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“Them?” Cronley said, then turned his head at the sound of the arrival of a vehicle, its gears grinding and brakes squealing.

He looked out a hole in the wall that once held a window and saw a jeep with Father Francis X. McKenna, S.J., at the wheel.

“Let Father McKenna pass,” Cronley called out to the trooper standing outside the window.

A minute later, the priest entered the kitchen. He had a newspaper rolled up and tucked under his arm.

“I didn’t know that Holy Mother Church taught her priests to drive,” Cronley said by way of greeting. “Judging by your shifts, apparently not too well.”

“I learned in Boston, out of necessity.”

“How so?”

“If you get in the backseat and there’s no driver, you don’t get very far.”

Cronley snorted.

“They said at the castle you were here,” McKenna said, handing Cronley the newspaper. “Today’s Stars and Stripes.”

Cronley unrolled it and saw on the front page a three-column photograph above the fold. It showed Major General I. D. White shaking hands with First Lieutenant John H. Freeman III in front of an M8 armored car. Below it was the news report.

ESCAPED NAZIS SURRENDER

Former Top Deputies to Hitler and Himmler, Exhausted and Starved,

Returned to Nuremburg Tribunal Prison

By Janice Johansen

Associated Press Foreign Correspondent

Munich, April 29—

Former SS-Generalmajor Wilhelm Burgdorf and former SS-Brigadeführer Franz von Dietelburg were today, almost three weeks to the day since their escape on April 5th, put back behind prison bars at the Allied War Crimes Tribunal in Nuremburg.

As members of the Nazi General Staff and High Command, Burgdorf, a close confidant to Adolf Hitler, and von Dietelburg, chief deputy to Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler, have been charged with four counts that include war crimes and crimes against humanity. They are being prosecuted, along with more than two dozen other senior military officers, by the International Military Tribunal in court sessions that began in November 1945.

The pair’s short time on the run ended after they crossed paths with U.S. Constabulary First Lieutenant John H. Freeman III. The twenty-two-year-old was commanding a regular patrol of four M8 armored cars near Paderborn when he saw half a dozen men in civilian clothing staggering across a rural road.

“They appeared to be German citizens,” Lieutenant Freeman said, “and we stopped to check on their welfare. As we performed a routine review of their Kennkarten, the hairs on my neck stood up. Something seemed suspicious.”

Two of the identity documents, he said, appeared to be false. And he detected modifications to several of the others.

“All six men looked to be in ill health,” the lieutenant said. “But Burgdorf and von Dietelburg were by far the worst. They clearly were malnourished, with unkempt hair and beards, and filthy clothes. And their mental state was unstable. When I started asking more and more questions, they broke down emotionally. They complained that no one in the area would help them. Desperate is what they were, even quick to offer information on hidden valuables in exchange for food.”

Freeman said, judging by their condition, that he doubted that they had any valuables. “The probability factor of that was zero to zilch.”

But that, he said, didn’t matter—it was his duty to take them into custody.

Freeman transported the Germans to Castle Wewelsburg, near Paderborn, which he knew had a small Counterintelligence Corps detachment. With the U.S. Constabulary NCO Academy about to open in the castle, the CIC was on-site screening the many German citizens applying for work.

Constabulary Commanding General I. D. White happened to be at the castle inspecting the school’s progress. When he saw the M8 armored cars roll into the courtyard, he went to investigate.

Freeman explained, and then General White ordered that the six men, under armed guard, be given food and drink while the CIC checked their Kennkarten.

General White continued questioning Freeman, during which it came out that both are graduates of Norwich University, the nation’s oldest private military academy.

The CIC quickly confirmed Freeman’s suspicions. The documents were false. And all six Germans were on at least one list of Nazis wanted by both American and German authorities.