My book, ‘Wrestling with God: Stories of Doubt and Faith,” is very much on my mind these days. I’m working on giving it a new start in life. Details to come!
Meanwhile, I’d like to share with you a story from “Wrestling with God.” It’s the story of Airman Robert Tharratt, a World War II prisoner of war who survived a forced march across Germany and who, fifty years later, sat down with me and my tape recorder to record his story.
A Forced March Across Germany
Robert was a ball turret gunner aboard a B-17 bomber. His plane was shot down over Nuremberg in September, 1944. He and the rest of the crew parachuted to safety, and Robert was captured by a band of Hitler Youth brandishing knives.
Burned into Robert’s memory was the sight of those boys, their knives, and the lederhosen — the traditional leather shorts worn by German men and boys — that they were wearing as they surrounded and menaced him.
Robert spent months in captivity in Eastern Europe. As the war came to a close, he and thousands of other POWs were sent on a brutal forced march across Germany. Fifteen hundred out of six thousand of his fellow POW’s died on the march, he told me.
When Robert was finally liberated in 1945, he weighed 109 pounds. He spent the following weeks recuperating in a military hospital near Halle, Germany, with two of his POW camp buddies.
This story, an excerpt from “Wrestling with God,” tells of Robert’s time in Halle.
Robert Tharratt Tells His Story — His Words
“After two weeks [in the hospital], we were allowed to go outdoors and walk around. A river ran through the middle of town. Art, Lou and I decided to go across and get a look at downtown Halle. We stood on a small pier with other people, waiting for a rowboat to shuttle us across. We had just finished lunch and I was carrying an orange. A German boy about fourteen years old came up to me, pointed at my orange, and said, ‘Bitte.’ He wanted me to give him my orange. He wasn’t being pushy or anything, he just wanted the orange.
“He didn’t have the Hitler Youth shirt on, but he was wearing lederhosen. I recognized the britches, they were strictly Hitler Youth, and everything came back to me. The starvation, the death threats, the Hitler Youth waving their knives at me.
“‘Nichts.” I told him. “‘Raus!”
“The people on the pier looked at me like, ‘He’s just a kid. Give him the orange.’ The boy kept pestering me.
” ‘Raus!’ I said. ‘Get out of here!’
‘I Pushed the German Boy Out of My Way’
“The boy still wouldn’t leave me alone, so I pushed him out of my way, and he fell in the river. Everybody on the pier started jabbering off at me in German. I couldn’t understand what they were saying and I didn’t care.
“I looked right at them. ‘Kriegsgefangene!‘I screamed. ‘Prisoner of war! Kriegsgefangene!’
“They shut up and backed away. One of the men reached down to the boy and pulled him up on the pier. The boy ran off, soaking wet. When the rowboat arrived, Lou, Art and I climbed in. There was plenty of room in the boat for more people, but nobody else got in. Nobody wanted to cross the river with me.”
It was decades before Robert could forgive his German captors — and Germans in general — for the cruelty he suffered during his wartime imprisonment. I’m wondering, will the polarization that permeates American life in the twenty-first century ever ease up? Will Americans on the political left and right ever forgive each other? More on the topic of forgiveness at “Forgiveness Is Tough, Atonement Even Tougher.” Also at “Evil, Forgiveness and Reconciliation.”
his is such an affecting story, and i’m eager to get your new release.
Robert Tharratt was a great teller of his own story. I met with him several times and had a mountain of material to pare down and shape into his narrative. When I was done working on it, I looked back and realized I’d spent three months, full time, on just that one interview.
Well that one makes me cry. We are we so awful. Why can’t we get along? I guess it’s different values. I wish we could respect and be kind to all. Yes, I’m a dreamer.
My thought on why we don’t — as opposed to can’t — get along is not that we don’t share values. I believe most human communities, at base, share the same values. To me, it’s a desire for power — or a fear of losing power — that leads to so much strife.