My Odyssey Thru Hell

By Hans Gruber

Discover what it takes to survive the worst life has to offer. Hans Gruber's life defines the term, "survival of the fittest". Strategically utilizing every ounce of his physical and mental capacity, Hans perseveres through: a chaotic, dysfunctional childhood; the horrors of war; seven years of abuse as a Russian POW; and the trials and tribulations of immigration. His stamina, courage, and ingenuity enable him to overcome the forces of evil confronting him in the form of Nazism, Communism, and the occult.

Hans' journey spans eighty-nine years from 1924 to the present, and it represents a microcosm of the aftermath of WWI and WWII. The U.S.A. is a nation of immigrants, a melting pot of ethnicity, and a composition of its parts. Hans Gruber's life is a small, unique component of that composition, but all Americans can enjoy my Odyssey thru Hell because it depicts one man's triumphant quest against all odds to live the American Dream.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jul 19, 2013
• ISBN: 9781481774314

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2013 Hans Gruber. All rights reserved. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 7/18/2013

ISBN: 978-1-4817-7429-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4817-7430-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4817-7431-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013912112

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreward

Introduction

Preface

Prelude

Chapter I   In Enemy Hands—October 1943

Chapter II   Prison Camp—1943-1944

Chapter III   Specialist—1944

Chapter IV   Apples—1945

Chapter V   No Hope—1945

Chapter VI   Studebaker Trucks—1045-1948

Chapter VII   Pawnbroker—1948

Chapter VIII   The Perfect Student (1949-1950)

Chapter IX   The Train to Freedom—Spring 1950

Epilogue

Footnotes

About the Editor/Biographer

FOREWARD

M ARVELING AT AND enjoying the skills of good writers prompted me to major in English and eventually attain a high school teaching position in that field. As a result, countless days and nights have been spent editing papers with the hope of improving students’ command of the English language. So, the assignment of editing the autobiography, my Odyssey thru Hell , may be larger in scale but is not foreign to me. I have always wanted to play a part in writing an exciting book but never became inspired enough to set time aside to accomplish such a feat. Now that I am retired, I have the time. Just recently, I found the inspiration. It started with a random meeting between the author and me.

The now eighty-nine-year-old author, who uses the pseudonym, Hans Gruber, owns a small island harboring his summer home in Lake Nippissing, Canada. One evening he took his wife, Bridgett, out to eat at the clubhouse of Camp Shuswap located on the shoreline of the lake. The elderly couple, over a steak dinner, was having a discussion in their native dialect, German. The Baughman brothers (Lanny, Mick, and Joe) and a friend nicknamed Mules had invited me on a fishing trip to Lake Nippissing, and all of us, by chance, entered the same restaurant. Having German ancestry and still maintaining ties with my German relatives, I was intrigued upon hearing Deutsch being spoken. So, I went over to the elderly couple’s table and greeted them with a, Wie geht es ihnen heute? That was all it took to start a relationship.

Joe Baughman and Mules already had a longstanding friendship with the author and spent the rest of the night socializing on his island affectionately titled Drunken Island due to its renown hospitality. The next morning Joe Baughman gave me a copy of the author’s memoirs about his experiences as a German army soldier during WWII. The author wanted us to read it. I became fascinated and enthralled with the material and strongly empathetic with the author’s plight. My German grandfather on my mother’s side, Joseph Langle, had fought for the German army in WWI. Like the author of my Odyssey thru Hell, he had endured many abusive years as a POW (six years in a French concentration camp). He died at the age of fifty-two (before I was born) from stomach cancer, a direct result of his diet during his incarceration. He never revealed the details of his experiences publicly. I feel that I was destined to do it for him. Through my editing of my Odyssey thru Hell, I hope to enrich (without changing the autobiographical facts) the American public’s discovery of what kind of amazing men survived such a nightmarish journey. As far as my research has taken me, this is the only account about the Russian Gulag written by a German soldier. Due to: most of the estimated over 1,000,000 German POWs in Russia dying before their release, the vast majority of the approximately 6,000 that were released dying shortly after their release, five out of every six being released to East Germany under Soviet control, and the few that survived making it back to West Germany and immigrating to the U.S., there was only a handful to tell the story. Before you begin this reading journey, here’s a warning. It’s a gut-wrenching trip!

Editor/Biographer, T.J. Riegle

INTRODUCTION

S INCE THE BEGINNING of mankind, good and evil have been basic ingredients of homosapiens. When the evil side dominates, the good side will arise and ultimately triumph. I had the misfortune to be born and raised in a turbulent time and place where the evil side had taken hold of the government and people via the usual means of indoctrination and lies. It provoked hatred, violence, and ultimately war.

Like millions of others, I became a brainwashed young soldier ready to fight and die for the ideas of an unscrupulous lunatic. Ending up on the Eastern (Russian) Front and after several months in frontline battles, I was listed as Fallen for the Fuhrer and Fatherland; such was the message my parents received from the German army in October 1943. Destiny, however, had other things in-store for me. Wounded and unconscious, I was taken into captivity where the survival rate was equal to that on the frontline. Here is where my Odyssey begins.

At this point, I would like to express my deepest gratitude and appreciation to my dear relatives, who with never-tiring support and persistence encouraged me to write about my POW experience. As I do not expect any praises of rewards for my memoirs, I dedicate this book to the memory of the hundreds of thousands (perhaps millions) who never made it out of Hell and simply perished namelessly. In sympathy for and in honor of my perished comrades, I also remain nameless.

Hans Gruber

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at age 19

PREFACE

B OTH ODYSSEUS AND Hans have much in common. Taking many dangerous but necessary risks, they used their native intelligence and cunning to survive. Their stories are told without self-pity or pathos. The drama of their encounters with danger speaks for itself. Finally, their combination of courage, ingenuity, and daring are the ingredients of a self-reliant person who faces up to supreme challenges.

Yet, there is a tragic difference between the two. Odysseus was a free man; Hans was a prisoner. The odyssey tells of high adventure, romantic encounters, harrowing escapes, and finally the triumphant return of the conquering hero. Many have wished they could have joined Odysseus in his glorious adventures. No one would have wanted to join Hans in his brutal struggle to stay alive.

Hans represents millions of unknown POWs who have had, through the centuries, no choice but to suffer as captives at the hands of their enemies. Their struggle against brutal treatment, starvation, disease, and death goes on and on. Their stories of endurance and survival contain no glory and are mostly untold. After years of silence, Hans has been willing with the encouragement of his family, to record his story. In his struggle, we view the human spirit fighting to survive against overwhelming odds. In his situation, it was easy to give up; it was so difficult to prevail. Excessive labor and insufficient food mean death. He was able to beat the system and survive by being constantly alert to new opportunities and dangers. Picture yourself in Hans’ shoes at age nineteen. Would you have made it?

Colonel William A. Fall

(Bridgett’s cousin and U.S. bomber pilot in Viet Nam)

PRELUDE

F OR MANY PEOPLE growing up is a process of surviving trials and errors of curiosity, and then, through gained experience, of wisely leaving many childhood fantasies unrealized. Only a few are stubbornly determined to act out all of their fantasies. I was one of the few. Being born in 1924 (about five years after the First World War) my life straddled several geo-political changes that bore a full array of poverty, brutality, drama, misdirected energy, rebellious behavior, and a heaped portion of youthful stupidity. Add to the volatile mix my mother’s four marriages and her occult activities (She and her father performed séances and fortune telling.), and my childhood can best be summed up with two words—chaotic and dysfunctional.

My mother divorced my biological father after two short years of marriage. He was liable for my financing until age 16, but he had no visitation rights and didn’t care. Without the consistent nurturing and disciplining of a good father figure, it seemed I had been abandoned to determine my own boundaries from the very beginning. Although my subsequent two step-fathers treated me lovingly and influenced me in positive ways, none of them could curtail my penchant for vandalism, theft, violence, and other various forms of juvenile delinquency.

Any childhood cohort who hung around with me ran the risk of: sustaining personal injury, causing property damage, stealing objects, or attaining an arrest record. They sustained several casualties, and some wore their scars permanently. Experiments with explosives blew off some fingers and hands, playing in forbidden areas amputated some toes, stealing a boat produced front page headlines, and a camping excursion gone awry started a forest fire to name a few. After each rampage, my intent was always to repent from my evil ways, but my genetic legacy was seemingly resisting those futile efforts. My biological father had been committed by his parents to a correctional institution for unruly children from age eleven to seventeen. Eventually I learned that my biological father, by the age of twenty-six, had become a highly successful businessman, but until then I thought I was destined to be lost and out of control just like him.

At first, during adolescence, I hoped I could channel all of my misdirected energy into physical labor and that would wear me out and damper any restlessness. After trying out some physically intense jobs such as: bricklayer, sailor, and blacksmith, my aching body finally convinced me that maybe I would be better off using my mental capacities instead. So, I focused on studying an architectural engineering booklet I had purchased on my own. My stressed-out mother and step-father were relieved and elated by that decision and gladly hired a retired professor to tutor me in that field to help me pass my university entrance exam. Perhaps in the eyes of my friends, peers, and relatives, I had undergone a paranormal transformation from a dumb, non-conforming brat to an educated college student over night. However, it took the sober reality of being drafted into a world war and enduring its aftermath to rehabilitate me and transform me completely into the determined, productive member of society that I am today. Here is my account of that harrowing journey…

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Chapter 1

IN ENEMY HANDS—OCTOBER 1943

S TRANGELY, I WAS quite confused and had doubts about the very state of my existence. Darkness and a pounding headache were the first indications that I was even capable of assessing my possible future. So, was this it—the Hell Hole? Due to the nature of the beast (the inevitable atrocities associated with war committed by highly trained and brainwashed human killing machines like me), I believed that no combat soldier would ever ascend to Heaven. Imaginary or real, I automatically assumed theoretically that I was currently either burning in Biblical Hell, or I was still surviving this Hell on Earth. Probing my immediate surroundings, I suddenly realized I was not alone. My limbs seemed to work… So, after blindly stretching them in different directions into the darkness, I felt some lifeless, soft, fleshy surfaces next to and below me. Then a memory flashed, and I slowly began regaining bits and pieces about the state of events that had occurred before I had lost consciousness.

I was a soldier in the German army deployed at the Southern Front in Russia near the town of Kertch in the Crimean Peninsula. After falling back from the Kuban bridgehead in the city of Novorosiysk and finding shelter, I was rudely awakened by artillery fire and a scream of alarm from my platoon leader, Ivan (the name referring to many previous Russian monarchs including Ivan The Terrible, the first czar) is coming! Everybody (about 30 soldiers) scrambled for their gear in the still-dark morning within the two rooms of a partially destroyed adobe brick house.

I had slept with my Russian-captured machine gun and 180 rounds of ammunition and arose in the usual hurry preparing for another day of slaughter. Unfortunately, however, our steel helmets were clustered around the neatly stacked pyramid of K-98 rifles in a far corner of the room. By the time I got to the helmets, there were only two left. Neither of them was large enough to cover my head. Someone else had grabbed my helmet! That suited me just fine anyway because I thought helmets were a big nuisance and unnecessary. Besides, nothing could happen to me. I carried my grandfather’s special black-magic letter (a letter inspired by ancient mystical writings from the 7th and 8th Book of Moses) that protected me from fire, bullets, and sickness.

With the evil intent of a warrior to fight and kill the enemy, I rushed out into the approaching dawn of the morning and was abruptly greeted by heavy machine gun and mortar fire from the attacking Ivan. We utilized some superior German MG-42 machine guns that quickly made short life of the enemy attack and many of its soldiers. As usual, we re-grouped for an immediate counterattack and proceeded to pursue the remaining, retreating Russians. However, we suddenly encountered heavy artillery and howitzer fire that was coming from three different directions and exploding into the retreating Russian troops. It appeared that we had been lured into a trap! Suffering immense casualties, whoever survived had run for their lives amidst heavy artillery barrages.

I had learned to recognize the sounds of war and instinctively knew that as long as I could hear the whistling sound of a grenade flying by, it wouldn’t harm me. Ironically, I fell victim to one with an undetected whistle that detonated nearby. The explosion was the last sound I heard, and it was quickly followed by a jolt to my unprotected head. After that—nothing…

The lingering odor of decomposing flesh and drying blood acted like smelling salts to awaken my senses, but it also provoked an eerie feeling of being entombed alive. I had been thrown into a shallow mass grave to be burned/buried and covered with rubble. I had witnessed such burials