Where is Robert Damm?

Mr. Kristian Kluth
West Germany
Marburg an der Lahn
Ockerhaeuser Allee 9a
bei Eichler
July 20, 1960
Dear Kristian,
It was good to hear from you, that you are still at home with your
grandparents in Marburg. I am sure that Opa is still having his three cigars
and a bottle of Vermouth wine every Sunday. Tell him I could not imagine
how he could always win at a card game of 66 so consistently. I think he had
two set of rules, one for him and another for me — ha, ha. Give my best to him and to Oma, your wonderful grandma.
Now here is an important request :
Do you have any idea what ever happened to Robert Damm ? He gave me a
check for $160.00 US before I left Germany. He wanted me to cash it for him in the USA.
He had been a POW, captured in Normandy and sent to a POW
camp, camp Haan, California. He earned money there doing some kind of outside work until the end of the war. My father even tried to help me with this after I got in trouble with the army (AF) finance centre at Lowry AFB. They thought I was Robert Damm and a Nazi to boot ! Ha, ha, ha, I had a hard time proving my ID to them until they called my father. No matter what I did I could’t get the check cashed here.
Well, tell Robert I tried hard. I will send the check back to you since I am not sure where he is now. Do you remember, he had moved into a room at Auf der Weide 7 and that’s where we found that 500 lb bomb buried in the cellar under his room — we looked through a hole in the closet floor and there it was, we could see it with a candle. Evidently it was a British bomb from late in the war. I wonder why nobody had seen it before we did. The police removed the bomb so I was told a bit later.

I think Robert had a daughter somewhere in Marburg. Do you know
anything about her ? Maybe I could send the check back to her if you can
locate her. Your aunt Brigita, Tanta Giti, might know. She was Robert’s
girlfriend if I recall. I know you don’t usually go downtown but if you do, you might find some of Robert’s friends at the Deutschhaus Cafe where we used to play chess (lose at chess) with Robert and some of his old army buddies from the Russian front; I know of this since they used to tell stories about their wild adventures in the Ukraine and Russia during the winter of 1941. Well, you don’t really want to hear about all of that. But, check with the old boys at the Deutschhaus Cafe. I feel I need to get this check back to Robert if I can’t cash it here. He was always such a good friend. He trusted me. I don’t want to let him down. If you find him, let him see this letter. I just want him to know.
Kristian, thank you so much for anything you can do. Just let me know if you have any luck.
My best to the whole family.
Your old friend,
Mike Thomas
503 So. Windermere
Littleton, Colorado USA
Addendum
Here’s commentary from Mike about this letter for context:
I was trying to find my friend, Robert Damm, to return a check he had given me before I left Germany.
Damm had been a POW after his capture in Normandy. I used to go around with him a lot. I went to meetings he had with his old army buddies. And, I was in on some of their exploits— mostly from the sideline. I did not write about that since I don’t want any trouble—I am too old for that. But, I know they used to board American trains (military ?) and push things off from the freight cars onto the siding of the railroad particularly between Frankfurt/Main and some town in the north then on to West Berlin which was blockaded at the time. I am not sure about the towns. However, they would go back along the tracks at night and get whatever the merchandise was and distribute it or sell it somehow. Food items, coffee, Zigarreten, ladies wear, guns, and who knows what else. It was all post-war black market.
I had a bit of trouble in later years. It seems that the FBI ( I believe) and some other arm of the government suspected that I was a Communist or some ex-Nazi. I was working for a Mercedes dealer (service dept.) in Colorado. I was approached by two men with FBI credentials (I believe) who showed me photographs of me at the main railway station (Hauptbahnhof) in Marburg purchasing a newspaper (called “Die Tat”) from a man who was the local cell leader of the communist party. So what ? That’s what I said to the two men.
They asked me questions and informed about the identity of the newspaper seller — all of that big surprise to me. Well I was no commie ! They did not detain me since they couldn’t prove anything except that I had been arrested by the German Military Police for conspiring to sell guns (property of the German Government) to persons outside of Germany. Well, that too was false.
You see, at that time (mid-50s), Cubans were trying to buy guns all over Europe, especially Germany. Yes, I had located a cache, hidden from the last war — or, at least I thought it was a cache located off of an old munitions road outside of Marburg —an accidental discovery while riding Greissinger’s motorcycle.

