The American Spectator

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The airmen did hear that there was another group of Allied personnel (parachutistes, they were called, because they were special operations forces flown or parachuted into occupied France) in another section of the camp. There were 37 of these parachutistes, mostly British and French, including Pierre Mulsant, who met briefly with Lt. Allen when he was cooped up in Colette Florin's rooms.

Mulsant, along with his British wireless operator, were arrested while trying to find some British SAS forces that they had heard had been dropped into their zone, and needed assistance. Mulsant was beaten and tortured for days. Among other injuries, Mulsant had both his shoulders separated. He finally gave his SS captors some old and useless information. He was then allowed to eat for the first time in days as he was further questioned by a more polite official who indicated that he would be treated as a POW and accorded the protections of the Geneva Conventions (though he obviously had not been to this point). Though not in uniform, Mulsant was, technically, a British officer. Most members of the French resistance, after being tortured for information, were summarily executed.

Mulsant then endured his own horrific train journey to Buchenwald. Any hope the parachutistes had that they might be transferred to a POW camp was dashed when they learned that 16 members of their group taken away a few days prior had been beaten and hanged by the SS. On October 5, 1944, Pierre Mulsant, his wireless operator, Denis Barrett, and eight other parachutistes were executed by firing squad at Buchenwald. Five of the 37 parachutistes would survive the war.

THOUGH TOO LATE FOR SOME of the Allied airmen who died at Buchenwald, in mid-October the Luftwaffe finally got around to transferring the remaining airmen out of the SS's control at Buchenwald and to a Luftwaffe POW camp. Allen at the time was in the notorious Buchenwald infirmary (which had no medicine, and the head doctor's main job was to determine each day which patients should be killed) and had to wait several weeks for his transfer.

The Luftwaffe camp outside of Sagan (now in western Poland) was known as Stalag Luft III. Earlier in 1944 a group from one of the compounds at Stalag Luft III made a breakout made famous by the film The Great Escape. When Allen, who stood over 6 feet tall, checked into the camp he weighed 110 pounds. The barracks were almost clean, the food, though only moderately better in both quality and quantity than what was at Buchenwald, was supplemented by regular shipments from the Red Cross, and the Luftwaffe captors had a military honor and humanity missing in their SS counterparts.

The relative paradise at Stalag Luft III, however, would be short lived. With the Soviet army closing in, the POWs made a 60-mile forced march in the snow and freezing temperatures to a rail yard in Spremberg for another train trip to another POW camp outside of Nuremberg, and then to another outside of Moosburg where the American Third Army finally liberated them on April 29, 1945.

Childers' tale is well written, engrossing, and important. It's worth buying and reading, even if you can't find it on sale.

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Books, Military, Russia