Otto's Blitzkrieg

by Leo Kessler

  ‘Oh poor little bugger, he's only got one udder…’ The song trailed away to nothing and Captain Hawkins slammed the window closed, and turned back, his face white with snow.

  ‘Too much bloody singing these days,’ he grumbled. ‘We didn’t sing out in India in the old days. It’s all this ruddy “Workers' Playtime” and Vera Lynn on about them sodding “White Cliffs of Dover”.’

  Then he remembered the problem in hand once again.

  ‘Looky here, Dicksey,’ he said, his voice more reasonable now. ‘We’ve got to do something. ’Cos if we don’t and some of the squareheads do a bunk, you’ll know what will happen? It’ll be back to the battalion and a nice swift posting to Libya to get yer knees brown right sharpish – and blokes are getting killed dead out there, even by the wogs!’

  ‘Don’t say things like that, sir,’ Staff-Sergeant Dicks quavered and clutched the officer’s desk, as if he might well faint. ‘I ain’t feeling too well as it is this morning. Me and my widow-woman had a proper night of it.’

  ‘Yer typical, out fornicating while I’m eating my heart out here worrying, worrying,’ Hawkins moaned. ‘I know it in my bones. There’s gonna be trouble. I knew it in Quetta just before the earthquake. I knew it in France just before the balloon went up last May. And I’ve got the same feeling here, Dicksey.’ He stared grimly at the pudgy-faced NCO, with the dark blue circles under his eyes. ‘We’re in for trouble. It’s gonna be a right old sodding Christmas, take it from me.’

  The prisoners’ Christmas Eve entertainment had gone exceedingly well despite the freezing cold outside and the meagre rations the Commandant had allowed them for the two-day holiday. ‘Sod’ em,’ he’d told the sergeant-cook when the latter had asked about special Christmas rations. ‘If they're gonna do a bunk, they’re not having their guts full of my plum duff!’ But the potent raisin wine had helped to overcome both the cold and lack of food.

  The ‘lovelies’ of the Italian chorus-line had performed well to the accompaniment of delighted little cries and jeers of ‘Don’t split yer knickers, missus!’ from their audience when they did the final splits.

  The accordionist had succeeded in getting even the members of the York Tunnelgesellschaft GmbH, as hard-bitten as they were, to join in the community singing, though his rendition of ‘O Solo Mio’ had reduced the Italian section of his audience to tears and there had been much blowing of noses and furtive wiping of eyes from them.

  Now it was the Germans’ turn. The light of the entertainment hut had been extinguished to cries of ‘kiss me quick’ and ‘get yoo hand from under me skirt, you naughty man,’ and the precious candles on the Christmas tree lit one by one to illuminate the German faces as they grouped around it, awaiting the pastor’s orders, while the Italians stared in open-mouthed wonder at their transformed comrades; for now the hard-bitten faces were animated by that hazy Germanic gemutlichkeit, their eyes shining sentimental and childlike in the reflected light.

  A beaming Pastor Mueller, standing just in front of the tree, nodded benignly to Todt, the shifty-eyed corporal, and he and the choir burst into ‘Stille Nacht’ in fine full-voiced style, followed by ‘Oh, Tannenbaum’ with the priest making pretty little movements with his entwined fingers to indicate they should keep their voices low. Politely the Italians clapped and waited to see what would happen next.

  Kraemer, his hair sleeked down with Vaseline, his broad tough face awkward and red with embarrassment, stumbled forward through the choir, a piece of paper in his hand.

  The pastor nodded and he started to read the poem, written laboriously on it, mumbling his words occasionally and hesitating over the bigger ones, all about ‘homeland’ and being on ‘foreign soil’, away from ‘hearth and home and the loved ones.’ All around, those Italians who spoke some German attempted to answer their comrades’ enquiries of ‘quedice, quediceil,’ while Otto shook his head in mock wonder. Only a German could be transformed from a ruthless, brutal, potential killer into a meek, wet-eyed sentimentalist who was prepared to read that kind of drivel in front of a shaggy tree hung with candles. He took a hefty drink of his raisin wine.

  Finally it was over and with his hands clasped together in front of his portly belly in a very professional manner, Pastor Mueller commenced his little Christmas Eve speech, customary on such occasions back in the Reich, his voice low and vibrant and full of trained inspiration.

  ‘Comrades,’ he said, ‘it is a sad thing to be away from one’s loved ones on a day like this. It is an even sadder thing to be parted from them behind prison bars in a foreign land.’

  His voice rose professionally.

  ‘But comrades, years will come, when we and our beloved Führer Adolf Hitler have achieved final victory, when we will look back at this Christmas Eve of the year 1940 and remember it with quiet pride as a time of adversity over which we triumphed… because we were German and bear a German heart which is Good, True and Brave. We have been felled low, comrades, we have been beaten to our knees. Yet,’ he raised one pudgy finger to emphasize his point, ‘yet, the enemy has not succeeded in crushing us into the earth, in spite of his terrorist methods, such as not giving us any of his celebrated English plum pudding.’

  He took off his glasses and wiped them hastily with his tie, almost as if he were too overcome by emotion to continue. ‘We do not need his bribes, his alms, his plum pudding. We Germans need nothing on this earth, save the loyalty of a good brave comrade and the knowledge that our Führer Adolf Hitler,’ he raised his eyes upwards piously, as if the Führer were floating slightly above his balding pate, ‘is watching over us. That is all,’ he finished, a little flatly.

  Someone gave a sob. Kraemer reached hastily for his handkerchief and patted his eyes. Todt burst spontaneously into Deutschland uber Alles, followed almost instantly by the rest of the choir. A little startled and puzzled, yet caught up by the stirring spirit of that moment, the Italian chorus snapped to attention, their little skirts riding up to reveal their precious frilly knickers once again, and cried, ‘Heil Hitler… Heil!’

  I am in the mad house, thought Otto.

  Thirty minutes later as a slightly tipsy air-gunner staggered out of the entertainment hut humming the Horst Wessel Lied between repeated belches occasioned by the raisin wine, a powerful arm crooked itself around his throat to stop him from crying out aloud, and a hoarse brutal voice said from the cover of the raging snowstorm. ‘All right, you treacherous arsehole. Now you’re for it!’

  At first, Kurt the air-gunner, the raisin wine still lending him courage, blustered, denying everything, shouting at his accusers with honest indignation. But, as the effects of the alcohol started to wear off, he began to falter, his features paling with fear as he realised that the hard-faced men staring at him in the candlelit priest’s hut, with the storm howling outside drowning any cries he might make, were deadly serious.

  Pastor Mueller let him go on for about five minutes before nodding to Kraemer, the one who had brought him in. With casual, effortless brutality, the giant hit the air-gunner in the stomach and as he doubled up with a frantic gasp, clubbed his fist down at the back of the Luftwaffe man’s neck. He dropped to the ground sobbing with pain.

  ‘How did you find out?’ asked Mueller, softly.

  Kraemer kicked him routinely in the ribs.

  ‘The boots,’ he sobbed, ‘Otto’s boots… There was clay on them… different from the surface earth.’

  ‘Damn!’ Mueller cursed himself, and snapped his fingers together angrily. ‘We always forgot that one. Go on. What did you tell the Tommies?’

  ‘I didn’t tell – ’

  His words ended in a cry of pain, as Kraemer slapped him open-handed and he slammed against the wall, gasping like a dying fish stranded out of water.

  ‘Don’t lie to me, you wretch!’ Mueller thundered suddenly, half-rising from his chair with rage. ‘For God’s sake, man, if nothing else, think of your Immortal Soul.’

  ‘But I didn’t tell them anything,’ Kurt mumbled
through thickened, bloody lips, spitting out a little scarlet blood as he did so. ‘Honest… on my word of honour.’

  There was a quick outburst of gruff, disbelieving laughter and the prisoner stared wildly around those hard-faced men, knowing that he would find no sympathy there.

  ‘It was the Eyeties then?’ Todt suggested.

  ‘Yer, your lace-knickered boyfriend,’ Hans simpered in an affected falsetto.

  ‘I might have mentioned it to Renate… trying to make myself seem a little bit important. They’re impressed by such things. But that was all. Please believe me, all!’

  Otto swallowed hard, as he watched the proceedings with horrified, sickened fascination, and told himself that they would have no mercy on the air-gunner; they hated him more than they did their captors, the Tommies.

  Mueller took control hastily once again.

  ‘Comrades, please,’ he said. ‘Let us get this unpleasant business over with as quickly as possible. I have something of vital importance to tell you in a few minutes!’ He stared at the trembling, bleeding air-gunner. ‘You could have destroyed the work of months,’ he said harshly. ‘You are a traitor – either by omission or commission, it matters not now. All that matters now is that you should be punished. As a warning to others of like mind.’

  ‘Punished?’ the air-gunner croaked, looking from one hard face to the other, his own features a mixture of fear, fright, and disbelief. ‘You are prisoners yourselves, how can you punish me?’

  Mueller ignored the question. He rose slowly and solemnly to his feet. Automatically the others did the same, knowing now that the die was cast. Hans gave Otto a dig in the ribs and he did the same.

  ‘Prisoner,’ Mueller intoned, ‘you are a disgrace to your service, your country and yourself. I find you guilty – and the Sentence is Death!’

  ‘Death!’ the air-gunner cried aghast. ‘You mean murder!’ he shrank back fearfully, hands outstretched as if to ward them off. ‘You want to kill me!’

  Mueller shook his head. ‘No, we won’t kill you. You will do that yourself.’ He nodded to Kraemer. The giant produced a short length of stout rope from his jacket and said, ‘The latrine is high enough to do it. One of the nancy-boys managed it very well last month.’

  The air-gunner clutched his throat, as if he could already feel the hempen rope digging into his flesh. ‘Why… why should I?’ he gasped. ‘You can’t make me… If you want to kill me, you’ll have to – ’

  ‘A letter to your parents, to the authorities, to your girl, if you have one,’ Mueller said remorselessly, his icy eyes boring into the ashen-faced prisoner. ‘What do you feel they would think of a common pervert like you, who sleeps with other men? Italians to boot? You think you could ever go back to Germany with that stain on your character, eh?’ He paused momentarily. ‘You know in your innermost self you couldn’t. You are branded. There is no other way. Will you do it? Yes or no?’

  Like a broken-hearted child the air-gunner began to sob, his head hanging down, mumbling something that was unintelligible to a horror-struck Otto. Docilely he let himself be led outside, shoulders heaving, while Otto watched, sick with self-disgust, and did nothing.

  Five minutes later Kraemer and Todt were back, grinning broadly, the shifting corporal screwing his head to one side and giving strangled noises.

  ‘Like clockwork!’ was Kraemar’s only comment. ‘They’ll find him in the morning.’

  ‘Good,’ Mueller said coldly and then his fat face lit up. ‘Comrades that was his Christmas Present! Now for ours.’ He looked around proudly at their expectant faces. ‘We go out on New Year's Eve, Comrades!’

  There was a triumphant cheer from the others, on their feet in an instant, faces aglow with excitement, clapping each other on the back happily. A sickened Otto slumped there unseen, recalling the air-gunner sobbing broken-heartedly that first night at the camp. Now he was hanging in the cold smelly latrine on Christmas Eve 1940. He could never work with this troop of blackguards again. He knew now that he must punish them, cost what it would.

  CHAPTER 11

  Somewhere a gate slammed back and forth in the howling wind. The snow peppered the windows of the huts like machine gun tracer-bullets. Everywhere in the deserted, dark compound the wind whirled the flakes into dancing, drunken snow-devils. Over on the other side of the wire, the Tommies were drunkenly singing their marching song, ‘Roll out the Barrel’. It was a perfect night for a breakout.

  Now, one by one, the escapees stole from Pastor Mueller’s hut and hissed through the whirling white gloom, perfectly camouflaged in the white woollen one-piece undergarment, and slipped into the Hole, with a triumphant Mueller patting each one on the back before he left and whispering, ‘God be with you, my son.’

  Now it was almost Otto’s turn. Carefully he checked his equipment and supplies, the two tins of black market corned-beef, the packet of wet bread, toasted in the oven so that it would remain edible for a couple of days, the water-bottle of cold tea, laced with raisin wine.

  Pastor Mueller smiled at him winningly.

  ‘Don’t worry, Otto,’ he said, ‘you won’t be out long enough to have to worry about food. By morning we’ll be in Hull and by nightfall I’ll have found us a Swedish ship. Then we’ll really eat – the Swedes like their bellies.’

  ‘Yes Herr Pfarrer,’ Otto said dutifully, keeping his head lowered so that the priest could not see the look in his eyes.

  ‘Ohne mich,’ he whispered under his breath and felt for the most important part of his kit, concealed in the inside pocket of his khaki tunic, which was now free of the blue patches that marked him as a POW – the homemade compass.

  One of the Italians had made it for him in forty-eight hours at the cost of his whole month’s cigarette ration, but Stahl knew without it he would be lost. The casing was made of a broken gramophone record, heated and moulded into form, with inside a piece of cardboard on which the points of the compass had been painted. A gramophone needle formed the pivot, and resting upon it, the direction needle – a bit of sewing needle, which had been charged by rubbing against a magnet. Otto thanked God he had learned how to use a compass in his years with the Hitler Youth back in Stralsund. He would need that knowledge tonight.

  ‘All right, Otto, now you,’ Pastor Mueller’s voice broke into his thoughts.

  ‘Yes, Herr Pfarrer,’ Otto straightened up and edged the door open. The storm raged on.

  ‘I’ll bring up the rear, Otto, in five minutes. Off you go. God bless and protect you, my boy.’

  ‘Hypocrite!’ Otto said under his breath and then he was out, skirting the length of the wall like a white ghost, his feet almost soundless in the snow, the wind bringing snatches of the drunken Tommies song across to him, ‘Now this is number one and he’s got her on the run… Roll me over in the clover and do it agen…’ He frowned and prayed that the singing was only a cover, then he concentrated on the task on hand.

  ‘They’re all down below, Herr Pfarrer.’ As the portly priest hushed into the door of the Hole, beating the snowflakes off his shoulders, Otto toiling at the pump, gave him the quick explanation. ‘Digging the last of it out.’

  At the entrance to the tunnel, Hans loomed into view and dumped another box of sand carelessly in the corridor. ‘No need to worry about concealing it now, eh, Herr Pfarrer,’ he said with uncharacterful happiness.

  ‘That’s right, Hans. Tonight the York Tunnelgesellschaft GmbH goes into liquidation – for good. Ha, ha!’

  Hans joined in the laughter and then disappeared from sight once again.

  Down below they were digging upwards – a tricky, dangerous business. Already the previous night they had dug to within one metre of where they expected the surface to be on the outside and roofed the shaft firmly. Now Kraemer, the giant, was removing the soil on both sides below to make it big enough for them to exit and soon he would clear the roof support itself and start burrowing upwards that final metre, which separated them from freedom. If he did it too hastily, ho
wever, there could be a slide or cave-in which might block the tunnel for hours or a too massive hole might appear which could alert a sentry, even on a night like this. The digging-out was a difficult affair and even Mueller’s usual bonhomie vanished now as the minutes passed by; the only sound – the howl of the wind outside and the steady gasping of the makeshift bellows as Otto pressed and pulled it at regular intervals. Over in their quarters, the drunken Tommies celebrating New Year’s Eve were bellowing, ‘Now this is number five and he's got her on the hive… roll me over, lay me down and do it again. Roll me over in the clover…’

  ‘Not only are the pigdogs obscene,’ Mueller was saying, ‘but they also have the audacity – ’

  'Herr Pfarrer!’ Hans’s urgent whisper cut into his words.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘We’re nearly there. Kraemer says there’s only millimetres of earth separating him from the surface. He’s waiting for your orders.’

  Pastor Mueller breathed out a sigh of relief. Obviously the electric tension had almost been too much for him. ‘Gott sei dank,’ he breathed out fervently, and lowering his head for a moment, his hands clasped in front of his portly stomach, which bulged obscenely from his white long johns, he sank into prayer, while the other two waited a little confused.

  ‘Amen,’ he whispered to himself, and then to Hans, ‘All right, pass it on. We go out at midnight exactly. Not a minute too soon. They’ll be drinking in New Year 1941. That’ll keep the drunken sots occupied for at least fifteen minutes alone, the way I know those Tommies: beer-hounds.’

  ‘Klar, Herr Pfarrer,’ Hans snapped and disappeared below again to relay the message.

  Mueller turned to Otto.

  ‘I’m going down now, Otto, my boy. I hope my, er, girth will fit,’ he flashed him a smile. Automatically Otto did the same. ‘Would you be so kind as to stay pumping a little while longer? As I am sure you can understand, one needs a little fresh air when one’s nose is pressed up close to Hans’s, er, rear-end.’