House Design

On April 29, 1945, Allied captives at Stalag Luft VII A, a prisoner-of-war camp in southeast Germany, heard the rumbling of artillery in the distance. Lt. Charles B. Woehrle, 28, of the U.S. Army Air Forces, peered though the barbed wire fence to the town of Moosburg in the Isar River valley below. Plumes of white smoke rose above the village.

Gaunt, unwashed and lice-ridden, Woehrle checked the new Patek Philippe watch on his wrist and noted the time. The watch was stainless steel — an uncommon luxury at the time — with a hand-stitched alligator strap.

From the camp’s position in the foothills of the Alps, Woehrle and his fellow prisoners watched as men from Gen. George S. Patton’s Third Army lowered the Nazi flag above the town square and raised an American flag in its place. Using the shorthand he had learned in college — indecipherable to his captors — the lieutenant scrawled some notes on the back of an envelope containing a letter from his mother, all the while referring back to the watch.

“American flag raised over Moosburg at 12:40,” he wrote. “At gate U.S. flag was raised at 1:03,” he scribbled. Later: “Sherman tank enters compound at 2:04.”

Patton was just behind, donning his iconic ivory-handled pistols and riding trousers. Prisoners cheered, wept and swarmed the tanks.

The following month, the lieutenant planted his first footsteps back on home soil in New York City, the same watch ticking on his wrist.

German captors, forced marches and a prison barter economy that could have fetched anything for that watch — perhaps even his freedom — had not separated him from his Patek Philippe. But decades later, a burglar in St. Paul did.

Call it a homecoming, or perhaps the best story of brand loyalty ever told. When Woehrle, now 94, arrived in New York again last week, this time to receive a replacement for his beloved watch, it was just the latest improbable twist in an Odyssean saga that has bound war prisoner to watchmaker for 67 years.

By the summer of 1944, Woehrle had been a prisoner at Stalag Luft III for more than a year. A bombardier aboard a B-17 Flying Fortress, he had already beaten some incredible odds. His plane was shot down by German flak the previous May over the Bay of Biscay. Four of his crew members were killed when a group of Focke Wulf 190 fighters strafed the burning plane. A faulty parachute fractured his jaw and dislocated his shoulder. Compared with the Gestapo camp where he was interrogated, Stalag Luft III, in what is now western Poland, could have been much worse. Most prison camps were. But Stalag Luft III, for aviator officers only, was run by the Luftwaffe, and its administrators generally treated captives with the respect common among airmen.

Still, it was a prison. Despite the Red Cross packages, the men were always hungry. Woehrle lost 30 pounds. Young men who once talked about pinup girls instead fantasized about favorite recipes.

B Around that time, Woehrle came across a Patek Philippe advertisement. He had given his old watch to a camp chaplain, who he decided needed it more than he did.

“I knew that they were expensive because Patek Philippe was a name I had seen in Harper’s Bazaar or Esquire,” he said. He knew it was a long shot, but he tore out an order form anyway, and mailed it with a note promising to pay the watchmaker once he was freed.

Months passed; he forgot about the watch. To his surprise, one day it arrived. Camp administrators were reluctant to give it to him. They feared he might use it to bribe a guard. They relented when a ranking U.S. colonel promised that the lieutenant would do no such thing.

“It was an electrifying experience for the whole camp,” Woehrle said. “I had lines of fellows out in the hall knocking on my door, waiting to see the watch.”

Dick Schiefelbusch, 92, a retired professor from Lawrence, Kan., remembers the watch. “It was one of those kind of positive events, one of those things that was talked about,” Schiefelbusch said. “You don’t feel quite as lonely — or as out of it — if you have something like that happen.”

As the war’s end hastened, conditions worsened. On Jan. 27, 1945, the prisoners of Stalag Luft III were informed they had to evacuate overnight. By 11 p.m. they were leading a forced march of the entire camp. Thousands of prisoners marched about 50 miles to the town of Spremberg, Germany, through snow and freezing temperatures. Some died along the way. Then they were packed into windowless boxcars. Three days later Woehrle arrived at Stalag Luft VII A, outside Moosburg — a much harsher camp than Stalag Luft III. It was a horrendous three months. Men were flea-bitten, starved and could not bathe. “We just existed in that camp,” Woehrle said.

After the war, Woehrle returned home, opened a film company and paid for his watch. All Patek Philippe wanted was about $300, he said — a steal even back then. Every four years, he faithfully sent the watch to Geneva for maintenance, until one day in the mid-1970s his home in St. Paul was burglarized. He scoured the local dealers and pawnshops. The watch was gone.

Louise Woehrle, daughter of Woehrle’s late identical twin, Richard, first learned about the watch last August while making a documentary about her uncle, planned for completion this fall.

“My dream since hearing this story was to find a way to replace the watch with another and give it to him as a gift,” she wrote in an email.

She contacted Patek Philippe in Geneva, which connected her with Larry Pettinelli, president of Patek Philippe USA. She hoped the company could help her locate a replacement. That was harder than Pettinelli expected. But through private dealers, he and his lead technician found a close match in good condition, a midcentury Calatrava model, slightly larger than the original, with a yellow gold casing. The company did not want to disclose its value.

The Stern family in Geneva, which owns the company, decided to give the watch to Woehrle as a gift. Last week Woehrle and his niece flew to New York. At Patek Philippe’s office on Thursday, Pettinelli wore a white glove as he presented the watch to Woehrle. “I want your fingerprints to be the first ones on this watch,” he said.

Eyes glistening, a cry of delight escaped the old veteran’s lips: “Oh! Isn’t this lovely, lovely?”

Pettinelli fastened it to the former prisoner’s left wrist. Woehrle held it proudly aloft.

“When God wants to do something wonderful, it begins with a difficulty,” he said. “And if he wants to do something extremely wonderful, it begins with an impossibility.”

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