CHAPTER TWO BUMBY'S BELT
The belt and buckle was a
gift from his son Jack.
According to Jack
Hemingway's autobiography,
MISADVENTURES OF A FLY
FISHERMAN,
(pub
1986,
Chapters
14-15 p.165-199)
liberated
prisoners at the POW
Hospital in Ludwigsburg
choked Hauptman Haas to
death. They used a belt with
a 'Gott Mit
'It (the belt and buckle) had the 'Gott Mit Uns' buckle and was of beautiful leather, and of large size, so I later gave it to Papa.'
Jack Hemingway wrote a second autobiography. A LIFE WORTH LIVING was published shortly after his death in December 2001. The first section relies heavily on excerpts from
With the able assistance of Frau Ingeborg Grafmüller, my interpreter, researcher, and friend, we began the search for Hauptman Haas. Not an easy task. Haas is a common name in Germany and a lot of them were captains in the military during World War Two. We had no first name, no date of birth. The German archives are a big bureaucracy with records stored in repositories all over the country. Many records were destroyed by allied bombing. Some records were destroyed by the Nazis' themselves as it became apparent Germany was going to lose the war.
After researching numerous
false leads, we found the
war records of
We met with him at his home
in the little village of
Bodneg. Herr Haas was
surprised that his father
had been vilified by the
son of the famous author
Hemingway , and even more so
by the report of his death
by hanging. Dieter Haas was
helpful and responsive to
our questions, but could
tell us little more. His
father had arrived home a
tired and broken man after
his release from prison.
According to his son, he
never mentioned any belt,
attempt on his life, etc,
He simply did not talk about
the war.
As we sat at his dining room table looking at his father's scrapbooks, one photo reminded me of a passage from Jack's biography.
'I heard Haas's loud command
to enter, then stepped into
the office, coming to
attention in front of the
captain's desk, and
reported, saluting and
announcing
my name and rank. There was
another captain with
infantry insignia sitting in
the chair next to the
captain's desk. Haas asked
me calmly what I wanted and-
I explained that I was an
Oberlieutenant and that at
the payday I had only been
paid the pay of a Lieutenant
and I had come to insist
that I be paid the
difference. His face turned
beet red and he exploded in
a stream of invective which
I did not understand but the
meaning of which was quite
clear and it ended with the
familiar 'raus', which
means get out! I remained
at attention as the enraged
officer ran out of breath, I
ventured in English to the
other captain, "After all,
you too, Herr Hauptman will
surely insist on your rights
when you become a prisoner,"
to which he chortled while
Haas roared on. Finally, the
security chief seemed to
calm down, the pressure
lessened by the stream of
invective, and he sighed. .
. yes, sighed. . . then
sputtered, "Ach, you
Americans. Such fools."
~
Jack admits in his
autobiography that his
recollection of what
happened during World War II
is somewhat hazy. He was
after all seriously wounded
and a prisoner of war.
That said, there are
numerous inconsistencies in
Jack's version of the Gott
Mit Uns story.
I found some answers when I visited the Finca Vigia in Cuba. There are in fact two Nazi World War II belts and buckles. Resting atop a bookshelf in Ernest's bedroom is a German officer's belt with a standard double claw buckle. I am convinced it is Hauptman Haas' belt. Next to it is a leather enlisted man's belt. (The Gott Mit Uns buckle is at the JFK library in Boston. ) Ernest's waistline increased considerably as he grew older, and I think it reasonable to assume he used the Gott Mit Uns buckle with other belts when he could no longer fit the original belt around his waist.
Jack did give Haas' belt to his father. It just was not the Gott Mit Uns belt. And Ernest did wear the Haas officer belt and buckle from time to time as is clearly shown in a photograph of Ernest sitting in front of a Henry Streeter painting.
In Dieter Haas' scrapbook there is a picture of his father in his officer uniform. It is in an informal setting, a back yard, and I believe it was taken after Haas returned home upon his release from a POW camp. The one uniform accessory missing is an officer's belt normally worn outside the tunic.
These pictures tell the story.
There is yet another rather sinister possibility, albeit extremely unlikely. In the course of searching German, British and American war records for Hauptman Haas, captain of the POW camp where Jack Hemingway was a prisoner, I came across bits and pieces of information about other Hauptman Haas's in the German military. Haas is a rather common German surname. One of them, a Luftwaffe officer named Hauptman Joachim Haas, was a POW at Shap Wells POW camp in Cumbria UK. He died in an ambulance transporting him for emergency treatment at a British Hospital. He is buried in an unmarked grave in Cumbria and there is no 'cause of death' indicated on his death certificate. Could it be that the friends who sent Jack the belt took revenge on the wrong Haas?
Certainly , that is very unlikely. However, despite the fact that Jack was an army officer in the OSS - which today is known as the CIA, and that he made specific reference to an OSS debriefing in London after his release as a POW, I have been unable to find any paper trail whatsoever. Both NARA in the USA and British archives tell me 'no such records exist.' These massive records repositories also advise there are no records on Karl Haas or Joachim Haas or Jack Hemingway.
It is possible that Jack alone knew the truth and took it with him with him to the grave.
