Freiburg

Sadly, I’ve had to part ways with Charley, who needed to get back to his family.  Before we split up though, we drove to Potsdam where we got to see nothing of this truly aristocratic city. We did, however, visit an Afrikaner from the  ‘gentlemen’s evening’ who was not in Afrika Korps.  As a machine gunner he served with the Hermann Goering Division.

The next morning at 5 am we hit the road – I towards the Swiss border and Charley back home. Traveling with a World War II veteran is one of the most amazing experiences one can have in this life, and I was sad to leave such a charming travel partner after we had had so much fun.

Once it was light I saw I was traveling through beautiful, pastoral, frost-covered landscapes in Saxony then Bavaria and finally Baden Wuerttemburg. Germans, true to their reputations as car and autobahn lovers, make this type of travel on the autobahn easy and convenient. The plentiful and frequent rest stops virtually guarantee clean restrooms, a gas station and some type of hearty German food.

After 8 hours of 80’s music on the radio (why? why?) I arrived at the German military archives in Freiburg. There I immediately got down to the earnest business of trying to find out if 20 mm shells or a Nebelwerfer grenade brought a B-24 down on January 7, 1944.

After registering I was handed some finding guides and assigned a desk. I got terribly excited by some of the entries, and immediately submitted a request for a microfilm roll and some files. The microfilm arrived and after some initial scanning was somewhat less helpful than expected. Then the file arrived that should have contained all the missions of the Richthofen fighter squadron from 1940-44, but unfortunately, it only had individual flight logs of pilots in the squadron until 1942 or 1943.  Sigh.

The last file should have contained prisoner of war statements and equipment/weapons reports for the squadron.  There were some very interesting and sometimes entertaining reports with the statements of captured Allied servicemen. I loved the one that stated that the 101st/506 paratroopers caught just days after D-day included a “full-blooded Indian” who remained stubbornly silent. Many captured airmen also remained mum. I burned a little, though, thinking of how much some of these guys gave up freely in the way of describing their training, tactics, and new planes and weapons under development they had seen flying over England (so much for name, rank, and serial number). But then I remembered that perhaps all the credit should go to the savvy German interrogators. (Try reading The Interrogator by Raymond Toliver to find out why)

In the end, no equipment/weapons reports for the squadron appeared in the file. I had been warned in advance that many of the German files were incomplete or missing, a consequence of orders on the ground to destroy everything in the final days of the war, and the fact that the Americans and Brits took many documents abroad at the end of the war. When they returned them, many originals had mysteriously disappeared.

As with any archives, one day – even one week or a month – is never enough.  It takes time to become familiar with the holdings and get your bearings.  I’m barely scratching the surface in 8 hours between two days here. I may actually be able to find what I’m looking for in DC, but many of the archivists who really knew the captured German archives have retired. And so the detective work continues.  In either location it’d be a dream come true to simply set up a cot, order out for food, and just dig in for a few weeks..or months.

The beauty of these short and frenzied visits though is that now while visiting veterans and archives I experience parts of Germany I wouldn’t have seen otherwise, including the old town here. Freiburg is a university town bursting at the seams with bike-riding young people, medieval buildings, and groovy restaurants. The old street sewers have been incorporated into the renovations and converted into flowing rivers with occasional bridges by shop entrances. Be careful where you walk or you will fall in (not that anything like that would ever happen to me.  Uh uh, no way). This type of historical attraction would never be financially feasible in America.  Within 24 hours  some inattentive citizen or tourist who stepped right in and twisted an ankle would sue.  It works in Germany, where you can be expected to watch where you are going. Every day in Germany with veterans is so precious, so short.  I definitely know where I’m going.