The Forgotten

by Mary Chamberlain

  ‘Lieutenant?’

  John pushed himself onto his feet, walked towards the tailboard, jumped to the ground, saluted as best he could.

  ‘Bloody snipers,’ the major said. ‘I gather you’ve a casualty.’

  John nodded. ‘Private Nash.’ He breathed in as deep as he could and tilted his head towards the truck. ‘Poor bugger.’ He hoped he sounded braver than he felt, in command.

  ‘We’ll leave him for our boys to pick up,’ the major said. ‘We’ve radioed through already.’

  ‘You don’t want us to take the rest out then, sir?’ Arthur asked.

  ‘No, Sergeant,’ the major said. ‘That’s not our job.’

  Arthur was drumming his fingers against the barrel of his rifle. This was not how war went. John swallowed, caught his breath. Leadership.

  ‘You got the sniper, Sergeant, and well done,’ he said, thinking fast, remembering the stories he’d heard in the mess of other snipers, other skirmishes. ‘For all we know there could be another thirty in the house. They could put up a fight. Or they could all surrender. Either way, there’s nothing we can do. There’s not enough of us to handle it.’

  ‘Thank you, Lieutenant,’ the major said. ‘Well said. Arrange for Private Nash’s body to be organised for pick-up. Your driver has the co-ordinates. We’ll push on.’

  They saluted. John watched as he strode towards the first truck and swung himself into it. He heard the engine start and rev, the crash of gears, the chug of the engine as it left, leaving John in charge.

  ‘I’ve detailed the men, sir.’

  He hadn’t heard Arthur come up beside him. He fished into his pocket for his cigarettes, pulled one out and offered it. They stood side by side staring at the dark, empty field opposite, their hands curled around the cigarettes, the smoke unfurling through their cupped fingers.

  ‘Thank you,’ John said. His voice was thin, strangled.

  They rocked on their heels. His father used to do that. Perhaps he’d got the habit in the Great War. Brigadier Alfred Harris. He’d come back with a DSO and a leg full of shrapnel.

  ‘First time, was it?’ Arthur said.

  John nodded.

  ‘You get used to it, you know. Water off a duck’s back in the end.’

  John swallowed, took a drag of his cigarette. His throat was parched. Even if he had the words, he couldn’t spit them out. He could smell the vomit on his uniform, see the stains on his jacket. There was a clot of blood on his shoulder.

  ‘First time it happened to me,’ Arthur went on, ‘it sliced him in half. Corporal at the time, like myself, he was. Nice man. Family man, you know what I mean? Never did whores or anything like that.’

  John heard him suck on his cigarette, the whoosh as he blew the smoke out and over the field where it hung like a ghost.

  ‘Always one for a lark, he was. Never took the officers seriously.’

  John watched Arthur smile at the memory.

  ‘It was his idea to nick the rattan chairs out the sergeants’ mess. Thought why should those buggers have all the comfort? So in we went, while they were eating. Took out two, one each. I tell you, sir.’ Arthur began to laugh, turned to face John, his cigarette half smoked. He’s trying to cheer me up, John thought. He wanted him to shut up, but he couldn’t say. ‘Running out with them. Bloody awkward, chairs are. All legs. Tripping up the path. Mind you, we’d had a few.’ He took another puff. ‘Cairo, that was. Ever been to Cairo, sir?’

  ‘No.’ John’s voice had returned, but it had no force.

  ‘No,’ Arthur said. ‘I don’t suppose you would have. The pyramids are a sight, I tell you. I went on a camel there, too. Just the once.’ He sucked at his cigarette, then pinched it dead, threw it on the ground. ‘Filthy beasts, they are. Spewing green mulch out of their mouths. Smelly. How that man learned to ride them beats me. You know, sir, the one that liked the Arabs.’

  ‘T.E. Lawrence?’ John said.

  ‘Yeah, him. Mind you,’ the sergeant went on, ‘they can go for months without water? It’s all in their hump. Bloody clever.’

  ‘You still think they’re foul, though?’

  ‘Well, their breath is, sir. It’s because they don’t drink enough.’

  John smiled. ‘Thank you, sergeant,’ he said. His cigarette had burned to the end, had singed his fingertips. He threw it onto the ground. ‘Have they finished?’ He didn’t turn round.

  Arthur walked away and John waited for his return.

  ‘Won’t be long, sir,’ Arthur said. ‘They’re having to—’

  John held up his hand. ‘I know,’ he said. Collect the body parts.

  ‘I’ve given them my groundsheet,’ Arthur said. ‘You know, to wrap him up.’

  ‘That’s kind,’ John said. ‘We’ll have to be sure we get a good billet tonight then.’ He smiled. ‘No sleeping under the stars.’

  ‘I fancy something soft and fragrant,’ Arthur said. ‘Clean sheets. Warm bath.’

  John felt the tears well from nowhere, his legs tremble. A homesickness so sudden, so acute, so all-consuming.

  ‘Anyway,’ Arthur went on, ‘two days later I was only promoted to sergeant, wasn’t I? Needn’t have nicked the chairs at all.’

  John swallowed, smiled, and Arthur nodded.

  ‘It’s not my job,’ he said. ‘But when we bed down tonight, in whatever billet we’re in, I’ll get you cleaned up a bit.’

  ‘That’s the kindest offer I’ve ever had,’ John said. He put his hand on Arthur’s shoulder, squeezed it. ‘But I’ll clean my uniform myself.’

  He turned and walked back to the truck. Private Nash’s body lay by the road, wrapped in a tarpaulin shroud. His comrades had found two fence posts and had tied them together in a rough cross which they’d laid on top of the corpse. It felt wrong to leave him. But their orders were to advance.

  ‘Come to think of it,’ Arthur was saying, ‘you get VD from them if you’re not careful.’

  ‘From whom?’ John said. The tarpaulin had fallen open at the top and John could see the top of Private Nash’s bloodied, severed head.

  ‘Camels,’ he said, moving close to John so John had to peer over his shoulder to see the body. ‘Well, at least, that’s what you tell the wife.’

  John looked away. The dog from the square was there, running towards them. Private Nash would be happy. Bits.

  ‘Sir,’ Arthur said. John heard the engine start up. ‘We have to go.’

  The rest of his men were already in the truck. He nodded, clambered aboard. There was blood on the bench and a line of holes where the machine gun bullets had penetrated. He stood with his back to the cab and held onto the roof bar as the truck lurched away. The dog slunk towards the body, began to sniff it, the open end with the private’s head.

  ‘Stop!’ John yelled. He signalled to one of the soldiers.

  ‘Tell the driver to stop. Now.’ The soldier banged onto the glass window of the cab and the truck drew to a sharp halt, tipping John so he stumbled for a moment.

  The dog was tearing at the shroud with short, urgent movements. John saw its curled lip and hungry teeth, its shrunken gut and spindle ribs. He raised his rifle. Didn’t think. Crack.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Berlin: late April 1945

  Bette shared Mutti’s big bed now. They all did. No one slept alone, not anymore. A drunken Russian had broken the service door to their apartment, and anyone could walk in, loot the place, and worse. They’d wedged a chair under the handle, but even so. Lieselotte crept beneath the covers in the early hours and whispered to her mother for a long time. Women’s things, Greta said. That’s what they talk about. When the Ivans came, Greta hid in their ceiling space. It was the best Mutti could do. Frau Weber had gone to pieces, so Mutti said.

  ‘And where does that leave her? And the girls? Or her poor old mother? Just more work for the rest of us.’ Mutti clasped her hands to her head. She was irritable these days, snapped at the slightest thing. She couldn’t get cigarettes now, and that m
ade her temper worse. ‘What will become of us? When will it end?’

  Mutti’s hair had turned grey in a week, and the bald patch was bigger. They hadn’t eaten for days, not properly, some nettle soup cooked on the oven heated by laths and splinters gleaned from the bombed-out buildings. The authorities were rationing the coupons now. Their turn to collect had been two days ago, and wouldn’t come again for another day, and even so there was little in the shops and what there was cost a fortune and took all day to buy, what with the queues and the looting. Mutti’s cough seemed worse, too, and they had nothing to give her, not even honey.

  Bette pulled on Otto’s trousers, hitched the braces over her shoulders. Her mother and sister were still sleeping. Perhaps, if she was fast, she’d get back and catch them talking, hear what they said. She tiptoed out with the pot. The gunfire was far away, the sharp shot of a pistol, the rattle of a machine gun muted and muffled by the ruins, but the smoke from the smouldering city hung thick and yellow, clogging her nostrils and coating her tongue so she could taste the soot and grit. The burned-out tank, its frame buckled and blackened, was still lodged in the basement of the building five along from theirs. It had been there for days now, squatting half in, half out, part of the furniture, like the pockmarked street signs and the unlit lamps and the broken cobbles.

  Bette placed the old check tea towel over the top of the chamber pot.

  ‘Shame enough we have to use it,’ Mutti said. ‘But that doesn’t mean every Tom, Dick and Harry has to see our business.’

  She turned to go back into the house but a small body in a brown uniform was on the steps of the building close to the tank. It hadn’t been there yesterday. Mutti always pulled her away from the corpses on the street, placed her hand over Bette’s eyes. ‘Don’t look.’

  Some lay as if they were asleep, calm and unharmed, but others were twisted, or blasted, or pumped up fit to burst. You could smell them, all the time, even when they had been buried in graves scratched from the rubble. It was hard not to look, whatever her mother said. Sometimes they hung from a window, feet dangling. No one had gone near the building down the road, not after the tank, and the bodies were still in the cellar, stinking of rotten flesh and bad eggs and faeces.

  This one didn’t look dead, not like the other corpses she’d seen.

  Bette checked no one was peering at her. She put the chamber pot down and wrapped the towel around her nose and mouth. If someone saw her she’d say she was checking to see if he was asleep or needed help. She gulped deep, held her breath.

  The street was deserted, the early morning sun low in the sky. Bette felt the hairs rise on her arms, her heart thump in her chest. She tiptoed towards the form, hand over hand on the brickwork of the building for balance, creeping towards the motionless body.

  It crouched on all fours, its head twisted to one side, chin down hard on the cobblestones. She saw the face, smooth skin waxy, unmarked. Otto. Otto, from next door. She cried out, shut her eyes. Opened them again. There was a small, bloodied hole in the back of his head. Why was he here? Was the war over? Had he been on his way home and something had happened? They’d played together, she and Otto, on rainy days when they couldn’t go out. Ludo. Draughts. Chess, until she beat him and he said she’d cheated. How can you cheat at chess?

  She put her hand to her mouth, yanked the towel free and placed it over his face. She ran back to the apartment, tearing at her clothes, pulling the buttons of the shirt and trousers. These were Otto’s clothes, a dead boy’s clothes. She pushed open the heavy outer doors and ran up the broken stairs, two at a time. She knew them well enough now, which ones were cracked, which wobbled, which missed a central step, hammered at the Baumanns’ door opposite them on the landing.

  ‘Frau Baumann. Come. Frau Baumann.’ She knew she was screaming, but it was Mutti who opened their door and pulled her inside their own flat and slapped her face hard.

  ‘Be quiet. Now.’ Beyond her, sitting at the table in the kitchen, were five Ivans. Her mother grabbed her by the collar, pulled her into the sitting room and slammed the door behind her.

  ‘Button yourself up.’ Her voice snapped the order. ‘And behave.’ Bette was trying not to cry, her mouth spluttering. Her mother had never hit her. Never. Ever.

  ‘So what was so urgent,’ her mother hissed, ‘that you had to yell it out to everyone?’

  Bette breathed hard before she spoke.

  ‘Otto, Mutti,’ she said. ‘Otto’s dead. He’s lying there. On the street.’

  Her mother’s eyes grew wide. She nodded, bit her lip. Her eyes softened. ‘All right,’ she said, glancing at the door. Then she added, ‘The chamber pot? Where’s the chamber pot?’

  Bette looked at her hands, at the floor. ‘I left it.’ She began to cry.

  ‘You left it?’ Her mother was screaming. ‘How could you? Find it. Now.’

  There was a wildness in her mother’s face that Bette had never seen before, fury, fear. She darted past her mother, out of the apartment, down the broken stairs, through the vestibule and onto the street. The chamber pot had gone. Of course it had. Everything was stolen now. Bette looked down the road. Otto’s body was still there, but the tea towel had been taken. A pigeon with a missing tail feather strutted beside his body. She ran up the street in the opposite direction. Whoever had taken the chamber pot couldn’t be far away. Please, she thought, please let me find it. Her mother’s moods were bad enough already. She said it was her nerves. Her nerves were playing up so they were all treading on eggshells. Everyone’s nerves were raw.

  It wasn’t her fault she’d lost it. It was only a stupid chamber pot. Hardly more important than Otto. They’d have to use a bucket. So what? She hated war. She hated the Ivans who crowded into their kitchen, their arms laced with looted watches. She hated that there was no water, no light, no food. Nothing. That she wore Otto’s clothes and had her hair cut like a boy. The Führer said they were winning, but the last soldiers she’d seen didn’t look like heroes. They didn’t even look like men.

  Old Herr Baumann was sitting at the table when she came back. She could see him facing her as she opened the front doors.

  ‘Bettelein?’ her mother said, her back to the hall. ‘Is that you?’

  Bette’s eyes filled with tears and she stood still.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mutti,’ she called from the hallway. ‘The pot had gone and I couldn’t find it. I looked and looked and—’

  ‘Come in,’ her mother said. ‘Come closer.’

  Bette stepped into the kitchen. Old Herr Baumann was sitting where the Russians had been, Frau Baumann to the right of him. Greta sat like a mouse at the end of the table.

  ‘Where’s Lieselotte?’ Bette said. She wanted her sister there, in case her mother lost her temper again.

  ‘Asleep,’ her mother said. ‘Come, sit.’

  Bette stepped into the kitchen and perched on a stool her mother pulled towards the table.

  ‘You found my Otto,’ Frau Baumann said, her voice flat and emotionless.

  Bette nodded. ‘I think he was coming home. He was nearly here.’

  Frau Baumann’s mouth clamped tight and Bette saw the muscles in her cheek ripple beneath her skin. She must have said something wrong, but she didn’t mean to. She thought Frau Baumann would be pleased.

  ‘He would not be coming home,’ old Herr Baumann said, slapping the palm of his hand hard on the table top. ‘Let me be clear. He was loyal to the Führer, to Germany. He was defending our city.’ He spoke slowly, emphasising each word, as if Bette did not understand. He tossed his head towards the empty window. ‘Barbarians.’ He turned and stared at Bette. ‘Are you saying he ran away?’ Bette went to answer, but he broke in before she could say a word. ‘Otto was no coward.’

  He put his hand over his face and Bette saw how twisted and gnarled it was, how the veins pulsed and the knuckles had swollen.

  ‘Don’t be hard on her, Herr Baumann,’ Mutti said. ‘She’s just a child.’

  ‘She’s o
ld enough for the Jungmädelbund,’ he said. ‘She should know better.’

  ‘Frau Baumann,’ Mutti said, turning towards her, her voice plaintive, pleading. ‘We have been neighbours and friends for so long now. You will understand. Bette meant no harm.’

  ‘My son and my grandson sacrificed their lives for the Fatherland,’ old Herr Baumann went on. ‘This is my honour you talk about. Their honour. Our honour.’ A dewdrop hung from the tip of his nose. Bette looked at him, at Frau Baumann staring at her hands tucked in her lap, at Mutti who was reaching over and touching old Herr Baumann on the arm, at Greta whose lips had curled and quivered as if she was about to cry.

  ‘The Führer can’t know what’s going on,’ Mutti said. Bette wanted to say, Has the Führer left us? He wouldn’t leave us, would he? No one moved. She wasn’t sure she should speak but she could feel fear rising in her chest. She looked from one grown-up to the next, each wrapped in their own thoughts. She could hear the panic in her voice. ‘What will happen to us?’ That’s what her mother said, all the time.

  ‘Enough.’ Old Herr Baumann’s voice was rasping, angry. ‘Our sons made the ultimate sacrifice.’ He groped for his daughter-in-law’s hand and stood up. Frau Baumann pushed herself away from the table, tucked her hand in the crook of the old man’s elbow.

  ‘Goodbye.’

  Bette watched as they walked from the room, along the hall and out of the door, the erect figure of old Herr Baumann, who wasn’t so old really and could have been in the Volkssturm as Mutti said, and young Frau Baumann, shuffling like a grandma. Her mother sat at the table, staring ahead. She didn’t even get up to see them out.

  She waited until she heard the front door click shut, then turned to Bette.

  ‘They are Party members,’ she said. ‘We must be so careful. The night is at its darkest before the dawn.’

  Bette knew the SS went from house to house, pulling out the traitors and the deserters. She’d seen them, even in their street. That’s why Mutti covered the chamber pot with an old check towel, grey from use, in case they thought it was white. Surrender. Perhaps they’d shot Otto. On his way home.