The trucks finally came to a sudden stop near the end of the parallel railway track — a track that seemed far from complete. The earthworks and the bedding for further new track continued on much further, curving back around to the west and then to the north-east, the layout almost perpendicular to that coastline that was at that point probably no more than three kilometres away.
They were ordered off the trucks and lined up between the road and the railway line in two ragged rows of fifty men. Piles of digging equipment — picks, shovels and such — lay nearby in large, lidless wooden crates, and as SS guards piled out of the APCs they began to order the POWs to take up those tools in both German and broken English.
The orders were received with a distinct lack of enthusiasm, and the officers refused outright, quite unused to being treated or spoken to in such a manner. Colonel Scammell, close to Whittaker in the front row, was one of the most vocal in his objections, being the ranking officer, and he immediately broke ranks and sought out the nearest armed SS trooper.
“You will work!” The lance-corporal directed angrily, a little flustered at the unexpected questioning of his authority and gesturing once more at the tools.
“Article 27 of the Geneva Convention — of which Germany is a signatory — prohibits officers from being forced to engage in manual labour!” Scammell snarled in return, equally infuriated as the grey of his large moustache and hair contrasted dramatically with the beet coloured fury spreading across his features. “This is a direct contravention, and there is no way these men will be taking part!” The NCO, who fortunately did have some understanding of English, wasn’t really programmed to consider higher issues such as International Law, and that statement left him stymied for a moment or two: there was a pause as he considered the ramifications of whether his duties as a soldier might indeed answer to a higher code than his orders alone.
The captain in charge of the work detail came storming down from his staff car at the head of the convoy at that moment, pistol already in hand and looking none too pleased at the disruption to work that should have already been started.
“What the hell is holding these prisoners up?” He demanded loudly, directing his query at the SS NCO. “Why are these men not working?”
“Their ranking officer, sir,” the man replied instantly, inwardly relieved the situation was now no longer his problem. “He claims that ordering officers to work is prohibited by the Geneva Convention, and that they will not do it.”
“You say you will not work?” The captain demanded, turning to Scammell and switching to reasonable English.
“These men aren’t lifting a finger!” The British officer shot back in instantly, repeating what he’d said to the NCO, and there was a moment’s silence as the two men’s eyes locked, neither ready to back down. The German suddenly turned slightly, addressing his next question to the rest of the men lined up there.
“This is true?” He shouted the words, the tone indicating that the question was completely rhetoric. “Because of the Geneva Convention, you will not work?” The SS officer took a step backward and lifted the pistol without any warning, shooting Colonel Scammell through the chest. The sound caused many to jump in fright, and there was nothing but surprise on the British officer’s face as he stared down for a few seconds at the crimson spot suddenly spreading across his tunic. It was only another moment or two before the man’s eyes glazed over and he toppled to the ground, the rest of the allied prisoners riveted to the spot in shock.
“Yes!” He bellowed as they stood there, mute and terrified. “Germany has signed the Geneva Convention…!” Every word was a stab of pain as Pieter Stahl screamed at them. The movement of his mouth threatened to open up the stitches in his cheek, but he wasn’t about to moderate his actions all the same… not for a moment. “As this officer has just learned, however…” he gave Scammell’s corpse a savage kick “…the SS has not!” He began to pace along the line of men, pistol waving about as he continued his rant at full volume. “You men will work here, just like everyone else! ‘Conventions’ and treaties have no place here — the only rule you need to know is ‘Work or Die’!” He almost managed a smug grin in spite of the pain. “You are no longer officers or gentlemen… all you are now are prisoners: failures of dead empires!” At a whim, he raised the pistol once more and shot another man through the head, this time a French air force pilot. The man crumpled to the ground, already dead, as the men around him leaped aside in horror.
Stahl was still filled with an incredible amount of repressed rage over his injury and humiliation at the hands of the Luftwaffe officer, Ritter, a few days before — something the constant pain wasn’t helping — and he had no qualms over expending that rage on his prisoners. Because of the injury and for other, more political reasons, he’d been reassigned for the duration of his ‘convalescence’ to an SS work gang, and he intended to make certain the work was completed to schedule if it killed him…or others, which was far more likely. He cast an evil eye across the whole group, pistol held outstretched and seeking out each in turn as a terrified target as his aim swept along the line of men.
“Think carefully on your actions from now on, for the next time anyone fails to obey an order, I will personally shoot four prisoners!” Spittle flew from his lips as he spat the words out at full volume and surveyed the scene before him. “The next after that and it will be eight… the next… sixteen!” The mental calculation somehow came to him in just a moment. “So you can either obey my orders, or do me the favour of disobeying them five more times, in which case there will be none of you left alive to waste my fucking time!”
There was just one more moment’s silent pause before Flight Lieutenant Edward Whittaker joined in as readily as the others in hurrying across to the piles of tools and reaching out for the nearest shovel.
L’Hôtel de Crillon, Place de la Concorde
Paris, France
Maria Ritter had married at just twenty years of age. Almost as tall as her husband when wearing high heels, she carried a slender and willowy figure with a fine waist, long graceful legs and alabaster skin that perfectly complemented high cheekbones, an exquisite nose and wide, blue eyes. When not held in place by what was usually a complex combination of clasps and clips, her golden hair fell in long tresses on either side of her face and down as far as the middle of her back.
Maria never failed to attract the attention of men when she was out in public. In any setting, she’d be considered at the very least an extremely attractive woman. On occasions such as cocktail parties, Regimental Dinners or similar official functions where some preparation might be expected in the way of make up and such like, most onlookers male or female would concede that in an evening dress or ball gown, Maria Ritter was a stunningly beautiful woman.
Carl Ritter, nearing the end of his second year at university, had been at a loose end one Friday evening in September of 1925 and had decided at a whim to attend a play at a theatre not far from the his apartment and the campus. The performance itself was barely memorable — an avant garde new director’s interpretation of Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet — however for the young Ritter there was one single, significant moment to be taken from the show that night.
As a condition of the Treaty of Versailles, Cologne had been occupied by the British Army of the Rhine and would remain so until 1926. Although an unpleasant situation, the English troops generally acted honourably and displayed fairness in their dealings with the local population, and the occupation for the most part was without incident.
As a result of this, and the fact that the play was being performed in English, the two hundred seat theatre that night held a significant number of British officers and enlisted men in its audience. The group was mostly quite well-behaved, save for one incident early in the performance: the initial entry on stage of Juliet. The first appearance of the female lead drew a number of loud and not altogether pleasant cheers and wolf-whistles from some of the British troops present, althoug
h several officers among them quickly silenced the men’s outbursts.
Resplendent in a long but nevertheless quite revealing contemporary cocktail dress of bright red — all the players were in modern dress as part of the director’s ‘vision’ of the performance — the stunning vision of young Maria Planck on stage captured the attention of all present, men and women alike. Herself a second year university arts student at the time, she’d also had a lifelong love of acting and the stage, and had already participated in several local theatrical productions.
Carl Ritter was as captivated by her as the rest, and found that he couldn’t take his eyes off the beautiful woman on stage before him. The rest of the crowd, and most of the performance itself ceased to exist in his mind as he followed her movements around the stage, jaw hanging slightly as if in outright shock.
After the performance, Ritter somehow managed to find somewhere nearby where he could purchase a huge bunch of red roses, and he returned to the theatre in a rush to join a small group of hopefuls of both sexes at the stage door, all desperately waiting to meet the cast as they left the building. The young man had never believed there was a chance the beautiful young actress might consider him worthy of her attention, yet as she stepped out through the stage door that night wrapped in a long, ladies’ woollen overcoat and fur hat, her eyes met his and everyone else around them was forgotten for both.
Carl and Maria were engaged soon after and were married in the spring of 1929, just six months before the Wall Street Crash. Carl didn’t think much of the idea of ‘love at first sight’ — he was a practical and logical man after all — and he was also well aware of the old English proverb that concerned ‘Gift Horses’ and the dangers of inspecting their teeth. He was happy to simply accept his excessively good fortune in the unfathomable fact that the lovely Maria was as head-over-heels in love with him as he was with her, and leave it at that.
Ritter sat on the queen-sized bed in their hotel room and stared down as his wife as she slept, arms instinctively cradling the baby boy he’d rescued from the farmhouse the weekend before. As Maria lay there beside him, she was as beautiful to him as she’d ever been, and their meeting at Paris’ Gare du Nord railway station earlier that day had been a happy one indeed after so many months apart.
The luxury suite he’d booked for the next week in one of the oldest, grandest hotels in Paris was large and beautifully appointed. The main bedroom they were currently in held that huge bed and a collection of antique Louis XV furniture that included a dressing table, armoire, secretary desk/cupboard and several chairs. The adjoining bathroom and living room area were proportionally as large, and were decorated with a similar opulence. More than enough money had changed hands to ensure there was no problem for the hotel staff to place an extra single bed in the main living area, in which Antoine also currently slept.
Dressed in just his uniform trousers and an undershirt of white silk, Ritter rose from the bed and moved silently across to bedroom windows that stretched floor-to-ceiling before him. Beyond those windows, a spacious terrace area overlooked the city from the top floor of the building, and the mild night air was soothed by a cool breeze as he opened the glass double doors and stepped outside.
Taking a soft pack of unfiltered Gauloises and a box of matches from his trouser pocket, Ritter picked one out and lifted it to his lips. The match flared and died, and as he leaned forward over that fourth floor balustrade and stared out at the city, the faint, intermittent glow of the cigarette itself was the only visible indication of his presence looking up from the street below. Ritter didn’t smoke often, and never smoked while on duty. The strong, overtly French brand was his personal favourite, and one small benefit of the occupation, on a personal level at least, was that they were far more readily available in France than they’d ever been back in Germany.
Directly below him, the Place de la Concorde spread out to the south, its pair of fountains as stunning in their copious floodlighting as the 23-metre tall Luxor Obelisk that stood at its very centre. The square was the largest in the city, and during the French Revolution, at which time the site had gone by the earlier title of Place de la Révolution, the city’s guillotine had for some time held pride of place where that red granite monument now stood.
He took a long drag on the cigarette and savoured it, smiling to himself in the recognition that things could be a lot worse than the situation he was in at that very moment, and finally released the smoke from his lungs in a long plume that was instantly carried away on the breeze.
The Hôtel de Crillon was positioned at the north western end of the square, and was one of the oldest in the city. One of two identically designed buildings set side-by-side along the northern boundary of the Place de la Concorde, the hotel had actually been temporarily occupied and used as a headquarters by the Wehrmacht , following the declaration of Paris as an open city. Following the cessation of hostilities between France and Germany and the creation of the Vichy government however, the OKW had decided to move further west and set up camp at the mansion neat Amiens, where it had stayed ever since.
The move had been Reuters’ own decision, the Reichsmarschall preferring to remain closer to the coast and their main adversary, Great Britain. He was also of the opinion that his headquarters staff and attendant support troops would be better able to concentrate on their work and generally keep out of mischief well away from the bright lights and distractions of Paris… and from the prying eyes and ears of any potential spies or resistance agents.
During that short period as a HQ, the luxurious reputation of the Crillon had spread throughout the Wehrmacht nevertheless, and it was on that knowledge alone that Ritter had spent a sizeable amount of the money he’d saved from his last three months’ pay on one of the premier suites in the building. From that penthouse terrace, he could see right across Paris’ southern hemisphere — a view that included the magical beauty of the Eiffel Tower, near the banks of the Seine and just a few kilometres to the south-west. If he leaned far enough over the balustrade, he could also look straight down the Champs Elyseé and see the impressive majesty of the Arc de Triomphe an similar distance to the west.
“It’s just beautiful, isn’t it?” The unexpected sound of his wife’s soft voice was a welcome surprise, and he turned to find her standing just outside the glass doors to the suite. Her sheer, summer night dress of fine silk was almost see through, and did nothing to hide her fine figure as dim lighting from the suite behind her left her silhouetted in the open doorway.
“A city that just became a great deal more beautiful,” Ritter observed with an appreciative smile that bordered on the positively lascivious.
Maria walked slowly across the terrace to join him with a crystal flute of fine champagne in each hand, offering one to him as she drew near. As she approached, he instinctively stubbed the half-burned cigarette out on the balustrade and flicked it over the side to fall downward to the street. Maria had never made an issue of his infrequent smoking, but he nevertheless knew full well she didn’t approve, and out of respect for the woman he loved he’d developed a habit during their years of marriage of putting his cigarettes out while she was around almost by reflex.
“Prost…!” She declared in a soft toast, which Ritter repeated, and both drank from their glasses as their bodies pressed together in simple enjoyment of each others’ proximity. Maria moved to lean over the balustrade beside him, and as he turned, he reached out and slipped his free arm around her waist, drawing her close and resting his head gently on her shoulder as they both stared out across the city lights.
“They seem to trust us, at least,” Carl observed softly, turning his head slightly to place a gentle kiss upon his wife’s bare shoulder.
“After what they’ve been through, I’m surprised they’d trust anyone,” Maria replied, her face contorting into a momentary frown as she recalled the story Ritter had told her of what had transpired at the St. Omer farmhouse five days before. He’d carefully omitted many of t
he more unsavoury details, but what he had revealed had been more than enough to fill her with disgust. She’d also been no less affected by the loss of their own child five years ago than had been her husband, and as a result she’d been just as deeply affected by the plight of the two children that now slept inside the suite.
“I… we… have custody of them both until a suitable permanent home can be found,” Carl began, unsure how Maria might react to that news.
“How long to we have?” She asked immediately, standing back just enough to enable her to turn and look into his eyes with a direct and quite intense stare that clearly told Ritter she was already thinking things through in her mind.
“The paperwork comes signed from the office of the Reichsmarschall himself,” he shrugged. “I should think we’ve as little or as much time as we like.”
“Then I see no reason at all for us to give those beautiful children to anyone else,” Maria shrugged also, the declaration quite matter-of-fact in her own mind.
“My thoughts exactly,” Carl agreed, allowing himself a relieved smile and seeming almost taller as a huge, mental burden of uncertainty lifted from his shoulders. He’d come to feel the same over the last few days, and had been terrified that his wife might have reacted differently, in spite of his own instincts. He was now filled with relief that she had indeed come to a similar conclusion independently from any outside influence. “Antoine tells me his brother’s name is Curtis, but I’ve shortened it to ‘Kurt’ for the sake of the official papers.”
“My father’s name,” Maria beamed.
“My thoughts exactly at the time,” Carl nodded with a wry smile, “but also convenient to perhaps let the Reichsmarschall think it’s in his honour. I doubt it’ll make much difference, but it never hurts to have one’s bases covered… perhaps only for the sake of what others may think…”
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