John Chaffin--From Copilot to Kriegie Chef

One can see the weariness in this photo of the Broman Crew taken after a mission. John Chaffin stands at right rear. Four of the enlisted men went AWOL right before the Munster Mission, when 'Fritz Blitz' was shot down, and were court-martialed.

One of my first friends back in 1999 when I began research for my book Untold Valor was John Chaffin. Originally from Grapevine, Texas, John became a pilot in the 95th Bomb Group, and flew as co-pilot on the Eldon Broman crew for over twenty missions on 'Fritz Blitz' before being shot down on the Munster Raid, October 10, 1943. He ended up a POW (better known as Kriegies by the men themselves) at Stalag Luft III in Sagan, Germany.

Today I've been working on a chapter for the 95th BG history about POWs, and am using a privately-published book John sent me back in 2000. John had a dry sense of humor, and it comes through in his writing. He was also unfailingly honest in everything, a dedicated Christian to the end. He was a hard-working perfectionist, and his harsh critiques of some of my early writing forced me to dig deeper in my writing and never take the easy way out. But he was also an intensely warm, giving man and when he passed away seven or eight years ago, it left a void that will never be filled.

I laughed as I read his book today, as I could hear him saying the things that are now left only on paper. In his POW chapters, he talks about the importance of food in the lives of the men. There was never enough, even supplemented with Red Cross parcels, but the men came up with ingenious ways of creating tasty dishes, going to great lengths to do so. Some of the kriegies shared favorite recipes. John did, and put some in his memoirs. Here are some snippets from the late, great John Chaffin.

"The Geneva Convention defines the food that is to be supplied to Prisoners of War in terms of minimum calories per day per POW. We could probably have survived on just what the Germans gave us but we would have been very, very hungry all of the time. The rations which we got from the Germans included black bread, potatoes, kohlrabi, carrots, ersatz jam and honey, blood sausage and on rare occasions, fresh beef."

The German rations were supplemented by Red Cross Parcels. These came from various Allied nations and had foods such as powdered milk, chocolate, coffee, cigarettes, SPAM, a dry powdered milk called KLIM, and more. “The Red Cross food gives us variety, keeps us healthy, and does more to make our life bearable….Full rations are one parcel per man per week but we never had beter than one-half rations and most of the time we received only one-fourth the normal allowance.”

"Early in our kriegie life we did not do too well. Most of these guys had never learned how to cook or plan a meal. A certain number of them had seen in Boy Scout programs and learned how to cook over camp fires and a efw, like myself, had not only the benefit of scouting experience but also a mother who believed that boys as well as girls should grow up with some knowledge of cooking.” Quiet, please...chefs at work. Conditions were tough as several hundred men had to share just a few stoves.

"Flour was made by crunching up Canadian crackers. No parcels have yeast, so tooth powder, which contains baking soda, is used.

Some of John’s favorite Kriegie recipes:

Pie Crust:--- Grind crackers into a fine powder. Over about ½ bowl of the powder, pour ¼ lb. of melted butter. After mixing this well, add milk until the dough is pliable; then put it in a pan and bake until brown and fully dried out.

Chocolate Pie:-- (Serves Eight)
Ingredients: one (1) Klim can of milk (dry)
One ‘D’ Bar or ½ can of chocolate
Four tablespoons of sugar
Make pie crust. Shave ‘D’ Bar into a fine powder; mix thoroughly with milk power and sugar; then add enough water to make a thin paste. Boil mixture until it is thick; then pour into a crust and let set until cool.

John describes this recipe with his usual dry humor:

Kriegie Cake:
The Kriegie Cake is likened to a sandwich in that it is built and not made. It is not unlike a stew, since almost anything sweet in the pantry can be thrown in.
The bulk of the cake or rather the usual starting point is one bowl of bread scraps. Soak these in hot water for fifteen to thirty minutes and then pour into a dishpan. You are now ready to start.
Throw in about one Klim can of cracker crumbs; add sugar to suit taste—about ¾ lb. should be close to right. Put in ½ can of Nestles milk if you have it handy; a can of any kind of jam helps and ½ can of chocolate powder is one of the few necessary ingredients. A half can of New Zealand coffee doesn’t hurt anything, and, if you like, a box of raisins may be added. An apple pudding or Yorkshire pudding (from British parcels) will help immensely but if you are not fortunate in having one, don’t fret. When you have tired of throwing things into the pan, roll up your sleeves and work at the mess with both hands until it is well mixed. (If it is obvious that there is dirt on your hands and the weather is not too cold to run out to the latrine/washhouse you probably should wash your hands first—especially if any of the picky other Kriegies in your combine are watching.
Work the mess with both hands until it is well mixed. Pour the batch into a buttered pan and bake in the bottom of the oven until done. It should be baked slowly.
Almost any kind of icing will suffice for your cake. If you are lazy or pressed for time (rare even for a Kriegie) a little jam or honey will do. Should you feel more industrious, here are a couple of ideas for your use:
Take ¼ Klim can of milk, three spoons of sugar; mix well then add enough water to make a thick paste. Spread slowly and there you are.
To make a chocolate icing just add cocoa into the already-mentioned mixture and there you are—chocolate!
Some of John’s other recipes, meticulously saved in his POW log, include Barton’s OO—LA—LA Cookies; Blood Sausage Sandwich Spread; Delta Delight; Kriegie Style Grapenuts; and Prune Whip Pie

Novel Update

Writing a novel is like living another life. Every day, I get up and disappear into a world that exists only inside my head. I live in that world for four or five hours at a time. When I re-surface, I always feel discombobulated. One moment I'm in a German Stalag Luft with my characters, the next I'm sitting in a small room in Ammon, Idaho, staring at my computer.

The characters in my novel are currently in their second POW camp. The first camp became too full, due to the fact that sometime in September of 1943, the Italians switched sides, and all the Italian soldiers and diplomats in German territory instantly became 'the enemy'. Massive roundups and imprisonment of Germany's erstwhile allies from Italy followed. Many of those who ended up in the German prison camps couldn't believe that they were there.

Though my camps are fictional, they are based on actual camps. The first camp is based on Stalag VII-A at Moosberg. The second is based on Stalag 17-B at Krems.

One of my favorite readings about POW life comes from my old friend John Chaffin. John was a pilot in the 95th Bomb Group who was shot down on the Munster Mission in October, 1943. He became a close friend after we met in 2000. A strong Christian and a writer, John sent me several of his own books, based on his journals and notes he kept while a pilot and POW. John was one of my earliest critics. When I wrote something that he thought stunk, he would tell me, and then tell me how to make it better.

Sadly, John passed away about three years ago. I lost one of my best editors. After 100th pilot Herb Alf passed away, I had only one of my original three 'hard-ass' editors left, namely Maurice Rockett, who remains with me to this day, keeping me on the straight and narrow.

John's journals and notes are occasionally hilarious. John loved to cook. His mother had taught him to cook as a boy, though almost none of his fellow POWs had a clue how to do it. John therefore became the 'chef' in his 'combine' or group of POWs who shared food and cooking duties. An incredibly creative man, John developed recipes for dozens of dishes--no easy task when you consider that all his recipes had to be made from the limited ingrediants in a Red Cross Parcel.

Remember, all John's recipes were POW-tested, and all came from limited ingredients and were normally baked over improvised stoves on hand-made utensils.

Here is one of his Kriegie creations:

"Kriegie Cake:

The Kriegie Cake is likened to a sandwich in that it is built and not made. It is not unlike stew, since almost anything sweet in the pantry can be thrown in.

The bulk of the cake or rather the usual starting point, is one bowl of bread scraps. Soak these in hot water for fifteen to thirty minutes and then pour into a dishpan. You are now ready to start.

Throw in about one KLIM can of cracker crumbs. (Rob's note--Klim was a powdered milk and the crackers were either shredded biscuits or crackers that the Americans had traded for from the Brits). Add sugar to suit taste--about 3/4 pound should be close to right. Put in 1/2 can of Nestles milk if you have it handy; a can of any kind of jam helps and 1/2 can of chocolate powder is one of the few necessary ingredients. A half can of New Zealand coffee doesn't hurt anything and, if you like, a box of raisins might be added. An apple pudding or Yorkshire pudding (from British parcels) will help immensely but if you are not fortunate in having one, don't fret.

When you have tired of throwing things into the pan, roll up your sleeves and work at the mess with both hands until it is well mixed. (If it is obvious there is dirt on your hands and the weather is not too cold to run out to the latrine) you should probably wash your hands first---especially if any of the picky other Kriegies in your combine are watching.

Work the mess with both hands until it is well mixed. Pour the batch into a buttered pan and bake in the bottom of the oven until done. It should be baked slowly.

Almost any kind of icing will suffice for your cake. If you are lazy or pressed for time (rare event for a kriegie) a little jam or honey will do. Should you feel more industrious, here are a couple of ideas for your use:

Take 1/4 Klim can of milk, three spoons of sugar; mix well then add enough water to take a thick paste. Spread it on and there you are (italics John's).

To make a chocolate icing just add cocoa into the already mentioned mixture and there you are---chocolate!" (Italics John's).

John Chaffin was one wise man who took the lemons life gave him and figured out the best possible recipe for making lemonade! He returned from his incarceration to have a long career with General Dynamics. Before he passed away, my brother had a good visit with him down in Texas. To the end, John was a writer, a mentor, a leader in his Christian church in the Dallas area, and one heck of a contract bridge player and instructor.

Red Cross Parcels

A July 4th salute to the Red Cross parcels that kept the Allied prisoners of war going during World War Two. Not only were the food and cigarettes welcome, but the parcels provided for many of the needs of the prisoners, as a lively barter system developed between the men and between the prisoners and their guards. By the end of the war, the Red Cross parcels contained better food and cigarettes than the Luftwaffe guards were able to get themselves. Many a clandestine radio part or other important survival or escape item was obtained by bribing guards with parcel contents. Each country supplied parcels for its troops. The British parcels were slightly different, as were the Canadien, as the list below shows.

In addition, the Klim cans could be made into anything from plates to small bellows-furnaces by the ingenious kriegies. Parts of cans were melted down and re-cast.

In future posts, I will be sharing some of the kriegie recipes given to me by Lt. John Chaffin, a 100th BG pilot shot down on the Munster mission in October 1943. John collected all the recipes while a POW and wrote them down. Almost every item was made from the basic ingredients contained in a Red Cross parcel.

The contents of a typical Red Cross parcel varied slightly, but generally were much like the one described by 15th Air Force, 301st Bomb Group airman Sam Hewett, who has an excellent site at the following link: http://www.thehewitt.net/sam.html.

"One full Red Cross parcel was a box about 3" deep and 12" square and contained the minimum amount of food required to sustain a man for one week at approximately 1700 calories per day. In an American box were small portions of spam, corned beef, powdered eggs, jelly or jam, powdered milk, soda crackers, dried raisins or prunes, powdered coffee, cigarettes, sugar, a chocolate "D" bar, salt and pepper."

The outer looked like this. Each outer box contained four individual parcels. Men rarely got their full parcels regularly, often waiting weeks in between or having to split a parcel meant for one man several ways.

Those Ingenious Kriegies:Chapter One: Making table-tops, trays, and plates

Lyle's mock-up of the cutting device used to connect flattened Klim cans to make metal sheets, table tops, plates and trays. Notched knife is in cut in board. This was used to cut the cans. Seam is visible connecting the two cans. The smaller Spam-type can was used to get solder.

The late Basil Lyle Shafer was a B-17 Flying Fortress co-pilot whose 390th BG aircraft was shot down in 1944, killing most of the crew. Lyle ended up in a Luftwaffe prison camp at Barth, Germany. Lyle became a very good friend when I first began writing my book Untold Valor. I had no writing experience, no resume'. I was just a guy who wanted to learn about the men who flew the heavies. Lyle never tired of my sometimes ignorant questions, sending me information on a regular basis for three years. He was the first man I interviewed for the book, and he believed in it from the first. When I got frustrated, he's the guy who kept me going.

Lyle lived near me, just across Teton Pass in Wilson, Wyoming. I visited him there several times. One the second visit, he gave me some of the artifacts he had saved and shown at the POW reunion in Jackson the previous summer. I am going to do a series of articles on some of the ingenious stuff the kriegies came up with. Several of these are from Lyle. The cooking recipes, equally ingenious, are from the late John Chaffin, a 100th BG B-17 pilot who went down on the infamous Munster Mission in October 1943 and became a POW as well.

Lyle made this mock-up to demonstrate how the men in the prison camp made trays, plates, table-tops and other metal items. They used Klim cans, which came in their Red Cross parcels. Lyle explained that they would flatten the cans out, and then cut strips of the cans, which they would make into connecting pieces. They would then slide two flattened Klim cans together by folding the edges of each and sliding them onto the connecting piece. To cut the cans, they used a block of wood and a regular kitchen knife with a notch it it. Lyle said they made everything they needed this way. The photo shows the mock-up Lyle made and gave me some years ago.

Lyle passed away about three years ago. Though he was my #1 believer and backer, he passed away only a few weeks before the book was published and never got to see it.

I will feature more of Lyle's amazing stuff in future posts.

Lyle Shafer as a young aviation cadet. He was twenty years old when he was shot down.

Lyle Shafer's Prisoner of War photo taken at Dalag Luft. He was badly injured when this photo was taken, having lost several teeth, broken his arm, and with a many pieces of flak and shrapnel embedding in his arm. Lyle had bent down to get his flak helmet in the cockpit when a round entered right where his head had been. This round decapitated the pilot and the next split the plane in two.