A vehicle roared up and stopped short of the bridge. It seemed to be a staff car specially adapted for the capture of escapers, for a searchlight was mounted behind the front seat with a light machine-gun below it. Six men jumped out and for a moment stood together in a bunch – proof that they were not expecting any armed opposition. The searchlight was then manned, its beam sweeping the desolate far side of the stream. I couldn’t see any of my party, who must have been clinging to the ground in ruts or behind lumps of mud.
Having first satisfied themselves that the truck on the bridge was empty, two men climbed the earth bank as I had foreseen. At a range of twenty feet I was able to kill them cleanly without any trouble. Response was immediate.
Their machine-gunner harmlessly peppered the crest of the bank, the searchlight swept it from end to end and the other two delivered a flank attack, this time with proper care. Meanwhile the bridge was in darkness, allowing me to get away while still remaining in contact. Movements thereafter had to depend on those of the enemy, now reduced to four.
Where the hard shoulder met the stream the slope gave just enough cover to reach the underside of the bridge. The flank attackers were cautiously working their way up the bank and it was safe to crawl round the end of it so long as the two did not look below them. So I ducked under the bridge, clinging to the lattice girder of the steel arch, more afraid of falling in than of the enemy, who must now have passed the bodies of their two comrades and at intervals were loosing off bursts at nothing. The carefully aimed shot seemed to have become unfashionable in modern tactics.
I heard our truck rattling over my head, its headlights shining on the road beyond. With one man lighting up the earth bank and two chasing shadows, only one was left to drive the truck over the bridge and park it clear of the road. A definite objective at last presented itself: to drive on to Cracow in that imposing staff car, provided I remained alive to capture it.
Praying that the searchlight would remain busy, I crept out from under the bridge and padded softly across the open to the back of the truck. The driver had just switched off the engine, and he was at my mercy; but I did not want to fire a shot. My problem was the two on the bank. If they took cover I could never find them in the dark and they were free to attack whenever our party was reunited and vulnerable.
In the event the problem was solved by a mere piece of gangsterism. I stood behind that slaughter-house van, and when the driver left the cab and came abreast of me he had the doubly unnerving experience of seeing an SD officer in dirty uniform and a pistol held at his head – two very good reasons for obeying when I ordered him to keep quiet and turn round. After knocking him out with the butt of his own weapon, I put him in the back of the truck, closed the door and settled down behind the bonnet, waiting for the inexplicable silence of night to have its effect on the others.
I did not have to wait long. The lonely man at the searchlight called to his two comrades to return to the car. When they had joined him he drove across the bridge and stopped at the truck. I was unfamiliar with the machine pistol and had been looking for the safety catch. I found it in plenty of time. A nasty, deadly killer at close quarters. They were all three of them in an open car only ten feet away.
I shouted in English and German to summon my companions and at last they appeared, two of them carrying the body of one of the poor devils who had been on the floor of the train. The exertion had been too much for that living substance tortured and twisted by his interrogators and used as a footstool by the guards. I could not think what to do with my prisoner. In those days it went against the grain to kill when I was not immediately threatened. But Broken Face had no doubt. He emptied a magazine into him. Passionate, foolish, understandable hatred. We had some trouble throwing the entire body into the rushes in one piece.
We now had two free uniforms; two more were unwearable and had to go into the marsh with their owners. Broken Face put on one and I took the other, changing my rank from captain to private. Then we drove off to Cracow in a towering thunderstorm which helped to clean up the car. My companions were indifferent to rain and cold and much cheered by some rations which we found in a locker, for they had been given nothing to eat since they started on their journey.
There was at last time to hear their stories. Doubled-Up had been demobilized after the defeat of Poland and then picked up in a raid on his quarter of Cracow and sent straight off to forced labour at Kiel Canal without a chance of communicating with wife or family. Broken Face had been on the same convoy and the same work, and the pair of them, not caring whether they lived or died, had organized a camp mutiny which was betrayed before it got off the ground. They were suspected of being ringleaders and after interrogation were being sent to Auschwitz for, as they supposed, more of it. Man-on-the-Floor, who turned out to be German not Polish, had a different, even sadder story. He was a Jew, a landowner, who had escaped from a concentration camp and been helped and hidden by a good Christian farmer until he was caught. They wanted the name of that decent, civilized man. They hadn’t got it. Man-on-the-Floor was proud of that, what was left of him.
It was a help to have two former soldiers in the party. They were familiar with our machine-gun and could also tell me about the use of radio by the military and what we might expect. They agreed that the search party would have called up the unit headquarters as soon as they had closed in on our empty truck, saying that they had started the hunt for the fugitives and would report back as soon as there was any news. Well, there wasn’t any, except two pistol shots. That each shot had killed a man would be unknown in the car until the second pair returned from the earth bank, and after that, during the couple of minutes left to them, there was no object in reporting until they knew more exactly what to report.
However, it was certain that posts further down the road would have been alerted as soon as we escaped from Auschwitz station. We had to guess how much they would have been told – probably that four prisoners had seized the truck waiting to take them to camp; that some unknown, possibly a Gestapo officer, must be driving it and that it should be stopped on sight. So should we try to clear the road with our machine-gun or bluff our way through?
Broken Face as always was eager to kill Germans whatever the cost. I doubted if it would be necessary, for there must be normal military traffic on the move to Cracow even at night and we were so obviously military. It was highly unlikely that it would occur to sentries that wretched unarmed prisoners bound for more interrogation and death could have captured our formidable staff car.
I drove while Broken Face, also in Gestapo uniform, sat by my side. The two civilians were huddled against the searchlight mounting hidden under packs and greatcoats. As Broken Face only spoke poor German he was to keep his mouth shut and leave the talking to me. Half of me was confident that we should pass, reassuring the other half which, since waiting is always worse than action, was more jittery than at any other crisis since Stettin.
We had not long to wait before we came to a large notice of HALT, well placed since there was water on both sides of the road and no possible avoidance. As soon as I stopped, a corporal and two of his men came out of a solitary cottage which was serving as a guardroom. I glimpsed inside a comfortable fire and a table with a bottle on it, and hoped that he would not stay out in the pouring rain asking questions or invite death by closely inspecting the car.
‘Taking it down to the next post, corporal,’ I said. ‘They want it in case some escaped prisoners come this way.’
‘Waste of time!’ he answered. ‘They’ll never get as far as the town.’
I think he was about to ask us in for a quick nip from the bottle and a warm-up by the fire, so I drove on quickly. It was good news that the next post must be in or very near the city.
It looked as if we should now reach Cracow, but planning was more impossible than ever. Obviously we should have to park the car somewhere and then, unseen by anyone, leave it
on foot either in uniform or as civilians. The essential was a safe house where we could change clothes and the victims could recover. Doubled-Up continued to believe that we could find it and that he and Broken Face might manage to acquire new identities. But for me and Man-on-the-Floor, neither of us speaking Polish, the difficulties were formidable. I saw no future as Hauptmann Haase. Wearing a respectable suit I might return to Ernesto Menendez Peraza, provided that only frontier posts had been warned to arrest him and that I could explain his most improbable presence in Cracow.
Dawn was just breaking when we arrived at the outskirts of Cracow. My first impression – and how often they are right! – was of a city in mourning, dominated by its cathedral and castle on the Wavel Hill like a tomb of past glory. It was all dark grey except for an occasional light in a bedroom window. There was not even the usual scatter of early risers in the streets. Twice on seeing our slowly cruising car, pedestrians vanished like rabbits round corners or into gardens, for we were obviously a Gestapo patrol which had picked up some wretched citizen. We had nothing to fear for the moment unless we met some genuine patrol which was bound to greet and question us. We did pass sentries on military establishments but they paid no attention.
There may have been a control post on the main road but, if there was, Doubled-Up’s directions enabled us to avoid it. We entered a suburb of deserted factories from which the workers had been seized for slave labour in the Reich and found a quiet spot in a damaged warehouse, where we waited well inside the gate, as if ready to dash out on suspected persons or transport. Morale, influenced by the wasted city, was low. It would not be long before the two privates of the Gestapo had to account for themselves to higher authority. Unfortunately my SD uniform was too muddy and stained to wear and I had no officer’s greatcoat to cover it up.
Doubled-Up came out with a proposal which was better than nothing. He insisted that now he could force himself to walk, and that walk he would.
‘I shall go to the Great Square,’ he said. ‘There will be people passing through on their way to work or to the university and I may meet some old friend who will remember how I disappeared. No one is ever allowed back, so he will know I am in trouble.’
Thinking that he would try first to find his family, I wished him luck.
‘We have passed my flat already. The house is a billet for troops.’
His expression was and had been set hard. Broken Face tried to comfort him.
‘They won’t have harmed her. When you were seized you had committed no crime.’
‘But when they know our names and how we escaped, they will try to find her and give her all they would like to give to me. I may be able to find out where she is and warn her but I must never go near her.’
No, it was not to see his lost family that he would walk. His plan was that, about half past eight, we should drive slowly along one side of the square. He would be sitting on a seat, if possible by himself so that no companion could be compromised, and would blow his nose on a white handkerchief if any of us had such a thing – the late Hauptmann Haase had – when we should pick him up quickly. He would then tell us if he had had any success and direct us where to drive.
I asked him what chance there was that the old friend, even if he could be found, would take the risk of helping us.
‘There is no man or woman in Cracow who would not,’ he replied.
He drew us a rough map of the city and the River Vistula and marked the spot where he would be.
‘And till then what do you advise?’ I asked him.
He couldn’t advise anything. All depended on how long we had before they discovered that we had wiped out the search party and got away in their car. That was hard to guess, but we might well have another hour before radio silence and the car’s failure to return began to cause concern. The headquarters would then call up the cottage by the roadside, who would report that the car had gone through on orders from Cracow. Our two ex-soldiers for the first time laughed. Experience had taught them that it would appear a mess of muddled command, typical of any army, to be sorted out after breakfast.
When Doubled-Up had gone, our Jew took me on one side, and said that he was too weak to be of any use to us. I replied with unthinking cheerfulness that if he thought we had no future he should try to find some of his own people to shelter him.
‘There are none left in Cracow.’
I was astonished. No one knew better than I the rabid Nazi cruelty in Germany which had dismembered and killed the only love of my past and all my future, but I did not realize that all Jews in conquered Europe were being rounded up, as well as those of the Reich.
‘For labour?’ I asked.
‘Women and children are not much good for heavy labour.’
‘Then what are they doing with them all?’
‘I only know rumours – terrible rumours.’
I told him I would never leave him till he was in safety or dead. Meanwhile a week in bed, a doctor and good food would make a new man of him.
‘But the Poles, sir? They don’t much like us either.’
‘That was long ago, friend. Now for the Poles everyone who has suffered is a brother.’
We got out of the car and from behind a wall kept watch on the gate of the warehouse, ready for escape on foot if anyone were to show interest in us. Nobody did. Cracow, as I learned later, was now the seat of the German government, and I think it had been swept so clean of workers and possible insurgents that security could be relaxed. After ten minutes Broken Face, always impatient for action, returned to the car and began to examine the mounting of the machine-gun and searchlight. He reported that it was held on only by nuts and bolts, that there was a tool kit on board, and that if we reversed the car round the corner and away from the gate he and I could take the lot off.
So we did it. His regret was evident when we parted from the machine-gun. I pointed out that we still had four machine pistols plus my own handy and accurate little weapon and that if he wanted to die like some ancient hero on a heap of corpses it could easily be arranged. The main question before us was whether we should drive away in our car, now no longer conspicuous, as civilians or as privates of the Gestapo. We decided on the latter, for our party’s civilian clothes were too filthy and disreputable. I was to continue driving while Broken Face was to sit in the back guarding our Jew, whose features could hardly be anything but proudly Semitic. Good cover if questioned. We had unearthed one of the last of them.
Dear God, what a city it was when we reached the centre of it! How dared these sewer rats describe the Poles as Untermenschen when their ancient capital was one of the flowers of Europe. I was ashamed – so far as I had the odd moment to be ashamed of anything – to have been ignorant of such a seat of learning, its age, beauty and peace comparable to the inner courts of Oxford. The peace now was that of silence, for the professors were in gaol and the students scattered. It was another, wider justification of my attempt on Hitler and those three years as Don Ernesto plotting for a second chance.
The splendid square was a little more animated than any of the streets through which we had passed, though still comparatively empty. A few soldiers were strolling about with cameras. They looked at us and looked away. I detected some disgust, or charitably thought I did. We spotted Doubled-Up and his handkerchief, and when we re-passed him Broken Face leapt from the car and threw him in. He had had enough experience to know every cold and brutal gesture of the Gestapo, and his impersonations must have been convincing for nobody interfered.
Doubled-Up had seen four or five former acquaintances, but only one had recognized him. This friend had sat down next to him showing no sign of welcome and eventually listened to his story as if it were a casual, rather boring conversation with a stranger. Then he had spoken of himself. He had been lucky. He could eat and had a comfortable room. Before the war he was one of the chief municipal engineers. It pleased
the invaders’ sense of humour to put him in command of a large public urinal. There he had been able to serve his fellow citizens in more ways than one. Through him, members of the underground were able to communicate safely, even to stand next to each other.
Friend did not know enough to tell Doubled-Up where and how we could find safety, but did tell him what our first port of call should be. We should go in civilian dress to a little village near the banks of the Vistula and get in touch with the priest who would warn the partisans of our presence. It was essential to get rid of the car some distance away so that no suspicion could possibly fall on the village.
It all sounded very comforting in theory, but by now our battle at the bridge must surely have been discovered and the number and description of the car signalled to Cracow. On top of that danger we had to cover miles down a main road without any explanation, if stopped, of where we were going. We did not know where prisoners were taken. Our best story was that we were bound for some secret spot where they could be executed. It was weak. In Cracow executions were by no means secret. Doubled-Up’s advice was to follow the river and drive fast, so that if any military passing traffic were suspicious we should be well away before they could make up their minds to follow. We could only put our trust in German respect for a uniform. As I had found out, it does not readily occur to them what may be inside it.
Seeing a whole convoy of trucks ahead of us and afraid that we might be challenged as we drove past it, we turned into a side road and found ourselves running through a pleasant district of villas and gardens taken over apparently as billets for high-ranking officers of army and administration. Passers-by, not wishing to tangle with the Gestapo, ignored us, but a colonel of the SD, beautifully polished and uniformed, stepped off the pavement into the road, stopped us and ordered the two miserable privates to get out. I was in two minds whether to run him down or not. Too many eyes might be watching.
Rogue Justice Page 5
