“Potatoes?”
“Yes, those brown jobs we eat.”
“I presume you put them in the ground...”
“Correct. But it must be done properly. Dig some trenches. Fill with spuds. Pile up earth to form a mound on top. To keep it simple, I use my foot to measure it all out. Distance between trenches: a foot and a bit. Trench width about the same. Separation between each potato also a foot and a bit. Nice and easy.”
“What about depth?”
“A yes... depth. Somewhere between your wrist and elbow.”
“When do I start?”
“Now. At once. Our spuds should have been planted weeks ago, but I’ve been up to my ears in work. Running the gasthof... cooking... doing the jobs of a dozen people. Our menfolk – those still in the land of the living – are away at the front. The Party grabs all the foreign workers for the factories. Leaving us with nothing. So when you suddenly drop out of the sky... don’t imagine you can just sit there knocking back my beer.”
Her words ‘dropping out of the sky’ sounded ominous. Had Siggy guessed or was it just a turn of phrase? But I had a more immediate concern. So I mentioned food.
“Hmm. Can’t have you fainting in my potato patch,” she said. “Don’t suppose you have a ration book?”
I shook my head.
“Didn’t think so. Well, we always try and have a pot on the go. Nothing special. Just a vegetable stew and some scraps. But it should fill a hole. Hang on a mo.”
Truth to tell, I was beginning to feel pretty spaced out. My last decent meal had been back at base. Several eons ago. Even that had not been a feast. Daisy’s milk and the eggs had merely staved off complete collapse.
Siggy returned with a large bowl of steaming broth, which I shovelled in, ravenously.
Sitting down opposite me again, she said, “I’ll tell you the score while you eat. The spuds are all loaded up in the cart. You may have seen it outside earlier. Meant to do it myself but, as usual, something else turned up. The field we use is on the edge of town about ten minutes away; our old horse is past his prime, so don’t whack him. He’ll be doing his best. Don’t want him dying on me. He knows the way...”
She broke off as another though occurred to her.
“...Change of plan. Or rather, modification of plan. Better still, I’ll let you have Benni. He knows the way. And he’s taken quite a shine to you.”
“That’s very trusting.”
“Not really. We’re trying to survive under a storm of bombs. Letting Benni off with a stranger is the least of my worries. Besides, you’re hardly likely to save him one minute and harm him the next.”
“How old’s Benni?”
“Coming up to six. Due to start school next term. Poor little lad is forever getting under my feet. Not his fault. Do him good to get out for a while.”
Going to the bottom of the stairs, Siggy yelled, “I’ve got a job for you, Benni. With that nice man you just met. He’s not very clever, so needs a big boy like you to show him.”
Benni came down hesitantly. Still suspicious. Gave a hint of a smile, then asked, “Where’s Karl?”
Siggy was taken aback. Dismissively, she replied, “Karl’s gone to the big kennel in the sky. Having a lovely time, I expect, playing with other dogs.”
This fairy tale must have sounded patronising, even to a six-year-old. But she could hardly have told Benni the truth, that Karl had already fallen victim to Felix’s cleaver and would shortly be supplementing the town’s meagre meat ration.
Benni would not let the matter drop and asked, “D’you think Karl will also be playing with Daddy?”
The fairy story was getting out of emotional control. In desperation, Siggy said, “Please dear, just go along and show this gentleman... Per... how to get to our field.”
“Oh... all right.” Reluctantly, Benni followed us out of the door. Like me, he’d been scrubbed clean after our little drama. Unlike me, he’d suffered no scrapes or bruises. No emotional scars either, by the look of it; probably didn’t realise what a close shave he’d had. His only concern seemed to be the fate of his pet dog.
The cart was back in place outside the gasthof’s front door. It was almost full of seed potatoes – at least a week’s worth of work, I’d say, plus tools to do the job. I climbed onto the driving seat, while Siggy lifted Benni up beside me.
“Do what you can today. But come back before it gets dark. Not many people on the roads these days, but those that are drive like crazy. Even in the blackout.” She gave the horse a slap on the rump and we were off.
The pace was funereal but, as instructed, I didn’t attempt to increase it. Our equine engine was about the same size as our fjordings back home. In other words quite small. But whereas Norwegian ponies were usually well-built, tough little beasts, this one was weary and moth-eaten. He only had half a left ear, which hung down limply, giving him a lopsided look.
Our route took us back along the valley, a couple of hundred feet higher up than the road I’d come in on. I caught occasional glimpses of the river below. Benni was not in a chatty mood, for which I was grateful, because I was beginning to wonder what on earth I was doing.
To try and escape was the duty of every downed airman. That very few succeeded in making a home run was almost beside the point. Escapees tied up valuable enemy manpower and effort, which could have been better used in the frontline. But I was now getting dangerously close to aiding and abetting that enemy. Back in Britain there was a famous poster urging us to ‘Dig for Victory’. Was I now about to ‘dig for a German victory’?
This philosophising was cut short by a realisation that the horse had stopped. Houses had given way to fields and Benni was pointing at the nearest one. “Over there.”
I clambered off the cart, helped Benni down, and got to work. Dig a trough. Plant. Cover up. It exercised the body, if not the mind. For a nipper, not yet six years old, Benni was surprisingly useful. I found a stick, broke it into the right length, and got him planting; stick’s length between each spud. We made a good team.
We’d developed such a slick rhythm I was quite startled to hear a shout. It was Siggy, getting off her bike.
“Inspection time,” she announced.
We already had several completed mounds to offer. And an open, half full trough.
“I do planting,” Benni told her.
“Clever boy.” It wasn’t just maternal pride speaking. It looked genuinely good. “Passed. With an alpha grade. Now let’s pack up. It’ll soon be dark.”
As she got back on her bike, Siggy turned to me. “As for you, it’s decision time. Don’t be late.”
CHAPTER 2
We trudged back to the gasthof, where I unhitched the horse. Benni showed me the way to the stable, where the reward was a pathetic pile of hay; starvation rations. No wonder the animal was listless.
That done, I returned to the lounge, which was unrecognisable. Now full of noise, smoke and people. Mostly male and uniformed. The uniforms were either army grey or something sand coloured. With lots of red-rimmed swastika armbands.
I hesitated at the door. The entrance to the lion’s den. In the lion pub. At the far end, I could see the family table. My table. Now occupied. But only by one person, a middle aged man. One of the few not in uniform. Spotting me, he waved me over.
Weaving through the tables, chairs and haze of tobacco smoke, I stood uncertainly before him.
“You must be Per,” he said. “Sit down. Siggy told me about you. Forgive me if I don’t get up. My name’s Gregor.” He half rose and shook my hand. I noticed a walking stick beside him.
A voice inside me screamed, “Hobnobbing with the enemy again,” but I ignored it. What else could I do? Raise my hands and ask to be taken to the nearest POW camp?
“First, I must thank you for saving young Benni,” he began. “If Siggy had lost him as well... doesn’t bear thinking about. Irma saw it all and has told me about it. Appears you could have saved yourself and left Benni to his fate. Brave of you.”
In fact, everything had happened so fast, there had been no time for any thought process. Or bravery. It had been an instinctive reaction, pure and simple. But I wasn’t going to tell him that.
I guessed Gregor was in his mid-fifties, straight dark hair, flecked with grey. His face was thin and might have been taken for severe had his eyes not sent a more friendly message. He was wearing one of those pseudo-peasant jackets with large lapels, common in alpine regions – even though we must have been miles away from any proper mountains. It was the sort of outfit that was usually rounded off by a hat festooned with feathers.
“I have some questions,” he continued. “But first a beer. My shout. I think you deserve it. Or perhaps you prefer wine? I’m a wine man myself...” he indicated a glass in front of him... “It’s fashionable these days to drink French wines, but I stick to the good old German ones. This is a rather nice Piesporter Goldtröpfchen. The vineyard there goes back to Roman times... ah, here she is...”
While talking, he had been trying to attract attention and now a waitress was behind me at the ready. Not any old waitress, I realised, but my old friend blue-blouse banshee.
“Ah, our hero! Do you have a name?” It was the first time I’d seen her since the accident, but she was as effusive as ever.
“I’m Per. And you are?”
“Irma. At your service.” Now in a barmaid get-up, she was not really busty enough for the classic Oktoberfest wench, a dozen steins in each hand. She was a sleeker, darker version of that: straight black, shoulder length hair, brown eyes, nearly as tall as me, so around 5 foot 8. I was in love again, but... what was the matter with me! This was the enemy, for God’s sake!
“I thought you worked at the pharmacy,” I said.
“I do. During office hours. But it’s all hands to the pumps these days. Can’t waste anyone able-bodied. So in the evenings I help out here.”
“Pretty busy, by the look of it.”
“Yes, the boys reckon it’s safer here than the big city. Not that there’s much left of the city. So we benefit from other people’s misfortune...”
“What’s it to be?” asked Gregor, interrupting.
“Something wet and long and mildly intoxicating...?”
“A beer perhaps?” Irma grinned.
I nodded, smiled... and again was overcome with angst. Fraternising with the enemy was bad enough, but flirting with them must be a hanging offence.
As my new girlfriend departed, Gregor tapped the table impatiently. “Siggy tells me you have a form of identification. Let me see it, please.”
I handed over my passport. Gregor studied it for so long I was well into my beer by the time he was ready to comment.
Finally he leant back, threw the document at me and said, “Useless, of course. If it’s genuine, which it probably is – the photo looks pretty much like you – it only tells me who you are. We can, and will, check on that. But you have no proper identity card. No ration book. Nothing. You appear out of nowhere, with some cock-and-bull story...”
I was preparing to submit to the boys with the handcuffs, when he uttered a lovely word: ‘However’.
“...However,” he said, “this might be an opportunity. For both of us. Not going to be easy, but it might work. And if it does, it’ll be for our benefit rather than yours.”
I was about to say something, but he held up his hand.
“Hear me out,” he said. “You may be surprised to learn that you’re something of a rarity: young, apparently fit, and not German. Had you been German, you’d already have been off to the Eastern Front. So to plug all these manpower gaps we now employ millions of foreign workers. From France, Italy, Greece. Russia, Poland... God knows where. Albert Speer grabs most of them to keep our military machine going. Leaving us with the crumbs that fall from our masters’ table.”
He took a sip from his wine and continued. “So when we come across just such a crumb – you – we think twice before sweeping it up and sending it off to one of to the usual places. Siggy tells me you’re a dab hand at planting potatoes. Which is pretty important right now. Last winter was bad enough. Next winter will be worse. You could help to feed us. Trouble is, the Reich is knee-deep in rules and regulations. We can’t just take on anyone. But I can see a few chinks of light. Like your nationality.”
“Oh?
“The people now living in the Greater Reich are very diverse. Poles, Czechs, Latvians, Estonians... the so-called Untermensch: all mere factory fodder for the state to dispose of, as they see fit. The French we rather admire for their culture. And for their wines and cuisine, which we consume at every opportunity. For a while we even allowed them to run half the country themselves from Vichy. But the French are not Aryans.”
“Norwegians are?”
Gregor gave a ghost of a smile. “In its wisdom, the National Socialist Party classifies Norwegians and Danes as Aryans. Like us. Furthermore, we occupy your countries not for ‘lebensraum’ – more living space, or to pinch your wines and truffles and cheeses. But solely for our common good. To stop you being taken over by our enemies.”
I almost burst out, “Could have fooled me!” Josef Terboven, Norway’s Reichskommissar, was using concentration camps and firing squads like the rest of Hitler’s henchman. But I kept a straight face.
“Your nationality merely means my plan is not hopeless,” he continued. “The odds are still against us. But we’re helped by the curious way the Reich works. I expect you think our Führer is the boss...?”
I nodded.
“In theory, that’s so. But nowadays he just sits there in his Berchtesgaden mountain retreat. Or Wolf’s Lair on the eastern front. And lets the Party get on with it. With one exception. Because he’s a military genius...” this without a hint of irony “...he’s forever telling the top brass how to run the war; constantly pouring over maps and firing field marshals.”
“How does this help us?” I asked.
“Because everything non-military is decided by his underlings. Himmler runs the Gestapo. Speer war production. Heydrich, before he was gunned down, the Jewish question. As long as they more or less follow the Führer’s guidelines, he doesn’t bother to check details. So we’re really run by lots of different empires; which themselves fragment. Many decisions are taken way down the command chain. But always by the Party. Get the Party onside and we have a chance.”
“You have that influence?”
“You may wonder, looking at me. I’m different from the others here, right?”
“You mean you’re not military?”
“Not military. Not Party. Not in uniform. You probably don’t realise it, but we’re sitting in the nerve centre of the local National Socialist Party. Supposed to be in the big city, but that’s now a bomb site and rather dangerous, so some of them have migrated out here, to the Gasthof zum Löwen. Where we’re hopefully too small and insignificant to attract the terror-flieger. These fellows have their offices in the castle, then after work come here to let their hair down. The Party partying, if you like.”
Well, well... So I’d blindly walked into a Nazi hotspot. I could only hope for some collective myopia on their part.
“Fortunately, family still counts for something in the Reich,” continued Gregor. “And my brother Willi happens to be our Block Leader: the link man between Party and the local community. Right now Willi will be nursing a large dose of guilty conscience...”
“So Willi is...?” The aftermath of the crash came back to me. Arrival of a plump little man in uniform... Siggy yelling something like ‘You nearly killed him... last of the Weisses’.
Gregor nodded. “Yes brother Willi was the cause of this morning’s fiasco. He’s the local Party... I was going to say bigwig, but that would be too kind; call him the Party littlewig.”
“You think Willi could swing things? Let me stay?” As I said this, I wondered whether that’s what I really wanted.
“We can try. But first we need to check your credentials. Make sure you�
�re not a spy; though, God knows you don’t look like one. I assume you have family in Norway?”
I nodded. “Father’s a teacher at the cathedral school in Oslo. Mother’s a nurse in Ullevål hospital.”
“Good. I’d like you write them a letter. Just a few words, nothing to upset the censor. I’ve got a friend in the occupation forces who’ll deliver it, and give your parents the once-over at the same time. If everything is as you say, we’ll try for a more permanent arrangement. In the meantime, I’ll ask Willi to grant you temporary residence. We’ll keep an eye on you, make sure you don’t get up to any mischief. Siggy has an attic storeroom, where you can bed down. You’ll repay us by planting potatoes – and anything else that’s required.”
Gregor must have been signalling Irma again, because there she was, behind me, smile at the ready.
A pen and paper for the young man, if you please,” said Gregor. “And some food. What’s on the menu tonight?”
“A great big steak, lashings of wine-soaked gravy, roast potatoes...”
Gregor held up his hand. “Don’t. That’s no longer even funny.”
“Very well. How about the usual stew. With maybe a sliver of meat hidden in every tenth helping.”
“That’ll have to do. I’m sure you can manage something for both of us.”
As Irma departed, Gregor explained: “We eat much better here than most places. Rationing or not, the Party manages to scrounge all sorts of goodies the man in the street can only dream of. Leaving some snippets over for us humble peasants.”
Irma returned with paper and pencil. And a dilemma. Because the letter needed very careful wording.
I had left Norway over three years before. Since then my only link with the folks back home had been by occasional heavily censored letters, courtesy of the Red Cross. They knew I was alive and in England. The last I heard, they were also OK, continuing their lives in Oslo. It was far too early for them to have had any ‘missing in action’ news, so getting a letter from Germany would be bound to throw them. I had to make sure their reactions didn’t give the game away. After much thought I wrote:
THE LAST WEISS Page 3