Andrew Carter pulled his key out of the lock and made sure the door was secure, still humming "We Can Work It Out," the last tune he had heard on the radio inside his pharmacy. It had been a long day; the bitter winter brought with it many colds and other ailments, and he had spent a good part of the day giving out remedies and advice, which left precious little time for his pet project: coming up with his own concoction to cure the common cold.

He was preoccupied with thoughts of formulas and the warm, welcoming home he was heading to, so he nearly jumped when a voice behind him said, "Hey, Mr. Carter, can I talk to you a minute?"

Carter turned around to the voice and grinned, a common expression for him if one judged by the laugh creases around his eyes. "Oh—gee, Charlie, you startled me."

"Sorry, Mr. Carter. I was just waiting for you to finish."

"That's okay. Going my way?" Carter started walking down the street. The young man followed. "What can I do for you?" Carter always had time for people like Charlie Mathers. An enthusiastic, sincere young man, Charlie was studying at nearby Ball State University, in the hopes of being a history teacher. Carter himself had always thought of teaching as a noble profession, but he couldn't keep his hands off test tubes and chemicals. Maybe a science teacher. Someday… when he got bored being a pharmacist and a chemist. Not that that would ever happen.

"Well, Mr. Carter, we're doing a research project in one of my psychology classes on World War Two, and I wanted to focus on Prisoners of War, and what it was like for them getting caught and kept by the enemy." Carter raised an eyebrow but did not speak. "There's a lot of stuff in the library, Mr. Carter. But… my dad says you were a POW yourself… so… I was wondering if I could talk to you. You know, interview you, and record it."

Carter smiled. "You mean use me like a text book?"

"Well, sure. I mean, who knows better than the men who were there?"

The pair reached a crossroad. Carter stopped. "Well, I don't usually talk about it much," he mused. "That was a long time ago now." Charlie noticed Carter's eyes change as the man's mind obviously reached back. "But maybe it's time I did," Carter said, with a new determination in his voice. "The guys all deserve it." He nodded. "Okay, Charlie. Come and see me on Saturday after the drug store closes. I'll tell you everything you want to know." He nodded down the road. "Here's where I turn off. See you then."

----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- -----

Carter opened the bulky envelope that had been pushed through the mail slot onto the floor of his living room and pulled out several neatly typed sheets of paper. Peering into the envelope, he then retrieved a handwritten note scrawled on a folded piece of paper that had clearly been ripped from a notebook.

Dear Mr. Carter, it began. Thought you might like a copy of our conversation from a couple of weeks ago. I'd appreciate it if you could take a look at it and make sure it's all okay. Some of it seemed too wild to be true!

Carter immediately abandoned the note, plodded over to his favorite recliner, and sat down thoughtfully, already scanning the pages. He turned on the lamp and settled in for a read. Though he had no doubt that Charlie had properly copied down what they had said, it all still seemed a bit unreal to Carter, too, and he was anxious to see what he had blurted out when he got on a roll.

TRANSCRIPT OF CONVERSATION

BETWEEN

CHARLES MATHERS

AND

ANDREW J. CARTER

JANUARY 1966 (MUNCIE, INDIANA)

Charles Mathers to be represented by CM

Andrew Carter to be represented by AC

CM: Thank you for letting me talk to you today, Mr. Carter.

AC: That's okay, Charlie. Is that thing on now?

CM: Yes, sir, it sure is. We're ready to roll.

AC: Great.

CM: I thought I'd start by just letting you free-form, Mr. Carter. You know, say whatever comes to mind.

AC (pauses): Well, you need to get your hair cut. I can't see your eyes.

CM: I mean about being a POW during the war.

AC: Oh. Well, what do you want to know? A lot of stuff comes to mind when I think about being a POW.

CM: Like what?

AC: The people, the food, the weather, the fear, the excitement…

CM: The excitement? I heard being a POW could be really boring.

AC: That depends on where you were.

CM: What do you mean?

AC: What do you know about being a POW, Charlie?

CM: Well… if you were caught by the Germans, they kept you in a camp until the end of the war. And you'd get books, theater, sports, Red Cross packages and things. But you didn't have to work, and they didn't let you do much else. So I guess it would have been pretty tedious.

AC: That could be true. I suppose it was for most.

CM: It wasn't for you?

AC (chuckles): No. I tell ya, sometimes I wish it was.

CM: What branch of the service were you in?

AC: US Army Air Corps. I was a Sergeant.

CM: And were prisoners in the Air Corps treated differently than other POWs?

AC: Only if you had Colonel Hogan as your commanding officer.

CM: Who was Colonel Hogan?

AC: He was the senior POW officer at my Stalag Luft. That's the kind of camp they kept Allied flyers in after they were shot down and processed. There were a couple of dozen of them spread out around Europe.

CM: Tell me why it was different with Colonel Hogan.

AC: Everything was different with Colonel Hogan. But then, Colonel Hogan wasn't an ordinary guy, even for an officer.

CM: In what way?

AC: He thought differently. It was like he operated on a different plane than the rest of us sometimes. And even when we all thought he was nuts, just plain out of his mind, he wasn't, boy. I mean not at all. You might think he'd slipped a gear, gone completely around the bend, as Newkirk would have put it, but he hadn't. No, sir, he had it all under control. It was fantastic—although it was a bit scary to watch his mind work sometimes.

CM: Let's back up. What did you do when you were in the camp?

AC: Have you ever heard of Papa Bear, Charlie?

CM: You mean like from Goldilocks and the Three Bears? Yeah, I've heard of that.

AC: Have you heard of it in connection with the war?

CM (thinking): Not a lot. I remember Dad said something about it once, that there was some secret operation that was just declassified a few years ago. Something about sabotage, or espionage, or something like that. Hey, are you saying that was you?

AC: No, I wasn't Papa Bear.

CM: But you knew him? Was Colonel Hogan Papa Bear? Were you in the spy business, Mr. Carter?

AC: Well, I didn't set out to be. Demolitions were more up my alley.

CM: Man, I can't believe that! You? A spy? I am gonna have to come back to this! (Pause as CM scribbles notes. Then, reluctantly) Okay, let me go back to the beginning. Tell me about the people. What were the people like in the Stalag?

AC: Well, the prisoners were a pretty good bunch, they sure were. We were a mixed lot but we all got along pretty well. I think the Colonel would have had our heads if we didn't. I was in Barracks Two with fourteen other guys including Colonel Hogan, but he had his own room because he was the senior officer. But I was always closest to Louis, Peter, Kinch, and the Colonel.

CM: What made your friendship work?

AC: A common problem, maybe. I mean unless something changed, we were stuck there till the end of the war. There was no way the Germans were just gonna let us walk out any time we wanted to. And even though we went out and in a lot, we were still prisoners, and we knew we could be out of business at any time, or be shot, or both, and that wasn't going to go over well. So we always looked out for each other.

CM: You "went in and out a lot"?

AC (surprised): Yeah. We had a lot of work to do. Anyway, I think the key was that we really respected each other. We were all completely different. We all had different skills. Newkirk—Peter—he was really worldly. He's English, you know. RAF. And he could come up with anything you needed, any time. Heck, once he even knew where to find someone who could break into a safe that we didn't think anyone could get into! And a card shark, that was Newkirk. Usually played with a card stuck to his forehead facing out. I'm still not sure why, but he almost always won anyway, except when he was playing with me, and I could never actually catch him cheating, even though everyone said he did.

Louis Le Beau was our chef. He was French. You know, as you'd expect with a name like Le Beau. He was really passionate about everything, especially France and women. And he was really loyal to us, especially to the Colonel. He understood how all of us thought. And he was the best cook ever, even though once in awhile he came up with some really strange concoctions that I couldn't swallow. But he used his cooking to help confuse the Germans, and that was great. We always knew we could count on Louis.

Kinch was our radio operator. I don't think he looked forward to sitting in front of the equipment all the time, but he was great at it, and besides, it was really hard for him to pretend to be a German when we were doing jobs because he was black, and there aren't a lot of black Germans. At least there weren't at the time.

And the Colonel—well, I've already explained him. He was one of a kind. He trusted all of us with his life, and we trusted him, too. He put a lot of faith in us, and let me tell you, not one of us ever wanted to let him down. No, siree, boy, he was the best.

CM: What about the Nazis?

AC: At the Stalag?

CM: Yeah.

AC: The Stalags were run by the Luftwaffe, and they weren't automatically Nazis. The Sergeant of the Guard, Sergeant Schultz, well, he was hardly even German! I mean you could almost think of Schultz as a friend. I sometimes wonder how he is. And Colonel Klink—he was the Kommandant of the camp—well, he was kind of a marshmallow. But he tried to act tough when the big boys were around—Generals, or the Gestapo. Especially the Gestapo. Everyone was afraid of them.

CM: You, too?

AC: Oh, sure. We'd seen first hand what they could do. They'd dragged the Colonel out more than once. Major Hochstetter, he was a maniac. Anything he wanted to say, he used his fists and whatever other weapons of torture were at his disposal to say it for him. One time, right at the end… (pause) well, we were lucky to get the Colonel back alive.

CM: You still sound upset about it.

AC (pauses): Yeah.

(Long pause.)

CM: Do you ever see these men?

AC: The fellas? Sure. I mean once in awhile. I don't get to travel as much as I'd like. It's not the same as it was back then, of course—and none of us are in the service any more. Not even the Colonel. And I can't stop calling him Colonel Hogan, even though he was promoted when we got home. And when he told me to start calling him Rob, I still couldn't do it. Some things are just ingrained.

CM: Tell me how you ended up as a POW.

AC: Typical stuff, I'm afraid. I mean nothing very exciting. I was just unlucky enough to get shot down over Germany.

CM: What was that like?

AC: It was scary. It was night time, and I don't mind night time except that when you're in enemy territory and you've got nothing but yourself and your parachute, you can't tell what's around you or where you are and you feel really vulnerable.

CM: Can you tell me what happened?

AC: It was really, really dark the night I was shot down. I remember being pretty happy because my parachute worked. That was one thing I was a little worried about, to be honest. Because aside from the training sessions, I hadn't spent much time in the air, and I wasn't really graceful in parachute training. It wasn't something I wanted to do or anything, but it was where my draft board put me. I was in a C-47 Skytrain—we called it a Gooney Bird. Even though it was used to carry paratroopers and other personnel to combat positions, it was also used in reconnaissance, and that was my job. I took the pictures. I always did love cameras, and I sure had a lot of use for that hobby while I was a prisoner. In camp, once in awhile things went wrong—the film was exposed, or I forgot to put it in the camera altogether. But that didn't happen when I was in the air, boy. Everything went smooth as silk, till the Germans shot us down, that is.

CM: The C-47. Aren't they using those planes now, in Vietnam?

AC: I think so. Brilliant aircraft, if you like that sort of thing. Been through three wars now. There must be something good about it. Either that or we just can't keep our noses out of war.

CM: So what happened—you bailed out and then what?

AC: Well like I said, I was happy about my parachute, but that was about it. The sky around me was loaded with flak—that's shrapnel from shells exploding in the air, shot up from Ack-Ack guns—you know, anti-aircraft guns. And a fella could get killed hopping out in the middle of it. But it was either jump and take a chance on dying or stay in a useless plane and guarantee it. So I wished the other fellas onboard good luck and we all beat it out of there—fast.

CM: Did they survive the war, too?

AC: All but one. Alan Pretty died in a camp. He got some kind of infection and they didn't have enough antibiotics to go around. (Pause) We were lucky. We could usually get what we needed from London. Colonel Hogan made sure we were well supplied as often as possible.

CM: From London—you mean the Red Cross?

AC: No, Allied High Command. Colonel Hogan would have Kinch radio London and tell them what we needed.

CM: Okay, I'm going to have to get off track here, Mr. Carter, because you're saying things that I don't understand. You've mentioned cameras, radios, London—what was going on there? I thought all that wasn't allowed.

AC: It wasn't. We did it all in secret. Most POWs were involved in one sort of clandestine activity or another—building tunnels, getting radios, whatever. We just did more than most.

CM: But radios—requests for medicine—it all sounds too wild.

AC: Okay, let me spell it out. Colonel Hogan was in charge of a sabotage and intelligence operation that we ran out of the tunnels under the camp. The way I was told, after he was shot down, London thought it would be great to have a man on the inside, working against the Nazis and feeding information back when possible. Colonel Hogan agreed. And that's how it started. I got to camp a few months later.

CM: So Colonel Hogan was Papa Bear! And so you spent the war…

AC: Blowing up bridges, getting escaped prisoners and other fellas out of Germany, gathering information for the Allies to help in the war effort…

CM: You were a spy?

AC (laughs): I'm no James Bond. But we did our fair share of intelligence work.

CM: Did you ever nearly get caught?

AC: All the time. But it was part of the job, and Colonel Hogan was really smart; he could talk or scheme us out of almost anything.

CM: What's the most dangerous thing you ever did?

AC: Join Colonel Hogan in the first place (laughs). Well, gee, I don't know. I think it might have been the times I had to dress up in German uniform and go into Gestapo Headquarters.

CM: What?

AC: Or maybe it was more dangerous pretending to be Hitler. (laughs) Don't get that look on your face; I was only pretending. (Brushes hair forward and lays finger under his nose) "I hate Generals! Zey are all incompetent fools!" (laughs) I haven't done that in a long time. Kinch always did the best Hitler, though, if we were only imitating his voice. Oh, and once I had to join the German Army.

CM: This is unbelievable, Mr. Carter!

AC: I never felt like I was in danger when I was working with my explosives, though.

CM: Explosives?

AC: We had a lab under the barracks, and Colonel Hogan left me in charge whenever we needed to blow something up, or create a diversion with smoke bombs, or something like that.

CM: Oh, man.

AC: He trusted me. I'll never be able to thank him enough for that. I was such a greenhorn when I got to camp. I didn't feel confident in anything, especially myself. Colonel Hogan was a great commander, though. He gave me the chance to prove myself. I'll never forget it.

CM: So you weren't always sure of yourself when you were doing this stuff.

AC: Oh, no, not at all. I was just a kid when I got shot down. Left my girl waiting for me back home, and just naïve enough to think maybe I'd serve for a few months and it would all be over.

CM: Your girl—is that Mrs. Carter?

AC: Elise? No. She came after I got home. Not a lot of relationships can go for two and a half years with no contact except letters full of holes. But it turned out for the better—I'd have never gotten Elise if Mary Jane had been faithful.

CM: I guess so. You were all pretty young, I suppose.

AC: Yeah. I was just an innocent abroad. But the Colonel and the others—they looked after me. Like I said before, we all looked after each other. We were a family.

CM: It sounds like you came and went as you pleased, and yet you said the Germans wouldn't allow that. How did you do it?

AC: It wasn't that easy. Remember, to everyone but us, we were just normal prisoners of war. We had to go to roll calls and get deloused every week, and all that. But when we went out, most of the time we used tunnels. And a few other ingenious ways, like hiding in the back of German staff cars and bailing out when the time was right.

CM: But you always came back. Why didn't you escape, too?

AC: It was our job. That was our assignment. We volunteered to stay. One time I almost went, though…

CM: What stopped you?

AC (pause): I guess I knew what I was doing was the right thing. And the Colonel was counting on me.

CM: Did he ever order you to stay?

AC: No. He knew we were all doing dangerous work. He never would have left himself, even though I know he was tempted, but he never forced us to stay. He said we were volunteers and we could leave whenever we wanted to, as long as it wouldn't endanger the others. He used to give us the chance to back out of really dangerous assignments, too, without losing our dignity or his respect.

CM: And did you?

AC: I sure wanted to sometimes… but no.

CM: What was it? Pride? Thought you'd lose face anyway?

AC: No, I think it was loyalty. And pride, but not the way you mean it. If the Colonel needed a demolition man, it was going to be me. Maybe I didn't want the fellas' lives in anyone else's hands if incendiaries were involved.