Comfort to the Enemy (2010) Read Free Page A

made it up to captain without leaving Camp Polk, Louisiana. For this war he was brought back as a colonel in the Provost Marshal's office and appointed commander of the Deep Fork camp. He had told Carl sitting in his office he had 500 German officers in one compound of 30 barracks and 1700 non-commissioned officers and enlisted men in the other three compounds. All Carl could see, looking out the window and through the wire fences, were rows of tarpaper barracks down the left side of the road and gun towers around the perimeter. Wesley said he wanted the noncoms, not just the enlisted men out working during the day, even though it was up to them if they worked or not. So he made a deal with the staff officers: send all your boys out to work and the officers could have a soccer league and put on plays and musicals, have three-two beer served in the canteen and officer's club and their own chefs in the messhalls.
    Oh, they can look down their nose at you, Wesley said, and make demands, chew you out they think you aren't living up to the Geneva Convention. I run this place like they're guests of my hotel, the Fritz Ritz, as long as they don't break any of the house rules, like hanging around near the fences. I tell my boys in the gun towers, you see a prisoner approaching the fence, yell at him twice to halt. He doesn't back off, shoot him. I tell the officers this is the way it's gonna be, and the y u nderstand, nod their Kraut heads, 'cause these people operate on unconditional discipline. They give an order, it's obeyed. I said to an officer I can speak freely to, 'The war's over for you people, why do you keep playing soldier? Why do you let a few hardcore Nazis push you around?' This Kraut I can trust says, 'because they could be taking names, making a list of the ones aren't arrogant enough.
    Your guards shot any of 'em?
    One. Held on to the fence and dared the tower guard to shoot him, so he did. Other camps they've had to shoot prisoners. Up in Kansas a Kraut ran out of bounds after a soccer ball and was shot. He was told to halt, but kept going. Colorado, a guard back from combat shot three Krauts he said were coming for him.
    Wesley Sellers said he didn't worry about prisoners escaping. He had reports that listed eleven hundred sneaking out of camps or from work details during the past two years and nine hundred of them were picked up in a couple of days. Some of them, soon as they're hungry, they head back to camp.
    Carl said, What about Willi Martz?
    I asked several of the highest ranking officers here why they thought the man killed himself. They all said they didn't know, or 'How would I know?' Showing me they didn't care. I asked some lieutenants and they said he was ashamed of himself, a moral pervert who could not stand living with men who refused to speak to him. I asked if Martz was anti-Nazi.
    They said of course he was. I asked if he'd had any help hanging himself, since there wasn't anything he could've been standing on he kicked out from under him. I said it looked like some of you held him up while you put the rope around his neck and then let go of him. One of them said that would be a way to do it. They all said yah, nodding their heads, grinning.
    Be hard, Carl said, to keep your composure.
    When I was sheriff, Wesley said, questioning an offender, say a stickup guy, and he grinned at me like that? I'd punch him in the mouth. Why I always had leather gloves on me I was investigating a crime. But I can't punch any of these Kraut officers, can I? All dressed up in their uniforms with their medals and gee-gaws, their Iron Crosses.
    I don't know if you can or not, Carl said, I know the SS always beat up people they have in to question. Or pull out their fingernails.
    I don't believe in torture, Wesley said. All a punch in the mouth's for is to get their attention.
    You talk to Jurgen since he's back?
    I got him in what passes for solitary here, a room with a cot and a bucket, a narrow window that doesn't