems amused by Aricer's Deep South accent. The sergeant is equally entertained by the young man's clipped British speech. We have hosted other escaped prisoners in the last few days, all of whom have told exciting stories. Now, everyone on the Team sits down to listen to another tale. The lieutenant was captured at Dunkirk five years ago, and since interned in a POW compound in Silesia. When elements of the Russian Army neared his camp last week, the German guards decided to leave, hoping to reach the Bavarian Alps; they took along a handful of the POWs as hostages, but some of them escaped, including our guest. His story might have been written in Hollywood. While in the prison camp, some of his friends had constructed a crystal radio, which they kept in two parts-in a canteen and mess gear. The components for the radio were obtained from German guards in return for cigarettes and delicacies from their International Red Cross packages. (Incidentally, says the lieutenant , we could not have survived all these years without these wonderful packages.) With the radio, the POWs were aware of the changing nature of the war; even so, they had not been able to avoid being forced out of the camp. Why did the German guards want to escape? asks Private Eastman, who sometimes seems unaware of the nature of evil. The lieutenant answers his New Orders I 69 question: the Germans were trying to avoid being captured by the Russians; they feared their retaliation...