Cooperative Living May 2018 - 17

From a newspaper clipping: On the
way to captivity, a German general
talks to an officer of the 87th Infantry
Division near Carlsfeld.
When the jeep finally arrived at
April 12. Horrified, Eisenhower called for
government officials and newspaper
editors to see the many camps where an
estimated 12-million people died.
Escaping to and
from CzechoslovakiA
While American medical personnel
cared for camp survivors, AEF soldiers
continued to fight. Among the German
soldiers Stafford's company captured on
May 6 was a colonel wearing civilian
clothes. " I told him he could be shot on
the spot as a spy for masquerading as a
civilian, " Stafford says. The Englishspeaking
colonel said the Russians were
nearing Prague, Czechoslovakia, and time
was running out for the German forces. "
The colonel was correct: In Ambrose's
book, an American lieutenant wrote in his
diary: " Germans pouring into Pilsen by
the thousands to get away from the
Russians in Prague. "
Stafford goes behind enemy lines
Stafford's captive was so terrified of the
Red Army he asked Stafford to accompany
him through German lines to convince
his division commander to surrender to
the Americans.
Stafford said, " I then made two very stupid
mistakes. First, after having survived five
campaigns, and foolishly believing the
Germans didn't have 'a bullet with my
name on it,' I agreed to go with the
colonel. Second, I didn't obtain permission
to venture behind enemy lines. "
With a white truce sheet on his jeep,
and the officer back in uniform, Stafford
says he " sat behind the colonel with my
pistol between his shoulder blades and
instructed my driver, Jones, to follow the
colonel's directions. "
When the three approached the German
position, Stafford saw a German soldier
drop his armful of bread and frantically
un-shoulder his rifle. " The colonel
screamed at him to stop, " Stafford says.
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the division's headquarters in
Czechoslovakia, the colonel told his
corps commander the Americans were
there to accept his surrender. In
English, the corps commander asked
Stafford for his rank. Stafford says, " I
certainly wasn't about to tell him a
21-year-old platoon sergeant wearing
muddy clothing was demanding his
surrender, so I told him I was a captain.
He looked me over and said the American
Army also must be running out of officer
material if it, like the Wehrmacht, was
forced to fill its officer ranks with
youngsters barely out of high school. He
told me he would not surrender unless
ordered to do so by his higher command.
" I told the general the American Army
was moving again and wouldn't stop until
we were eyeball-to-eyeball with the
Russians, " Stafford recounts. " Although
I knew only a few German words, hardly
appropriate for the moment, his anxious
staff officers apparently told the general
I was correct. The general told us to wait
outside his office. Jones and I sat in the
hallway and watched with growing
uneasiness while staff personnel ran
hurriedly up and down the halls, eyeing
us warily as they entered or exited their
offices. While I understood our venture
behind enemy lines would not be a cake
walk, I began to realize Jones and I might
be taken outside and shot. To my relief,
the general called us into his office and
said that after weighing the predicament
facing the soldiers and officers under
his command, he would surrender his
entire corps. "
Wehrmacht motorcycles led the general,
colonel, staff officers and Americans to a
hotel. After finding the proprietor and his
family hiding in the cellar, the general
asked for some paper. " The poor fellow,
shaking and scared nearly out of his wits,
said he only had ledger sheets. "
On ledger paper, the general signed an
unconditional surrender of what turned
out to be more than 40,000 Wehrmacht
troops and at least 20 German generals.
Stafford says, " I knew absolutely
nothing of the Geneva Convention or
anything about surrender formalities,
but recalling a scene from a movie, I
A German
Family's Escape
Annemarie, who has family living in Virginia
co-op territory, remembers how her German
family barely escaped from approaching armies at
the end of the war. Her soldier father died fighting
in 1939. Then her baby brother died of
pneumonia. Her mother struggled to keep the
family of six together.
After the Allies bombed their home in Berlin,
Annemarie's family fled to Czechoslovakia in April
1945. But after the Czechs had had enough of their
Nazi occupiers in early May, and with the Red Army
just days away, Annemarie's family and other terrified
Germans bolted back toward their homeland.
" We were deathly afraid the Russians would
massacre us, " Annemarie recalls. " We wanted the
Americans to capture us. "
Catholic nuns hid the family in their convent
until a farmer took the family in his hay wagon to
the border. The girls and their mother, hauling her
ailing father-in-law and young son on a cart, hiked
through a cold, dark forest back into Germany.
" We didn't have boots or coats to wear in the
snow - just our dirndl dresses, " Annemarie
remembers. " When Mutti heard enemy soldiers,
she told us to climb up a lookout tower quickly and
not make a sound. She covered my little sister's
mouth while the soldiers stopped to smoke
cigarettes. We were terrified. "
The homeless family made it back into war-torn
Germany, now occupied by the Allies. Annemarie
says she and her siblings feared U.S. soldiers
almost as much as they feared the Russians.
" The Nazis had told us for years Americans
would kill us, " Annemarie recalls. " When a G.I.
offered us bananas, my little sister ran to the
soldier. We yelled for her to come back before he
poisoned her. She ignored us and ate the banana.
We waited and watched. When she didn't die, we
ran for the bananas because we were starving. "
Annemarie and her three sisters eventually
married U.S. soldiers stationed in Germany and
became American citizens.
A Wehrmacht general signed an unconditional
surrender statement on ledger paper at the
Carlsfeld Hotel and handed it to Stafford.
May 2018 | Cooperative Living | 15
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Cooperative Living May 2018

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