145

August 6th-1st day! in DP camp.

They said in Munich that the camp was "some-
where in the bush" and that there were about
2000 DP's here, nationality unknown. The
camp is in the most magnificent mountain
valley I have ever seen and there are 18,000
DP's here, all Poles. The camp itself is
composed of fine stone buildings with slate
roofs, spread out fanshape around the hdqtrs
with barracks, also fine stone buildings,
below, around the hill. This was a special
training school for SS elite guard, so it has
everything - lights, water, fine flush toilets
and it has also that extraordinary remoteness
which Hitler sought for the breeding of his
supermen. I feel absolutely lost to the world.
I gaze at the circling mountains and fine
fields striping their slopes...and the blue-
green forests of Germany ringing us in. Here
we are with our 18,000 Poles, with a small
military detachment posted as guard. The Poles
have every element among them - especially
a group of ruffians numbering some 2000 who
terrorize the remaining population. The Pol-
ish leader has offices set up in the middle of
camp, efficient as a Rockefeller Center execu-
tive office. All is controlled from there. We
must nibble like mice around this organization,
find ways to penetrate it, to take over control,
somehow. I feel like a dwarf gazing at handi-
work for a giant. There was a murder in the woods
this PM while I was in the Polish Committee
offices, making friends with blue-eyed gangsters.
My interpreter a darling old Polish lady whose
daughter helps me in the office. This was also
a day of experiencing that double effort required
to communicate through an interpreter - saying
everything twice and hearing it thrice. Every-
where I looked today I saw things to be done,
terrific human jobs - like walking up the
hill from hdqtrs to the Pol. Com. office - encoun-
tering the pretty blond woman who talked agitated-
ly with my interpreter and then to me. Her
name is Helena Koblinska. Two nights ago she
came into camp with a convoy from Dremen -
and at the station where the train met our trucks,

there was another convoy of DP's headed for
a camp somewhere near here....and in that group
of DP's Helena saw her son, 18 yrs. old, an
Last she heard of him, he was in Buchenwald, and
she - she informed me, had been in the Ravens-
burg concentration camp. She could not speak with
her son, account the crowd. She saw him marched to
a DP truck, was sure he was coming to same camp
But when she got down here in our camp, she
learned the other trucks next had gone to some other
camp. Where? Even we did not know that the trucks
from 2 camps met that one train. This is a long
devious questioning job, beginning with the
Capt. who commands the military outfit here.
It is hard to learn the ropes with everybody too
busy to stop and tell. I sat in the office
this morning, took over the business of issuing
passes to DP's who wanted to go into town. Every
imaginable excuse...we have to be careful. Some
go to pillage, to black market, etc etc...some
even to murder, I suppose. One old man with
shock of white hair above fine high tanned forehand
came with a book written in Polish - a book on
the flora & fauna of this country written by a
friend. Could he go outplease and see some of
the things his friend described, since he also
was a botanist? I would have liked to have
given him a pass to botanize the countryside, but
there is a big German PW camp on the opposite
hill; all through the woods there are hidden stores
of impounded German materials. DP's cannot wander
freely, even if botanists. I put him off with
"I will try". They came into my office in solid
processional - pass for the village to pick up
shoes coboled there last week; to pick up a set
of false teeth finished by the village dentist
2 weeks ago. One wants to get past our GI guard
each one who has valid reason, but how can one
tell ...with a black market wild in the camp
and feuds resulting in murders going on in the
woods? I have an ear for languages so can at
least block-print out the frightful Polish name
when they say them slowly. There is a GI guard
at entrance to our hdqtrs - talking with him is
like home. When the air gets too thick with
problems, problems, it's nice to go downstairs
and ask him if he has an extra copy of Stars &
Stripes...and to talk of the magnificent country
around us - gorgeous ski country, they say.

The snow, they say, lies 15 feet deep here. The Army a few days ago said 'no more coal for DP camps'. So we must exist on wood this winter - wood for heating rooms for 18,000 DP's, for their cook ovens, etc...we have German laborers out cutting, we are hunting trucks to bring in the logs - to make a vast stock-pile, a hedge against winter freezing and rioting no doubt. Ted our supply man scours the countryside with our Army lieut., seeking things to requisition. Today he found a soap factory; also a paper mill. We' I have soap & writing paper anyhow. I am tired tonight. the whole project is so vast it staggers the mind....where, where to begin? My small taste of the pass business today gave me the human spectrum of the camp - everything from harmless botanists to potential murderers. Yet when I braved the Pol. Comm. offices, met the men who hold gangster sway over this camp; my hand was kissed 3 times in parting by men with salon manners. Our team messing is in the house opposite. Our darling little Du Dutch women does the cooking, makes good meals from same old Army food. The table with 20 people around it, all speaking their languages - Belgian, French, Dutch and English is my microcosm of United Nations...and I see that it must work, here in the test tube, if it it to work on a larger scale. Tonight at dinner I huddled next to Ted muttering "If I werexhe hear another discourse in French....." Our French drivers & nurses seem to dominate the table with quick chatter. One wants to scream at them to shut up and eat quietly like humans, instead of waving forks and words around. I see I have a long way to go, to internationalize myself. Tonight after dinner we sat on porch, having a team meeting against background of these heavenly hills. The French doctor said to me "Next war, you Americans will be fighting Russia" and I said "When the next war comes, it will be the last for us all and then it will be the turn of the insects...we can just hand our beautiful planet over to then.

tell him, all sneering and glossy before me...

The little Polish man stood before my desk
3 weeks ago and told about his wife in Straubing,
at the other end of Germany. He knew she was
there; he had a postcard from a friend. And there
was something about a new baby born, sick in a sp
hospital there. Could he go and fetch her.
I am allowed to give passes for 1-day only, but
I make exceptions all the time, going on
'hunches'. I knew this man told a story, that
was true - his face told it; a little-boy face
all haggard with anguish. He had only a
bicycle for going hundreds of kms. I gave him
a 20week pass; he returned to my office 2 days
ago - his face alight and all the haggardness
lifted tax He had found his wife. He had
found his child. He had brought them back to
Wildflecken, somehow...God only knows how they
find ways to travel. He had put his baby in our
baby hospital here. He had come in to thank me.
He had done what all the great Tracing Bureaus
of Geneva, of the Army, even of UNRRA had
failed to do...he had reunited HIMSELF with his
very own....

and this happens absolutely SCORES of times,
daily, daily, daily. There was the woman of
sixtyish, neat, trim, brown-faced from
outdoors living, who came to my desk and said
somewhere around Munich (it's always around
Munich, the farthest corner from where we are)
she knew her daughter was in a camp, and she
knew her daughter must just about be coming to
term with the baby she was carrying when last
the mother saw her - 8 months ago. Could she
please go? I said 'Are you SURE?' She said
she had no papers...she only KNEW... I
saw that mother face and knew she knew. I gave her
a completely illegitimate pass, for I have N
authority to send DP's on the road for a
week or two. I have no way to protect them
from being picked up by eager-beaver M.P.'s.
I told her all this. She was willing to take
responsibility for going. For getting herself
through...somehow. Sometime last week she
returned....I had forgotten about her, remem
bered only the face, honest as earth. She

came into my office and said in French (which
she spoke easily) "I owe you the only happiness
I have had in 6 years, I owe you my joy
inexpressible, I am a grand mother"...and tears
came to her eyes. Then I remembered. I said
"You found your daughter". The old lady had
gone forth alone, maybe with money for train
fare when she found a train going her way;
maybe with food (or maybe she ate apples out of
German orchards on the way) and she had visited
camps and camps all along the way, asking every-
where for her daughter...and at last she had
found her, and just two days before the grand-chil
was born. And then again, somehow ...she had broug
brought them back to Wildflecken...and now she
was at peace. All she wished was that we should
know her joy, listen to her fervent thanks...

There was a Boy Scout not over 14. He came back
from a trip of hex illegal days outside the camp
(sanctioned by me on another of those hunches).
He told me with dignity that he had found his
mother in one camp, his sister and brother in
another camp...and had brought them all back to
Wildflecken where at least the 3 meals a day are
sure, and a roof over the head. He was a solemn
stately little lad with a face much older than
his years. But young enough, hopeful enough,
to have ventured alone on the perilous task of
reuniting his family, of reassembling it out
of the desolation and confusion of this Germany
where the little people, the ex-slaves of Hitler,
another camp are scattered like leaves
all over the map, each leaf wanting to find
its family tree...and being able to find it if
given a chance.

Why should I try to tell our Colonel about these
things. This was our Clean House into which he
came, with his guards with sawed-off shotguns.
This was the Beginning Work which he has
already begun to lay waste to..... None of us
on the team believes it can endure. The Poles
themselves will revolt. We in UNRRA are the buffer
between Poles and Army....we must try to counteract
the evil our Army sows here.....Sometime I am going
to tell that Colonel that this is the SECOND time
only in my life I have been ashamed of the
American Army..... I am ashamed of this phony

militarism coming in just at a time when one could begin to hope there were other ways to handle this vast problem.

Two days ago when visiting the Mil. Govt in Bruckenan, I was told confidentially that our new Guard plans a raid of the camp.... soon. To unearth hidden guns, to suppress the Black Market. I cannot believe this will take place without shooting, without revolt. They intend, I was told, to throw a security screen around the camp outskirts - trebling the guard every 50 feet along the roads....let no one out of camp while the raid goes on. It sickens me to my soul to think of it...but this is Army. This is the stunted mentality of West Point dealing with a human problem. Prod them with a Lügers gun...that's all they know about how to get action from the Poles....

The Col. told me the other day that all Poles must work in the camp or else be arrested. I told him about the TB statistics here....a full ten percent of the camp, on a recent survey made by Dr. Servas, proves that this will be the TB incidence, once we get around to examining the entire camp. We'd have sick people coagging blood in the streets, I told the Col., if it were not for the fact that our DP's rest and sleep much of the time...

Dr. Servas. Habets asked me to go to his house a few weeks ago. To give him pleasure. I went....one of the block-houses in the Center where he has one-room not more than 10 by ten, in which he lives with his wife and daughter - his daughter about to give birth to a baby whose father has not been heard from in 8 months. Dr. Servas is a fine example of Hungarian nobility - a famed TB specialist of Buda-Pesth. In the tiny room occupied mainly by the beds of which two were in tier-bunk style one atop the other, he told how the Germans entered Buda and gave all exactly one hour to get out of their houses and into the trucks which were evacuating the city of its lawful inhabitants. Servas who had vast dispensaries, examination rooms, X-Ray rooms etc, had time to take exactly one

medical instrument from his clinic - a
small pocket stethoscope. He took also a
collection of family photos - salon scenes of
his home in Budapest - fine pictures on the
walls, fine china on the table, fine looking
wife and daughter grouped around him... it was
difficult to recognize the women in that small
room as those of the photo. His wife worked
with him in his clinic - for 26 years side by
side they worked. God gave him that dispensation
that they were together when the Germans came,
that they could be evicted together. His son
was not there at the time, has not been
heard from since. Neither the son-in-law whose baby is soon to be born in the camp. The beds
had lovely bright Hungarian embroidery spreads -
the sole note of jay beauty in the ugly
block-house room. "So very little one could
take," he said in broken French "one hour to
leave a lifetime is very short time, one cannot
think".... His salvation in
the Center is Hospital 3 where he conducts his
TB clinic. His wife works with him there, also.
I went up the other day to watch him perform
pneumo-thorax operations - collapsing infected
lungs with air. Only a few minutes each
operation... his delicate fingers knowing from
lifetime practice how to push the needed in
and arrive at that exact small point between
the lung linings. His wife sat at the
apparatus watching the rising liquid in the
tubes, calling out to him in Hungarian....
his daughter, with her pointed pregnant belly was
also there, attired in nurses dress. She
has just a few days more to go.... but she
will work up to the final minute. His gentle
tragic face, bending over the bared ribs of Polish
DP's, watching his fingers insert the
needle so knowingly... his life work claiming
him for the moment so completely that he
could forget that he had no life left, no
place to go, no great hospital of his own...
remembering it only when he looked up at
meto explain his technique and apnoeizm saw
fazxthe the barren ambience of a DP hospital
room with only the most primitive of apparatus
available. This is one of our D.P. doctors,
saving his own life by indefatigable work
saving lives of others...

September 19th - Lasy night I came in too
weary to think any more. All day my office
was filled with patient Poles, coming to ask
me "Is it true - do we ALL have to go back to
Poland?" The night before that, the Field
Supervisor of UNRRA arrived unexpectedly in
camp at 8 o'clock, summoned by the letter we
sent him when the Army occupied our camp.
We had a meeting of all the team - I was already
in bed but arose & dressed. Williams the Canad-
man nurse had half her head in pincurls after
a shampoo. In all states we appeared for the
meeting. - We were given the instructions we
wanted - what shall be our "official attitude"
toward this new Army regime... We must take its
orders insofar as those orders don't collide
with UNRRA purposes, we must seem to collaborate
but watching all the time, reporting every
incident which indicates "force" is being
applied (to get people to return to Poland. At
same time, we as UNRRA cannot express opinions
about what we think is happening in Poland,
cannot influence in either direction. No one
knows of course...but we must not even sug-
gest a yes or a no. This is the hardest role
I have ever been given in my life. The people
come, many known friendly faces... they gather
and ask questions, their eyes watching your face,
taking each word as you say it carefully, and
waiting for some of those positive statements you
were accustomed to making...waiting for some-
thing more than a neutral position. Of course
there is persuasion going on...the block lead-
ers in each house have to get a list of 20
poles willing to go back...when they don't fill
their list, they simply add on the names of the
Ukrainians...Polish citizens all, but Ukrainian
born. The Poles hate the Ukrainians because
(say the Poles) they collaborated with Germany.
The Ukrainians say if they go back to Poland,
Russia will shoot them. Five times in the la-
last 2 days, dear Dr. Besushko my interpreter,
brought me little lists of Ukrainians whose
names have been added to the Poland-convoy list.
I cannot rise up in my chair with a great
By God and say "This cannot be. NO ONE can be
forced...." I have to be neutral; I have to
say that Army has control of all DP movements.

we are about to "get going" on this colossal
job...and probably will make a start at it,
because ARMY has said we must do it. But,
as our Director boss said today "250 days in
any language all over the world means 9 months".
The team is at ragged edge, trying to carry out
orders that have no relation to our real mission
here.

And as ever the countryside is beautiful. The
autumn crocus are like lavender candles all
through the fields....orchid lavender, the loveliest
sight I have ever seen. Poles gather great
bunches and put them in bowis, with fern skirts
around them. Autumn crocus, last flower before
the snows.

Sept 21, 1945 - 9:30 PM and just finished work, the night work being PX - Army Post Exchange. Every 2 wks. this mobile store comes around to supply us with cigarettes, chocolates, razor blades, soap etc...I am mistress of PX. Means I have to keep 5 or 600 marks always on hand, and then "make up" the individual PX rations for the team. I've made friends with the PX boys - they brought a Parker 51 pen today, (selling 61 marks instead of $12.50) (gave to Habets) and 3 bottles of PASSION perfume at 31 marks each - "Sells for $15 in Paris". I sold it to 3 men on our team...Passion by Jolnay for their girl friends. The PX wagon is like a clean small store on wheels. The back opens and there are the shelves, stacked with cigarettes in cartons, Life Savers, chocolate bars and every other imaginable hard-to-get item over here. It was a golden day. I went out front while the boys made up our PX for 21 persons, our present "strength". I encouraged them to toss in things they were saving for detachments further on. The Colonel came out while we (some pretty nurses around me) were begging to have another Hinds Honey & Almond added to the collection....also some Dunhill lighters. The Col. looked sort of longingly at this country-store excitement, but could not stop because he is CO - a full "chicken colonel" with varnished helmet. (Patton would have stopped and told the PX boys to be nice to my girls.)

Two nights ago, when I was too tired to write, I lay abed thinking of my visit to the maternity hospital after work, to see the baby girl born to the daughter of Szarvas, our Hungarian TB specialist. In a barren room, but clean, of the maternity hospital, there was the bed of the mother, and mother (young, in steel-rimmed spectacles from long looking through microscopes) lay under a gold satin comforter, one of those treasures from the Budapest home (which they left on an hour's notice). Nearby was a small clean whod cradle-bed with the baby girl, names Claire. Claire at 2 days old was a perfect little porcelain doll. not a creas or wrinkle in the tiny face, not a red spot anywhere. She lay on a fine lace pillow (treasure from Budapest) with her tiny face reposed in sleep. On the window sill were bowls of autumn crocus with fern fringes, brought in by DP friends, gathered in our woodland fields. Also red rambler roses...gathered God knows where. Outside the windows, were the horizontal lines of barbed wire fence, for the maternity hospital lies at the far end of the camp, on the edge of where "off limits" begins. I gazed long at this tiny baby face, on the ex-quisite lace pillow, trying to imagine what life would be for one born in a DP camp... displaced already in life, even before eyes opened to show what color they would have. My first DP baby..... Later I went into the baby warsery... 14 of them, all a few days old, one just arrived an hour ago, all wet and red, lying in the blanket that brought him down from the delivery room. Going out, I asked our Corsican doctor, Muracciole, how come so many babies at this season - averaging 2 a day... He looked at me astonished at my ignorance. Then he said - "Les fetes du Nouvel An, naturelle ment"...and I had to think back to last New Years...and remember that that day is more to the European than is Christmas to us. So I looked at these results of a breif fete last year before liberation.....

Today in the office, as usual around 4 PM, came the small smiling man who brings passes down each day from the Polish Committee....150 daily for me to sign. It is a great chore and I always

scold him affectionately for what he cannot help. Today he sat smiling behind spectacles, watching me sign and sign...and for some association I cannot remember, he told me his brother lived in Chicago, had a factory there for making church things like cricifixes, crosses, etc. His German limped like mine so we continued. He told with signs and small words that he was alone in camp. His wife, he said, was last heard from in Ravensburg, the women's concentration. "Ich", he said, "sechs Jahres im Dachau"... his son in another concentration camp - His wife he was certain was shot. His son he had not heard from. He asked if I wished see pictures of Dachau. He took them from his wallet...a half dozen of the most frightful shots, things they deleted from the American movie reel of Dachau. I felt sick and ready to weep. The gorgeous pastorale of pine woods and hillside outside my window, all exóticos purpling in late afternoon shadow, became incomprehensible with those pictures in the hand....man on this planet doing this. Man in this countryside being able to do this. My little Polish man looked at me steadily from behind his spectacles as I fought my tears. Then I went on signing passes. I didn't have enough German to tell him what I felt. But he knew anyhow. He kissed my hand when he left. For more than a month he has been coming every day at 4 or 4:30 with 150 passes for me to sign. Every day I never dreamed, looking at his neat little face and clean pressed business suit that he had had 6 years in Dachau.... You seldom see traces of such an experience now, after several months of rest in DP camps. Seldom...except when you go to the TB clinic, and watch the chest X-rays....then you see the liscuna dark in the lacy lighted pattern of lung....

Tonight I had fearful longings but could not name them, even to myself. The moon is full. It makes the woods black except where roads go through. As I drove down a silvery cobbled road from headquarters, with That Moon there above black mines, everything ached....and I am so far away from all "my things", I could not even name the reason for that poignant aching...

October 3rd '45 - If I were not typing this in the office I would not be getting it done at all. For I'll go home tonight "a bout" as the French say - at the end of things. One of those days where every single imaginable thing happens...including the unexpected arrival of 150 tons of coal in our station - the coal we have been begging for months. This necessitated a hurry-call for Poles to unload it - also for trucks to carry it up the hill and into our warehouse zone where it will be stored as diamonds. Poles with shovels were running around all over the place; Masset was hanging out of the windows like Sister Ann to count the trucks as they went down the hill and Maj. Griffith and Capt Roth were swinging their swagger-sticks around, wondering what could be the end of all this. We are in a ferment of activity. In addition, a rail convoy Saturday - 1500 Poles bound for Poland, this time handled by our famous 79th Tank Bn Sanitation Squad.* Orders have come through from Division (that's next to God) to give these departing Poles 14 days rations. 14 days for 1500 people makes quite a parcel of food. It makes one-fourth of our TOTAL FOOD RESERVE in the warehouse. By now and by dint these past few furious weeks we have managed to get first ONE day ahead on rations - then 2, then 3 and then this order, cutting our herculean efforts by one-fourth. Why 14 days to go by train to Warsaw? It's a five day trip at the most. They want the descending Poles to get off with a week's food in the hand. That's all fine... only the week's food comes from our warehouses and we STILL have 15,000 Poles to feed back here. Of course the Russians will grab those extra food bags. That's why Masset is, like a maddened bull today....and so am I.

Then in the midst of it came Lt. Kelso from MG in Bad Neustadt - a man we have been wanting to see but never found the time to get to...only one hour's drive but where is that hour? So he came into office to attack me about "MY" Poles stealing sheep from German farmers and vegetable

and if he had not said "Of course I hate the Po
I would perhaps have been able to do something.
but I went into one of those states...
wanting to shout at him "Then if you hate them,
why the hell are you IN Military Govt?..?" but
decided to act the lady.

The whole thing is SNAFU....Mil Govt which
is假POSED to supervise DP work, has the
attitude of regarding all DP's as robbers...
and EVERY robbery, raid and theft in ANY villag
for MILES around Wildflecken, is always blamed
on our Wildflecken Poles. I claim for a city o
15000 - 200 sheep in 5 months is a pretty low
theft average - considering the hunger in this
camp DESITE our 2000 calorie-a-day ration...

I posed the lovely question to the visiting
Lieut (thanks to Truelson who formulated it
first - and maybe he borrowed...I think he
confessed that he did)...."Who do you think
were liberated - the Germans OR the Displaced P
Persons"

MG acts always asif the "ermans were liberated.
They have to handle the civil complaints...
every German who loses a sheep runs to MG
and complains of Poles, Poles, Poles. The "er-
man looks neat, sounds intelligent. MG uncon-
sciously sides with the military-looking Gent;
the poor Pole in rags with wild blue eyes
looks evil besides the bowing paragon of a
German. This the "angle" of MG thinking...

But he told us about a big meeting in
Kissingen yesterday - at which it was revealed
that before Dec. 1st - a total of 2 million
refugees from Poland (GERMANS) will be in
American occupied zone...and already 200,000 a
day are being booted over the borders from
France, Belgium, Austria, etc. These German
refugees were spot-checked in Berlin where
8000 a day are allowed to pass through,
receive one bowl of soup and spend ONE night
only..before straying on west through Germany.
Of the 8000 checked, nearly ALL had typhus
or lice upon them. It looks like a busy winter.
I'M GOING TO LOOK INTO MY BOLSTER SHOTS FOR TYPHUS

Home a little later - "A bout" butbooted up by
a whiskey in water, some of the last of our
precious ration for this month.

Looking over the notebook - mainly at blank
spaces - I think of things I forgot to write.

Days and days ago Dr. Szarvas came into my
office, his lean race face full of anxiety,
saying "I wish to ask a big favor from you, the
biggest yet". I said 'But of course...' and
waited. Would I, he asked, be the godmother
of his grand-daughter, the infant Claire whom I
visited in the Maternity Hospital. I said but
of course I would, but WAS I WORTHY. It seemed
a great gift, being asked to godmother a small
DP baby. I felt embarrassed. He said I would
be the gift to the baby. Then he kissed my
hand and thanked me, almost with tears. I
asked Habets later what in heavens it takes to be
godmother, what does one DO. She said a small
gift. She has since had the gift made - a set
of small baby sheets and pillow cases, embroider-
ed with Claire's initials. I think I present
this at baptism time. Sheets in this middle of
nowhere, where not even a rag exists, are a gift.
A great gift. So I am waiting to present this...

I'm a little haunted by the picture of that Lt.
from Neustadt today...his telling about the
typhus-ridden German refugees being kicked
across borders back into their own land, which
is mainly occupied by DP's who do not wish to
return to their own country. He said there is
bound to be trouble. Riding Poles will mix with
returned Germans. The Poles have everything on
their side including the recent edict of Eisenhower
that DP's must have everything this winter,
including 3 blankets each. And if there is
not enough roof space - then we will take over
German homes. Meanwhile, 200,000 a day - German
refugees, stream into Germany....there are
no roofs to go over them. Except this solid
SS camp and a few more large places like this.
Food also will be up her...not outside
in Germany where the fixed ration is 1000 calories daily - half what our DP's get. "Hungry cold
Germans" he said, "all out here (waving windowward

and in here, tons of food." (Between now and Nov. 1st, we have to pick up 2100 TONS of food - none of it within 20 miles of this place over bad roads) (That's mixing thoughts - tonnage versus transportation.)

"When you ask me for transport" said a Capt of our Tank Bn. "You ask me for my blood".

(The nurse next door is playing ANNIE LAURIE and I think of that record Alice owns, and the places we played it....and of Margaret Solita and Dorothy...and how lovely, how incredibly lovely that ambience on East 62nd Street.)

But you can't think of things like this. You think of those little grey ladies sitting in a row on a bed up in the center the other day - not complaining - but merely mentioning the fact that they had not enough overcoats to go out and get the fresh air that the nurse recommended.

Or, you think of Your Day...and of people sharing it. Like the little white-faced corporeal who comes every day, late, to deliver picked-up passes to me. He is chief clerk of Bn. Hq...and to be that in THIS battalion commanded by THIS Colonel, means Sysiphus business. We talked of that. All day I had wished to get OUT INTO CAMP, into the barracks, to continue the survey now in progress...but paper snowed me under. Little shreds of report papers, letters, memos, etc... and every other minute a Pole coming in to show me his teeth - all gone, knocked out by the Gestapo, and wanting a pass to go to the dentist in Wildflecken village for dental repairs...because with stumps you cannot eat the foul 9 tons of black bread our bakers produce daily......

October 6th - This is a Saturday night and one of those Saturday nights that makes me t remember the 13-day work-stretch in the yards, when the ships were going down the ways fast. For I have no Sunday to look forward to - no day of absolute rest, of letters, of reading...of just staring, and of a peaceful drink around sundown. Tomorrow at 7 I rise up, dress my best and go with Masset & the Colonel, in MY car, to Bamberg, to a meeting of all UNRRA Directors of the XV Corps...and of all CO's in that Corps. I asked Masset this afternoon what he thought was cooking. He said his guess was that operation of all DP camps in Germany was going to be handed over to UNRRA - right in the faces of their CO's - right in the face of OUR CO who is a full 'chicken colonel' from West Point and so full of paper-work that he has kept our noses to the typewriters ever since he has been here. It means that I ride in the back of my car, with the Col - while Nikolai, our DP chauffeur, drives. It means I'll sit in the back beside a man who doesn't smoke, doesn't allow smoking, and calls one a slave etc who smokes. Maybe the meeting will be worth it. But I doubt. I have had some lovely Sundays...the price of tomorrow is big.

The way 'orders' are given...today into the office broke a Sgt. - all wild-eyed and worried. He had a goat on a string, tied up outside Hospital 4, next door to Hq. He had to find a vet in the camp, to "test the goat". I asked (1) why he thought a vet could test a goat and (2) where he thought he could find a vet. He said there was one in building P2. I pointed it out to him on the camp map. I said"But if you think some poor Pole vet has the equipment to test a goat's milk, you're dreaming". He said he had to try, he had orders. He came back 15 minutes later, no vet. Meanwhile another sgt. came in, frantic with worry. He also had a goat. It seems that our chicken colonel had seen 2 goats in the camp, had learned that some DP kids were given milk out of these goats, had remembered something vague about dairy technique and had ordered, just as if he were on some agricultural college campus, that the goat's milk be TESTED FIRST. So the 2 poor sgts assigned to the

job had had to bring the goats down to Hq on a string...then there was no vet available. Capt. Roth came in about then, saw the GI frenzy, asked what was what. He took up my phone and began calling...he too had to go "through channels" to countermand that order... and even then he didn't get through. So in desperation, he told the 2 sgts to lead the goats back where they found them and forget it. But there were, during that hour, at least 5 military personnel, including a Col (who gave the order from his remote godhead) a Capt. (Roth) a Capt (at other end of line) and two staff sergeants...feverishly employed in carrying out an order about GOATS. ...an unfillable order moreover. Sometimes you can laugh at these things; more often you want to weep. I laughed this time because the poor sgt. who went out the door said piteously, "Do I have to lead that thing BACK where I got it, all through the camp...honest to God sir, it's the craziest goat you ever saw...it eats tin cans!"

This morning a convoy went out, the first in many weeks - 1500 Poles for Warsaw direct. We heard the trucks starting down to the station at 7...it was a mean, rainy wet day....from my windows the string of box-cars looked doleful down-and-out. Later I went to the station - with the Welfare and two cars filled with blankets because the last minute the Pres. of Pol Committee phoned that there were 100 babies in the convoy, and not enough blankets. We began at the back end of the train, parking our cars outside the cattle-car doors. I entered the car, cried out Vievle kinder hier? and the mothers shoved forth their prams or their toddlers...for each we gave a blanket. We had gone but 2 cars when the Poles began to catch on. They called many more 'kinder' than we could see...when I taxed them, they said they had ? other children in the next car, and so on. So I made them SHOW THEIR KINDER. It seemed sort to awful to have to say no when a 5 or 6-year old was shoved forward...I said it was only for kleine kinder, just the babies. We only had 100 blankets and 51 cars to go through. The Poles called out "Hier eines krank" - a sick one. Or here - an old one. A happy-faced