Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany by Miller Donald L

Author:Miller, Donald L. [Miller, Donald L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2006-10-10T00:00:00+00:00

Alpine Internment

Within an hour after touching down in Switzerland, Culler’s crew and other American crews that landed at Dubendorf that afternoon were taken by armed guards to a large auditorium, where they were briefed by Swiss officials on the conditions of their confinement. They would be taken by train later that day, they were told, to a special camp in an isolated area in the center of the country where they would be quarantined for two weeks and then kept under guard for the remainder of the war. They would be granted liberties, but anyone leaving the confined area without permission would be hunted down and sent to a penitentiary camp. Swiss soldiers were under orders to fire at internees attempting to escape if they failed to heed a “Halt!” order. Since Switzerland was a nonbelligerent, the airmen were not considered either prisoners of war or evaders; having entered the country armed and willingly, they were classified as internees. Yet in almost every respect they were treated like prisoners of war, although they were denied many of the rights granted to POWs under the terms of the Geneva Accords.

Seeing an American general sitting on the stage next to Swiss officials conducting the briefing in the auditorium at Dubendorf must have encouraged the captured airmen. Surely this was a charade; they were expensively trained American warriors and their country had people here who would make sure they got back to their squadrons and into the fight again. But General Legge, a corpulent World War I cavalry officer who dressed in jodhpurs and knee-high leather riding boots, concluded the briefing with a stern warning. Men imprisoned for attempting to escape would have no appeal to either the American consulate or the American military attaché; they would be under Swiss law. The internees would be treated well and should exercise patience, said Legge. The war would be over soon and they would be repatriated. Listening intently, Daniel Culler was confused. The general’s warning conflicted with instructions he had received back in England that captured airmen had a duty to try to escape and return to their units. “To my mind, even though they called us internees in a neutral country, the fact that they held us here at gunpoint made us prisoners,” Culler wrote years later.

Sergeant Culler’s crew was taken to the main American internment camp at Adelboden, a vacant summer resort thirty miles northeast of Lake Geneva. A single winding road led from the railroad depot at Frutigen to Adelboden. The camp commandant, a blond, blue-eyed officer who reminded Culler of every SS man he had seen in the movies, separated the officers from the enlisted men and assigned each group its quarters. The men were put up in stripped-down resort hotels, where they were kept under constant surveillance. They were treated well, although conditions were far from ideal. The entire country was under strict rationing. Hot water, a luxury in wartime Switzerland, was turned on once every ten days, and then for only a few hours.

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