Hero Found: The Greatest POW Escape of the Vietnam War Read Online Free PDF Page A

could afford to buy any. For two years, until surplus clothing was distributed, Dieter wore the same pair of shorts his mother made from an old flag, and—when not barefoot—shoes with holes in the sole. “Cold and hungry” is how he would recall those years, his “first lesson in survival.”
    If those years in postwar Germany were about surviving, Dieter also flourished. He was the first boy in the neighborhood to have his own bicycle, which he built himself. He found the frame at the dump, bartered for one tire here and another there, and fashioned a seat out of a small pillow. During those years Dieter became a leader, too. It was a role that came naturally from his being capable and enterprising, as well as tough and never backing down. His brother Martin recognized that although Dieter was not always the most skilled fighter, he would “never give up or be defeated.” By his early teens, Dieter was “always the leader,” and had his own gang—one of two in Calw, each with more than 100 members. The gangs fought to defend their turf, divided by the Nagold River that ran through town. To his followers, including Martin, Dieter, fiercely loyal to friends, was “the hero of Calw” with “nothing getting past him.” To Martin, Dieter “ran the town” and was “a hero to a lot of kids.”
    Martin wanted to grow up to “drive railroad trains,” but he was selected at age five to become a baker and take over his grandfather’s shop one day. As for Dieter, Maria signed him up at age fourteen, following four years of middle school and after he flunked the entrance test for high school, for an apprenticeship to a blacksmith and tool and die maker known as a stern taskmaster. She felt her middle son would benefit from a strong male figure in his life.
    The blacksmith, Mr. Perrot, was not only strong but cruel as well. With “calloused hands that were accustomed to forging metal on an anvil” all day, he beat Dieter and the dozen other boys under his tutelage—sometimes bare-fisted, at other times with a metal rod across the back. Six days a week from morning till dark they labored, building gigantic clocks and faceplates for cathedrals across Germany. The boys did so mostly for the experience, as they received only the equivalent of $2 a month. Dieter worked some nights in a butcher shop, his only remuneration being the quantities ofsmoked bratwurst he could stuff down while working, and a bag of sausage ends to take home to his mother.
    When Dieter was sixteen, an American bookmobile came to town. Browsing through a flying magazine, Dieter spotted an advertisement with a young man wearing wings on his chest standing next to a new airplane. Dieter’s dream of flying had not diminished over the years, and the picture struck a chord. The ad read: “We Need Men to Fly These Planes.” There was a coupon to tear out and send in, which Dieter did. It came back with information about how the U.S. military was training young men to fly. With both military and civilian aviation all but nonexistent in postwar Germany, Dieter decided the only way he could become a pilot was to go to America.
    Not long afterward, when an in-law from New Jersey arrived for a visit, Dieter found a way to sit next to her at a banquet in her honor. In spite of being “interrupted a hundred times by everyone wanting to impress her or looking for a handout,” he managed to tell her, in his fractured English (English was taught in German schools after the war), of his hope to come to America to fly planes. Taken with the charming youth with big ideas, Aunt Clara, a fortyish widow who had been married to the brother of Dieter’s grandmother, volunteered to be his official sponsor. She suggested he work on improving his English. Also, he would have to pay for his steamship ticket. At the time, the lowest-class one-way fare to New York was $520—a fortune to Dieter.
    It wasn’t long before Dieter had a plan. Scrap metal was in short supply