The next day he and his traveling partner Wolfgang in search together of the supply battalion they were supposed to reattach to were stopped by American soldiers in a truck. They were ordered into the back. For the next forty-five minutes Jim had the fastest ride of his young life. The truck stopped at a refugee camp. It was May 15, 1945, Jim's twentieth birthday. Wolfgang gave him TWO handfuls of raisins to commemorate the occasion.
After several days Wolfgang was interrogated and released to go to his home in Gera. On the eighteenth day, soldiers came and took Jim to the interrogation center. When his turn came and he walked through the door, he nearly fainted. Sitting behind the desk, wearing an American uniform with an arm band identifying him in four languages as an interpreter, was the Russian soldier who had saved his life by allowing him to escape from the soccer stadium in Toplitz, Czechoslovakia. Apparently he had escaped himself. The sergeant turned interpreter began talking hurriedly to an American officer. Jim could not understand English but he heard Czechoslovakia mentioned several times. The officer nodded approval and motioned toward the door with both hands. "You can go," the interpreter told Jim in Russian. He rose and accompanied Jim to the door. "Thank you for saving my life," Jim told him. "Think nothing of it," the former Russian sergeant replied. "I had decided to go West anyway. Then you came along at the right time and I saw the opportunity to help you continue your journey in search of your family."
Jim had learned to
believe in miracles. In the watery mist that filled his eyes, he moved
onward on foot setting out on the last leg of his long journey to rejoin
his mother and sisters in a new climate without war.
He was now a free man.
The Next Chapter - page two
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
