My father returned from service in World War Two aboard a troopship that left the Philippines, passed through the Panama Canal, and eventually pulled into Brooklyn Navy Yard. It was a few weeks late for the boisterous crowds and tugboat horns that greeted troopships in the immediate aftermath of VJ Day, but it was home nonetheless. Happy to have at last returned, and even happier that civilian status was only days away, the guys, many of them gaunt from long service overseas, eagerly disembarked and trooped off to get some food.
As they entered the mess hall, a shift was getting off and the twenty-or-so KPs, feeling that working there had bestowed certain privileges upon them, butted in front of them in the chow line – or at least tried to. Now, my father and his colleagues were amicable enough, but the KPs cutting in front of them were not fellow GIs. They weren’t even Americans. They were German soldiers.
Yep, the presumptuous KPs were German prisoners of war, with “PW” crudely stenciled across the backs of their Wehrmacht (or worse) tunics, put to work in the mess hall until repatriation. German soldiers were not yet seen as the affable oafs of Hogan’s Heroes. No Klinks, let alone a Schultz. It was an awkward situation that boded ill for postwar reconciliation.
Dad et al had been away from home for years, had endured hardships and indignities at the hands of Germany’s erstwhile Asian ally, and had had brothers and neighbors buy the farm in North Africa and Europe at the hands of these guys or their kamerads-in-arms. Such events had greatly diminished the generosity and charitableness that have been long-standing hallmarks of American soldiers the world over. Accordingly, dad and friends were not as deferent to those visitors to our shores as they might have been in less unpleasant times.
As word of the breach in protocol passed along the chow line, angry words carelessly erupted from GI mouths. A few guys picked up chairs. The twenty Germans – “God damn kraut bastards” they were now being called – soon found themselves surrounded by a hundred-or-so GIs intent on beating the schnott out of them. Unfortunately, at least from the German perspective, the conventions of war had little applicability in that Brooklyn mess hall and the surrender at Reims the previous May had no bearing whatsoever.
As the GIs drew closer, it became apparent that the GDKBs had been much better fed than the Americans, who had until recently been eating little else than C-Rats on New Guinea, Okinawa, and other island paradises – a galling paradox to many there, which helped not one bit to ease the situation.
The glaring disparity in caloric-intakes must have dawned on the cringing gaggle of GDKBs, many of whom were likely recalling events at Bizerte or Falaise-Argentan, where American troops had surrounded tens of thousands of them and persuaded them to change careers from foot soldiers and panzer crews to food servers and dish washers.
At that instant, as Brooklyn teetered between war and peace, a burly fellow with three stripes and two rockers on the sleeves of his unkempt fatigues, strode onto the scene. It was the mess sergeant, awakened from a pleasant dream involving Betty Grable by the commotion, and not happy about it. Silence fell across the room, interrupted momentarily by the clatter of chairs put back on the floor. Now mess sergeants at that time controlled vast supplies of food and drink, enjoyed Corleone-like ties to providers of virtually any good or service, and hence wielded great power. Furthermore, they gave more than they took in fistfights.
Upon ascertaining the nature of the contretemps, the mess sergeant glared at the GDKBs then ordered them to get to the back of the line or they’d get no more of the Rheingold and pretzels from his supply room. Problem solved, he wondered if there was a German word for chutzpah and returned to his office to finish his nap.
Brooklyn breathed easier. The Reims surrender remained in effect. And my father and the rest of the guys from the Pacific got their first stateside repast in years, served by another shift of German POWs. Guten Appetit, meine Herrn!
Copyright 2010 Brian M Downing