THE STEAM ENGINE COLLECTING OF GLEN J. BRUTUS
(Page 6 of 8)
January/February 2000
Dr. Robert T. Rhode
'I went to a bunker, but it was filled with German
civilians. I knew they'd kill me, once everything died down. So
I got out of there and went to the crest of a hill. Albert Olschig
[another prisoner] spoke German fluently. I wanted him to take off
with me. Many of the German people were sympathetic with escaped
prisoners, if you could get them away from the other Germans Hitler
planted on every block. But Albert didn't want to take any
unnecessary chances. He had a wife at home expecting a baby. I went
back to the boxcar, but I discovered that our shaving kits and
personal belongings had been stolen. I walked up to the locomotive.
That engineer obviously had orders to stay by his train no matter
what. He'd been in that engine all night during the bombing
raid.'
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In broken German, Glen asked for hot water. 'The engineer
stuck the hose out of the window and filled my helmet.' Glen
had first scrubbed the helmet with clean dirt, for it had been put
to hygienic purposes in the boxcar. 'I washed my face.'
Again, Glen asked for hot water, and, a second time, the engineer
filled the helmet. 'I drank out of it that time. That was the
first water I'd had in three days.'
Glen continued, 'By about daylight, a German officer rounded
us up and marched us up a mile away.' Glen was still a
prisoner.
Years later, Don Bowman, a minister who had come to serve the
Pine Village Methodist Church, was talking with Glen, and they
discovered that they were on the same boxcar that night in
1944.
At Lukenwalde much later, the prisoners learned that the
Russians were coming to liberate the camp. The German officers and
guards said that they planned to spread out to the perimeter of the
compound to set up their defenses. If the Russians were not to show
up or were beaten back, the Germans would return to the camp.
'They told us that, if they found we had a gun, they were going
to shoot a hundred of us,' Glen said. After the Germans left,
some American prisoners disposed of a German shotgun by dropping it
down a privy.
While the Germans were away, one of the prisoners found a box of
records in the office and brought it back to the barracks. Glen
knelt beside it, thumbed through the files, and pulled out his own
German prisoner-of-war record, which he has to this day.
The Russians accomplished their objective, and Glen eventually
returned to the United States to savor the peace that followed the
war.
His war time experiences had taught him, to paraphrase the motto
of the United States Army Service Forces, that the difficult he
could do immediately but that the impossible took a little longer
sound advice for anyone intending to restore as many engines as
Glen has put into preservation.
Glen was in the forefront of the steam hobby early on and shared
information with other collectors who, by now, are legendary.
Harold Ottaway of Wichita, Kansas, told Glen that a titanic
40/140-horse-power Reeves traction engine was located in Julesburg,
Colorado. Two or three years later, Harold said to Glen, 'I was
just through Julesburg again. That one got junked.' Glen,
however, knew where another 40/140 was to be found, and he passed
that fact along to brothers Ray and Ed Smolik, who wound up buying
the much-sought-after Reeves. Glen commented, 'Windy Stingle
said that the 40/140 was the largest traction engine that could be
hauled on a railroad flatcar.'
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