Excerpt from
Field Interrogation, 4/11/45
POW 957991
Interrogation and Translation by:
Morris L. Fishbein, 2nd Lt., USA
…
Interrogator: Have you any association with the SS?
Prisoner: The only association I ever had with the SS cost me my rank and my airplane. (Obscenity) the SS.
I: Your airplane? If you flew an airplane, why are you wearing the uniform of an army private?
P: The devil! Why are YOU wearing the uniform of an army lieutenant? Have you even started shaving yet?
I: Answer my question!
P: All right! Tell that fellow to relax. Until last year, I outranked you. I was a full lieutenant in the Luftwaffe. I got busted to private and transferred to the mud-eaters, courtesy of the (obscenity) SS.
I: What was your relationship with the SS?
P: (Obscenity) Errand-boy! I was commandeered to use my plane for an (obscenity) moving van for Mr. Meir.
I: Who is Mr. Meir?
P: It’s a German thing, you wouldn’t understand. Mr. Meir is the Reichsmarschall, Hermann Goering. The SS commandeered me, my plane and an escort of fighters--all needed elsewhere--to move some of his precious souvenirs.
I: By precious souvenirs, do you mean looted property?
P: Yes.
I: Then these were small objects, that would fit into a fighter plane?
P: NO! The devil, I’m a working pilot, not one of those fancy hero boys with medals down to here. I flew a real plane, a Messerschmidt 321.
I: That is a big plane, then?
P: The devil! The Giant is just the biggest plane that ever flew! I could pack (obscenity) Panzer tanks with room to spare! I could carry…
I: Go on.
P: … I… Yes, it’s a big plane.
I: Let us get back to the SS, then. What did you do with them?
P: It wasn’t me doing, it was them doing it to me. As I said, They yanked me away from a real job and made me a moving boy.
I: Who were the SS personnel involved?
P: A little tin god on wheels named Schlagel. One of Goering’s pets. A colonel, with medals down to his bellybutton. An arrogant (obscenity) stupid god-damned (obscenity) pretty-boy (obscenity) tailor’s dummy in a spiffy uniform, with the brains of cockroach and a shovel-handle up his butt.
I: Any others?
P: Cavemen. Apes. Too dumb to tell one end of a spade from the other and too cowardly for the front lines, so they made them SS troopers.
I: This looting, where did it take place, and when?
P: I imagine Meir--Goering collected it all over, the greasy bastard. It was stored at Amiens, in northern France. Last April they brought me in there to fly it back to the Fatherland, although of course they emphasized it wasn’t because any invasion was coming, and swore me to secrecy.
I: What did this loot consist of?
P: Crates of food and drink, you know, fancy French stuff to keep our dear Mr. Meier from wasting away. Then a car, a Mercedes open-top tourer about ten years old, very rare and valuable. Looked like it was going 120 when it was standing still. Very nice, if you could afford the gas to run it. But most of the cargo--most of it was postcards. Crates and crates of postcards, tons of them.
I: What, Goering collects postcards?
P: French postcards.
I: Of course they were French, but what about them?
P: God in Heaven, just how old are you? Were you raised in a convent? French postcards. Dirty pictures. (Obscenity) photos, you understand? If that slob lived to be 250, he couldn’t have looked at all of them. Not even if he had that gang of SS morons helping him.
I: How did you know what it was?
P: One of the SS trooper-stevedores showed me some he swiped, very proud of himself. Who wants to look at (obscenity) pictures, anyway, when the real thing is so plentiful?
I: Ah… Let us get back to the SS. They made you load this looted material into your plane?
P: ME load! (Obscenity)! That (obscenity) little arrogant bastard wouldn’t let me supervise loading my own plane! He knew how to do it all, damn him! Never spoke to an underling except to show how all-powerful he was! Drove that Mercedes up the ramp himself! Then he had to sit in the cockpit so he could continue ordering me and my copilot around--shooed one of my flight engineers out of his seat so he could sit and look over my shoulder, damn him! And with all those engines, it takes a full crew to fly the Giant, I tell you--that little (obscenity) would have been more useful made of cast iron! At least then I could have shifted him around to trim the ship.
I: So you flew this loot back to Germany.
P: We got it off the ground and headed in that direction, anyway, with the Luftwaffe aviator heroes flying their pretty formation above to protect Mr. Meir’s art, while I tried to stay under the clouds so one of them wouldn’t ram us in the murk. When a plane is loaded all wrong like that, it’s like heaving a bucket of lead into the sky. Takes muscles like a blacksmith. I was sweating, trying to crank in some more trim, when I heard our brave SS colonel scream like a schoolgirl in my ear. I glanced up, and God in heaven! There was a fork-tailed devil about to come in through the windshield.
I: A fork-tailed devil?
P: American plane, you understand? Fast fighter. An engine on both sides and a crazy man in the middle. Bam! he was there, and Bam! he was gone, and the next thing I knew I had a mouthful of broken windshield and we were hanging by our shoulder straps. I think he must have collided with us. The horizon was standing on edge, and our brave colonel was screaming for a parachute.
I: Did you give him one?
P: God in heaven! I was rather busy at the time, you understand? The roof of the cockpit had been sawed off just above our heads, several of the engines were dead and me and my copilot were bending the control columns trying to get level. But something was charging around down below like a wild elephant, and every time the plane lurched it would bang up against something else and throw us into a tighter spin. I remember I spoke disrespectfully to our all-knowing colonel, bellowing why hadn’t he secured that (obscenity) car! He bawled he had set the hand-brake himself! He set the (obscenity) HAND-BRAKE!
I: The situation was serious, then.
P: God in heaven! You might say so. If one engine goes out, no problem, we’ve got plenty. Even a couple of engines on each side, we can handle it. But with a bunch out on one side, a hole in the wing you could drive a bus through and that damned car racing back and forth below, yes, you can reasonably say we had a serious situation.
By now the plane was breaking up, the centrifugal force was so bad we could barely move, and the horizon was looping. Just then that Mercedes made a final charge, hit the locked nose doors and tore off the whole nose of the plane. Otto and I popped our seat buckles, and were slung out of there like stones. We barely had time to get our chutes open.
I: The looted material was not taken to Germany, then.
P: Indeed, that is a brilliant deduction, Lieutenant. In fact, I think we single-handedly stopped the war cold for a dozen kilometers in every direction.
I: How?
P: Because every soldier in a dozen kilometers was wandering around picking those damn French postcards out of the weeds!
I: I see. Was this the end of your involvement in this matter?
P: Not quite. At the inquest for losing my plane and Herr Goering’s valuable play-toy, I spoke up very plainly about the sort of official stupidity that would put two dozen valuable airmen and a dozen valuable planes under the command of a gold-plated idiot, and all to haul a collection of dirty pictures and a used car home to a globular fool who couldn’t find his own butt with both hands and a navigator. I might have said more, but I was somewhat agitated at the moment and can’t remember exactly. As a consequence, I was stripped of the rank I took four years to earn, assigned to the infantry and spent the last year digging ditches, sucking mud and dodging bullets. At least they didn’t send me to the Eastern Front.
I: And the SS colonel, Schlagel, in charge of the operation, where is he?
P: I believe you will find him at a bottom of a hole, with than damn car on top of him. Can I have a cigarette? ….
… The prisoner apparently having no information of immediate strategic value, he was remanded to POW Processing Center West.
s/s:
Morris L. Fishbein, 2 lt., USA