From Hitler Youth to American Soldier: A Prisoner of Hope

Copyright © 2012 Herb Flemming

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ISBN: 978-1-4497-3581-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4497-3582-1 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4497-3580-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011963677

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WestBow Press rev. date: 02/10/2012

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Author’s Note

Foreword

Introduction

Prisoners of Hope

1

Escape from Pillau

2

Around Rothenen

3

The War Starts

4

The Early Days

5

Images

6

Retreat!

7

First Flight

8

The In-Between Time

9

Final Flight

10

The Lotringen

11

The Train Ride

12

Jork

13

The English

14

Frau Schmidt

15

Jork Again

16

Papa

17

Emigration

18

America!

19

Full Circle

20

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Timothy King, who actually wrote my story, and his wife Tammy, who transcribed most of our interview tapes, for all their labor in putting this work together. Without them, this book never would have been written. I would like to thank my wife, Frieda, for her incredible patience during the five years it took to write my story. I would also like to thank Rudy Schaack and several other people who provided important details about their parts of the story.

I dedicate this book to my children and grandchildren. By reading it, I hope that they will better understand not only our family history, but also how God can work in their lives.

Author’s Note

Incidents that are marked with an asterisk probably did happen as I described; however, I don’t remember exactly these particular situations. There were many people who certainly did have what I described happen to them. I ask that you pardon my memory for any discrepancies that you may have noticed if you were there too and remember things differently from how I have written them. Thank you, and God bless you.

Foreword

The wonderful life stories of Herb Flemming and his family remind us there are authentic people who give us hope through their examples. Herb’s passion for God and his family affirm values which offer strength and protection for those who live in a threatening world culture.

This family provides a legacy of faith from one generation to the next, inspiring us to believe our future is brighter than our past. His stories cross cultures and continents while reminding us that our choices determine our providence. This incredible journey will warm your soul!

Larry Hickey

Pastor of First Assembly of God, Winchester, Virginia

Introduction

Prisoners of Hope

I am struck by the remarkable narrative of this author and the accompanying story of his family. Herbert Flemming, his parents, and his siblings have been held by the redemptive bonds of a divinely given hope evident throughout their lifetime. This book is more than a gripping saga of struggle, survival, and ultimate victory. It conveys a quintessential and timeless message for its readers.

The story is that of a young boy growing up in a tightly knit community situated on the Baltic Sea in East Prussia, before and during World War II, and then of the challenges to life and limb while his family were refugees after the war. The trail of Herb’s young life is traced through all the adventures which young and curious boys experience.

Herb had his older brother Karl, a cadre of friends and secret hiding places, Tom Sawyer-like haunts, and a host of personal discoveries to hold his inquisitive mind captive. He notes the bumps and bruises and lessons learned in his journey of growing up. Throughout all this there was also the strong, positive, parental influence of his father Otto and mother Maria. They were there with and for him in all his roller-coaster trip. It makes for exciting reading and has something to say to families of our current generation.

For Herb, the usual progression from innocent childhood to adolescence to young adulthood was brutally interrupted by World War II. As the end of the war drew near, the Russians drove ruthlessly and relentlessly westward, and Herb’s hometown was in the direct path of their bloody fury. The slow pace of life in his quiet village suddenly turned tumultuous as refugees and soldiers and then the fighting itself descended upon them. Herb’s family left home in a harrowing but divinely protected exodus to the relative safety of northern Germany. As one reads the story, the evidence of divine Providence is inescapable.

The telling of Herb’s life story is heartwarming. His separation from his family at age twelve so that he could work on a farm and relieve the burden on his mother tears at the heart. His search as a young man for truth and reality finds fulfillment when he makes Jesus Christ the Lord of his life. His hunger for a walk with God and his earnest seeking of God’s will for his life speak volumes to his integrity. God’s eventual provision of a life partner for him in the person of Fraulein Frieda Gatzke is touching and romantic.

Herb’s autobiography includes his experience of emigration to the United States of America, his return to Germany as a US soldier, and much more. But through all this, the power of his hope—a God-given gift—is overwhelming. It was as if Herb and his family were held captive by their hope through all their years of trial. Herb was indeed, a prisoner of hope.

The entire narrative brings us face to face with gnawing questions which are universal and as old as the human family. What are people looking for? Where are they conducting their search? When they think they’ve found it, do they recognize whether the answer is true? How do they take satisfaction and hope from that discovery?

These questions are not peculiar to a single culture. The Bible is filled with stories of people on such a quest. Among them was Solomon, fabled king of Israel. He prided himself on his works, wealth, wine, women, and wisdom. Yet having gained more than any of us could ever hope, he concluded Vanity, vanity, all is vanity and vexation of spirit. These universally sought goals turned out to be lighter than air.

There are some commodities in short supply in our world. The most needful and satisfying of these cannot be found in the big stores, the avant-garde shops, or on the Internet. When we talk about love, joy, peace, forgiveness, patience, and personal understanding, this world has only one major vendor. In order to find these commodities in abundance, we must turn to God Himself: our Creator, our eternal Father, and the worthy Architect of our future. This was the all-encompassing discovery made by Herb and his family. It is embodied in these simple yet profound words, God gives hope. The Bible reads in Hebrews 6:19, We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.

It was my privilege to serve as pastor to much of the Flemming family from 1957 to 1962, at the First Assembly of God church in Albany, New York. By this time, the four eldest children were married. Otto served much of that time on our church board, and we grew very close to the family.

We had many long conversations, the Flemmings and I. Otto went through a Job-like experience, having lost everything. He was a lay minister, a blacksmith, a forward observer in the military, and a commanding figure as a father and husband. He lost his church and his vital place of leadership in his small town. Worst of all, he lost his family after they fled by sea to Germany, and he was captured by the Russians. As a Russian POW, he was subjected to his captors’ political indoctrination classes, or brainwashing sessions. One of his most memorable quotes to me arose from those classes as they tried to foist their atheistic anti-God philosophy on him. Otto said with profound faith, God’s Word rose up in my soul, and my mind could not surrender. They had his body but not his mind, not his spirit, not his faith, and not his heart. He, too, was a prisoner of hope.

Maria Flemming was also a prisoner of hope. With unwavering faith, she shepherded her eight children, Hildegaard, Karl, Horst (Herb), Ruth, Marianne, Waltraut, Ursula, and Gerhardt, through their flight as refugees. She was carrying her ninth child, Ulrich, as she boarded the refugee ship and left her beloved Otto on the docks of Pillau. Ulrich was born very ill and had but a short life in their ultimate place of refuge. Through that, however, Maria never sacrificed her hope for Otto’s safe return—though it took nearly five years before she saw that hope fulfilled. She committed that sturdy faith to Herb, as well as to her other children.

I stood by Maria in the Albany Medical Center as she bade us farewell and slipped into heaven in 1959. Years later, I saluted Otto when God called him to his eternal home as well. Both were prisoners of hope. Could their voices be heard today, they would join their children and say to you who are still on your quest, Look to the primary Source! It is God who gives us hope!

And that is the heritage of Herb Flemming. What follows now is Herb’s life story, told in his own words. It is a remarkable story from a remarkable man. He makes himself open and vulnerable to you, as even now he is a prisoner of the hope that his testimony will help guide you to the Answer that you are seeking in your own quest.

Thank you.

Rev. Almon M. Bartholomew

Superintendent Emeritus

New York District

Assemblies of God

1

Escape from Pillau

The roads in Pillau were jammed. Wagon after wagon lined the streets, occasional sleds, automobiles, and army trucks mixed in. The wagons were piled high with people’s belongings—not just clothes and furniture but valuable items, too, like expensive paintings and boxes of jewels. But it was all abandoned by the side of the road. The people who owned these treasures fled toward the harbor. Others passed by the wagons, too, but they ignored what was there. They were completely focused on making it to the docks.

The road was impassable, and we had to leave our own wagon there as well. Ahead, someone’s wagon had overturned in the middle of the road, and the father and older son of that family were trying to get their horse under control. It kept rearing up, terrified at being confined and not understanding what was going on. Finally they cut the traces and let the horse go free. Dozens of other horses roamed around as well, their owners had already freed them. As we abandoned our own belongings, my father and his friend Oskar Audehm did this with our horses, too.

We joined the throng of people streaming down to the harbor. It wasn’t a panic—at least not yet. But no one was wasting any time either. The sky was bright with sunshine on this early February day in 1945, but no one was laughing or standing outside enjoying the sunshine. No one was selling fish or bread or anything else. No one was talking in pleasant tones—instead, what was said was hushed and urgent. In the distance, you could hear the whistling scream and reverberating thuds of the Russian artillery shells that were driving us on.

My father, Otto Flemming, and his friend Oskar were members of the local marine artillery unit, a part-time artillery battery on the coast of the Baltic Sea in East Prussia. Papa and Oskar were assigned to the squad that manned the observation post just south of Rothenen, where we lived. Their unit had fallen back into Pillau, along with most of the army, but they had persuaded their commander to let them return to Rothenen to get their families. Now, after rescuing us and taking us back to their headquarters on the outskirts of Pillau, their commander had assigned them a couple of young soldiers to help us. One of them, Kurt, knew the Pillau area. He was our guide and was helping us get down to the harbor to find the ship that hopefully would carry us and the other refugees to safety in north central Germany. The other soldier, Markus, was carrying Gerhardt, my youngest brother. Rumor had it the German navy was trying to evacuate the entire Samland pocket, so people were flocking to the coast to escape from the advancing Russian army.

Papa was growing frustrated with the impassable street. We picked our way back and forth between the wagons. Even keeping our footing was difficult because the cobblestones were covered with ice and the street was bowed in the middle, so water would run off into the gutters on the side of the road. Several wagons had crashed into each other, creating more roadblocks, and horses scrambled as their hooves slid out from under them on the ice. Finally, Papa asked Kurt if he knew a better way to get to the harbor. Kurt said he did and motioned for us to follow him.

We cut off to the left, taking a narrow side street, all twenty of us. Besides Markus and Kurt, there were my father and mother; my older siblings, Hildegaard and Karl; me; and my younger siblings—Ruth, Marianne, Waltraut, Ursula, and little Gerhardt. There were eight kids in the Flemming family, though there would soon be nine, since Mom, whose name was Maria, was eight months pregnant and about ready to burst. Also with us was Oskar Audehm and his wife and daughter, and Mr. Schaack, his wife, and their three children, including fourteen-year-old Rudy. Mr. Schaack was also in the military but out of uniform. They had been fleeing on foot when we caught up with them on the outskirts of Pillau and invited them to join us.

We trudged on for nearly an hour, taking first one street and then another, going left and right in alleyways and around dark corners. When we finally came out onto a main street, Kurt admitted he just didn’t know where we were, but after a while Papa looked around and saw we were on the same street where we had started, downhill from where we left it by about two hundred meters. Papa was angry with Kurt now, but he was in too much of a hurry to do anything about it right then, so we plunged back into the crowd heading downhill toward the harbor.

It took us another hour of slipping and sliding down the crowded street to reach the dockyards. There before us lay mountains of suitcases, bags, and boxes that people had thrown away because there wasn’t room for them on the ships. Long lines of people snaked between the piles of discarded luggage, the abandoned wagons, the wandering horses, a bombed-out freight car on a rail siding, and several warehouses and fish factories, most of which had considerable bomb damage. There were also heaps of rubbish, rotting food, and feces, whose smells overpowered the faintly pleasant aromas of fish and seawater. The shade trees lining the streets and water’s edge seemed somehow out of place in this mayhem.

The lines of people went down to the water, where the largest ship I’d ever seen was docked at a stone quay. It looked like a big passenger liner, and it had a gangplank going steeply up the side of it onto the deck, where people were fanning out, trying to find a place to spend their imminent sea journey. I could just make out the name, General von Steuben, under the bow. Already every deck seemed covered with people—from the main deck, to those on the superstructure, all the way up to the top. The ship rode so low in the water you couldn’t see the waterline painted on the hull.

Over here. This is the way, said Kurt as he headed off toward the lines of people. As we obediently followed him, we noticed that people in the other lines seemed to queue up tighter as we passed, as if to keep us from cutting in front of them. Many of them still carried heavy suitcases and other belongings in some vain hope they’d be allowed to keep them once they boarded the ship. We saw many other ships in the harbor too. Some were military and some were freighters or fishing boats, but all of them seemed to have a line of people leading up to them and piles of discarded belongings at various places along that line.

Once we were in the proper line, Papa said to Kurt, You stay with us until we board the ship. I want you to help Maria up the gangplank. We spent another hour in line, talking with the Schaacks and swapping our stories of how we each made it out of Rothenen and past the police cordon around Pillau. It was comforting having someone from our hometown with us, even though we weren’t really friends. Papa and Oskar would not be able to come with us, of course, since they were in the military, and we thought Rudy’s papa was helping his family the same way, so we needed encouraging.

We began to get excited as we got closer to the ship. It would be such a relief to be finally on board and to get underway and escape from the Russians. But just as we neared the gangplank, with only another ten or twenty people left before us, someone yelled down from the ship, No more! No more! The ship is full! Nobody can get in here anymore! The ship is full! Then they pulled up the gangplank and began throwing off the big mooring ropes so they could move out into the channel.

We all just stood there at first, too shocked to do anything. This was our last chance to escape from the Russians, and a sense of despair and dismay began spreading through the crowd. We could hear the artillery shells crashing in the distance, and we all wondered what would happen to us, trapped in Pillau, with the Thirty-ninth Guards Army bearing down on us.

2

Around Rothenen

We moved to Rothenen, in the county of Samland, in 1934, when I was just one and a half years old. Papa had been working as a blacksmith on a large plantation in Dorhtenenhoff with his father, who was also a blacksmith. But Papa dreamed of having his own blacksmith shop, and Rothenen was a place where he could do that. At first Papa had to work for a local farmer, while we rented a house from the shoemaker. Papa would do all the smithing for the farm, and then he was free to do work for his own customers. That way he was able to build up a business. Eventually he bought some land at the north end of town and built a house, and later on, he built his own blacksmith shop and began working for himself full time.

Rothenen was a small town—actually just a village—but it was a wonderful place for a boy to grow up. There were wide fields on all sides, with only dirt roads leading into town. Just a short walk west of town was the Baltic Sea, where one could go swimming or watch the fishermen tend their nets.

What few streets there were in town were cobblestone. The main street formed the junction between two wyes in the road, making a sort of dog-bone or bow-tie shape, with the town running north to south in the straight part between the forks. The road to the northwest went to Nodems, which served and was mostly owned by an aristocratic plantation with large landholdings in the area. The road to the northeast led inland to Grebieten and Germau, where the local creamery was. On the south end of town, the road that angled to the east went to Osterau, while the road that ran southwesterly along the coast went to Saltnicken and passed the coastal observation post where Papa served his military duty. Our house stood just below the junction on the north end of town.

Across the street from our house was the Daniels’ store. They also had a theatre, dance hall, and inn. On our side of the street, just south of us, were several rental houses for farm workers, including one that we called the Villa, owned by farmer Dagott, which had a pond behind it. On the other side of the street, a network of small roads funneled into a track leading to the sea. Among these roads but still along the main street, were the Wittkau farm where my best friend Alfred lived, then the Romey house, the Hübner’s bakery, the Hinz house, and the Burgermeister’s house, who was also the wagon maker and carpenter. His name was Mr. Eggert. Then came the town’s fire department and jail which shared a building, and just beyond that, the town plaza, which we used as a playground and sports field. Across the street from the plaza, on the inland side of town, stood the town’s two-room schoolhouse. This was on the south end of town, just above the Saltnicken–Osterau junction.

Most of the area children as they grew up settled in the same town, so there were many families that each had several houses in town. This was true of the Dagotts, the Wittkaus, the Niemanns, the Hübners, the Audehms, the Schaacks, the Schocks, the Baumeisters, the Growes, and the Strausses. Most of their homes were scattered through the network of roads feeding into the road that went to the sea, but the Niemanns’ house and farm was next to the school. They owned a lot of land and had quite a number of workers on their farm. The Growes owned the only other general store in town, which was right where the roads came together on the way to the sea, but the Schaacks had a vegetable stand right next to them, too. Most of the families that lived closer to the sea were fishermen and owned boats that they kept down on the beach, sometimes with several families sharing one boat.

The farmers in town had fields extending mostly behind their houses. They grew potatoes, peas, turnips, beets, wheat, and various other vegetables. In the late summer and early fall, we would help them harvest their crops with their large, expandable, horse-drawn wagons. This was hard work, but it was also fun, especially when we got to race each other with the horses back to the barns, or when we got to take the horses into the ponds to bathe and drink. It was beautiful there with the sun shimmering off the fields and the smell of hay, earth, and growing things mixing with the smell of the sea blowing in from the coast.

Rothenen was about twenty kilometers north of Pillau, which was the big city on the coast and which was also at the end of the channel that led to Königsberg, the capital of East Prussia. We would watch the ships from our vantage point on the bluffs overlooking the beach near Rothenen. These bluffs were a good ten to twenty meters over the beach, so we could see quite a way from there. The farmers’ fields extended right up to the bluffs, but the beach below was of beautiful, soft, white sand, even though boulders and debris often fell onto the beach from the bluffs during storms.

The road from town to the beach split into three steep cuts of sand and dirt as it went down through the bluff to the water. At the beach, the fishermen would bring their longboats in with special rollers mounted on boards to keep them from getting in the sand, and then they would keep the boats in place and upright with triangular chock blocks. Usually they just left the boats on the beach, but when a storm came up, they used rollers and a hand winch which they had installed in a ravine to pull the boats further inland, off the beach. There were railings alongside where they kept their boats, where they would spread their nets to dry and mend. All this took up quite a bit of the beach, but there was still plenty left for us to play on and swim from.

Our house was one of the newest houses in Rothenen, where, as in most of Germany even in the 1930s, the average age of most houses was over a hundred years old. Our property was in the northeast corner of town, with one side of the house facing Main Street and the north side facing a side street that went off toward the village of Korjeiten, due east from Rothenen. This street joined Main Street at right angles, right where the roads from Nodems and Grebieten made a fork in the road. Papa built the blacksmith shop between our house and this street, so that the shop had road frontage on two sides of it.

In front of the house, Mom had a rose tree, which was her pride and joy. It bloomed in July, just in time for the birth of my twin sisters, Marianne and Waltraut. On the south side of the house, Mom had also trained a pear tree to grow up as if it were on a trellis. In the southeast corner of our property, against the low chicken-wire fence that separated us from farmer Dagott’s worker houses and the Villa, we had a garden. Along our back fence grew gooseberry and sour cherry trees and red currant bushes. There were a few apple trees sprinkled throughout the backyard, too. That made for a very nice effect and gave us a number of fresh fruits throughout the year. There was also a picket fence running between the shop and the house, with the gate right next to the house, and a woodshed behind the blacksmith shop.

Papa’s blacksmith shop faced Main Street. Behind it was a pig pen in the south corner. On top of that, Papa had put the chicken coop. A wooden ramp with crosspieces for traction gave us access to the coop. In the north corner, Papa had built a kitchen for Mom where she did her baking and washing. There was a large oven on the inside corner wall, backed up against Papa’s smith forge on the other side, so they could share the same chimney.

The door to the blacksmith shop was on the side of the building facing Main Street. Inside and to the right of the door was the workbench, fitted with several vises. Over in the left corner was the oxygen tank and a carbide generator for welding things, since Papa’s work as a smith was much broader than just shoeing horses—back in those days, a blacksmith was more like a general machinist and metalworker. On the wall beyond them was Papa’s sixteen-speed drill press, and then on the back wall was his forge. The anvil for that was just to the left of the forge, and then there was a big pile of scrap metal in the corner on the left, since whenever he needed a piece of metal for something, it was better for him to look for it among the pile of used pieces than for him to try to make something new. There was another pile of larger pieces of scrap just outside the shop, on the side by the Korjeiten road. Also, in the corner beyond the workbench, there was a side door that led over to the house. Around back of the shop, on the corner by the Korjeiten road, was the outhouse.

Our house was built of brick for the walls and of red Spanish tile for the roof. This is common construction in Germany even today. There was only one entrance, which was through the kitchen, facing out into the backyard, but later on, Papa extended that by putting a glassed-in porch, which we used as a dining room, around the kitchen door, with the exit now facing the blacksmith shop. The house had two stories and a basement, which was mostly only used for storing vegetables and so on; the stairs were in the kitchen by the door. From the kitchen, you could go either into the living room or into the master bedroom, which faced the front of the house. In the living room, on the far wall, was a chaise longue and a large table in the middle of the room. A ceramic-tiled stove and heater graced the inside corner of the room, sharing its chimney with the kitchen stove, much the same the setup as in the shop.

The children’s bedrooms were upstairs. There was a large foyer area at the top of the stairs, over the kitchen. There were two bedrooms exactly paralleling the rooms downstairs. The bedroom facing Main Street was for my sisters, and the other was occupied by the various apprentice boys that Papa employed by virtue of his being a Schmiedemeister, or master smith. When Gerhardt came along, he slept with Mom and Papa.

Karl and I shared a bed out in the foyer. There was no dropped ceiling out there, so we could see right through to the rafters. There wasn’t even any plywood roof under the Spanish tiles, so we could see right through to the sky outside through little chinks between the tiles. That made it extremely cold during the winter, so that the top blanket would freeze over from our breath. When it snowed, our bed would be covered with a light dusting of snow. Our bed was just a straw mat, covered with a burlap bag and two down blankets, which we slept between.

As is true for most people, our lives were shaped by our parents and a few close friends as we grew up. Mom had received Jesus Christ as her Lord and Savior as a young girl in Schmiedenen, and she and her family, the Helmdorfs, belonged to an evangelistic Pentecostal group known as the Blau Kreutz (Blue Cross), which preached a lot against drinking and swearing. She was of average height, though she may have been a little on the heavy side too. She was a quiet person and a hard worker. She did all the cooking and household chores, plus she kept Papa’s books for his shop and made clothes for us kids. She brought order and serenity to our family, and later when we were refugees without Papa, her faith and strength of character kept our family together and provided the example that we needed as teenagers during those desperate years after the war.

Papa was a powerfully built man, a blacksmith and the son of a blacksmith. He was from Schmiedenen too, but my grandpapa was a real drinker, and in his early twenties, Papa had followed in those footsteps as well. Many of the girls in Schmiedenen wanted to go out with Papa, but he ignored them, preferring someone who was hard to catch and who was also worthy of the hunt—namely, Maria Helmdorf. Since Papa wasn’t a Christian, however, she told him that she couldn’t go out with him. Papa’s sister, Elfriede, however, was a Christian, and she and Papa were close friends. He frequently waited for her at her church, just to be with her, even though he didn’t like being there for himself. Eventually, someone invited him in for a service, and he received Jesus as his Savior, too. After that, he went back to his favorite bar and announced to all his friends, including the farmer’s boy who always had drinking contests with him, that he could no longer drink with them because he’d become a Christian. Then he started holding street meetings, because of how powerfully God had touched his life. Everyone thought that he’d gone crazy—everyone, that is, except Maria Helmdorf, who now became interested in him and soon became his wife.

The touch of God’s hand on Papa’s life was strongly evident throughout the time that I knew him. Papa had an incredible temper which would often send us scurrying to get out of his way, but when things quieted down, we would find him praying and talking quietly with Mom, asking her forgiveness and setting things right. Papa was always amazed at the fact that God loved him and had sent His Son to die for him, and he spared no effort telling people about this wondrous love that God had for him. In fact, Papa even became a lay preacher and preached in several churches during the time we were living in Rothenen. It was so beautiful, getting up on Sunday mornings and hearing Papa singing gospel hymns while we were getting ready for church.

3

The War Starts

The summer of 1939 was a wonderful, magical time. I was six years old. Papa was able to take some time off from his work now and then, and he took us to the beach, where we would build sandcastles and roughhouse with him. We kids would climb all over him on the beach, trying to tackle him, and then he would throw us in the water or bury us with sand up to our necks. At other times, Karl and I and perhaps some of the others would run through the fields and the streets of Rothenen, chasing each other. In the mornings and sometimes when Papa was working, we could hear him singing gospel hymns, and we knew that he was happy, and that made us happy. He would take us to Sunday school, and then we would listen