[Old and Reliable]

My first wife's uncle Jack was a Lt. and a bombadier in the USAAC in Europe. Both he and my late father-in-law were raised in Milwaukee and were fluent in German-- Jack's B-17 was shot down on the Polesti/Rumania oil field bombing runs, and all the crew parachuted out safely- unlike the Japanese, who would either machine gun our pilots that bailed out, or fly into the parachute cords to cause death to the pilot- the Luftwaffe followed a more chivalrous code of conduct, and in spite of Goering ( or Goring with the umlat over the letter o) was in charge of the Luftwaffe Stalags--Jack often said that the worst part of the POW affair was that the Germans would take the American cigarettes out of the Red Cross packages and help themselves- Jack was assigned to work as an orderly in the Commandant's office, he wisely never let on that he could understand quite clearly all that was spoken in his presence--

The Commandant was a full Colonel (Oberst) with a Knight's Cross (Ritterkruze) with oak leaves and diamonds personally awarded to him by Goering, who may well have figured out early on that Germany would lose, with the Russians pushing in from the East and the Allies coming in from France, Belgium and Holland- Jack told me that one day a Gestapo Hauptsturmbannfuehrer (Major) came into the office with orders that all the Allied prisoners of the Jewish faith were to be shipped East- The Colonel told him: We removed all their dog tags, and all these men are under custody of the Luftwaffe, not the Gestapo or the SS- and further, he told the Major to "take a hike"- Brave man--