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Joseph Gringlas - January 14, 1993

It was inside.

Mm-hm. And, and my brother got, got so, he hit-he was hit atleg. Okay, so we knew that it's gonna, it's, it's. There no, nobody guardingyou. But he was laying a few nights, we were sick, injured. We were layingin a-like a stable. And all injured people were laying there in that stableon the, on that hay or was that? Eh, and you could bare...I never forget that,the day, you know the noise when people die? They couldn't breathe. Like Iwas, like eh, like from injury, I couldn't breathe. I was-unbelievable. Ijust felt that this is finished. I-this thing, pains. And some of them came,Germans and they saw the one which we, which burned dead, they took him outto kill in the stable. And next morning I felt better. I don't know, the injurymust have quieted down and I felt better. And I walked, walked out of thatand I got-I was-got on a bunk, it was covered with crud. It was a bunk, itwas wine and the, was, they had champagne, so the SS. I suddenly got-and Ibrought back for my brother a bottle of champagne. And then next day we, wegot better and my and we went to a, away from the S...I said it's not-it wouldbe not good to lay around because they're going to kill us up and we're gonnadie. We went in, we went to that other old civilian house, a German house.First thing what I did, I found a place with uniforms with-I have a pictureof it. Uniforms from ver...fliers, pilots, the insignia for pilots. So I throwmy uniform away, but by the, in the and I dressed myself in civi...in that,that, in that, I stripped, stripped off the, from the uniform, from the Nazifliers-pilots you know. So I, I wouldn't be like, like the one going, walkingaround. And I walked around outside and I saw tanks, American tanks comingup. I knew what Americans were 'cause I know, they were surrounding, it wasgetting so close. So I saw the American tanks there and went back to my brother.He was laying in that room, I say, "We are liberated. We're free." But I knowhe wouldn't be able to walk. Finally we saw Americans coming up. And uh, Americanuh, it was chaos all over. And we organized f...I organized food because my,body couldn't move and I organized, went out and got some food, food fromplaces. And then eh, eh, next day, civili...the way-beside us, work in thecamp they had civilians from France, from Poland from all over, working thefields. He was a doctor. And I said, "Do you know, my brother's laying thereand, and he was, he's going, he's going to die. You have to help him." Sothe civilian, that French doctor he said, you know, first to me, "We gottago organize for food." Getting food to feed us, you know. I went with himand very close was a-like a village. I went in, it was goose sitting on eggs.Unbelievable. So you see something you take the goose out. And we had, I don'tknow eh, put it underneath my blouse, what I'm wearing. Underneath to holdon to it.

The goose or the egg?

No, the eggs.

The eggs.

The goose is too big to-I wouldn't take the goose. So the eggs,we said we're going to have eggs at least. And then came out uh, German civilianfrom the farm. There was no Ameri...it was a chaos, no American, no Amer...wecould have been killed because, what are you doing here? We said we got lost.So, he let us go. And I had eggs with me. He didn't notice that I was having-wegot, eh. It was lucky, he could have killed, nobody would know. You know,you were on his farm.