Barbed Wire Legacy

My dear friend Chris Sand is here on this earth because my dad Dr. Leslie Caplan saved her dad Gunnar Sand’s life during the death march from Stalag Luft IV during the bitter winter of 1945. I met Chris via the book I self-published about my dad, called Domain of Heroes, The Medical Journal, Writings and Story of Dr. Leslie Caplan.  The book contains the story of some incredible USAAF gunners who were shot down and bailed out of their B17s and B24s over Europe, and how their beloved doc, my dad, kept them alive against incredible odds. All of them were POWs at Stalag Luft IV and in early February 1945 were evacuated out on foot on an 86 day death march 500 miles across Poland and Germany.

I always knew my dad had been a big hero on the death march, but he never told me much about it. He was a flight surgeon during the war, but he always portrayed himself to me as a flyer. He even had a propeller he had kept in our basement where he shared his stories of WWII with me. He instilled a great love in me for those who flew big bomber missions over Europe during the war. But he died in 1969, without ever sharing his death march experiences with me.

My dad kept a medical journal containing detailed medical notes while he was on the death march. He had used the journal to prepare for his testimony before the US War Crimes Office about the death march. This testimony has been published in numerous veterans magazines and the web, and is much cherished by the former POWs as the most authoritative record there is of what they went through. As my dad had mentioned his medical journal in his testimony, there were lots of former POWs out there who wanted to see it.

Several years ago, those vets started calling me. At their urging and with their help, I self-published the journal along with all of my dad’s writings and the many stories I was told by the men he served. Many of them had never shared their stories with anyone before; not even their families, but they shared them with me to honor my father. Helping me piece together my dad’s story also gave them a chance in some way to say thank you for all he had done for them.

The book became a best seller amongst the former POWs of Luft IV. I spent over a year processing orders and schlepping shopping bags full of them to the post office. Every one of the hundreds of book orders I received contained a personal note about my dad. I heard from men well into their 80s who had lived long and rich lives because of my father. I heard from wives who would never have married their husbands without my father having saved their lives. I heard from daughters, sons and grandkids who wouldn’t have been born without my dad. And now, after all these years, they were bringing my dad back to me.

One day I received an email from Chris Sand of Clara City, MN, who wanted to order the book. Chris wrote: “My Dad, S/Sgt Gunnar Sand, was on the Death March, and I have read the testimony of your Dad's from the b24.net website.  I don't know if your Dad took care of my Dad or not, but I want to say that your Dad seems like a mixture of angel and hero.”

Immediately I looked to see if Gunnar Sand was listed in my dad’s medical journal. Sure enough my dad had noted caring for him on February 24, 1945 at a makeshift barn hospital he had set up along the way. Gunnar was too sick to walk due to weakness from dysentery, so he became part of the sick group under my dad’s protection. 

Chris was ecstatic about this discovery in my dad’s journal and so was I. She wrote me back saying: "Every day this winter, I look outdoors and think of our Dads and their buddies trudging through the snow, the bitter cold, no heat, crappy shoes, swollen frostbitten bodies, starving, malnourished, the despair, the injuries from war and parachuting, the fear, wondering when the damn war will end, endless marching, buddies to carry and hold up and hope they don't (or do) die that day." I had the same thoughts every day myself.

Incredibly, Chris lives just two hours west by car from Minneapolis, my hometown. So I invited her for lunch and when she arrived with a barbed wire pin on her cigarette case, we let loose from our hearts in a non-stop marathon piecing our long gone dads’ stories together. Both of us grew up freezing in Minnesota. So straight away we started sharing our childhood memories of our winters with our dads. I told Chris about the times when we all piled into the car with chattering teeth, which always seemed kind of funny to me. But my dad made it perfectly clear in no uncertain terms that there was nothing funny about it. Chris told me about her dad coming inside on the cold days, going to the fireplace to warm his hands and saying “I’ve got that an-an-an-an-xiety again”. Both of us had never really thought about these things because it was just the way it was in our families. But now we looked at each other laughing, saying hmmm, maybe this wasn’t completely normal.

I guess it also wasn’t completely normal for me to say to myself whenever I encountered a big challenge (like walking over a mile to high school on 28 degrees below zero days) that I could make it because my dad had walked 500 miles across Germany during a ferocious winter without even a decent coat. Chris was the first person my own age I had ever talked with about these unusual Minnesota winter family episodes, and visa versa. We both realized that our dad’s death march experiences had shaped and strengthened us in all sorts of ways.

That was the beginning of a long, animated and vital exploration we are still having about our dads’ experiences during the war and how those events had shaped both them and us. When you share an experience like our dad’s did behind the barbed wire and under the heel of their Nazi guards, you become instant family. And Chris and I did the same. She named us “the barbed wire sisters”, and we quickly expanded the name to our whole larger barbed wire family of former “Kriegies” (short for kriegsgefangenen/German for POW) their families, and other kindred spirits. All of us share this unusual history and a deep understanding that we should never ever take our hard earned freedom for granted.

Thus began the barbed wire sisterhood, along with some great lunches, dinners and barbeques, among other things including this blog. All because my dad saved Gunnar Sand’s life. Now my co-blogger and barbed wire Chris sis is writing her family’s story. Below is her first chapter, with much, more to come as we take our barbed wire legacy into the web.