The Prisoner's Wife
Page 30
Our principal occupation is trying to rid our clothes of lice, and we are able to wash our long underwear for the first time in a month, though I can’t imagine how I can wash my corset, which must be harboring whole legions of lice.
The sounds of the war are close to us all the time: the rumble of heavy artillery and the constant drone of planes overhead. For two nights running, the number of huge bombers flying over makes the windows rattle all over the camp, and the sky to the west is lit with red light. The guards tell us it’s Dresden burning. They are bitter and angry that one of their most beautiful cities should be destroyed by firebombs, when the war must be so close to ending. I imagine women running with babies in their arms, children with nowhere to hide from the bombs, the awful screams of people being burned to death, or perishing by suffocation under the weight of fallen buildings.
After Dresden, the mood in the camp darkens. Even Hans and the other guards from Lamsdorf are cold with us, but there’s also a new attitude among the prisoners.
I see a guard strike a prisoner with the back of his hand. The prisoner slowly takes a cigarette paper and a stub of pencil from his pocket. “What’s your name and serial number?” he asks the guard.
We are frozen with horror. Surely this will result in days in the cooler, or a more determined beating. But the guard just looks at him for a long time and then turns and walks away.
On the eighteenth of February, we’re informed we’ll be leaving in the morning, on foot again. This means we’ll be forced to leave Ralph behind. The sick are told they’ll be taken on by truck or train. Most of them hope they’ll simply be abandoned to be liberated by the Russians.
The men have been moved around in the sick bay, and there’s a stranger in Ralph’s bed. For a horrible moment I think he’s died in the night, but other men who’ve seen me there before tell me where to find him. As I leave, they call out, “Good luck, lad,” and “Say hello to Piccadilly for me.”
I scan the faces of the patients until I find Ralph. After I’ve washed and dried his feet for the last time, I take my notebook and write in shorthand, with my hand shaking, and my eyes prickling, I never forget everything you have done for me.
He says aloud, “And you for me. Come and find me when you get to Blighty.” He writes his parents’ address. “Or if I don’t make it back”—I shake my head fervently, but he wants to know that he’s said it—“go to see my mum and dad. Tell them . . .” I nod. Of course I know what he wants to tell them, and he doesn’t have to finish.
He looks over my shoulder and scratches his head as he continues. “And please, would you look after Max for me? He means . . .”
I wait, nodding solemnly. He swallows and tries again. “Max isn’t as resilient as he looks. He could give up. And you’re the strongest of all of us. Promise me.”
He wipes his face roughly with his sleeve. I lay my hand on his and nod again.
I write again in his notebook, seven little shorthand squiggles: I promise. I won’t let him give up. Of course I’ll look after Max. He and Bill feel like all the family I’ve got left.
One of the medics stops and looks closely at me. “Out on the march I want you to keep telling yourself that the human body is the toughest device ever invented. You can make it if you believe you will. Don’t forget that, will you?”
I nod, full of dread at what we may be facing.
Ralph and I both have tears in our eyes as I stand by his bed and formally shake him by the hand. I leave with my head bowed and a strong feeling I’ll never see him again, that only one of us or perhaps neither will make it to England.
As I cross the compound back to our hut, though Cousins holds back my tears, I feel hollowed out, a husk of the person I was.
* * *
Just after dawn on the nineteenth of February, we’re called out onto the parade ground. We’re wearing all the clothes we possibly can and have our kit bags and blankets lashed to the sledge again. This time there are only three kit bags and no food parcels, but we still need our blankets, and it’s easier to pull a sledge than to carry anything in our weakened state. We’re all counted, in the old, familiar way, but this time the derision and mockery from the prisoners’ ranks are loud, and mostly ignored by the guards. The old taunts that have been called for so long are now louder: “Der tag”—our day will come; “Sie sind schon gewesen”—you’ve had it. We’re told that this time we’ll be sent out in groups of two or three hundred at a time, following slightly different routes to make it easier to find billets for the night.
Our old Lamsdorf guards are standing back, and new men from the town of Görlitz are assigned to accompany us. I look along their faces; they are furious at the unpunished taunting, and the old fear floods through me. Maybe one of these new guards will spot the secret I’ve kept hidden for so long.
The order comes to “about-turn,” and the great gates of the prison camp are swung back for us to leave, as once again we march out onto the open road.
Twenty-six
Bill senses the mood of the march darkening further as they leave Görlitz, still pulling their sledge behind them. It’s even more than a grim fight for survival; it’s like being at war all over again. Their shorter column of three hundred or so prisoners may be easier to bed down for the night, but Bill fears that Izzy might be harder to hide. Their guards are posterns and volkssturm rather than regular army: either adolescent thugs, indoctrinated by the Hitler Youth from the time they could walk, or soldiers in their sixties who lived through the First World War and the terrible conditions of the armistice. The young are the worst because they’re arrogant, aggressive and self-important, completely certain, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that the Nazis are still winning the war. They are distrustful, trigger-happy, mean. They haven’t been through what the Lamsdorf guards suffered with the prisoners on the first leg of the march. They haven’t known any individual prisoners long enough to see them as human beings. The new guards loathe the Allies for the slaughter of civilians at Dresden.
Bill’s constantly worried that Izzy will be discovered as a woman by these new guards, who seem eager to show their superiority in every way. He knows they wouldn’t hesitate to have their sport with her in front of him, before killing both of them. He watches Izzy doggedly putting one foot in front of the other through the snow and he can’t believe everything she’s faced, just to be with him.
Now they are in the old prewar Germany, and Bill feels there’s a difference in the guards. They are in their homeland and he knows they’ll fight to defend it just as Izzy was prepared to do for Czechoslovakia. They seem to take the ice on their eyebrows and noses and lapels as badges of honor. They call to the prisoners constantly to move faster up the long, murderous hills, as if they weren’t going as fast as their bodies could move. Despite their days resting at Görlitz, Bill knows they are in very poor condition, hundreds of starving men edging forward through the snow.
But just as something has hardened in the guards, it has lightened in the prisoners around him, who are marching west toward their own people. This time they are kitted out against the cold better than on the first march. They have had more time to prepare, and everyone knew they weren’t going on a short hike. Two friends have raided the sports cupboard in the camp; one is wearing wicketkeeper gloves, and his mate has cut open a leather football to make a hat. One man shows Bill his gloves and says they’re made of dogskin, the warmest thing he’s ever felt.
“Look—look there,” says Bill to Izzy, pointing as they trudge. “Posterns digging in with machine guns. They know the Allies are coming very soon.”
Jeering and insults are thrown at the posterns and singing starts up and down the line. Bill joins in, roaring out the words of “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary,” “Keep the Home Fires Burning,” and “Take Me Back to Dear Old Blighty.”
Rumors keep starting that there will be Red Cross parcels in the next
village or the one after that.
Hauling their sledge up these long gradual hills, Bill, Izzy and Max can take in their shorter column, two or three abreast, stretching ahead along the snowy, potholed country tracks they’re traveling. Although they’re now in Germany, Bill notices that the number of civilian refugees seems even greater than before. Nobody wants to be left for the Red Army, he thinks. His blood freezes at the thought of the revenge Russian soldiers will mete out to German women if they showed no mercy to Czech women. And now he’s pleased that Izzy didn’t stay with Berta. Perhaps her mother and Marek are on the road by now too.
They trudge through endless pine forests, with snow fallen from the branches of the trees, but still lying deep beneath them where the sun doesn’t reach. The farms are bigger than in Poland, with bigger barns. The villages have red roofs that ought to look cheerful.
At the first night’s rest stop, the posterns treat the prisoners like animals, kicking out of the way men who’ve collapsed with exhaustion.
Bill says, “Who’d have thought we’d miss the guards from Lamsdorf?”
A man near him says, “There were some bastards there too, but that one with eczema asked me why I went round all day with an empty pipe in my mouth, and I told him it was because I hadn’t got any tobacco. And every day after that, he brought me a pinch of tobacco for my pipe.”
There’s a moment’s silence; then Max says, “Well, none of them showed me a moment’s kindness. And we should get the names of all these bastards so they can be made to pay.”
The guards push and shove them into a huge barn, bigger than Bill’s ever seen and alive with rats. Some prisoners try to catch them for food. Bill thinks again of Tucker and wonders if it was Izzy who laced his food with rat poison. Could she have done it? Would she?
The mood is different in the villages too. Bill remembers the Polish women who came out with hot drinks for them, but now many of the Germans throw stones at them and spit on them. “This is for Dresden,” they shout. “Murdering swine.”
News comes down the line that the posterns are having to guard the RAF prisoners from the locals as they pass.
On their second day Bill hears the line ahead go deadly quiet as they begin to come alongside men and women who’ve been made to stand back from the track for them to pass. There must be two thousand of them wearing thin, striped pajamas and bloodied wooden clogs. Their heads are shaved and uncovered. They have no coats, no underwear, no hats, no fuss-lag. They shiver uncontrollably; some are holding one another up. They stare ahead or down, but aren’t focusing on the prisoners, not expecting anything from them. They line both sides of the road, like a terrible warning that however cold and hungry the British POWs may be, even worse is possible. Max tries to press a crust of bread into the hand of a young person who might be a man or a woman, and one of their guards crashes a rifle butt down on his hand. The morsel of bread falls into the snow. Bill thinks they can offer them only respectful silence, prayers, perhaps, from those who still believe.
For a long time after they’ve passed, Bill can still see the blankness in their eyes.
Max whispers, “Jews. I think they were Jews. If my grandfather hadn’t gone to America, I could be there with them.” Izzy links her arm into his, and they tramp on.
The new guards are harsh with anyone who drops out of line to answer a call of nature, so they try to wait until the rest stops. With so little food they only have to defecate every five or six days, and because the new posterns rarely let them stop for water, their urine has turned dark yellow. Izzy is very careful now only to crouch down when the posterns’ backs are turned, with Bill and Max to shield her.
In addition to the gnawing hunger, Bill is thirsty all the time, a terrible thirst he’s never experienced before. He cracks ice off a puddle and hands out chunks of it to the others. They break it into their tin mugs and wait for it to melt. One man says it’s his birthday, and the guard gives him a half cup of water. Bill sees many men scooping up handfuls of the yellow snow from beside the road, and he remembers Ralph telling them only to eat clean snow, only to drink boiled water, not to use the same hand to eat as to clean themselves. Bill wishes Ralph and Scotty were still with them. It’s so hard only having Max to help him watch over Izzy. He is exhausted with having to be vigilant every minute.
The food ration is intermittent. At some overnight stops, there’s bread or even soup or potatoes, but sometimes there’s nothing. When there’s a pause to rest, the guards let them into the fields to forage for turnips, mangolds and potatoes, which they dig out of the frozen ground with their bare hands and eat raw, with the earth still on.
They are still covering punishing distances of more than twenty kilometers each day. They pass Bad Muskau and the river Spree, with factories farting their smoke into the sky. There’s a huge chemical works, and then a field of hop poles. Bill remembers going down to Kent once on a working holiday with Flora’s family to harvest hops, everyone laughing in the summer air. He is hardly able to believe a day will come when these will be hanging with green vines and people will laugh in these fields.
They walk on, still pulling their sledge, until the track again enters the dark and gloom of a thick pine forest. Bill wonders if there are wolves in Germany, but thinks he’d better not ask for fear of worrying Izzy. He thinks the prisoners are all such sick weaklings now that wolves could pick them off like baby deer.
For three whole days, they eat nothing at all. They’ve still got a cake of soap, but the villages they pass through have either been bombed or are shut up tightly against them. Bill begins to grab at something in the air before him as he shuffles onward. Izzy catches his hand, and he looks at her puzzled, not knowing who she is for a second. Then he focuses. “Sorry,” he says. “It was right there in front of me. A big slab of bread and drippin’. Right there where I could grab it.”
At the next village, they drop back in line till the postern is ahead of them, and they look out for someone ready to barter. A woman in a head scarf and shawl is standing close to the column, watching them pass. Bill catches her eye and shows her their last cake of soap. She nods and reaches into her apron pocket, quickly snatching the soap and pressing a bread roll into Bill’s hand. Bill pulls the roll into three portions and shares it with Izzy and Max. It isn’t fresh, but they press it quickly into their dry mouths, chewing and chewing.
They overtake more civilian refugees. A young woman with two children hanging onto her skirts stands next to a cart piled high with her possessions. The cart has one wheel missing. Her clothes were once well cut, good quality, now dusty and ragged. She holds out one hand for food, but doesn’t look at them. As they come level with her, Max unstraps his watch and presses it into her hand. Bill just catches the astonished look on her face as they shuffle past, and shares her disbelief.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” says Bill. “That was your last birthday present from your folks.”
“I know.”
Bill is urgent. “You could’ve swapped it for food for yourself. That’s what your mum ’n’ dad’d want.”
“It might be enough to keep all three of them alive. They’re the next generation,” says Max reasonably. “And I’ve got a feeling I’m not going to need it.”
They walk on in silence, and Bill says quietly, “You’re a good man,” though he can’t help thinking Max could have used his watch to feed his friends, not a family of strangers.
In every barn Izzy scratches the floor, searching for a trapdoor covered in earth leading to a basement where potatoes, beetroots, carrots and corn might be stored. Bill watches her indulgently; though he doesn’t believe she’ll find it, it’s important to have hope. But one evening she comes to them, eyes shining with triumph, and pulls Bill and Max over to see. As soon as Bill opens the trapdoor, he can smell the dry, clean smell of stored vegetables.
Max hisses, “Shut it quick. Goon up!”
Men nearby move aside as Bill hauls up the trapdoor. Max and Izzy hold it open while Bill drops down, lights a match and calls back up, “Yes. Spuds. Turnips. Something else.”
They help him back up, and all the eyes are watching him, somewhere between hope and desperation.
Bill says, “Quiet, now. Don’t let the goons know. Form an orderly queue. I’ll get down there and hand it up. Let’s say one spud each for now. Then we’ll get it all up and share it out properly. There’s enough for everyone, but if you push in, you don’t get anything.”
He drops back down and begins to hand the vegetables up to Izzy and Max to distribute. The other prisoners line up for Izzy and Max to give them their share, each taking their potato and either eating it raw or cutting it up into tiny chunks to cook on their blower. When each of them has one potato, Bill continues to hand up the rest of the winter store. Max counts the men in the barn and they divide it so everyone has something to take away with them to eat tomorrow.
They pass through bomb-wrecked towns and villages, with houses burning. Sometimes the side of a house has fallen away, leaving a room like a theater set, with a fireplace, wallpaper and curtains flapping at a window, as if the actors will step back into it at any moment and the action of their lives will resume exactly as before. All along the road, Bill sees makeshift graves hacked from ice. Many are child sized.