Missing The Boat: War Stories of Thomas Alan Dirkin

35 Vodka My father escaped more than once during the war. In the spring of 1945, he had escaped from being marched west after his POW camp was evacuated on January 22, 1945. My dad and a couple of his fellow soldiers came across an abandoned Russian truck. As battle lines were fluid, the truck had been caught too close to the action, shot up and left behind. Carefully peeking inside, it was clear that it was a supply truck with rations headed to the front. My dad and his friends were hoping to find something edible. The truck was largely empty and it looked like one side or the other had hurriedly been stripped of most of its contents. Stuck in a darker corner was a wooden case. Pulling the case open, there was no food, but there were bottles of Russian vodka. The soldiers grabbed a couple of bottles each and ran for cover in a clump of trees several hundred yards away. Three POWs out of custody; half a dozen bottles of vodka and a high level of uncertainty as to what was going to be in store for them on an hourly basis. Time for a drink! I am sure their late afternoon and evening party had to have started by slapping themselves on the back for their treasure trove find. Transcending from revelry to philosophy, to stupidity, ultimately, as my dad said, resulting in a comatose depth of sleep. My dad told me this story several times over the years, always with a sense of the ridiculousness and humor of the situation. But the aforementioned party was not what he thought was funny. The part he thought was funny was their awakening. The return to consciousness was slow, almost in stages. Someone or something was gently rocking them awake; rhythmically back from hours of alcohol-induced peace. During the time they had passed out, their clump of trees had become part of the middle ground: Germans to the west, Russians to the east. The rhythmic rocking was from the ground moving in waves in response to shells dropping, way too close. Once awake, the whistling of shells became a definite signal to