D-Day at Oflag 64
On D-Day, June 6, 1944, millions of Americans gathered around their radios, glued to the announcers’ updates of the Allied invasion of Normandy. My father was also gathered with an excited group around a radio—at Oflag 64, a POW camp in the rural town of Szubin, in German-occupied Poland.
The Germans had repurposed the campus of a boys’ reform school: even if you escaped the barbed wire, you had nowhere to hide in the vast miles of never-ending flat fields. The first contingent of 35 American Army officers arrived there on June 6, in 1943. My dad, twenty-one-year-old Lt. Seymour Bolten, arrived a few days later. By D-Day, the American prisoners numbered around 500.
In their first months of captivity, the resourceful POWs collected the pieces for their secret radio from various sources: British POWs they’d met at previous camps, German guards they had bribed with American cigarettes, and Poles who risked their lives to help. They hid the radio pieces around the camp—in a pot in the greenhouse or wedged into the attic ceiling of the school dormitory.
Every evening a POW assembled the radio and wrote down in shorthand the latest information broadcast over the BBC. Barracks “news readers” passed the updates to their bunkmates. They nicknamed the radio “The Bird” because, when it broadcast, it “sang.”
Not clandestine was the POWs’ newspaper, “The Daily Bulletin,” a hand-lettered poster size sheet of paper that focused on war news. Its editor, non-combatant POW Larry Allen, a Pulitzer-prize winning Associated Press war correspondent, bylined it the “Szubin Bureau of the AP.” His sources were the German-supplied newspapers and magazines published by the Nazi’s Propaganda Ministry, and the German-language radio broadcasts piped in over the Oflag 64 loudspeakers. My dad, a camp interpreter, used his college German to translate the sources into English, and then he and Allen interpreted the propaganda for The Daily Bulletin. The Bird also provided information. To protect their source, my dad and Allen used coy and indirect language in their war news copy. (My dad would use these skills later, through his lifetime of service in the CIA.)
The staff of The Oflag 64 Daily Bulletin news sheet. My dad is front row, far right. Pulitzer Prize and AP war correspondent Larry Allen is behind him. Photo taken January 1944
In the Fall of 1943, they pinned up the first issue to the cardboard scrap bulletin board outside of the Mess Hall. The POWs lined up to read it, and the German Kommandant locked Allen in “the cooler” for three days. Allen posted the second issue the day after his release—without punishment—and every day thereafter. One of the few things that my dad told me about the war was that the Germans officers always came to read The Daily Bulletin: it was their only source of reliable information.
One of the bound volumes of The Daily Bulletin that I found at the U.S. Army Heritage & Education Center in Carlisle, PA. I discovered that my dad carried these volumes to the U.S. in 1945 during his 6-week evacuation, and that he and Frank Diggs donated them to the USAHEC in the 1970s.
In the Spring of 1944, the Germans repatriated Allen. Lt. Frank Diggs, a former reporter for the Washington Post, joined my dad and became editor of The Daily Bulletin.
On June 6th, 1944, at around 11am, the POW monitoring the Bird sidled up to senior officer Colonel Drake and whispered, “the invasion is on.” As the message galloped through the camp, the POWs stifled their joy. Around 1pm, German radio announced over the loudspeakers that the invasion “attempt” had begun. The POWs let loose their pent-up cheers. The Nazi Security chief doubled the number of guards.
Diggs, my dad, and the rest of The Daily Bulletin staffers rushed to their news-bunkroom to write up a “Flash” edition, adorned with lightning bolts: The invasion has begun. The Greatest military event in history started this morning when mighty Allied forces smashed at the North Coast of France…German radio reports “heavy fighting is in progress...”
The calligraphers used their precious ink colors to publish a second Flash with a one-word headline that took up a quarter of the page “INVASION!” And, in big red letters: ALLIES LAND IN FORCE ON NORTH COAST OF FRANCE!!” Followed by blue: “The Battle is On.” The other half of the page displayed a cut-out map, on which my dad had circled the landings with thick red pencil.
The Daily Bulletin on the afternoon of June 6, 1944. U.S. Army Heritage & Education Center.
The POWs celebrated until 10pm, ignoring the Propaganda Ministry’s radio announcement that the Allies had been “annihilated.” Finally, the Germans ordered an end to the day.
The Daily Bulletin, June 10, 1944. U.S. Army Heritage & Education Center
The following week, my dad wrote to his family:
Dear Folks,
Last week on June 6 we celebrated the first anniversary of the beginning of the only all-American ground officer’s camp. It turned out to be the reason for an even bigger celebration than we figured on…