Beneath a Frosty Moon

by Rita Bradshaw

  ‘No, I’m not trying to cheer you up, I’m facing facts. If you’ve got any chance of keeping your leg and your life along with it, we have to get medical help. You’ve got nothing in you to fight infection – none of us have, we’re all half dead as it is.’

  Neville shook his head. ‘The guards will never agree to it, you know that.’

  ‘Aye, I do, that’s why the three of us have got to escape and tonight’s as good as any other. Better, in fact. The guards are full of potatoes and whatever else they’ve still got in their truck. They’re more relaxed than usual and that means they’re less on the ball. Why do you think I got us three sitting here, at the back of the barn?’

  ‘Enlighten us, laddie.’

  ‘There’s a damn great hole, well, a hole at least, behind the bales of hay you’re leaning against, Jock. Big enough for us to crawl through at a pinch. We’ll wait till everyone’s asleep and the guards have just done one of their patrols, and then we’ll make a run for it. Or in Jock’s case, a hobble.’ He grinned. ‘Piece of cake.’

  ‘A cake with too many holes in it for my liking.’ Jock’s voice was grim. ‘And I’m not letting you two get killed because of my foot. Even if we manage to crawl through the gap and get outside we’ve no idea where to go. We’ve got no weapons and we can’t trust the locals, added to which I’d slow you down too much. You two go but I’d be a liability.’

  ‘We either go together or not at all and I, for one, am not prepared to watch you die slowly like poor old Ralph or that young London lad.’ Both of these men had contracted infections through open wounds; one, Ralph, had died of gangrene and the other of septicaemia. Both deaths had been chilling.

  ‘One of the lads is sure we’re going to cross the border into Germany in the next twenty-four hours or so. You know who I mean? Walt, the lad with a smattering of German. He heard the guards talking. Who knows what’ll happen then. What with our lot bombing the hell out of the Nazis and then us turning up to one of their damn camps, seems to me we’re piggies in the middle. If we’re not shot on sight by the Germans, the Allies might do the job for ’em with a damn great bomb. If we get away tonight we’ll have a chance, and we’ll find someone to look at your leg, Jock. If I have to steal a weapon and shoot someone to do it, I will.’

  ‘If you shoot ’em make sure it’s after they’ve treated me leg and not before.’

  ‘So you’re up for it?’

  ‘You’ve painted such an attractive picture of what’ll happen if I don’t, I can’t see I’ve any choice.’

  Jed looked at Neville. ‘All right with you?’

  Neville nodded. He could see that Jock needed help and fast. Jock had three young children at home who hadn’t seen their father for some years; he didn’t want it to end for their mate like this with his flesh slowly going bad.

  ‘Once it’s quiet then.’ Jed’s voice held a thread of excitement. For weeks, months, he had been longing to do something, and the longer the march had gone on the more he had been determined not to be shot at the end of it. When the Nazis knew they had lost for sure, when it was official, he wouldn’t put it past them to slaughter any POWs in their care. The fewer witnesses to accuse them of war crimes the better. As far as they were concerned the Geneva Convention boiled down to their trigger fingers on a machine gun or a Luger pistol. Life was cheap. Suddenly the terrified face of a young, beautiful girl flashed into his mind. She had been in the back of a lorry with other female POWs that had passed them as they’d walked back to their camp one night from the site in Auschwitz, and he had noticed her because there was something about her that reminded him of Cora. He had gazed after the lorry for a moment, and the man next to him in line had muttered, ‘Poor devils, they’ve been picked to go in the brothel. The Kapos need a constant fresh supply with what they inflict on the women. They don’t last long.’ He’d stared aghast at the man and for some time after that he’d tormented himself with what she might be going through.

  With the image of her clear in his mind now, he whispered, ‘Tonight then, for better or worse.’

  Jock gave a weak chuckle. ‘I’m not marrying you, laddie, bonny though you might be with them big blue eyes of yours.’

  In the event, the escape went like clockwork. The rest of the prisoners were snoring loudly and the guards on duty at the doors of the barn had settled down with a hot drink and were talking amongst themselves when Jed nudged Jock and Neville awake.

  Neville went first, slowly manoeuvring himself into the thin narrow space between the wall of the barn and the bales of hay by shuffling an inch at a time until he was hidden from view. Jed gave him a minute or two and then it was Jock’s turn. Jed and Neville had decided they needed one of them on the outside of the barn to help Jock through the hole, and after Jock had inched out of sight Jed was glad of the chorus of snores from their fellow POWs as he heard muffled cursing behind him and a good deal of rustling. Clearly Jock, who was a big man at six foot four, had got wedged in the hole in the wall of the hut. Jed had to trust that Neville could ease Jock out because there wasn’t enough room for him to duck down behind the bales and help. After a few moments it was quiet, and now he followed the others, careful not to dislodge the bales or make any noise. He slid through the hole fairly easily to find Neville and Jock lying flat on their stomachs waiting for him.

  Leaving the bulk of the hut for the field beyond was scary, and any moment Jed expected shouts or warning shots in the air, but the night was dark and quiet. They crossed the field and the scrubland beyond, their hearts pounding fit to burst and Jock swearing every so often from the pain in his foot, but then they were in a second field with high thick hedgerows surrounding it which obscured them from view.

  They walked for a couple of hours but slowly; Jock was finding it hard. When Jed was satisfied they had put enough miles between themselves and the German guards, they crawled deep into thick hedgerow that had space enough in the middle for them to lie down as well as giving a surprising amount of shelter from the cold wind. It wasn’t as warm as the barn they had left but the fact that they were free, that they had escaped their captors, made the accommodation like that of a first-class hotel.

  Jed awoke at first light. Jock and Neville were still sleeping soundly and he let them. He needed time to think. The first thing they had to do was to find some kind of help for Jock, but he didn’t have the faintest idea of where they were or how that could be accomplished. The three of them were dressed in what remained of their battledress and there was no way they could venture forth into a town or village in daylight. Some of the locals the column had passed on their journey had been friendly enough; others had spat at them or shouted insults. A few times, when someone had thrown food to them, other folk had remonstrated with the benefactor and even come to blows. Nevertheless, they would have to take the risk of being captured and shot if Jock was to avoid losing his leg.

  Once the others were awake, they set off in a southwesterly direction. Jock had a little compass on him that had been his father’s and which he’d kept safe all through the war; it now came into its own. It was around three or four in the afternoon when they came across a brick-built house with a neat front and back garden. They had skirted a village shortly before, taking care not to be seen, but the house was a good mile or two from the settlement and set on its own in countryside with fields behind and to the sides of it.

  They were hungry and tired, and it had become clear in the last hour that Jock couldn’t walk for much longer that day. As Jed surveyed the house, it came to him that he had little option but to try and get food, and maybe hot water and disinfectant for Jock’s foot. It was agreed Jock would remain out of sight while he and Neville approached the house. They both knew what it might mean. If the householder was hostile it would be kill or get killed but as Neville, a churchgoer back home in his native Wales, said, ‘It’s in God’s hands, boyos. It’s in God’s hands.’

  They left the cover of the hedgerow that bordered the lane off which th
e house was situated, crossing the road and opening the little wicker gate into the front garden which had been planted with row upon row of vegetables. Walking round the side of the house they came to the back door where a large black-and-white cat was busy cleaning itself on the doorstep. It eyed them lazily through bright green eyes and then miaowed loudly, standing up and rubbing round their legs.

  ‘Well, the cat’s friendly enough,’ Neville whispered, just a moment before the door opened a crack and a rifle poked out of the gap.

  It was one of those moments in life where time seemed suspended. They stood frozen, the cat continuing to wind round them, purring now, and then the door opened further to reveal a little gnarled old woman with a crab-apple face and thin white hair pulled into a tight bun on top of her head. They stared at her and she stared back, and it was only afterwards that Jed reflected the sensible thing to have done would be to put their hands in the air. She eyed them up and down before saying, ‘English?’

  Totally taken aback, Jed nodded. ‘We – we mean you no harm. We’re not armed,’ he stammered, hoping she understood. Certainly her pronunciation of the word ‘English’ had been good. ‘But we have a friend who needs help. His foot’s infected.’ He lifted up his own foot and pointed to it. ‘Infected.’

  The woman surveyed them for a moment more before saying in perfectly good English, ‘There is no need to labour the point. I am in full possession of my mental faculties. Where is he?’

  Jed turned and pointed. ‘In the lane.’

  ‘Fetch him.’

  Jed blinked. Of all the possible scenarios that he had considered first thing that morning when the other two had still been sleeping, coming across a little granny who spoke English and seemed friendly had not been one of them. Mind you, she still had the rifle pointing at them.

  ‘Thank you. If we could just have some hot water and disinfectant if you have any?’

  ‘Fetch him. And my name is Etta, Etta Mieser.’

  An hour later Jed was reflecting that God must be on their side. When they’d got Jock into the house, Etta already had a kettle full of boiling water ready and had fetched a tin box from a cupboard which contained bandages and other medical bits and pieces. The rifle had disappeared – she obviously didn’t trust them enough to leave it in view – and she had told them to sit at the kitchen table while she eased Jock’s boot off his foot, drawing in her breath in a sharp whoosh when she saw the state of it.

  She had left the kitchen for a moment, returning with a small framed photograph which she had shown to Jock. ‘This is me,’ she said quietly. ‘I used to be a nurse so I know what I am about.’ The photograph showed a young smiling girl in nurse’s uniform.

  She had the slightest of accents, and Jock had said, ‘Are you English?’

  ‘Swiss. My husband is German – was German. He has been dead for many years but I think that is good now. He would not have wanted to see what Hitler has done to the country he loved.’

  This boded well. Heartened, Jed ventured, ‘You’re not in favour of Hitler?’

  She looked at him. ‘I had friends who were Jewish,’ she said simply before turning away and mixing hot and cold water along with a considerable amount of salt into a bowl which she set on the floor at Jock’s feet. ‘First we soak, then we see better.’

  Over the next little while as Jock’s foot continued to soak, Etta fed them a meal of fried potatoes and a strong-smelling sausage that tasted as if it had fallen straight from heaven, along with a home-made loaf of grainy bread that she cut into slices and daubed with dripping. As they ate she told them how her family had moved from Switzerland to England towards the end of the last century when she had been verging on womanhood, and then back to Switzerland in the mid-twenties where she had met her husband, Hans, a doctor. The pair of them had married and transferred to a hospital in Hans’s home town of Marktredwitz when Hans’s aged parents had become frail, and once the old couple had died had made their home just across the German border in Cheb, initially in the town itself before moving out into the country to this present house. They had never had children, having married relatively late in life and both being dedicated to their careers, something, Etta had told them, she again gave thanks for now.

  ‘So many young men dead,’ she said with a shake of her head. ‘So many mothers’ hearts broken.’

  Jock’s foot had been in the bowl for an hour and Etta had changed the water twice, making it as hot as he could bear. She now dried it with a towel and looked at her patient.

  ‘This will not be comfortable,’ she said quietly, ‘but it needs to be done.’

  Jock stared at her. ‘The last time a doctor said that I had a damn great needle stuck in my backside.’

  Etta smiled. ‘You men,’ she murmured. ‘Such babies, yes? But I have no needle so that is good.’ She unfolded the towel to reveal a nasty great open wound that had spread across most of his foot under his remaining toes and which was oozing gently. His ankle had ballooned and was red and angry, and there were signs that the infection was beginning to spread up his leg. His foot was resting on a towel on Etta’s lap and as she placed her fingers either side of the wound, she said, ‘If you want to swear and shout, please do so. No one will hear but your friends here. In my time I have heard it all, I assure you, young man.’

  Jock didn’t swear or shout but after she had finished draining as much of the pus as she could, he gave a long shuddering sigh of relief. His forehead was wet with sweat.

  ‘We now clean again with my olive-leaf extract.’ Etta smiled at Jock. ‘The leaves are soaked in vodka for five weeks. You would like to drink this, yes? But not today. Today your foot benefits.’

  Jock raised his eyebrows at Jed and Neville. Etta caught the look and said, ‘Trust me. This will help fight the bacteria and inflammation and it is natural. My husband was a clever man and did much research into the way the body heals. Sometimes when we try to beat Nature at her own game we do more harm than good. We do not want to interfere with the process of wound healing if we can help it but merely assist.’

  ‘I’m in your hands.’

  ‘Yes, you are.’ It was firm. ‘Now the wound is deep, too deep, but as we cannot take you to the hospital I will do the best I can. This wound needs to heal from the inside out and be kept moist. No scab, you understand?’

  ‘What? But . . .’ Jock stared at her helplessly. ‘I need you to bandage me up so we can be on our way.’

  Etta shook her head. ‘This will not be possible for a while.’

  ‘But a scab under the bandage’ll protect the foot, won’t it? Everyone knows that.’

  ‘I am not everyone.’ Suddenly Etta was every bit the nurse, in fact she reminded Jed of a matron he’d seen in action in a hospital in England when he had visited a sick pal. She’d scared the living daylights out of patients and doctors alike, and her nurses were absolutely terrified of her. But the hospital had run like clockwork. ‘We need new cells to colonize the wound area and as you are far from healthy your body will need all the help it can get.’ She had finished dousing the foot with her concoction which she allowed to dry naturally before glancing at Jed. ‘That jar of honey there, pass it to me.’

  Jed was past asking questions. He watched as Etta opened the jar and slathered the honey over Jock’s foot, after which she took a thin gauze strip that she’d soaked in the olive-leaf extract and laid it over the wound. Once Jock’s foot was resting on the towel on the chair, she smiled at them. ‘My bees produce the finest honey in Czechoslovakia.’

  ‘I’m sure they do,’ Jock said, humbly, ‘but—’

  ‘No buts. You will stay here until your foot is healed sufficiently. We will keep it clean and moist and you will eat good food with lots of garlic and honey to help the process.’

  ‘But we can’t take your food and if you are caught helping us—’

  Etta made a sound in her throat. ‘I am not afraid,’ she said, her voice suddenly soft. ‘I am an old woman and often I think I have live
d too long as it is. To see what I see these days is painful beyond words. My Hans would be distraught. I have seen neighbours, friends, delivering other neighbours and friends up to the Nazis, knowing that they will be sent to the death camps, and simply because they are Jews. Little children, babies . . .’ She shook her head. Looking at Jed, she said, ‘The three of you will be as safe as it is possible to be in these times here. No one comes, not any more. I grow my own vegetables, I keep my chickens and I have Oriel, my cow, for milk and cheese. I have plenty to share. Saxon and I want for nothing.’

  ‘Saxon?’

  ‘You met him on the doorstep.’ Etta smiled. ‘Now, I will clear away and then I will put the kettle on, yes? It will be good to have company for a while. And then we will see about where you will sleep, and you –’ she turned to Jock – ‘will be still and keep your foot on the chair like a good boy.’

  Jed looked at the small figure and found to his embarrassment that he was fighting back tears. After all the brutality, the vileness, the unbelievable atrocities of the last years, here was this tiny woman with snow-white hair and a flowered pinny offering them not just the hand of friendship in an alien environment but help and succour, despite the danger to herself. He swallowed hard and glancing at Neville and Jock he saw his feelings reflected in their faces too. Here, in this little kitchen, there was more healing going on than just Jock’s foot.

  PART FIVE

  Births, Marriages and Deaths

  1945

  Chapter Nineteen

  ‘So, lass, there were times when we thought it was never going to happen but it’s over. There’s just the Japs to beat now but they’re as good as finished, from all accounts.’

  Cora nodded. She and Rachel were setting the table for breakfast and Maria and the others had gone to the hen coop to let the birds out after being confined during the night, and to bring any fresh eggs back with them. The schools were closed for two days and in the village closest to the farm, bunting and flags of the victorious countries had been up for days. A street party, to which the inhabitants of the nearby farms were invited, was planned for that afternoon.