Jerry started to pick up some German, and Kurtz practiced his English as they’d walk among the prisoners, most of whom were 18-25 years old, and talk about home and sports and their kinfolk. Women mostly. Wives, sweethearts, aunts and sisters. Occasionally, they’d talk about their offspring. That topic always ended in tears. One man had two sets of twins, which he split up and sent to different female relatives to care for when it was rumored Dr. Mengele was interested in studying twins.
And it wasn’t long before the many residents of Morganfield who still spoke German were welcoming the loaned labor of Camp Ulm, and slipping them contraband German food over the fence. “Half-American” Kurtz called himself when one of the single girls who came round the camp to flirt with the boys flirted only with him. Her name was Mary Lee. He called her “his Marlena.”
It was his Marlena that inspired them to formulate a Thanksgiving plan that rivaled the Allied invasion they both knew was inevitable. Gloria would visit Marlena’s family, who were conveniently going to visit more of their relatives in Racine. Jerry and Kurtz would come for lunch and pretend it was dinner. The plan required lying to three families. It required well-honed acting skills on Marlena’s part. She’d have to feign illness to her family, and pretend to be her mother to Gloria’s mom. It required stealing Marlena’s parents’ wine and a jar of her mother’s Blue Ribbon sauerkraut. It required begging: a laying chicken from the farmer Kurtz worked for. It also required Jerry to lie about Kurtz’s whereabouts at roll call Thursday morning.
When the logistics were carefully considered, as well as the catastrophic outcome if they failed, the plan required Jerry and Kurtz to abort the operation, console each other on one hand, and cheer each other’s honorable behavior on the other.
But planning the caper wasn’t the stupidest thing they did. The stupidest thing they did was drink the two bottles of white wine Marlena’s mother smuggled over the fence to Jerry, and then tell Captain Couch, who found them drunk in Jerry’s office, about the aborted plan. He laughed at their foolishness and applauded their decision. He also persuaded the mess cook to serve them a baked chicken stuffed with sauerkraut for Thanksgiving to go with their hangovers and regret. Kurtz had to work in the mess hall for four weeks straight, which meant a month away from his Marlena.
***
“I was sent back to war,” Jerry said. “D-Day happened. We learned Earnest was taken prisoner and died in a stalag from cholera. I hated Kurtz for being safe at Camp Ulm,
and I hated myself for missing the camp. It was only when I came home that I realized how lucky I was—Captain Couch could have court martialed me. I had classified information in my office files. Kurtz could have killed me, stolen valuable information, maybe sabotaged a military asset or killed the twelve Army guards that watched the prisoners. Three thousand POWs could have escaped. Done things our boys would have done if they had the chance. The Germans were at Camp Ulm because the government believed they were low-risk enemies, but . . .”