Book Review of SAGE, by Col. (Ret.) Jerry Sage

The book to read, right now -- or as soon as you can buy or borrow a copy -- is SAGE, by Colonel Jerry Sage, U.S.A. Retired, “the man the Nazis couldn’t hold,” “Dagger” of the OSS, the “Cooler King” in German prisoner-of-war camps. And, to those who spent time with him behind the wire in Germany, “a big, flamboyant and warm-hearted guy who made their days more bearable.”

SAGE is a saga of World War II. A thrilling adventure. A true story, told from the heart.

This new book, put out in paperback by Dell Publishing Co. and soon to be out in hardcover, is. an invaluable record of a myriad of events that took place during the height and fury of WW II as well as in its dark aftermath.

It is written after many years of war and peacetime experiences, exactly forty years after the end of WW II. But this work is more than a chronicle of the author’s close to seventy years of living, and of his more than thirty years of Army service.

This is Jerry Sage’s invictus.

Invictus is, of course, the Latin word for “unconquered” and the title of William Ernest Henley’s poem that his in it these lines:

“Out of the night that covered me;

Black as the Pit from pole to pole,

... My head is bloody, but unbowed,

... I am the master of my fate;

I am the captain of my soul.”

Sage writes how on one of the many occasions when he was enduring lonely days of punishment in solitary confinement (in. the “cooler” of the German prisoner-of-war camp), he scratched all the verses of Invictus on the cell wall. This, from memory and with a comb, because he was not allowed to have a pencil.

But he explains that now, were he the author of this oft-quoted poem, he would change several lines and phrases to make it say there is one God and that He is the master of a man’s fate and the highly capable captain of his soul.

The author, a football-playing Phi Beta Kappa from Washington State, tells his story in more or less chronological order, with occasional flashbacks to clarify events for the reader.

He begins in the fall of 1941, when, as a first lieutenant in the reserve, he asked for active duty and soon found himself a volunteer in Wild Bill Donovan’s “new super-spy unit ... a spy and sabotage agency” which became the Office of Strategic Services (OSS).

Sage takes his reader with him through the rigorous OSS training designed to qualify him “to be an agent, a saboteur, maybe an assassin, certainly a guerrilla fighter” ... to enable him to carry the war to the enemy ... hit him where it really hurts ... behind the lines.”

Sage was given the code name “Dagger” and assigned an OSS detachment to take to North Africa in December, 1942.

Here, he helped develop “a zany but effective weapon to use against Rommel’s Afrika Korps and the Italians ... a manure bomb, a camel dung bomb.”

In describing these operations, Sage writes: “We strewed the roadways behind the lines of the Afrika Korps with manure bombs, and Arab line-crossers or friendly patrols told us what happened. Wheels were blown off the German trucks. Nazi Tiger tanks lost their treads. Numerous German and Italian infantrymen were killed or wounded. The results were certainly grim, but we were doing our job, slowing up the famous Afrika Korps. ... Our main targets were the railroads, the locomotives and rolling stock particularly.”

Later, when the Nazis captured Sage, they sent him from North Africa to Stalag Luft III, a prisoner of war camp for shot-down fliers near Sagan, Germany. (Had the Nazis known he was a member of the OSS, they would have followed their orders to bury him twelve feet under.) He remained at this camp, some ninety miles southeast of Berlin, about 15 months before being purged from it and sent to another prisoner compound down near the border of Czechoslovakia.

It was in Stalag Luft III that occurred the events that have since been immortalized in Paul Brickhill’s book The Great Escape, and the move of the same name.

Sage ends his story with his final triumphant escape; his cold, exhilarating trek across Poland and the kindness and hospitality of the Polish people; Poland’s betrayal by the Communists; his going to Odessa on the Black Sea in February of 1945; and finally his journey back to the U.S. and to his home in Washington State.

Then comes a brief account of his further work and special assignments with the Army, and his teaching. The epilogue brings the reader up to 1984 and Sage’s living in Enterprise, Alabama.

In style, the writing, is detailed, clear, frank -- no beating the devil around the bush. Sage speaks in a matter-of-fact way of when his captors took wire pliers and jerked the flesh off his heels. He does not say so, but the reader senses that he did not bow down and beg for mercy. When a sentry dog lunged at his throat, he did not run. And when his interrogators almost burned him alive with their “heat treatment”, he did not cry out to anybody except his God.

These parts of the chronicle shine as the author’s tremendous determination, his indomitable spirit, and his faith come through.

There is humor mingled with the pathos, such as the quotation from the classic “Dear John” letter which one of Sage’s fellow prisoners received. It read: “Dear Darling, you have been gone so long I have married your father. Love, Mother.”

In the book’s four hundred and seventy pages there are sections that reverberate with the roar of battle, the wail of air raid sirens, the bark of vicious sentry dogs ever on patrol in and around the Nazi POW camps.

Yet, there are the sounds of singing and laughter and fake brawls as the “kriegies” (the name for all prisoners in camp, taken from the German word for war prisoner “Kriegsgefangener”) carry on much tomfoolery to cover the noise of work on their three escape tunnels. Sage was the tomfoolery specialist.

And, there is the sound of praying. The reader can hear Sage whispering “Thank you, Lord” each time he faces and somehow overcomes the threat of certain death. Sage tells how one day he DID literally hear God telling him to “Move in!” on his two would-be killers.

There are large sections of the book which describe, vividly, how dreadful and drab prison life was for the captured Allied soldiers and airmen. “Grayness” is the word Sage chooses.

He writes:

“The average kriegie’s (prisoner’s) life was one dull, empty, monotonous routine played out against a background of gray ... He was forever hungry ... There was never enough of anything -- clothes, food, hot water, utensils, fuel, blankets... The too-thin blankets were enough only when sewn together with layers of the Nazi propaganda newspaper ‘Volkscher Beobachter’ in between as insulation.”

Colonel Sage is to be complimented for writing this book, his story, his Invictus.

Copies of SAGE are available in the Ft. Rucker Post Exchange (department store).

I have read my copy twice.

Published June 1985. Click your browser’s ‘Back’ button to return.