Gregory was nearly through the cluster of trees. At the side of the road, less than a hundred yards away, he suddenly saw a figure that had previously been hidden by them. Against the glare of the blazing camp there could be no mistaking the solitary, broad-shouldered man who was standing quite still watching its destruction. With infinite relief, Gregory staggered to a stop. Then, with all the remaining strength of his lungs, he yelled:
‘Stefan! Stefan! For God’s sake take cover.’
Kuporovitch did not turn and through the roar of the explosions it seemed unlikely that he could have heard. Starting to run again, Gregory gave another shout.
At that moment there came a blinding flash, another and another, as a stick of bombs straddled the coppice. The trees to either side of the road swayed and crumpled. Gregory glimpsed one as, uprooted by the blast, it toppled and fell. There was no escape. It crashed directly on to him. One moment he had been running, the next he was pinned to the ground in the middle of the road. An intolerable pain shot through his body. His eyes seemed to burst out of their sockets. A terrible weight on his left leg held him captive. Even as he strove to lift his hands they flopped back slack and useless. Everything about him had gone black. The crashing of bombs and roar of guns now sounded distant, as though his ears had suddenly been plugged with cotton wool.
Through a mist of pain a thought flashed into his brain. It was the 17th of August. An 8 day in the 8th month. Malacou had warned him that any such day, in conjunction with his birth number, 4, would prove highly dangerous to him, and particularly so in his association with Kuporovitch. Yet he had ignored that warning and been brought to the fatal date on account of the Russian’s having to be a day late in coming on his fortnightly forty-eight-hour leave. Malacou had also told Gregory that he might die in the hour of his triumph.
This, then, was it! He had had a good run for his money and Peenemünde was being destroyed. But he had come to the end of the road. His agony then seeped away as he slipped into total unconsciousness.
8
Sentenced for Life
When Gregory came to he was at first conscious only of the agony that racked his body. Vaguely he realised that he was being carried and that at every step his bearer took an intolerable spasm of pain shot from the region of his hip up towards his heart. He began to whimper and, indistinctly, he heard a voice speaking to him. But he had been temporarily deafened by the nearby explosion of the bomb that had brought the tree down upon him. He wanted to implore the man who was carrying him to stop and put him down, but he could not formulate the words. The stabbing pain increased with every step and again he fainted.
The next time he became semi-conscious it slowly penetrated his thoughts that he was lying in a shallow ditch and that someone was heaping earth upon him. He felt certain then that he really must be dead and that whoever had found him was giving him a perfunctory burial. Knowing that anyone might lose a limb yet still feel an ache in it, he told himself that agony from wounds that a body received before death must continue for a time in the consciousness of the spirit that had departed from it. Resigning himself to that conclusion, he lay still and prayed that it might not be very long before he was relieved of the ghastly throbbing that racked him. After a while the pain subsided as his mind again blacked out.
When, once again, his brain began to stir, his eyes flickered open and he saw that it was full daylight. His still pain-racked body had a weight upon it, as though he were lying beneath a dozen blankets, but his face was not covered and, as with lacklustre eyes he lay gazing upwards, he saw the branches and tops of trees.
Suddenly his mind cleared. He recalled that it was a tree that had felled him. The events of the previous night flooded back: his desperate race to stop Kuporovitch from entering the camp, the Experimental Station going up in flames. He no longer supposed himself to be dead, and the sight of the trees about him led him to assume that he was still in the coppice where he had been struck down. It seemed that someone must have found his unconscious body, carried it to a ditch and cast a light covering of earth over it. Yet why had they not covered his face? That puzzled him; but the gnawing pain in his thigh prevented him from concentrating on the question.
For a long while he lay comatose. Then he roused again. The thought entered his mind that, although hundreds of people must have been killed in the raid, sooner or later the soldiers of the guard who had chased and found him would return to bury him properly. He must not fall into their hands. Somehow he must get away from the coppice before they came back to it.
Gritting his teeth he tried to sit up. But the pain became too agonising and he fell back. After a time he succeeded in turning over. His arms and right leg were still sound; his left leg a dead weight, red-hot and throbbing madly. Clutching a tree root, he levered himself up on his good knee, hauling his body out from under the heap of leaves and top soil. Foot by foot, and fainting twice on the way, he managed to drag himself some twenty feet, to the side of the coppice nearest which the trees ended.
After lying there a long while he recovered sufficiently from his efforts to raise himself on his elbows and look about him. In the near distance he saw a village from the middle of which rose a church spire. To his amazement he recognised the spire as that of the church in Kröslin.
How he had got back to the mainland side of the creek he could not imagine. No guard would have brought his presumably dead body there. Perhaps he had only dreamed that he had been carried for some distance, and his subconscious will to survive had given him the strength to stagger back through the screen of trees and, undetected owing to the confusion caused by the raid, get across the creek. Yet to have done that with a smashed leg seemed impossible.
For a time his pain-racked mind rejected the problem; then as the church spires in Peenemünde and Kröslin looked much alike, he decided that it must be that of the former, but from an angle at which he had not previously seen it.
Throughout the day there were long periods during which his mind blacked out entirely. During others he strove vainly through a mist of pain to think of steps he might take which would give him some chance of survival; for he felt certain that unless he could secure help, or somebody found him, he would die there.
Twilight came and, eventually, darkness. Hours afterward, as it seemed to him, he caught sight of the beam of a torch flickering among the trees. For a long time past his sufferings had been added to by a terrible thirst. Now, resigned to falling into the hands of the enemy as the only possibility of receiving relief, he called feebly for help.
Footsteps came hurrying towards him, then a voice that he did not recognise cried in German:
‘Here he is! Bring along the coffin.’
As the man spoke he thrust both his hands under Gregory’s shoulders and began to pull him up. The pain caused by his being lifted was so excruciating that he fainted.
When he came round he was submerged in complete darkness. Now his memory of previous events returned immediately. The man who had found him had called to someone else to bring a coffin. By feeling about with his hands he realised that he was lying in one; then, with a gasp of relief, that he had not yet been buried, for the coffin was jolting and evidently being taken somewhere.
Panic seized him. His having called for help had shown that he was not dead. Yet the fiends of the Gestapo were capable of anything. Perhaps they meant to lower him into a grave while still alive. Frantically, with clenched fists, ignoring the increase of pain it caused him, he began to hammer on the coffin lid and plead to be let out.
The coffin lid was not nailed down, so lifted a little as he pounded on it. But his cries were feeble and were not heard. His effort caused him to swoon, but he soon came round and frantic thoughts again seethed in his brain. Perhaps, since he had fainted when half-lifted, the man had thought that he was already in extremis and had then died. If so, he was probably being taken to a cemetery for proper interment. But why should the Nazis trouble to do that with his body when, as the
result of the bombing, they must have so many of their own dead to look to?
So far, during his periods of semi-consciousness, he had been thinking of himself as an Englishman and British agent. Now it occurred to him that he must still be wearing the uniform of a German Major, and there was no reason to suppose that the men who had found him should believe him to be anything else. If that were so they would regard him as one of their own casualties and, most probably, were about to give him a respectable burial. There was, then, still a chance that when they reached their journey’s end he might get himself taken to hospital.
Hopes and fears continued alternately to agitate his bemused mind. The rocking and jolting of the coffin had the same effect as if someone were constantly pummelling his injured thigh and, crazed by pain, his mind wandered from the present to scenes of the past.
After what seemed an eternity the vehicle on which he was came to a standstill. He caught the sound of footsteps on boards near the coffin and the lid was taken off. Dimly he realised that it was still night, for a torch was shone down into his face, blinding him. It had been very hot in the coffin and, as he felt the cool air on his face, he knew that it was damp with sweat; so he must be running a high fever. A hand was eased into his tunic to feel his heart, then a gruff voice said:
‘Holy Virgin be praised! He has survived the journey.’
In normal circumstances he would have been certain that it was Kuporovitch who had spoken; but his last glimpse of his friend had been in silhouette against the glare of the burning camp on Usedom, so he believed himself to be the victim of hallucination. His right arm was lifted. By the light of the torch he saw that the sleeve of his tunic had been cut away. He felt the jab of a hypodermic needle and in another few moments lapsed back into unconsciousness.
For a long while, each time he came out of his drug-induced stupor, he dimly realised that he was shouting in delirium, then the kindly needle sent him off again. When at last he opened his eyes with a clear mind he gradually took in the fact that he was in bed in a vaulted stone-walled chamber. As he feebly raised a hand he heard a movement beside him, then Kuporovitch’s face came into view above his.
‘So, my poor friend, you are conscious once more,’ murmured the Russian. ‘St. Nicholas and all the Saints be thanked. For the past week I have feared you would die, but now you will turn the corner.’
Gregory strove to reply but could only mumble, and the excruciating pain again shot up from his thigh to his heart. Kuporovitch gently raised his head, gave him a soothing drink, then, with another injection, sent him off.
During the three days that followed he awoke several times to lucid intervals, his powers of comprehension increasing with each. On every occasion he found Kuporovitch beside him and gradually learned from him what had taken place after the great raid on the fatal 17th August.
His friend had heard his last shout, turned and seen him struck down by the falling tree. Only the Russian’s great strength had enabled him to lift the splintered trunk from Gregory’s body. Finding that he was still alive, Kuporovitch had carried him back up the road, then left it and entered the belt of trees that screened the interior of the island from the creek. The confusion resulting from the raid, and the fact that the arc lights had been switched off, had enabled him to get Gregory through the wire fence unobserved. By a dispensation of Providence it had been low water in the creek, so he had been able to cross it by the nearest ford. On his early reconnaissance of the mainland bank one of the places he had marked down as an emergency hideout had been a group of trees not far from Kröslin. Almost exhausted, he had got Gregory there, then taken an hour to recover from his terrible exertions and consider their situation.
His first idea had been to walk into Wolgast and get help, but it had suddenly struck him that Gregory must have left his boat on the far side of the creek, so in the morning it was certain to be discovered. Sooner or later the wireless would be found in it. When that happened the Germans would swiftly put two and two together. They would jump to it that Major Bodenstein and his servant, Janos Sabinov, had been spies and it was messages sent by them that had brought about the raid on Peenemünde. The whole police network in northern Pomerania would then start buzzing like a hornets’ nest with imperative orders to hunt them down and, if Gregory were in a hospital, he would promptly fall into the hands of the Gestapo. Yet with him lying at death’s door it was out of the question to remain in hiding and hope later to slip safely out of the district.
Kuporovitch had then decided that the only hope for Gregory was to leave him there and try to get help from Sassen; so, the better to conceal him from any passer-by, before setting off he had partially buried him.
On reaching Wolgast he had found that the marshalling yard there had also been bombed and that part of the town was in flames. Skirting it he had reached the road to Greifswald and after a while got a lift in a lorry that took him through the barrier and to the town. From Greifswald he had somehow managed to walk the seven miles to Sassen, arriving there at seven o’clock in the morning. Taking great precautions against being seen by anyone, he had gone to the ruined Castle. There he had found Malacou up and, by his own mysterious means, already acquainted with a general outline of the situation.
The doctor had given him a potent draught that had temporarily restored him, and they had consulted on what best to do. Their decision had been that the following night Kuporovitch should accompany Willi von Altern in the lorry back to the coppice near Kröslin and pick up Gregory. Owing to the chaos caused by the raid, the Russian thought it unlikely that the wireless would be discovered during the course of the day. Unless it was, the hunt for them would not start immediately so his pass for going to and fro through the barrier would still be good that night, but he had been quick to see that to the plan there was another danger. Although Willi was half-witted, he might later give away having brought Gregory back to Sassen.
Malacou had got over that hurdle by saying that people whose brains were in such a state were very easy subjects to hypnotise; so he would send for Willi and while talking to him about some farm matter put him under. He could then be made to forget permanently everything that took place during the next twenty-four hours.
There remained the problem of getting Gregory back to Sassen through the barrier, as it would have later proved their undoing if it were recorded at the guard post there that Major Bodenstein, suffering from wounds that made him incapable of escaping from the district, had been brought out in the Sassen lorry. That problem had also been solved by Malacou thinking of the coffin. For a dead body no pass would be required and, well lined, a coffin would serve just as well as a stretcher. He had added that Willi while under hypnosis could be made to knock up a rough one during that evening.
Their plan being settled, Kuporovitch had fallen into a sleep of exhaustion. In the evening the doctor roused him for a hearty meal and gave him morphia and a hypodermic to take with him. After dark he had set off with Willi. At the barrier he had had some anxious moments, but all had gone well. On reaching the coppice he had been terribly afraid that he would find Gregory dead and, on finding him gone from the shallow grave, had feared that he must have been stumbled upon and carried away by the Germans.
But Willi had heard Gregory’s cry for help so had been the first to reach him and had foolishly tried to lift him up before Kuporovitch could give him an injection. That its effects had worn off during the latter part of their journey, Malacou said later, must have been due to the acuteness of his pain having pierced his consciousness; but otherwise everything had gone according to plan.
In the early hours of the morning they had cut off his clothes in the room in the ruin now used as a kitchen, and on the table there his terrible wound had been cleaned and bandaged up by the doctor. They had then carried him to an upstairs room, the roof of which was still sound, and Kuporovitch had remained there with him ever since.
Gregory also learned that the raid on Peenemünde had proved an outst
anding success. Hauff had let it out to Khurrem that the Germans estimated that the better part of six hundred bombers had been employed in the raid. They had come in accompanied by a force of Mosquitoes that had bombed Berlin and the Germans had been deceived into thinking that the whole air fleet had dropped its bombs there. But, a little short of the capital, the Lancasters had swung north, passed over Rügen island, then come in from the sea and swooped on Peenemünde, coming down to eight thousand feet to make certain of their targets. The German night fighters had intercepted them on the way back and had shot down forty aircraft, but the havoc caused by the raid had been terrible. Many hundreds of the labour force in the crowded hutments had been wiped out or burned to death, scores of German technicians had been killed or wounded, the whole Station was a shambles and it would be impossible to resume work there for many months.
About Hauff himself there was also news. On the night of the raid his wife had died. His account of the matter was that the sound of the distant raid had reached him just as he was going to bed. Looking out of a window he had seen the fierce glow in the sky and realised that Peenemünde was being attacked; so he had gone downstairs, got out his car and driven into Greifswald in case his S.S. unit there should be required to give help in the emergency. When he had got home the following morning he had found his wife at the bottom of the stairs with her neck broken.
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