John Katzenbach: Hart’s War

Then she lifted her eyes to his and broke into a great, wide smile of utter recognition.

"Mr. Hart," she said melodically, a singer's vibrant voice, "I am so honored that you came. Lincoln would have been ever so pleased."

"I wish," Tommy started, stopped, then started again, "I wish that he and I…"

But he was interrupted by the widow's eyes, which glistened with an unabashed joy.

"Do you know what he used to tell his family, Mr. Hart?"

"No," Tommy replied softly.

"He used to say-that you were the single greatest friend he had ever had. Not really the best, you see. Perhaps I fit that category. But the greatest, Mr. Hart."

Lincoln Scott's widow would not release Tommy's hand.

But she turned to the gathered children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, that were arrayed on the steps beside and behind her. Tommy looked over at the faces, all of whom were turned toward him, all wearing some curiosity, some solemnity, and perhaps, among the very young, just a little eagerness to have things move along. But even the little ones who were fidgety quieted rapidly when the widow spoke.

"Gather round," she told them all, her voice suddenly carrying an authority that went far beyond her tiny figure.

"Because this is someone you must all meet. Everyone: This is Mr. Tommy Hart. Children, he was the man who stepped up to help your grandfather when he was all alone in the German prisoner-of-war camp.

You've all heard him tell the story many times, but here is the very man that Grandfather spoke of so often."

Tommy could feel words choking in his throat.

"In the war," he said quietly, "it was your husband who saved my life."

But the widow shook her head back and forth like the schoolteacher she once was, as if she were correcting a favorite but mischievous student.

"No, Mr. Hart. You are mistaken. Lincoln always said it was you who saved him." She smiled.

"Now children," she added briskly, "come up quickly." And with that, the first of Lincoln Scott's sons stepped forward, took Tommy's hand out from his mother's strong grip and pumped it firmly as he murmured, "Thank you, Mr. Hart." Then, one after the other, from the tallest and oldest right down to a tiny baby held in his young mother's arms, Lincoln Scott's family moved to the front of the cathedral steps and Tommy Hart shook hands with each and every one.

My father was three months into his junior year at Princeton University when Pearl Harbor was bombed. Like so many other men of his generation, he promptly enlisted, and slightly over one year later was navigating a B-25 Mitchell bomber above the waters near Sicily. Green Eyes was shot down in February 1943 after skip-bombing a German convoy seeking to reinforce Rommel's Afrika Korps. My father, and the other men in Green Eyes, were plucked from the ocean by the Germans. They initially spent some weeks at an Italian POW camp in Chieti, before being shipped on boxcars to Stalag Luft Three, near the Polish border in Sagan, Germany.

That was where he spent almost the entirety of the war. On a prominent bookshelf in his home, occupying a spot of some respect, is a first edition copy of David Westheimer's classic adventure novel of escaping prisoners, Von Ryan’s Express. It is simply and affectionately inscribed by the onetime kriegie author: "Dear Nick… If only it had been like this…"

When I was growing up, my father's experiences in the POW camp were not often discussed in our household. No talk about starvation rations, deprivation, freezing cold, crippling fear, and ever-present tedium.

The only real detail of his imprisonment and the hardships he underwent that we were told about as children was how he had managed to obtain all the books he would need for his junior and senior years at Princeton from the YMCA organization. He studied these, replicating the courses he would have taken were he still a student, and upon his return to the States, persuaded the university to allow him to take two years' worth of exams in six weeks, so that he could graduate on time, with his class. What my father did, remarkable as it was, took on a sort of mythic value in our household. The lesson was simple: An opportunity could be created out of any situation, no matter how harsh.

It was that opportunity that he seized back in 1943 that eventually became the inspiration for Hart's War. But, that acknowledgment aside, it is important to note that the characters, the situation, and the plot of the novel are mine alone.

While I have spent considerable time over the past eighteen months peppering my father with questions about his experiences, seeking accuracy and verisimilitude, the ultimate responsibility for what is described on the pages of the novel is mine. The world of my fictional Stalag Luft Thirteen is a composite of several camps. The events that form the novel, while grounded in the realities of the POW experience, are inventions. The officers, both German and Allied, that are collected on these pages are not directly based on any real men, living or dead. Any resemblances to actual persons is unintended.

Some thirty-two Tuskegee airmen were shot down and captured by the Germans during the war. As best as I can determine, none experienced the sort of ostracism and racism that Lincoln Scott does. The worst of the prejudice they faced was back in the States. There is an excellent book. Black Wings, which describes how these exceptional men broke the color barrier in the army air corps. There is also a small, but deserved, exhibit about them at the Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. It is one of the ironies of racism that by the time the Tuskegee men managed to overcome the exceedingly rigid standards demanded of them, they had become some of the finest pilots and fighters in the entire air corps.

The Tuskegee men ended up flying more than fifteen hundred combat sorties over Europe. And it is one of the more delicious facts of war that they, indeed, never lost a bomber they were escorting to enemy action. Not a one. But not without cost. To maintain this pristine record, more than sixty of these young men sacrificed their lives.

There are a number of fine works about the kriegie experience.

Lewis Carlson's We Were Each Other's Prisoners is a fascinating collection of oral histories. Arthur Durand's history of Stalag Luft Three is complete. David Westheimer's Sitting It Out is a detailed and elegant memoir of his time in the camps. (I borrowed the slightly risque words to "Cats on the Roof" from this estimable book.)

Once, while talking with my father-I think we were discussing fear and food, two subjects that had more in common than one might initially believe-he suddenly mused, "You know, being in that camp was probably one of the most important things that ever happened to me. It probably changed my life." Given what he has accomplished over the arc of his years, I suppose one could argue that whatever changes came about within him because of his war experience, they were for the best. But that is an observation that might well be true for an entire generation of men and women.

Sometimes I think we live in a world so obsessively devoted to looking forward that it frequently forgets to take the time to look back. But some of our best stories reside in our wake, and, I suspect, no matter how harsh these stories are, they help tell us much about where we are heading.

John Katzenbach has been a criminal court reporter for The Miami Herald and Miami News and a featured writer for the Herald's Tropic magazine. He lives in western Massachusetts.