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

Author:Donald L. Miller [Miller, Donald L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2006-10-09T21:00:00+00:00

The Black Hole of Wauwilermoos

Daniel Culler feared the unknown. Growing up in insular Syracuse, Indiana, he had never wandered more than thirty miles from home. Yet now all he could think about was escaping into the unknown to “rejoin the fight against . . . oppression.” His patriotism was so ardent it seems, in retrospect, contrived. But in shedding his Quaker beliefs to kill for his country, he believed that he had given up any chance of entering heaven. His only hope for the hereafter was that God had created a special place, short of heaven but far from hell, for those who committed licensed murder for a clean cause.

The first time Culler escaped, in May 1944, he and two companions got lost and nearly died of exposure in the mountain forests along the Italian border. In excruciating pain from the bleeding scabs on his feet, and so sick from accidentally eating poisoned berries that he could barely walk, Culler returned, by himself, to Adelboden on the same train that he and his companions had taken south to Bellinzona, the largest city on the Italian border. “The most amazing part of my escape was that I had traveled more than five hundred miles on the Swiss public transportation system, and not one time was I ever questioned or asked for any identification.” One of the reasons was that he had been passing through the Italian, not the German section of the country, where the police were more vigilant. A report from the Swiss Commission of Internees and Hospitalization, issued after the war, offered an additional explanation. “We did everything we could to prevent the escape of internees. Unfortunately, our efforts were hampered by the fact that a large part of the population felt honor bound to help internees escape in any possible manner.”

After reporting to the commandant of Adelboden, Dan Culler was sentenced to ten days’ solitary confinement in the Frutigen jail. His companions, he learned later, were caught by Swiss border guards and imprisoned. After serving his sentence, Culler was taken to a high-security punishment prison called Straflager Wauwilermoos or, in English, “punishment camp at the swamp of Wauwil,” a village near Lucerne. Culler was never told why he was sent there, or for how long. As he passed through the gates of the prison, his military guard whispered to him. “I’m sorry to bring you to this hellhole. Watch your every step. There are some awful men in here, and you are so young.”

Wauwilermoos was a closely packed compound of mud-splattered barracks surrounded by a high barbed wire fence and patrolled by guards with machine guns and attack dogs. Built in 1941, it was a disciplinary camp for lawbreakers and escapees among Switzerland’s ballooning population of military internees from nearly a dozen countries. To run it, Swiss authorities could not have chosen a more odious character. Capt. André-Henri Beguin, a former officer in the French Foreign Legion, was as corrupt as he was cruel. At the time, he

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