After the first group of Hammelburg evacuees was transported by rail via Nuremberg, Pop Goode led them into Stalag VII-A at Moosburg in Bavaria at the beginning of April. This massive camp was overflowing with as many as 100,000 Allied POWs, at least 30,000 of them American. When his group marched through the camp gate, Goode was still toting the bagpipes he’d carried all the way from Schubin over the past harrowing weeks. In the last few days of the journey to Moosburg, Goode had come across a Scottish piper in a party of British enlisted men who were also being sent to Moosburg, and the Scot had given him a few lessons.
The USAAF’s Colonel Bub Clark, the original North Compound Big S in the Great Escape and later Big X in Sagan’s South Compound, had led an American air force contingent from Stalag Luft 3 that had reached Moosburg several days ahead of Goode’s group, and he was among the first to greet Goode. When Clark commented that he was surprised that he had brought bagpipes all the way from Schubin, Goode smiled and assured him that they played a very pretty tune. Not even Clark was let into the secret that the bagpipes contained an illicit radio receiver.
Over the weeks until April 20, the other four rail groups and four marching groups would be brought to Moosburg until 1,650 American POWs, including Goode’s remaining Schubinites and Task Force Baum captives, had been transferred from Hammelburg.
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UPON REACHING THE US Army’s 34th Evacuation Hospital at Gotha, Abe Baum was checked out by the doctors, who found that, although his wounds were healing well, he was still very weak. Consigned to a two-bed ward at the hospital, Baum was soon visited by two officers from G-2, who debriefed him on the task force’s operation and then told him that General Patton had classified Task Force Baum “top secret.” Baum was instructed not to talk to anyone about it.1
Several days later, General Patton himself, accompanied by two aides, visited Johnny Waters in the hospital. After speaking privately with Waters, Patton presented him with the Distinguished Service Cross (DSC) for action in North Africa prior to his capture. Lying in a bed in a ward not far from Johnny Waters when General Patton visited was another kriegie. As chance would have it, this was former Hammelburg inmate Lieutenant Thomas Morton, who’d escaped the Nutto column following the Höllrich ambush and walked back to US lines.
Reaching out a hand to General Patton as he passed, Morton asked weakly how Colonel Waters was doing.
Patton said his son-in-law’s wound was nothing, adding, “I had much the same in the last war.”
Morton then said, “Thanks, General, for setting up the liberation.”
Patton, knowing that the lieutenant was talking about Task Force Baum, responded dismissively, “It was a feint to the east, son, while the main force was turning to the north and then east for the next push.”2
Patton would continue to maintain this line, but Abe Baum and a lot of others would think differently. A few days later, Patton came to visit Baum himself. As the captain lay in his bed, the general also presented him with the DSC. In Baum’s case, it was for leading Task Force Baum. Baum would also soon be promoted to major, just like Eggemann, the German responsible for ending his mission.
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EARLY ON THE morning of April 22, Russian tanks of the Soviet Fourth Tank Army reached the sprawling POW camp at Luckenwalde. That day, Schubin kriegie Thornton Sigler devoted a whole page in his diary to a single word: FREEDOM. His celebration proved premature. The Schubinites at Luckenwalde discovered that German guards were replaced by Russian guards. The NKVD would not let the Americans leave the camp.
By May 5, inveterate Schubin escaper Jack Van Vliet had had his fill of captivity. Sneaking by the Russian sentries at the Luckenwalde camp, he headed off on a stolen bicycle.3 He would reach US forces at Duben, on the Mulde River. V.V.’s last break would start a flood of escapes from Luckenwalde by Schubinites, also aiming to link up with US forces. For those who remained behind at Luckenwalde under Russian guard, repatriation would not come until June.
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ON APRIL 23, at Camp Grafenwöhr, Oberst Hoppe, formerly commander of the Lager Hammelburg training area, knew that the end of the war was only a matter of weeks away. He was also aware that Walter Eggemann’s damning report of his conduct during Task Force Baum’s Hammelburg raid had ruined his military reputation.
There was even the possibility that Hoppe would be executed as a warning to other Wehrmacht officers in these dark dying days of the Third Reich, with his lack of fortitude held up, in comparison to Eggemann’s fanatical determination, to exemplify how not to react in the defense of the Fatherland. At 11:30 that the night, in his quarters, Hoppe took his pistol from its holster, put it to his head and shot and killed himself.
The war would end before Major Eggemann could be awarded his new medal for stopping Task Force Baum.
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FOR THE SCHUBINITES and tens of thousands of other Allied POWs at Moosburg, liberation came through the agency of the US 14th Armored Division, on April 29. That same afternoon, at 2:30, General Patton himself drove into the camp in a jeep. His aide, Major Stiller, who had been captured at the Reussenberg and became a POW alongside the Schubinites, was located by Patton’s aides, and he rejoined the general before Patton spoke to American POWs gathered outside the camp kitchens.
Clarence Meltesen was in that gathering. He would remember Patton spouting a brief speech that lacked any warmth. Meltesen wondered whether the general even realized he was talking to Americans as he declared he was going to get POWs to their home countries as soon as possible and urged them to stay in the camp for the time being.4
The Schubinites at Moosburg were eventually sent to Camp Lucky Strike outside Le Havre in France, from where they would be repatriated by sea to the United States. Apart from a small number remaining in US Army hospitals in France and Germany, the last Schubinites finally arrived home on America’s shores in July 1945.