R. Bowling Barnes P-38 WW2 War Story
My purpose is to record this event as part of Barnes family history. I use the phrase “WW2 War Story” in the title to acknowledge that it is not corroborated by any contemporaneous photographs or even written down in the journal Dr. R. Bowling Barnes kept during his time in Germany just before the close of World War Two. All we have is the pistol itself and memories of my father telling this story to friends and family. Perhaps my father was afraid he was operating outside of his authority. He probably was.
In 1945, my father was recruited into a special US Army outfit because he was a scientist, familiar with the brand new technology of the electron microscope and spoke German. Like the famous “Operation Paper Clip” that captured rocket technology and hardware and relocated German rocket scientists into the USA, my father’s assignment was to travel to Germany along with the advancing military forces and capture Germany’s scientific knowledge and equipment related to the Electron Microscope.
Most of his activity involved visiting universities, interviewing scientists active in the field, discovering where, within companies like Phillips and Krupp, Germany’s electron microscopes were developed and produced and tracking down working models of the equipment. He actually visited Hitler’s “Eagles Nest” hideaway in Berchtesgaden in the German alps where a brand new electron microscope was kept for Hitler’s doctor’s private use. Ultimately, that functioning unit and what is described in my father’s journal as “two and a half boxcars full of electron microscope hardware” were shipped back to the USA. After the war, my father became president of the Electron Microscope Society.
To travel within Germany, just behind the advancing front, my father was assigned a Jeep and a regular army GI driver named Charley Banca. A few weeks after they met, Charlie felt he knew my father well enough know he was not a “hard-ass officer” and asked: “Doctor Barnes, you are a scientist …. how would you remove the smell of gasoline from steel? A few weeks before you arrived, my former unit captured a cognac distillery and that extra five gallon gerry-can strapped to the back of the vehicle is full of cognac. Although we rinsed it out again and again with liquor, it still smells of gasoline.” That war story isn’t in my father’s journal either.
A university professor in southern Germany told them that the German’s were producing technical hardware in an abandoned tunnel nearby. My father and Charley found a classic, old brick mine tunnel entrance cut into the side of a hill. A thick timber wall closed it completely. But a small passage door was cracked open at ground level and they could see someone standing in the shadowy interior. Nobody moved for quite a while. Then, the door opened further and a man stepped out into the bright sunlight …. with his hands held high. His well tailored uniform declared him an SS officer. He approached my father and Charlie and the Jeep very slowly with arms fully raised and in perfect English told them he was surrendering to them. “From within tunnel, I saw the big white star on the door of the vehicle and presume you are Americans.”
Then, my father told us, he reached ever so slowly across his body with his left hand and using a smooth, practiced motion, and with fingertips only, unholstered his weapon and turned it barrel facing down and grip facing my father. Not having been trained for this, my father simply accepted his Walther P-38 and his surrender. The German officer smiled broadly and saluted, smartly.
The officer told him that he and several regular soldiers had been guarding a work force of prisoners making parts for aircraft in a machine shop hidden in the mountain. They knew the war was lost and that they had been abandoned. The others had drifted away days before but the officer had been “waiting for the right army to find him”. Neither Charlie or my father knew what to do, but the SS officer did. “It must be clear to anyone who sees us I am your prisoner, so take off my hat and tie me up and deliver me to the nearest US military police you can find.” Which they did.
