Too tired to turn on the wireless for the news, we must have been the only people in the Reich unaware that the small enemy raid in France was turning out to be something more substantial.
CHAPTER 20
Next day Gregor didn’t phone back until close on noon. Must have had quite a job on his hands. Meanwhile, I tried to take a census. The combined total from the three camps, Belsen, Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen, was forty-three hutches. Counting the inmates was more difficult, as they refused to come on parade, all neat and tidy, like humans for a roll call. But I reckoned there must have been something like 860 of them. In other words, about twenty per hutch. Far too many. And that was now. If Frau Sperrle’s predictions were correct, the figure would soon be up in the thousands.
I busied myself seeing that the bowls of water were full, and then started to move a few hutches into the other two fields. We’d have to use the Sperrle estate to maximum. I could just about drag a hutch along on my own, as long as it was rabbitless. Benni became my aide de camp, extracting inmates prior to moving, then repopulating the hutch again in its new location. He was a child transformed – smiling, lively.
When Gregor did phone it was to ask for me. As we went in, Frau Sperrle muttered something about hearing on the wireless that the Wehrmacht was still busy throwing the enemy back into the English Channel. Seemed to be taking a long time. I hoped it wasn’t a repeat of the disastrous Dieppe raid, when they really had thrown us back into the sea. But I was not concentrating on world events. My mind was on rabbits.
“I’ve spent the last umpteen hours trying to find homes for our guests,” began Gregor. “Quite a list. But we can’t do anything until we’ve sorted them out. Bucks from does.”
“Surely a job for Felix the butcher,” I said.
“You’d think so,” replied Gregor. “But I can’t get hold of him. Even when we do, can I trust him? You know what Felix is like, pretty damned useless. Would probably sex the little devils any old how, just for a quiet life. Anyway, after yet more ringing around, I’ve found someone who claims she can do it. And sounds reliable. A certain Fräulein Schwarz...”
“Schwarz und Weiss (black and white) – nice symmetry,” I said.
“Life’s full of coincidences,” replied Gregor, unamused. “I’ve never heard of this Fräulein Schwarz, but by sheer good luck she lives just down the road from Hilde’s. Not on the phone, so you’ll have to go and drag her out. I’m told she’s something of a recluse, but don’t be put off. Future of the Fatherland at stake, that sort of thing. Just get her over to Hilde’s. And get her sexing.”
Gregor had rung off before I could ask where exactly this lady lived, but Frau Sperrle gave me directions: the first gaggle of houses I’d come to on the right. Ten minutes later I was banging on her door.
“Yes?” As the door opened, a voice came from somewhere down below: a thin treble from a person so tiny she would barely have reached the knees of Junior Assault Leader Bruch. Or so it seemed.
“I’ve come with a message from Bürgermeister Weiss,” I said. “He says you’re a rabbit expert.”
“Well... I don’t know about that. But I can show you something interesting...”
She led the way in. I followed. The cottage appeared to date from a time when builders disliked windows, which were small and scarce; maybe there had been a window tax. Trees grew unhindered almost up to the walls, accentuating the gloom. Even though it was a bright summer’s day, she switched on the lights as we entered the lounge.
“Aren’t they beautiful?” Fräulein Schwarz presented her treasures with a flourish.
Dolls.
Hundreds of them in this room alone: mostly small, all immaculately dressed, in every colour under the sun. There were shelves with dolls. Dolls on tables. Dolls on window sills. Dolls on the floor. I had to agree, they were beautiful.
She beckoned me into another room. More dolls. Doll overkill. None of it kids’ stuff, but works of art. Probably worth a fortune.
Fräulein Schwarz was a manic doll collector. Child substitutes for a spinster? Who knows. It wasn’t my job to care or work out why.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” I said. Which was true. “But Bürgermeister Weiss is wondering if you could do us a favour. A job for our town. And the Fatherland.”
I explained our predicament and asked whether she could pop down the road. For some bunny sexing.
At first she didn’t seem keen, but relented when I told her it was only as far as Frau Sperrle’s. A few minutes away. Everything about Fräulein Schwarz was miniature. She tripped along with wee, birdlike steps, three to my one. I couldn’t even begin to guess her age, except that it must have been post-menopausal – in her younger days I would have expected her to lay eggs.
She seemed such an unlikely rabbit-sexer, I began to wonder whether she was having us on. She airily waved away my doubts. We would see soon enough.
Fräulein Schwarz turned out to be a true professional. Bunny on her lap, she gave it a quick poke in its nether regions. Balls or no balls? Easy. For her maybe, but not for the rest of us. Keen to add rabbit sexing to my repertoire, I asked her to carry on, but more slowly, so I could get the hang of it. Buck rabbits don’t display their family jewels that readily, but eventually I cracked it.
As did Benni. Kids are insatiably curious and Benni became even better at it than me. The youngest rabbit-sexer in the Third Reich. I wondered whether his mother would approve.
It wasn’t long before we had a sexing production line going. Frau Sperrle made out labels, ‘His’ and ‘Hers’, to ensure we filled the new gender-based hutches correctly. No bunny hanky panky for the next few days. She also kept us going with coffee: not from her pre-war hoard, just the ordinary ersatz stuff from acorns.
When it became clear that sexing over 800 rabbits was going to be a two day affair, Frau Sperrle offered our expert a sleepover, dinner and breakfast thrown in. But this was an excitement too far for our little spinster. Her dolls beckoned. But she promised to return next day to finish the job.
Which she did. By midday we had all forty-three hutches re-filled according to gender. I’d had a secret fear the concentration camp commandants might have played us a nasty joke, sending rabbits of only one gender, but this turned out to be beyond even their warped minds. We now had our stock of potential winter feed, all nicely labelled and ready to go. We could afford to take a break. As Frau Sperrle prepared lunch, she turned on the wireless. The date was 8th June 1944.
CHAPTER 21
Since the Stalingrad disaster nearly eighteen months previously, Josef Goebbels’ propaganda machine had been flipping, almost at random, from one extreme to the other. One day trumpeting imaginary victories; the next warning of ‘total war’ and the apocalyptic consequences of a Nazi defeat. The broadcasts that afternoon were in the full flow of hysteria, so something was clearly up.
I couldn’t listen for long, because they wanted me back in town. Next day was Benni’s birthday and Siggy wanted to celebrate, so we had to do a swap. Benni’s stay out in the country was proving so successful it would be silly to spoil it. Mum would have to go to him. It was judged that 860 rabbits could survive overnight with just an old lady and child to tend them.
I arrived back in time to join Gregor at the family table for our pre-dinner drinks. Piesporter wine for him, beer for me. Official broadcasts over the wireless had been tantalisingly vague, so I pumped Gregor for any inside information.
“It’s the second front, all right,” he replied. “France. Normandy. We’re still throwing them back into the sea, but the sea seems to be coming further inland. Bayeux is already beneath the waves. Situation confused. Omens bad.”
“And the eastern front?”
“Also confused. They’ve given up all that talk of surrounding some Soviet divisions. Operation Napoleon is ongoing, but has obviously hit a brick wall. Sounds grim. Perhaps the worst news is from Italy. Rome’s fallen.”
“Rome?” I tried to smother my
natural elation with the camouflage of surprise. With all those mountains, Italy was proving a tough nut to crack. If we had Rome, that would prove a tremendous morale booster.
Gregor nodded. “Declared an open city. Surrendered three days ago. Kesselring has done a great job there, but you can’t put off the inevitable for ever.”
“So the gauleiter’s pep-talk is looking a little sick,” I ventured. Was it little more than a week ago that Richard Frunze was comparing the Reich’s current predicament with Frederick the Great’s successful last stand.
“Gauleiter Frunze is an amazing man,” said Gregor. “The best of a pretty awful bunch. But, like Kesselring in Italy, he’s just keeping up appearances. Everyone with half a brain knows the Reich is done for. Only question is when it’ll end. And how?”
I said nothing. It was a curious feeling, sitting there in enemy territory, listening to their doom and gloom. Half of me wanted to whoop with joy. The start of the long-awaited second front must surely mean the end was in sight. But the end would not be pleasant.
So my other half was filled with foreboding for those enemies. Some of whom I’d grown unaccountably fond of: Gregor, Siggy, Irma, Benni, Hilde Sperrle. None responsible for the mayhem brought down upon them by their masters.
Modern warfare can be very impersonal, especially the sort I had practised, sitting there in the heavens chucking out lethal lumps of metal. All we had seen was the flash, the explosion; this we had to photograph to make sure our sortie counted towards the grand total making up a tour of ops, and our eventual safety. But we gave little thought to those on the receiving end of those flashes: the innocent Siggys, Irmas and Bennis. Our job in Bomber command was so dangerous, so intense, we had little time for anything but our own survival.
“In a strange way, we should welcome the second front,” said Gregor, breaking into my thoughts. “Because it’ll now be a race. Between east and west. Barbarians against civilisation. We may still stand a chance. God help us if the Russkies get here first.”
CHAPTER 22
The next few days were spent tidying up ‘Operation Bunny’. Gregor had built up a list of potential foster parents, based not only on their willingness to partake, but also their ability to care for the animals; the main essential being some form of garden or outside space to put them. I then went along the valley in the horse and cart distributing rabbit honeymoon couples.
I was told to vet the recipients and only hand over the goods to those willing and able to comply with the following instructions:
“Rabbits are for the long haul and NOT to be eaten immediately.”
They were for breeding purposes, harvesting of the rabbit crop being planned for the winter. This only to be undertaken with the bürgermeister’s permission.
It was the responsibility of the foster parents to lay up enough feed to carry them over the lean winter months. (The town was small, with countryside only minutes away, so this should present no problem). When assessing the size of this food store, it should be borne in mind that these two ancestors should produce plenty of progeny.
“Anyone without, or unable to make a hutch, to contact the bürgermeister immediately.”
If this sounded authoritarian, that was what the Germans were used to. The Party dictated; the people obeyed. As for the instruction to those without hutches, Gregor had finally managed to locate Felix and twist his arm to be our hutch manufacturer. Although dilatory and unreliable, the butcher was a competent handyman. If leant on enough, he should be able to house our hopefully expanding rabbit population.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch (Frau Sperrle’s), the fields were looking less frosty white, only about 230 rabbits now left without a new home. We had managed to farm out some 600 animals. Pretty good, I thought. Fräulein Schwarz, our little sexer, had a fair-sized meadow behind her forest-enclosed cottage and offered to take six couples. She sounded enthusiastic, less reclusive. Perhaps bunnies would replace dolls in her affections. Perhaps rabbits would not only provide food for the coming winter, but also a new purpose in life for everyone.
CHAPTER 23
By mid-June we were beginning to relax. The rabbit situation was under control, with Gregor even talking about culling some of Frau Sperrle’s bucks.
“Must keep an eye on the amount of feed in Hilde’s fields,” he said. “Males are surplus to requirement once they’ve fulfilled their biological function, so we need to keep all the grass we can for the females.”
“Like rabbits, like humans,” I added, perhaps tactlessly.
Gregor nodded. “When this whole awful business is over, Germany should still have its near normal quota of women. Fewer men, of course, but so what. They’ll be having a rare old time making sure all those ladies don’t go babyless. Talking of babies, we’ve just had our first bunny births. Fräulein Schwarz tells me she has a litter of five. Some of the does must have been pregnant when we got them, so I’m expecting more happy events. Things are moving faster than anticipated.”
If Operation Bunny was going to plan, the same could not be said for the German military machine. In France there was no longer any talk of ‘throwing the enemy back into the sea’. The Atlantic Wall, so recently serenaded by Gauleiter Frunze as our ‘mighty fortress’, was now well and truly breached. The news was similar to the south and east. Wehrmacht advances were now taking place backwards.
It was in this scenario that I was accosted late one evening by Block Leader Willi Weiss. Although I had seen little of him during the rabbit saga, Willi was about to re-enter my orbit with a vengeance.
“Spare a minute?” he enquired, plonking his flabby frame on the seat opposite. It was an order, not a question.
I’d had a hectic night, so there was nothing I wanted less, but refusal wasn’t an option.
“Haven’t seen young Benni recently,” he said.
It was difficult to keep secrets in our little town and we hadn’t even tried. Everyone knew Benni’s whereabouts. Willi was trying to needle me, so I said nothing.
“Now he’s six, it’s time to begin his education,” he continued.
“Nothing to do with me,” I replied.
“Maybe not. But you have influence with Siggy.”
“Nonsense.” I regretted the word as soon as I’d said it. My situation was still precarious, so antagonising this Nazi ‘littlewig’, as Gregor had called him, was sheer stupidity.
“Some advice,” said, with quiet menace, “Try to cooperate.”
“Of course,” I retreated hurriedly. “But I’m a mere foreign worker; a nothing person.”
Willi sank another slug of beer and eyed me suspiciously. After our first meeting, when he’d wrecked the Party car and nearly killed two of us in the process, he’d been understandably shaken. But the intervening weeks had seen his confidence return. He was now back to his normal persona: the petty bully.
“Siggy must understand that the Party now needs Benni’s attention,” he said. “Six is the age we enrol them in our junior section. Give them a little book, Pimpf im dienst (Youngster in the service).”
‘Pimpf’ was a word I’d not come across before. Apparently it was slang for a young boy. Hitler Youth proper started at age ten. Before that they were ‘Pimpf’, ready to begin the brainwashing process. I’d grown fond of Benni, so it was awful to think of him being moulded into a sieg-heiling little Nazi. But I was helpless. And vulnerable. I’d have to bite my lip.
“I’ll talk to Siggy, again,” he said, “but she keeps putting me off. I need help. From you. And I expect results.”
The Block Leader departed, leaving me feeling wretched. And without a clue what to do.
A couple of days later I got Siggy on her own for a few minutes. Felix the butcher had turned up to help in the kitchens – he was hopelessly unpredictable – so she had managed to clock off a little earlier than normal. But it was still late. And we were both tired.
“Willi has been reading me the riot act,” I said. “About Benni.”
She
nodded. “With me too. Several times.”
“The Block Leader isn’t happy.”
“I know. And an unhappy Block Leader is dangerous. But what can I do?”
“The obvious, I suppose. Give Benni up to the system. Like every other boy in the Third Reich.”
“You know what they’ll do to him...” The tears were beginning to flow.
I nodded. “But it can’t last long now. A year at most. Then the nightmare will be over. I don’t suppose Benni will even remember it. Better that than take any chances so late in the day.”
Siggy nodded, calmer now. “But I’ll keep him with Hilde as long as I can.”
I considered this. “Very well. But don’t push your luck. Willi’s patience won’t last forever.”
“OK. Promise.” Siggy took my hand. “Come on. I’m whacked. Let’s go to bed.”
She led me on, uncomplaining. Into her room.
“Please undress me,” she said.
Who was I to refuse an order from the boss? Besides, I had grown more than a little fond of her. For six weeks we’d barely been out of each other’s sight. A strange courtship. Now we both needed a night of make-believe. Our personal fairy story. A pretence of normality in a world gone mad. So for the second time I slept with Siggy. This time it was not platonic.
CHAPTER 24
For a few days nothing happened. Willi seemed to have given up on Benni. At the farm the two of them continued their good work, an unlikely pairing of six-year-old boy and arthritic old lady. They obviously got on. Siggy said Benni had never been happier.
Gregor made it a rule that either Siggy or I should visit them every day, mainly for the practical reason that it took a fit adult to move the rabbit hutches around the field. Rabbits never stop nibbling and need constant fresh pasture.
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