Mr. Carter-Edwards ~ Heroes Remember
Transcript
It was around one o’clock in the morning of June 8th, 1944, flying along, actually almost getting ready to drop our bombs when the whole aircraft shook as if someone was hitting it with a sledge hammer. And what had happened this German night fighter that was not seen by either the mid upper gunner or the tail gunner came underneath us and as he flew by he just raked the whole aircraft because the German had invented, developed a gun that was mounted at right angles to the fuselage so they didn’t have to point their nose at you, they just fly underneath you and as they pass underneath you they rake the plane and so it set the whole left wing on fire so we got the order to bail out, jump because, wow, the whole left wing was on fire and I opened up my little window and looked out, oh this is, ya, this is dangerous and so I grabbed my chute, put it on and I went to the nose of the aircraft. In the Halifax aircraft those in the front leave by an opening in the nose of the aircraft. It wasn’t until many, many years later when I met my navigator, Gordie Waddell, he said to me, “Do you remember bailing out?” I said, “No, I don’t,” and I really don’t. What happened I got to the nose of the aircraft, I was sitting there with my legs dangling out of the hole and I froze. Psychologically, emotionally, mentally I froze. And Gordie who was behind me couldn’t get out because I was blocking his exit so he said I just put my foot on and shoved you out. Now I don’t remember leaving the aircraft, I don’t even remember grabbing the D-ring and pulling it. All I remember is floating down. And when I was floating down, of course, the aircraft went down a bit further and then it crashed and it lit up the whole countryside. And by the glow of the aircraft, I could see another parachute above me so I knew that Gordie got out but I could also see five way behind me. So I felt comfortable in that the whole seven got out. But as I was coming down by the glow of the aircraft, the fighter plane that shot us down was making circles around us and around me and at one time when he was between the burning aircraft and me, he was that close that I could see his silhouette in the cockpit and I thought he’s going to run into me but he didn’t and they wouldn’t do that. While I am up here in the sky, by the glow of the aircraft I could see what looked like a church steeple sticking up, a white one and the Seine River. And it looked like a bush over here so I figured as soon as I hit the ground I will run for the bush and hide in there because you anticipate as soon as you hit the ground someone is going to be shooting at you or yelling at you and so as I was coming down, while you are up high by the glow of the aircraft you can see all this but as you get close to the ground then the buildings and the hills block out so now you don’t see the ground so you are bracing waiting for the impact which comes very unexpectedly and it comes with a terrible shock, my knees came up, hit me in my chin, I hurt my back. I gathered up my chute and I ran towards what looked like the bush and before I entered the bush I looked back towards the burning aircraft and there was a shadow running towards me in my direction and it was hunched over. Now I can see him because he was between the burning aircraft and me and I was on the dark side and as he got closer, I said, “Who is it?” “It’s Ed.” Here it turned out to be the bomb aimer so we embraced each other, we were so thankful we survived. “We gotta get out of here!” So, Tommy still had his chute, we ran into the bush and we buried our chute under some bushes and by a miracle, by the glow of the moon it looked like a path.
So we ran blindly along this path then we thought this is crazy because if we get jumped, we are both going to get caught so we each thought, okay Tom, we’ll separate. Tom went ahead of me and every once in awhile he would stop and let me catch up to him. It was in this period when we were separated that some lights came on on the right and some excited voices and I ran blindly hoping to catch up with Tom, never did. Before I even got too far, there was a fork in the path and I thought which way did Tom go and I started calling, “Tom, Tom, where are you?” Anyway, I figured Tom went to the right, I took the path to the right and I found out many years later Tom took the path to the left. He was picked up by the French Underground and was liberated by the Americans when they liberated that part of France. I went to the right and I became so exhausted I crawled deep in the woods and I stayed there all night. During the course of the night, now I could hear what looked like a church bell ringing. So I figured, tomorrow night I will head towards that sound, it’s gotta be a little village and maybe I can get some help. So, during the night it started raining. I woke up in the morning I was cold, I was wet, I was hungry, I was scared but I was covered in a horrible rash. I had been lying on a bed of nettles of all things and so I had all these elements against me but I heard that church, it sounded like a church bell ringing so the next night I headed towards that village at night and came into a little village and knocked on many doors, nobody answered the door and I thought, how come nobody is answering the door. And it wasn’t until later that I found out why. So, walking along in this village there was a wall a little taller than I was and it sounded like there were two female voices on the other side and they were keeping pace with me. I couldn’t see them and they couldn’t see me until they came to the centre of the wall and there was a gate there and I stood there and I said to the, what looked like two women, in my poor high school French, “Avez vous le pain, s’il vous plait?” which means, “Have you any bread, please?” And the one lady said to me in good English, “Who are you, what do you want, what are you doing here?” “I’m a Canadian airman, I was shot down a few nights ago, I want food, shelter. Can you put me in touch with somebody that can help me?” So she took me into the kitchen, gave me a bowl of hot milk and bread and said some words that cast fear in their heart, “You can’t stay here because if the Gestapo find you here, you may not be executed but we will so what we will do, we will take you across the road, into a field, there’s a barn there and we will put you in that barn and if the circumstances are right at night time, we will bring you back into the house, give you some food and a little socializing.”
So after about four or five days then panic set in. “You’ve gotta go because somehow the Gestapo is aware there’s an airman in the area!” And so we had made arrangements for our young lad to come with a bicycle and take you to another safe hiding house which happened. The young lad came, him and I peddled on a bike, he peddled on a bike and we went to a safe second hiding house, safe second hiding house and we were there again for about another four or five days when the very same thing happened because the Gestapo, they had spies everywhere. They knew almost anything that went on. Not only that but the French people had trouble trusting one another because some of them supported the Nazi Regime, some supported the Vichy Government of France that supported and so people were getting paid to turn airmen over so it was very difficult to find out who trusted you, who you could trust but, in those circumstances, you had to trust whoever tried to help you. Anyway, I was in the second safe hiding house for about another week and the same thing happened. And so they said we’ll take you to another safe hidng house. And at the third safe hiding house where a widow lived whose husband had been killed fighting the Germans earlier, she said, “There will be a couple come to see you from the French Underground.” So, this young couple came to see me and the first thing they wanted me to do was to prove that I was an airman. So, I had papers on me and my escape kit so I gave them all this material and I said, “Why are you questioning me, I am an airman?” “No, no because the Germans were dressing up as airmen, pretending they were airmen to find out where the different underground cells were, to find out where airmen were being hid. Now you better prove to us that you’re an airman because if not, we will shoot you, assume you’re a German!?” Well, I gave them some information and they went away, came back a couple of days later and they said, “Thankfully, we were able to prove who you are and we brought back with us a passport with swastikas in it and so now your name is Edouard Cartier and in a couple of days time we are going to come pick you up and take you to Paris where you meet another contact that’s going to take you to Spain by car.”
Well, they came a couple of days later and we went by regular train which was scary, scary, scary because in order to get on the coach I had to go past a huge German soldier. He had the potato masher in his belt, he had the jack boots and he had a huge firearm in his arm, big, big man and he was growling as everybody went through and I thought, if he turns around and looks at me. I’m dead. But this couple were near me, watching me but they were watching to make sure I went by. They said, “If anything happens, if anything happens, we will try to create a diversion and if you get away, you get away. Don’t you worry about us.” And I thought, my God, these people are already risking their lives to save me but nothing happened. I got on the train and they asked me to pretend you’re sleeping on the train so not to draw undo attention to myself. Anyway, we get into Paris and again they said, “Now, you have to go through a security check. All you have to do is reach in your pocket, bring out the passport we gave you and you should be okay. We’ll be in the background watching you and again, if there’s something happens, if we can create a diversion to get you away, you get away.” Anyway, nothing happens, I go through and then they caught up with me and then we went by the regular underground railway and they put me in a hotel in Paris. And they said, “Okay, in a couple of days time you’ll hear (knocking sounds) and that will be your next contact to take you to Spain by car. The knock came and I opened up the door and the man said, “I’m taking you to Spain by car. I have some of your comrades downstairs waiting for you.” So, I go down the street and sure I get into this little black french car and there’s three other men in the car and immediately we struck up conversation. Here we had identified ourselves, we were all airmen. So, the driver had been around, picked up the other three boys and me and so now there’s four of us and we are so elated to think, wow, we are on our way to freedom so he took off, drove through Paris but he stopped at a roadblock outside of Paris. We have no idea why but he stopped and he got out and he went over and he talked to somebody in an official capacity, immediately six or seven military came over to the car, they opened up the car door and they physically extracted us like a sack of potatoes, threw us down to the ground, started to beat us horribly with their rifles and jack boots, we were all lying on the ground bleeding like stuck pigs, hurting badly. This great big German officer comes over to me, he’s standing over me, he straddled me and he pulled out this big Luger, pointing it straight at me. “Who are you? What are you doing here?” “I’m a Canadian Airman, “Prove it!” Well, I stood up, I showed him my dog tags which he grabbed and threw away. He removed any form of identification we had. He said, “You’re all spies and saboteurs and will be executed!”
The 15th of August, 1944 a lot of commotion was taking place. We could also hear a lot of bombing going on outside and then we could hear rumours that the allies were getting close. Anyway, the Germans came into our cell, yelled at us to get out and we go on out into the courtyard. Now, it’s the first time we had been in front of anybody else. Milling along this courtyard is where we learned there was was nearly two thousand French people. But we also heard other people speaking English. How come you speak English? “Well, I’m an American, I’m a British, I’m a Canadian.” It was there we found out there was 168 allied airmen in that prison. They had been all pretty well betrayed by the same collaborator who was a Belgian collaborator, his name was Jacques Desabrais, and we thought this is an awful situation. Nobody knows where we are. We are in the hands of the most vicious, the most cruel, the most sadistic people in the whole world, how are we ever going to survive this? But I had my, not my very first emotional trauma but milling around this group of people was a young French couple that had taken me to Paris. These people were in this crowd in this hub of humanity and I couldn’t get close to them, but I saw them and they saw me and as soon as our eyes met, I cried. I cried because I thought these people had risked their lives for me – a stranger who had fallen in their life and I didn’t know at that time but later on I could see where they may have lost their lives because of me. But our eyes met and I tried to tell them through the eye contact how sorry I was about what happened but I tried to thank them for the risks they took to try and save me.
Well, we spent five horrible days in these little cattle cars and the only toilet facilities was an open bucket in the middle of the car and so those who were in the middle of the car, they were constantly sprayed by the contents so it was a stinking lousy mess. for five whole days We had no idea where our destination was. But the second day out when we made a stop, a shot rang out, not in our car but in the car behind us and what had happened, a young French lad had put his hand on the window to look out and the German guard going by shot at him and the bullet pierced his hand. Then he opens up the door, and this is all related to us by the boys, our boys who were in that car. Then he said, “Anybody get hurt?” One of our boys thought they were doing the right thing, he said, “Yeah, this young French lad was hurt.” So the guard ordered him out of the car, down the embankment and as he walked down the embankment, this guard shot him in the back, killed this little kid. But he wasn’t dead, he was still convulsing and then another German officer came up and pumped several shells in the back of his head. Then they took two of our boys, they dug a shallow grave and they buried the young kid and then took off. And that’s another thing that troubled us emotionally because the mother of that young boy will never ever know what happened to him. He was murdered in cold blood by these savage beasts and they were actually laughing, laughing among themselves when this whole episode took place. They thought it was a big joke.
The train carried on, so on the fifth day the train stopped. The doors opened and wow, what a greeting. We were greeted by dozens and dozens of screaming military uniform people with dogs and whips and rifles and they were actually coming up on the boxcar grabbing people and throwing them on the siding, yelling and screaming and dogs are biting and so we thought, this can’t be a prisoner of war camp because we could see what looked like a camp in the distance so the Germans were yelling and pointing and so it was to our advantage to move in that direction because if not you were getting bit by the dogs or hit by the whip or the rifle and as we went in that direction, that the German SS were pointing at, we could see what looked like a camp, we could see barbwire, we could see guard towers and low lying buildings but we didn’t see the thing that scared us the most, as we got closer to the camp and out of the wooded area, we saw this building with a tall chimney, smoke belching out of it. And as we entered this camp, then we heard the word, Buchenwald. Buchenwald, the most notorious concentration camp in Germany.
We entered Buchenwald on August 15th, 1944. We were not physically greeted, but milling around the camp were 45,000 walking skeletons; men, old men, young men, young boys, some had the striped suits on, some had the ordinary clothing on, and so these men were just walking skeletons. And then we found out later these poor men were slaves because Buchenwald was a slave labour camp because it had two huge factories within the confines of Buchenwald and so these slaves worked in these factories, 10 to 12 hours a day, and then crawled back into their camp, crawl back into these shelves, tried to survive on these meagre rations that we had and had and so if you died, it didn’t matter because they had hundreds of other people come in from other areas so they had an endless supply of slaves to work in these factories. And so, if you took sick in Buchenwald, if you didn’t survive, you were a goner because if you couldn’t work, you died in Buchenwald. Anyway, so they took us down to an area called the Klina Lager (sp), it was a little camp. So once we got in there they took us into a building and they shaved every shred of hair we had on our bodies so here we had 168 men, allied airmen who were in Buchenwald, shred of every hair we had on our bodies, bleeding like stuck pigs because the hair was shred by prisoners who were very unkind and they had these hand clippers so we were bleeding underneath our arms, all over, and then they got some kind of a chemical on a stick with a cloth and they would dab between our legs underneath our arms and it burnt so horrible. Here we had 168 men jumping down like cats on a hot tin roof because of the burns of the chemical they put. But it was so humiliating, so degrading because we had never, ever been exposed so embarrassingly to anybody else and it was from there that we went to another building where they gave us clothing, I had a shirt and a pair of pants, no shoes and so for nearly two weeks we slept in the open on the cobblestone road in the little camp, exposed to all the elements.
On the 24th of August, 1944, the Americans came over and they bombed Buchenwald because of the two huge factories. So they came over and luckily we were just out of range of the bombing but we were there, these planes were above us, the markers were down and it was the most horrible experience to hear all these bombs and the incendiaries raining down and we thought we’re gonna get killed but thankfully it was the most precision bombing the Americans ever done because they obliterated the factories but they killed hundreds and hundreds of poor slaves who worked in the factories. They also killed many of the SS who ran the camp and they killed, yeah they killed a lot of people. Thankfully, none of us were killed. Some of us were hurt by the shrapnel that was coming down, some got cuts on them but we had to go and fight the fires. Now we got no shoes on and we were under escort by the Germans with their guns and we had to go and fight these fires. Our feet were cut, were bleeding from everything because we had to go in the rubble to try and save records, to try and help people who were trapped so that was a horrible, horrible experience for us and we had to do it because the German guards would have shot us if we didn’t. And while we were there, the Americans dropped leaflets into Buchenwald and they showed pictures of how the Germans were being treated in the prisoner of war camp and anybody who picked up these were shot by the German guards who ran around the camp. So we survived that.
I took sick. I had pneumonia and pleurisy. And normally if you got pneumonia or pleurisy in Buchenwald, you were dead because there was no medical attention whatsoever. There was no medication for anything. If you took sick, you died. If you died, you weren’t cremated. You had to either survive on your own, get better on your own or you were dead. So they put me in a building called the infirmary which was a building not like our infirmary but just a big hut which housed all those who were dying and so I was surrounded by people dying everyday. People crying, people with their arms up pleading for somebody to help them. Everybody had diarrhea, everybody had dysentery, ruining through the mattress on the ground. It was the most horrible, the most putrid environment to be in. Everybody was sick and so how I survived is a miracle but I found out many, many years later how I survived. There was a secret organization within Buchenwald formed by high-ranking communists and Russian military. They were scared that towards the end of the war and this was August, September, 1944, it was quite obvious the Germans would lose the war and they were all worried that if the Germans are going to lose the war they would destroy Buchenwald, destroy everything, leave no evidence and so what this group of people had done, they had formed a highly secreted organization. They had even a piece of steel with spikes on it, they had even smuggled guns so what the plan was in the event that the Germans were gonna try and destroy Buchenwald they would raid the gate, run the gate, try to get people out, so they had witness to what happened. It was them, when they found out that I was an allied airman, they showed concern and sympathy for me. So, they would move me around this hut so that when the German guard, a German doctor came through every week, if he thought you were in that bed too long, he would give a signal to people following him and they would inject something in your heart and kill you because if you couldn’t walk out of the infirmary, you were dead. You either walked out of there to work or you went to the crematorium and so they, the ones that saved my life, they kept moving me around so that the German doctor would not recognize that I was in the same bed twice.
There was a professor from the University of Paris in Buchenwald. He was a doctor; he was a prisoner. And he found out about me being in the infirmary and he came in with a great big syringe at a great risk to himself, he stuck it in my back and sucked out fluid. So that’s another thing that saved my life, The other thing that saved my life, there was a young Dutch lad, who was, some of the boys, some of the people in Buchenwald, were there long enough that they had attained a position, not of authority but they would work in the records or handing out clothes, this kid worked on the record department so he said to me one day the only thing I can do is take your name off the work list because I had to go out and work in the quarry which would have been a death sentence for me. And it was a death sentence for anybody who worked in the quarry and the ones who were sent there were mainly the Jewish people and the Russian people because you went in the quarry, you smashed rocks, you had to carry big boulders up and down the hill until you collapsed. The guards had dogs that would sick onto you. They forced people up and down the hill, pushing a big cart. If you collapsed, they shot you, it was a death sentence and I was sent, I worked in the quarry one day and this young lad, this Dutch lad took my name off the list of people that had to work in the quarry and he was another one who saved my life because if I had stayed there, I’d have died. I never would have survived! Somehow, somehow the German Air Force who was our enemy in combat but strictly comrade-in-arms found out there was 166 allied airmen in Buchenwald. Two of our boys died in Buchenwald and were cremated and so their bodies are still there and they have never, ever been officially recognized as airmen of being in Buchenwald – Anyway, that’s another story. Anyway the German Air Force snuck these 156 allied airmen because twelve of us were left behind, eleven of us were left behind, snuck them out and took them to a place called Stalag Luft III which was a prisoner of war camp run by the German Air Force. So the enemy, our enemy who was German Air Force and maybe even shot some of us down, saved our lives, saved their lives and I never got out of Buchenwald until the 28th of November 1944, and so we were all, well they found out after they got out that five days later we would all have been hung on the meat hooks below the crematorium by stringing piano wire around our necks and hanging them on these meat hooks. We would have all been strangled to death. That was the orders that came down from Buchenwald. That was the orders that was on our records. We were never, ever to leave Buchenwald alive!
Another thing that was most horrible. These poor slaves that worked in these factories 10 to 12 hours a day, crawl back in Buchenwald but they had roll calls twice a day, morning and night, that would last maybe 2 or 3 hours. And you’re standing there while they’re counting 45,000 slaves and while you’re standing there, people are dropping all around you because they are so sick from lack of food, from disease or from being overworked, and there is nothing you can do about it. You can’t help them. They are lying there, pleading, arms out, crying, asking you to help them. And do you know what the most difficult thing to do is to walk away from the roll call was to physically step over these human beings who are lying on the ground crying and pleading for you to help them. So that was, yeah, that was very emotional and it did cause us a lot of trouble then and it still does to think that I as a human being would turn my back, close my eyes, close my ears to someone who was lying there pleading for help. But it happened so often and it got to a point where we were so sick ourselves, we all lost 20, 30 and 40 pounds. We were all covered with sores. Most of us had dysentery, we were all passing blood and so we thought for sure we were going to die in Buchenwald and if the German Air Force hadn’t found us, we would have. We would have died there. We would have gone through the crematorium the same as everybody else.
But the Germans played with human bodies. They would order people into the death zone that surrounded Buchenwald. There was a huge, all around the outer perimeter there was a huge electric fence. It was electrified and people would throw themselves into this fence. They would literally run in to it to terminate their life because they couldn’t take it anymore because they saw, there was no possibility to escape out of Buchenwald and everyday was another day of agony, of torture, of witnessing people dying all around you and so people gave up. And we would have given up too except that we were 168 allied airmen and mind you, once I got in the infirmary, I lost contact with all the boys but the rest of them would stay together and try to keep the morale up. They would try to bolster somebody who is starting to fade, don’t give up, and so it was a good thing because it brought you out of the depths of desperation because there was no way you could see of ever getting out of there alive. You were surrounded by death. You were surrounded by the smell of death. You were witnessing death every second of the day or night while you were in Buchenwald. They played with your life like you play with a toy. They had no respect for human life at all. You were less than an animal.
It was most difficult for people to believe that this happened in a concentration camp. This is what we were fighting against and I tell people and I tell kids when I speak to kids and they ask me do you have any sorrow for being in the concentration camp. And I said no because until I was shot down my job was strictly, well it wasn’t that simple, my job was to fly over Germany or Europe and drop bombs to try and remove factories that produce armament or whatever, so my job was to try to remove this nasty scheme, this nasty machine that overran Europe and was trying to overrun England. So I was on this side of it, now I’m caught up in it. Now I’m behind the wall, now I’m within the concentration camp. Now I am personally witnessing and experiencing the horrors that went on. This is what we were fighting against and nobody knew about it and I would never have known about it if I hadn’t been shot down, if I hadn’t of become involved with the Gestapo, if I hadn’t gotten involved with the concentration camp, so I have witnessed both sides of this. The one side where I was fighting an enemy who I knew was dangerous, deadly, very cruel but now I am with them. I am on the other side looking at how he was which nobody really knew anything about.
After the war, most people thought it was just a Jewish propaganda, concentration camp which is another problem I had when I came home. People would not believe me as being a survivor of a concentration camp. Most of my friends laughed at me, well not to my face but they said to my face, “Sure Ed, yeah sure we believe you.” But behind my back they would make fun of me, they would say, “Ed has a problem. Ed’s got a mental problem. He has, this is all in his imagination. Ed couldn’t have been in a concentration camp because it was only for Jewish people. Are you Jewish? No. Do you have a marking on your arm? No. Well then and you were Canadian Air Force? Yah, No, you couldn’t have been in a concentration camp.” It was a most difficult thing to do. So, it was for many, many, many years, almost forty years later before I started speaking out. Once I became a target of laughter, once I became a target of disbelief, I gave up because people wouldn’t believe me anyway but I harboured this. I had this within me, something I wanted people to know about. Twenty-six Canadian air men were involved in the Holocaust by their presence in the Buchenwald Concentration Camp. Yeah sure, yeah. So that was one of the things that kind of prompted me to become active, to speak out, to let people know it did happen as a Canadian, as non-Jewish, as a Christian, I witnessed all this, the horrors of being afflicted by another person.