by Jules Wake
‘Guten Morgen,’ she said softly before Freddie had a chance to speak. The man looked up startled, wary now.
‘I’m Lieutenant Brooke-Edwards, this is Lieutenant Frederickson.’ She spoke in German and went on to ask him how he was feeling, what had happened to his arm and whether he needed any further medical attention for the bump on his head.
At first he answered with cautious, suspicious, monosyllabic replies but gradually he began to relax. Evelyn had done as much as she could in making him feel more at ease but now they needed to get down to work. They’d been tasked with trying to find out more about the capability of the aircraft that he’d been shot down with. Her knowledge of aircraft, weaponry and aerial tactics was minimal; she had a much greater understanding of U-boats, having been based in Falmouth.
This airman had had the foresight to burn his plane and its papers before he was caught. Freddie took over and Evelyn listened intently. Freddie seemed to know an awful lot about the gun mountings on a Messerschmitt, about how many rounds the gun could fire. She was impressed and so it appeared was the airman, who conceded, ‘You know everything.’
Freddie nodded and they carried on chatting about the plane’s specifications, the issues with flying it and how the guns occasionally jammed if they overheated.
After a while Freddie’s questions drew to a close and the airman, Captain Stadtler, accepted a cigarette and let out an audible sigh of relief. Evelyn knew that the interrogation was not over but the general questions about life in his own country were designed to find out about morale there and any useful facts that could be fed back to the teams responsible for sending propaganda back to Germany. He did let slip two potentially useful facts: one, that air defences in Berlin had been strengthened with additional flak towers and two, that non-essential citizens of the city were being evacuated.
Once the airman had finished smoking his cigarette, looking considerably relieved, Freddie started asking him more about the plane, flying formations and aerial tactics, all of which the airman refused to answer, with a genuine smile that accompanied his frequent ‘I can’t tell you that’ responses. He almost sounded regretful. Finally after another half hour of fruitless questioning, Freddie nodded his head and said in German, ‘I understand,’ and leaned forward to shake the airman’s hand, saying, ‘We are officers and men of honour.’
Evelyn had to bite back a smile. This was all part of the strategy, building empathy with the prisoner, emphasising that they were equals and starting to create a working partnership. He’d be questioned many times more while he was here but today they’d made a good start in building those bonds.
As they walked back to the main house for morning coffee, Evelyn took in a deep breath, relishing her freedom. Although the airman was safe and he would be well treated, he was still a prisoner and didn’t have his liberty.
‘Good job, there, Evelyn. Especially at the start. You read him perfectly.’
She turned quickly to face him to gauge his sincerity. ‘You’re not offended that I took the initiative?’
‘Gracious, no. This job’s all about acting on our instincts. You got it spot on.’
‘Even though I’m a woman.’ She thought about Williamson and his continual harassment of female officers.
Freddie laughed. ‘I’m man enough to appreciate feminine skills and anyone who doesn’t appreciate a fellow officer’s contribution, no matter what their sex, will soon be booted out. Myers would see to that. He thinks women on the team are our greatest asset and I’m inclined to agree. That poor bugger was shit scared. You put him at his ease with that lovely smile of yours.’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Freddie!’ It bothered her that men automatically assumed she used her looks deliberately. She’d harboured genuine compassion for the man. Not so many years ago she might have brushed shoulders with him in a market in Germany, been to a party with his sister or sat opposite his mother on a train.
‘Just joking, but it worked.’
‘It must be terrifying, don’t you think? To be in a strange country and not know what is going to happen to you.’ As she said it, she suddenly thought of Judith and it struck her how brave the other woman was and how much she must have been through to leave her own country. What had happened to her family? She remembered vividly the awful atmosphere of Munich when she’d been there in the summer of 1937, the jackbooted thugs that had marched around the market square demanding that people salute them. It had been bad for Jews then; how much worse must it have got?
‘Yes,’ said Freddie in response, his cheerful face sobering immediately. ‘You hear some tales. Especially about what the Gestapo get up to in occupied Europe. I heard that they strung one poor bastard up by his wrists until his shoulders dislocated. And that’s nothing. They’re not averse to bringing family members and torturing them in front of a prisoner. That’s what they do to the resistance fighters over in France, or go out and shoot a whole village.’
Evelyn shuddered. ‘The things men do in the name of war. Did you get much out of him? And how did you know so much about machine-gun mounts in that particular plane?’
Freddie laughed. ‘I was primed with it. Information from another interrogation. It all builds up into a picture. You tell them enough to make them assume you know it all and then they let slip something because they think you already know it.’
‘Did it work?’
‘Not this time but … we’ll see him again. The next one should be interesting, he’s a telegrapher picked up out of the sea. Only two survivors from his sub. The Admiralty are desperate to know more about how those bloody U-boats communicate. Those wolf packs have been too darn successful. We desperately need to turn the tide.’
Over coffee in the Officers’ Mess, which really was a lovely room, Evelyn was introduced to a few more people, many of whom she found she had some connection with. As promised, Freddie introduced her to Katherine Ruddings.
‘Kathy, this is Evelyn. She knows Gracie.’
‘Hello,’ said Evelyn.
‘How the devil do you know my cousin Gracie?’
‘I live just outside Henley, Binfield Heath. My parents, Lavinia and Geoffrey, are great friends with Gracie’s parents.’
‘Oh lord, I’ve met Lavinia a dozen times. I practically lived at their place when I was on summer vac at Oxford.’
‘I remember you,’ said Evelyn, a memory suddenly clicking into place. ‘Gracie, my brother David, you and two of David’s friends went out in a rowing boat and we went to Remenham.’
‘Gosh yes. And that idiot boy, Francis, nearly capsized us all.’
Evelyn laughed. ‘He’s still an idiot. How they let him into the RAF I’ll never know.’ She hoped he was still an idiot and still flying. For a moment both of them went quiet.
‘Sorry to hear about your brother,’ said Katherine.
Evelyn shrugged. ‘At least he’s alive.’
‘Yes, there is that.’
They began chatting about their time at Oxford, discovering more mutual friends and acquaintances. In some ways, Britain was such a small world and yet it was standing firm against the combined resources of the rest of Europe. Evelyn was grateful when the talk turned towards London and what was on at the theatre and how Katherine planned to spend her off-duty time in the next week.
‘I hear you have a car,’ she suddenly said. ‘That’s jolly handy.’
‘Only if I can get petrol rations.’
Katherine laughed. ‘That’s easy, you put yourself at the Colonel’s disposal to do the run to the station when you’re not on shift. Your car will impress visiting bigwigs.’
‘Do we get many visiting bigwigs?’
‘You’re kidding. Now we’re getting more POWs of interest, the Admiralty are really taking notice. Winnie loves us. Two weeks ago we had a bunch of American bigwigs visiting. Myers was strutting around afterwards like a peacock. Actually that not’s true, he’s not the sort, but you could tell he was pretty chuffed. Right-ho, look at the time. Be
tter get back to the grindstone.’ Katherine knocked back her coffee and said, ‘TTFN,’ before bounding off like a big overgrown puppy.
Freddie reappeared at her side. ‘Lord, she’s exhausting, that one. Demon tennis player, though. If you can get her on your doubles team it’s marvellous because you can sit back and let her do the work.’
Evelyn laughed. ‘Don’t give me that. I remember you being a demon tennis player.’
‘You were pretty handy yourself. We’ll have to get a mixed doubles set going.’
‘They’ve got courts here?’
‘Yes, and extremely well maintained. William the gardener often uses willing prisoners to help roll the grass.’
‘Is that allowed? I thought officers didn’t have to work.’
‘They don’t but they get bored and fed up with being cooped up, so they volunteer to help in the garden or in the grounds. Why do you think we’re so well fed here?’
Evelyn smiled, thinking of Hodges at home. ‘That explains it. Our gardener does a great job but he’s on his own. He has me digging potatoes when I go home.’
‘Tough luck.’ He gave her slender form a quick, cursory inspection, like most men underestimating her wiry strength. Typical man, he could appreciate that she could serve and rally in a tennis match but it didn’t occur to him that she could wield a garden fork with the best of them.
Evelyn shook her head. ‘It’s that or knitting and believe me, that really is a recipe for disaster.’
Freddie was still teasing her about her lack of domestic skills as they headed back through the barbed-wire fencing to their next interrogation.
Chapter Ten
Judith
The room was so quiet, it made her want to creep in and hope that no one would notice her, but nearly everyone was wearing headphones and listening with intent expressions on their faces, so she guessed they wouldn’t hear the scratch of her shoes on the hard concrete floor.
Sergeant Flesch, a chatty man who’d apparently lived his whole life in Dortmund before escaping with his wife to live with relatives in Rye, wherever that was, had met her and escorted her down to the basement of the house, leading her to one of the tables. As she slid into her seat, one of the other men, listening almost trance-like to something on his headphones, nodded absently to her.
‘This will be your regular station,’ said Sergeant Flesch and proceeded to explain to her in his friendly, helpful manner, how to operate the complicated-looking switchboard in front of her. He was clearly a man who enjoyed his work and it gave her a sense of confidence. ‘Walther is your team leader. A good man. He’ll be able to help with anything and he’ll brief you on today’s operation. Ask him anything you need to know.’ With that he turned and left, closing the big heavy door behind him. The room, Judith observed to herself, could have doubled as a prison cell. There were no windows and the low ceiling made it feel slightly claustrophobic. Whitewashed walls along with the slight dampness to the air added to the overall dingy aspect, although someone had tried to alleviate the cold with paraffin heaters in two corners of the room which gave off their own distinct smell. Despite the slightly depressing atmosphere there was an air of intense concentration like a roomful of chess players all working out their next move.
Anxiously she tried to remember everything the sergeant said, but there was so much to remember that when he left she wasn’t even sure which socket to plug her headphones into. It was one of two, but which one? She dithered for a moment, her hand shaking slightly as she raised it.
‘This one,’ said the man who’d nodded to her, who’d put down his earphones and come to stand at her shoulder.
‘Danke schön,’ said Judith, embarrassed now. He must think she was incredibly stupid.
To her relief he replied kindly, in German, ‘It takes a little while to understand how everything works.’
‘I hope so.’ She cast an anxious look around the room; everyone else looked calm and confident.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said, smiling. ‘You will soon get used to everything. Ask me if you need to know anything. I’m Walther Spier.’
Giving him a half-hearted smile, she lifted her headphones from the table and he plugged the socket in for her.
‘This switch to listen in. If there is nothing of interest or it’s general chatter, you can swap to a different network by plugging into a new socket and pressing this switch. You are monitoring three different cells. You’ll get to know the voices quite quickly if you have a good ear. Do you like music?’
She frowned, surprised by the question but there was a warmth in his eyes as he regarded her that made her say, ‘Very much.’
‘Excellent. We musical types are much better at this work.’ He winked and she smiled back at him, feeling for the stirrings of a sense of kinship. It felt like he was someone she had something in common with. ‘You’ve been assigned Luftwaffe officers. I believe you have some technical knowledge.’
Judith widened her eyes, worried that her expertise had been overstated. ‘I worked in a factory. That is all.’
‘Don’t worry, you’ll become an expert very quickly here. If they mention anything that you feel is important, you have to choose whether to make a recording. If they talk about atrocities, you must record it.’
‘Atrocities?’ Judith lifted her head and stared at him.
‘Murder. Executions. Massacres. Anything like that.’ His mouth firmed in a grim line and he went back to his seat.
She put on her headphones, praying that she wouldn’t have to record anything today. With an unsteady hand she flipped the switch and began to listen to the two men. It felt very odd to eavesdrop on their conversation when she had no idea of what either man looked like or the surroundings they found themselves in.
One of the men had had a letter from his wife whom he missed very much. He hadn’t seen her for four months. The other man asked questions about what part of Germany he was from, where his wife was from.
They chatted generally about their backgrounds before the first man began to read out excerpts from the letter, detailing the activities of friends and neighbours and celebrating the birth of a new calf. Both bemoaned the fact that they were so far from home and had no idea when they would see their loved ones again.
Good, thought Judith, a flood of vicious satisfaction streaking through her veins. They deserved to be locked up. These were men fighting for Hitler, supporting a regime which had destroyed her way of life and killed her father. They were still alive. She held not a scrap of sympathy for either of them.
She continued for a little longer but neither had much of interest to say. Feeling a little more confident, she unplugged the earphone and put the socket into the next slot, pressing the switch to open the line.
This time the conversation was a little more interesting; the men were having a heated debate as to whether the Russians were more to worry about than the British and American forces and which they considered more efficient.
‘By the rations we’ve had here, I’d say the British aren’t suffering at all,’ said one of them. ‘When was the last time you had food as good as this? And we’re prisoners. Imagine how the British are eating.’
Judith scowled, remembering Elsie and Betty’s conversation this morning. She couldn’t believe that they were sharing the produce with prisoners. Surely they should be on minimum rations. The point of her pencil snapped off and she sucked in an angry breath at the injustice of it all. She yanked out the socket and moved it to listen to the third and final cell. There was no reward there either. Neither man spoke very much; all she could hear was an odd tapping. She listened for a good ten minutes, hearing the taps and then the much louder sound of small pieces rattling together. Then one of the men said, ‘Another game?’ and she realised that she’d been listening to the pair of them playing backgammon or draughts.
This didn’t feel like punishment to her. By the time they broke for lunch she thought she might explode.
Back in the Mess, sh
e sat on her own, her hands almost shaking with impotent rage. Betty was further down the table with a group of ATS women and had gaily waved as if they were at a tea party. Judith pretended not to see her and found a solitary spot at the second table. Although she was grateful that Betty had helped her on the train, the girl talked of nothing but films and movie stars. Her comments at breakfast had compounded Judith’s view of her. She knew nothing of music or art. Judith missed those things with a physical ache and longed for the solace and soul-soaring joy that music had once brought her. The grief at what she’d lost washed over her again. It was wrong to take that grief out on Betty but she needed an outlet for the ache and dissatisfaction that churned in her soul.
She’d got used to life being unfair, to things being tough – the coldness of the barracks in Hull, the thin blankets, the poor food rations and generally miserable conditions – but at least other people were suffering alongside her, the thin, hungry population in the streets, bent like wind-whipped trees, as drawn and downtrodden by war as she was. So it was all the more shocking that the prisoners here had such an easy life. Prisoners should be enduring more deprivation, they should be hurting, not playing board games and eating freshly grown food.
‘Hello, how was your first morning?’ Walther slid into the empty seat beside her.
‘Good,’ she said stiffly.
He raised an eyebrow and looked pointedly at her hands clenched around the tea cup as if she might crush it at any second.
She turned and narrowed her eyes. ‘Doesn’t it bother you?’ she asked in a furious whisper, conscious that there were other people around. The last thing she wanted was to draw attention to herself.
