Behind him, the camp spread out its stinking and obvious presence, lines of cheap wooden huts, an expanse of bare, flattened, long-dead earth – where was all the grass? – and hundreds of prisoners, waiting, still and terrible, like half-clothed skeletons, stick-limbed and filthy, their skin the pale yellowish-white of old parchment, heads shaven, faces gaunt and scabby, eyes sunk into purple sockets. Some were standing, their arms dangling at their sides as if they no longer had the strength to lift them, many more were lying on the ground, too weak and ill even to sit up. And the stench cloyed around them, sickening and pervasive.
The troops at the gate were so appalled at the sight of them that they were bereft of speech. They looked from their own sturdy bodies and well-fed faces to the emaciated skulls and weary eyes before them and couldn’t believe that they were seeing such things. How could anyone be reduced to such a state and still stand? How could anyone be reduced to such a state? They didn’t look human. But that thought, true though it was, was too shaming.
The commandant was the only person who wasn’t abashed by the filth and starvation behind him. He clicked his heels to greet the brigadier and introduced himself as Joseph Kramer, looking as though he was proud of himself. Then he introduced his companions, a line of SS men and another of SS women, chief of whom was a pretty blonde, young and plump and looking most attractive in her trim uniform. ‘Irma Grese.’ It was all polite and proper and pompous, as if they were at a garden party.
The brigadier’s way with such people was cold and absolute. He turned to the military policemen who were waiting behind him. ‘Arrest them,’ he said and climbed back into his staff car.
‘Now what?’ Steve asked the sergeant.
‘Now we escort the food truck in,’ the sergeant said.
‘Poor bastards!’ one of his privates said, looking at the prisoners with anguished pity.
‘Don’t let any of them touch you,’ the sergeant warned. ‘If you get lousy, you’ll get typhus an’ I’ll bet they’re crawling alive.’
It was true. They could see the lice, walking across those bare bony backs, climbing an exposed arm, squatting on a child’s forehead, evil, disgusting creatures, large as thumbnails and dark with blood.
‘He’ll get the hygiene section in,’ the sergeant said, nodding towards the brigadier’s car. ‘De-lousers, medical corps, casualty clearing station, the lot. The wires’ll be red-hot now he’s seen this.’
They inched into the compound, driving very slowly because the prisoners who could stand were staggering towards them, holding out withered hands and calling to them, ‘Shalom! Shalom!’ signing, taloned fingers to cracked lips, that they needed food, their eyes imploring.
‘It’s coming,’ the sergeant called to them. ‘Quick as we can.’
But there’s so many of them, Steve thought, as they drove gently on. There must be thousands here. How can we possibly feed so many? What will we give them? They’re much too weak for ordinary food. To his shocked eyes the problem seemed insurmountable. The men squatting by the roadside or propped against the kerb with their heads lolling on their chests – their pitifully sunken chests – weren’t even bothering to ask for food. They looked as if they’d crawled there to die, already more like corpses than human beings. They must have been starving for ages, Steve thought. That foul commandant has been watching them starve to death, poncing about in his fancy uniform and his bloody jackboots with that fat female of his, and all the time he’s been watching these people starve to death. How could he do such a thing? The cruelty of it made him ache.
They found the cookhouse, which was empty of everything except cooking utensils, and there was a rush to fill it with supplies and get it operational. Steve and Dusty, having no other duties, joined the teams who were carrying in the food. The most important items were sacks of flour, dried milk and sugar, which were unloaded first so that the cooks could set to work right away.
‘Bengal mixture,’ they explained when they were asked what they were making. ‘Invalid food. It’s all they can take when they’re as bad as this lot.’
It looked like gruel and Steve grimaced at it. ‘And we thought we were hungry out on the road,’ he said.
Dusty was gazing into the distance. ‘What’s that under the trees?’
‘What trees?’ Steve asked, looking round. He hadn’t thought to see anything growing in such a place, but there they were, three miserable trees, covered in dust and drooping for lack of sustenance like everything else in that hellish place. Heaped in their shade, too terrible to be believed, too grotesque to be comprehended, was a pile of dead bodies, all naked and rotting and all so thin that they were nothing more than long bones covered by strips of yellow skin, stretched and creased like old chamois leather and glistening in the spring sunshine.
‘Jesus!’ Steve said. ‘Jesus Christ!’
Dusty was estimating the size of the pile, sixty yards long at least, probably more, thirty yards wide, four feet high. ‘Fucking hell, Steve! There must be hundreds of ’em.’
‘It’s monstrous,’ Steve said. ‘To let them lie there like that. Like rubbish.’ He wanted to weep and scream at the obscenity of it, but he couldn’t. He had to stay in control. ‘How could they do such a thing?’
It was a question all the troops were asking and they went on asking it all evening, long after they’d left the nightmare of the camp behind and returned to their own, clean, hygienic headquarters, where they were well fed and given beer to drink and water to wash in and extra supplies of cigarettes for that much needed smoke.
Steve and Dusty scrounged clean clothes, had a shower and a shave and a very good meal, and listened to the latest news on the wireless, but even then, restored to themselves, they couldn’t shift the smell of the camp from their nostrils or the memory of its horror from their minds and that night it was hard to sleep for the appalling images that swelled in their dreams. Being shot and killed in battle was horrific enough but it was something they could accept. It was the way things were in a war and as bad for one side as the other, a matter of odds and luck, eased by the knowledge that some of it could be avoided by pre-planning and quick thinking. But to be starved to death, unarmed and defenceless, men, women and children, was too cruel to be comprehended. How could they do such a thing?
And early next morning, they had to go back to it.
‘It’ll get better’, the sergeant reassured them as they drove towards the camp, ‘once we get things sorted out.’
But the smell was worse and it didn’t take long to discover why. The engineers had arrived and the terrible business of burying the dead had begun. They’d already dug a huge pit and were using a bulldozer to push the pile of rotting corpses into it, scooping them up in a tangle of arms and legs, torn skulls and rat-bitten bodies. The driver of the bulldozer was vomiting into his face mask – poor sod – but it had to be done. There was no time for individual funerals, even if such a thing had been possible, given how many dead there were. There was no time for dignity or pity. They had to be buried quickly before the entire camp died of typhus and dysentery. The only satisfactory thing about the whole revolting business, in the troops’ opinion, was that the people being made to assist at the graveside were the captured SS guards.
Lorries arrived in rapid succession all day. Among the first were the hygiene teams, who brought supplies of DDT and cases full of flit sprays, and were soon busy spraying the walking inmates who queued in long patient lines to be relieved of their unwanted livestock, scratching and waiting. One of the huts was being scrabbed clean ready for use as a temporary hospital as soon as the medical teams arrived. And there was another delivery of food, mostly bread-flour and potatoes.
The cooks were despondent. ‘Fat lot a’ good mixing up all that Bengal mixture,’ one of them told Steve. ‘It just made ’em sick. Poor buggers couldn’t keep it down. MO reckons it was too rich. We got to give ’em potato soup.’
It had been a bad night too. Some of the walking inmates had tr
ied to raid the food stores and the guards had been ordered to fire over their heads to keep them out. ‘Wouldn’t’ve done ’em no good if they’d got the food,’ the cook said. ‘If Bengal mixture’s enough to make ’em sick, bread an’ bacon would kill ’em.’
The fresh supplies were already being unloaded. Dusty rolled up his sleeves and got down to it, but Steve couldn’t face it. To be told that these poor devils were so weak they couldn’t even digest invalid food upset him almost as much as the sight of the mass grave had done. He had to get out of the cookhouse or he’d be in tears.
‘I’m going to see if there’s something else I can do,’ he said to Dusty. ‘I feel stifled in here.’
‘Try the major,’ the cook suggested. ‘He’s organising everything. He was down by the de-lousing section last I see of him, checkin’ ’em in.’
Being a major he was easy to find.
‘7th Armoured?’ he said, when Steve had explained who he was and what he wanted. ‘You’re a bit off the beaten track, aren’t you?’
Steve explained quickly and with a touch of pride. ‘Captured and escaped, sir. There’s two of us. Private Miller’s unloading supplies.’
‘This is a bad show,’ the major said. ‘Can’t send you back, you know. Not for the moment. No transport.’
‘No, sir. I understand that. I came to see if there’s anything I could do.’
‘We shall be pulling out in a day or two ourselves,’ the major said, still solving the first problem Steve had presented. ‘So you’ve got two options. You can come with us, or you can wait here until you know where your lot have got to. It’s up to you.’
‘We’d rather stay here, sir. We’d like to rejoin our lot, if that’s possible.’
‘Righto,’ the major agreed, and turned to the second problem. ‘Now you want a job to keep you occupied pro tem. Is that right?’
‘Sir.’
‘I’ll detail you to assist Captain Kennedy. He’s drawing up a list of all the bed bound. Trying to get a bit of order into the place.’ He sighed. ‘Anyway. He’ll be glad of some help. The Prof will show you the ropes.’
‘The Prof, sir?’
‘Some sort of professor,’ the major explained. ‘Speaks about ten languages, or so I’m told. Captain Kennedy’s found him terribly useful. Wait here. I’ll send him over.’
The person who came stooping across to the delousing section some twenty minutes later was slow and shuffling and looked like an old man. The stubble on his chin and his shaven head was grey and his nose had the beaked look of extreme old age. But his eyes were the rich brown of someone in his twenties and when he spoke his voice was young too.
He addressed Steve in immaculate English and very politely. ‘I believe you would like my help. You are to join Captain Kennedy’s team, is that correct?’
Steve agreed that it was and asked what he had to do.
The Professor showed him a file full of names and addresses. ‘There are six of us now,’ he said. ‘We go to each hut in turn. We complete a form for each inmate. I have lists of the phrases you will need. We wrote them yesterday. You see. “What is your name?” “How old are you?” “Where do you come from?” That one is German. This is Dutch. French. Yiddish.’
Apart from the French, which Steve recognised, the words were baffling. ‘I’ll have to write them out phonetically,’ he said. ‘Otherwise I’ll never be able to pronounce them. I haven’t got your gift of tongues.’
The Professor’s gaunt face lifted into a smile. ‘I was professor of modern languages in Berlin,’ he explained. ‘Once upon a time.’
That was rather a surprise. ‘What brought you here?’
Again the smile. ‘I said rude things about Hitler. A capital sin.’
That took courage, Steve thought, because he must have known what he was letting himself in for. He was full of admiration for the man and concerned that he had suffered so much for such a trivial offence. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked.
‘I have been eating gruel for the last twenty-four hours. And weak tea. Today I graduate to soup and bread, so I am told. I have not eaten so well in months. It is unimaginable luxury.’
They compiled a new list of the three phrases, the Prof pronouncing them as Steve wrote them down. Then they were both sprayed with DDT, to protect them while they were working, they collected pencils and erasers and two camp stools from Captain Kennedy’s headquarters, and then they walked down the camp to the hut where they were to start work. It was a relief to Steve that he would be usefully occupied and away from that terrible mass grave.
But the hut held horrors too. It was dark and airless and the bunks were simply wooden shelves ranged in three tiers along both side walls, and hideously overcrowded, each one containing three sick and starving men, feet to the wall, shaven heads to the centre of the room. There was an odd rustling sound going on, which made Steve wonder whether there were rats in the place, and the smell inside was foul in the extreme for there was obviously no sanitation. One man was crawling out to the latrines on his hands and knees as they arrived, but others had not been able to make it and lay in their own filth.
It took a few seconds for Steve’s eyes to adjust to the darkness and a few more before he realised what was making those odd sounds. Some of the men were trying to clap. They peered from their bunks, touching their emaciated hands together, shush, shush, in ghostly applause.
‘They are pleased you are come,’ the Prof said.
The two men worked in the stink of the hut for as long as they could endure it, patiently asking questions and writing down the answers. At first Steve found it impossible to spell the names and had to turn to his companion for an interpretation of what was stammeringly said. But he gradually improved, the lists were gradually filled and towards noon, the orderlies arrived with weak soup and medicines, followed soon after by a medical officer.
To Steve’s horror, two of the men he’d just questioned were certified dead.
‘They can’t be,’ he protested. ‘I was talking to them a few minutes ago.’
‘They’re dying like flies,’ the MO said. ‘We took more than a hundred out the last hut.’
‘They’re not going to that awful pit are they?’
‘No,’ the MO reassured. ‘There’s another one dug. They’ll be buried properly. We’ve got a rabbi here now.’
Even so, it was searing to see those poor empty bodies being wrapped in shrouds and carried away. And worse when he went out of the hut for a smoke and realised what was going on in the hut.
While he’d been busy taking names, he’d assumed that the MO was simply examining his patients to see which of them needed medicine; now, watching from the door of the hut, he saw that he was pinning an identification mark on some of them and spending very little time with the others. He wondered what the chosen ones were being identified for and it wasn’t long before he found out. More orderlies arrived, this time with stretchers. The identified inmates were lifted from their stinking bunks and carried away.
‘Where are they going?’ he asked as two of the orderlies passed him with their burden.
It was to the hospital hut. They were to be de-loused and washed and given a clean blanket to lie on and then the medics were going to take care of them.
‘What about the others? Are you taking them later?’
The answer was chilling. ‘There’s no hope for the others,’ he was told. ‘These are the ones who might survive.’
‘But …’
‘Look, mate,’ the orderly said roughly. ‘There’s no room for all of them. These are all we can manage. The others are dying. We can’t save them.’
‘But you must …’
The orderly exploded into temper. ‘Must!’ he said. ‘Who are you to tell us we must? There’s no must about it. We’re just the poor bloody infantry, mate. Not gods. We do as we’re told. It’s all we bloody can do. Oh get out the way for Chrissake.’ And he signalled to his mate to carry on.
Pity and anger stalk
ed the camp side by side. Steve couldn’t think of anything else except the state of the prisoners. Their faces wept in his dreams and filled his waking moments with an almost perpetual anguish.
Dusty seemed to be able to set them aside. He got raucously drunk, told filthy jokes, and drew another line on his calendar every evening, counting off the days, as if he were still on active service. ‘You just got to get on with it, ain’tcher,’ he said. But Steve found every hour more difficult than the last.
He and Dusty were sprawled under the trees after their evening meal on the second evening, smoking and resting, when three of their new mates came bouncing up in a Jeep.
Dusty woke up at once. ‘Nice work!’ he admired. ‘Where’d you get that?’
‘Commandeered it.’
‘Where are you off to?’
‘To town. We’re moving on in a day or two so we thought we’d see the sights. Wanna lift?’
‘Why not?’ Dusty said cheerfully. And after thinking about it for a moment, Steve agreed. Anything was better than sitting there with the smell of the camp eating into their brains and those endless awful faces rebuking and rebuking.
So they went to town, which turned out to be a small place called Celle.
It was like stepping into another world. It was such a pretty town that if it hadn’t been for the horror a few miles away, they would have called it charming. There was no sign of destruction, no shattered buildings or shell-pitted roads. Here the streets were clean, the shuttered houses proper and provincial and at the centre of the town there was a green park, surrounded by prosperous houses and fine gardens, where magnolia trees were in full and magnificent bloom, their heady scent wafting into the Jeep with every turn of the evening breeze.
Many of the citizens were out taking the air after their working day, as if there were no such thing as war. They didn’t seem to be the least bit abashed to be sharing the streets with their conquerors. They were all well fed to the point of plumpness, and very well dressed, the men in good suits and elegant hats, the women draped with fox furs. It was more like a spa than a town under occupation.
Avalanche of Daisies Page 37