Beneath a Frosty Moon

by Rita Bradshaw

  Jed licked his dry lips, his voice a croak as he said, ‘The men who were with me?’

  ‘Of them I know nothing.’

  As something was placed over his nose and mouth he wanted to struggle, to object, but he had no strength. He was now a helpless prisoner dependent on an enemy doctor and it was a strange feeling. His last vision was of the heavy canvas roof of the bell tent and the surgeon speaking sharply to someone he couldn’t see.

  He came out of the unpleasant drugged sleep retching and coughing, and continued to vomit on and off for the next couple of days. He was in a bigger tent with several other wounded men but they all appeared to be German. He was in agony from two bullet wounds, one to his chest and one just below his navel, and felt so groggy he wouldn’t have cared if he had died then and there. It was only when the nausea began to ease that the will to live kicked in again.

  The surgeon or Stabsarzt – a surgeon with the rank of major – came to see him and told him he was lucky to be alive. All of his comrades had died on the verandah and he had lost so much blood, the surgeon said, that during the operation he had died twice. ‘But back you came.’ The Stabsarzt eyed him unsmilingly. ‘And so I carried on.’

  Jed didn’t know what to say. After a moment, he mumbled, ‘Thank you.’

  The surgeon shrugged. ‘It is my profession to save life. A patient is a patient, whatever his nationality, yes?’

  Jed thought of the stories they’d heard about the Nazi death camps and the grisly experiments German doctors were doing. In spite of the man having undoubtedly saved his life he found he couldn’t answer him.

  For the next few days he lay in the tent suffering bouts of delirium in which he was sure Cora stood by the bed, crying and asking him why he had left without telling her and saying that she was going to marry Wilfred. Other times it was his mother’s tearful, reproachful face he saw, or his father’s grim one as he berated him for breaking his mother’s heart. He would surface, drenched with sweat and as weak as a kitten, to find himself in the tent with the other men, two of whom died screaming as the time went on. There was no guard outside the tent; the medical staff knew he wasn’t capable of escape. He could barely raise a cup to his lips.

  He didn’t know how long it was before he was moved, but eventually one morning two stretcher-bearers arrived at the side of his bed and unceremoniously carried him outside. After a few minutes he was loaded into the back of a small lorry, still lying down, along with two more wounded soldiers, both Italian. One of the soldiers was out of it and the other couldn’t speak a word of English, and the guards ignored his questions as to where they were headed with blank indifference.

  It was when the lorry started up and began to move that the pain seared through him, taking his breath away and making him gasp. It didn’t get any better as the vehicle trundled along rough tracks and roads, hour after hour. By midday the soldier who had been unconscious had died, and as Jed looked at his body before the driver of the lorry and their guard carried it away – presumably to dump at the side of the road – he knew a sudden spasm of envy as he thought, his worries are all over now. No more pain, no more trying to survive in this hellish world. And why was he trying anyway? he asked himself bitterly. He had nothing to live for, not really.

  He closed his eyes against the self-loathing that came when he let himself think of the past. He’d lost Cora through his own stupidity, that was the core of how he felt. Oh, Wilfred had played his part in it all, threatening to involve Cora and shop them both to the law, but he himself had been criminally weak and stupid to let Wilfred blackmail him. If he had known then what he knew now, he would have given Wilfred the hiding of his life and put the fear of God into the little runt.

  But he hadn’t.

  He shifted slightly to ease the pain but it was more his regrets than the physical agony he was enduring. To his shame, he’d done what Wilfred had demanded and skedaddled. Admittedly to save Cora – oh, aye, he was clear about that – but he had regretted it the minute he’d enlisted. He wasn’t a soldier, damn it, he was a farmer. All he’d ever wanted was to work the land he loved and live a peaceful life with Cora. That would have sufficed for him, heaven on earth. Wilfred had said that killing in cold blood was beyond him, Jed thought bitterly, but it wouldn’t be now. To safeguard Cora and the life they should have had together, he could kill in cold blood now. But it was too late. He’d left, abandoned her, and she must hate him.

  As the lorry started up again, he steeled himself to stand the pain of the journey. The remaining Italian said something to him he didn’t understand, and then pointed to where his friend had lain and shook his head.

  Jed nodded. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said awkwardly, hoping his tone would convey his sympathy. The Italian was young, probably no more than twenty, and he must have been good-looking before something, probably a German bomb or grenade, had mutilated half his face, taking most of his nose and upper lip and gashing his cheeks to ribbons so as they had healed he looked like an African tribal warrior.

  The Italian pointed to himself. ‘Leonardo.’

  Jed nodded. ‘Jed.’ He reached out his hand and as Leonardo shook it he grinned, showing the remains of his broken teeth.

  The guard who was sitting in the back of the lorry with them stared impassively. He was young too, fresh-faced and blue-eyed, and for a moment Jed thought how incongruous it all was – three lads of roughly the same age who didn’t know each other from Adam, two of whom would kill the third – and he them – should the circumstances dictate. But that was the absurdity of war, he reflected wearily. And just months ago Leonardo would have been fighting on the Germans’ side, which showed just how crazy it all was. Millions of men, women and children were merely pawns in a kind of horrific chess game that a few at the top of the governments of the world were playing.

  He shut his eyes, wanting nothing more than to drift into oblivion which was of course impossible in the bumpy, jolting truck. Mid-morning, the guard had stopped the lorry to pin the door back as they’d been almost suffocating in the back of the vehicle, but now it was very dusty, causing him to sneeze and cough which was agony with his wounds.

  They stopped a couple of times before nightfall which was spent in a small deserted building in the remains of what had been a German camp. Both the driver of the truck and their guard seemed agitated, and Jed and Leonardo got the impression that the men hadn’t expected the camp to be deserted. It bore credence to what Jed had heard before he was captured, that it wasn’t just his unit that was involved in fighting back the Germans in Italy, but that the Allies were launching a new assault on Cassino. Their sergeant, a gruff, plain-speaking Yorkshireman, had told them that by the end of April the Nazis would be on the run or he’d eat his hat. Not that that helped him much now, Jed thought, as he tried to sleep on the hard floor. And he was a little worried about what their guard might take it into his head to do to them if the man thought the Germans were retreating. It would be far easier for him and the driver to work their way out of Italy without dragging along two injured POWs.

  The journey resumed at daybreak after the guard gave them a meagre breakfast of what looked and tasted like dog biscuits and water. The only consolation was that the two Germans ate the same food.

  The hours merged as the day bumped on and Jed knew he was suffering from the delirium again because Cora was back, whispering that there was work to do on the farm and when was he coming home? His brothers came briefly too, telling him that he had been a fool to join up and he hadn’t got the sense he was born with. He knew they were his brothers from their voices and what they said; their faces had been blown away and were red, gaping masses of blood and bone. He was glad when they left him.

  He was barely aware of anything at all when he and Leonardo were loaded into a cattle truck at a railway siding, but when he came to himself as evening fell, he found himself crammed into the truck with other POWs, some of whom were British. He had been placed in a corner, and as he managed to strugg
le into a sitting position the man next to him said, ‘All right, mate?’ in a broad Scottish accent. ‘Thought you were a goner there for a time.’

  Jed could have cried to hear a British voice again. Instead he nodded, his voice weak as he said, ‘Where are we?’

  ‘Your guess is as good as mine but I’ve a pretty good idea of where we’ll finish up. I think this is the route the Nazis use to transport “enemies of the Reich” to their damn concentration camps,’ his new friend said grimly. ‘I’m Jock by the way.’

  Jed looked round him. There was one window in the cattle truck which was a twelve-inch-square gap with barbed wire stretched across it, and no other ventilation or light. A bucket in the opposite corner to him was obviously their toilet, and a soldier was sitting on it straining and groaning.

  Jock followed his gaze. ‘Dysentery,’ he said shortly. ‘A number of the lads have it.’

  ‘They can’t keep us in here, can they?’

  ‘Oh, aye, they can, laddie, and believe me this might be stinking and filthy but it’s a damn sight better than the trucks they transport the Jews in. Them poor blighters can’t sit or lie down they’re packed in so tight, and they die standing. Imagine travelling to certain death with a corpse either side of you.’

  Jed stared at him in horror. ‘But the Geneva Convention?’

  Jock shook his head. ‘The Nazis don’t regard them as people, just vermin, so what’s the Geneva Convention got to do with it? We thought we’d had it bad in the camp we’ve been held in for the last months, but it’s nothing compared to what them devils do to the Jews, even the little kiddies.’

  ‘I had heard stories but you never know how much is propaganda, do you.’

  ‘Whatever stories you’ve heard won’t be as bad as the truth, laddie. Take it from me.’

  The soldier who had been using the bucket finished, pulling up his trousers over a backside caked with diarrhoea. The smell in the cattle truck was overpowering and rancid, and no sooner had one man used the bucket than another took his place. Jed prayed he didn’t catch dysentery, it would finish him off, but as it appeared that most of the lads were suffering with it he didn’t hold out much hope.

  After a few hours the train stopped and the door to the truck was slid open revealing several armed German guards standing outside. They allowed one of the POWs to empty the bucket but no one else could leave, and once the POW was back the guards gave them more of the tasteless biscuits and one container of water to share. The second the door slid back into place the train was off again in the darkness.

  Jed had always imagined that hell was like the Bible described, a place of everlasting flames and fire and brimstone, but now he knew he had been mistaken. Hell had many forms, and this was one of them. And this conviction grew as the days passed and the train trundled on, the track eventually beginning to twist and climb. Jock had become a friend, along with several other of the POWs including Neville, a little Welshman. It was he who first caught a glimpse of the Alps through the barbed wire of their window. ‘Well, look at that now,’ he said, turning and grinning. ‘And here’s me forgotten my skis.’

  There were few moments like that. Three of their number had died from dysentery since the journey had begun and they were all wondering how much longer they could survive in the cattle truck. But then, at the next stop at a station somewhere, the train was shunted into a siding. German guards forced them and the occupants of the other trucks into covered lorries and then they were off again, driving through open countryside now which was wonderful after their incarceration in the trucks.

  Jed sat with Jock and Neville in the back of one lorry, breathing in the fresh air. He didn’t think he had ever smelt anything so beautiful, even if it was tainted by the odour of the POWs who were suffering with dysentery, but when they stopped in what seemed like the middle of nowhere in a forest glade that had a crystal-clear stream running through it, the German guards allowed them to get down and relieve themselves and wash in the water. The guards had set up a machine gun on a tripod before the POWs left the trucks, making it clear what would happen if anyone tried to escape, but most of them, including Jed, just wanted to get clean.

  Jed’s wounds had begun to heal in spite of the terrible conditions of the last days, and he joined the other POWs who stripped naked, bathing himself and then washing his clothes in the stream. It didn’t matter that they put them on again soaking wet or that the men with dysentery would no doubt soil themselves if the lorries wouldn’t stop when they were on the move once more; for the moment they felt like men again. Some of the POWs had scabies, tiny mites that had burrowed into their flesh and laid eggs causing a blotchy red rash that itched unbearably so they scratched until their skin was inflamed and bleeding, and they in particular lay in the water until the guards ordered them out. They were all, including him, a right motley crew, Jed thought, but never again would a bath feel so good.

  It was the last time he would feel clean for a while. The lorries trundled on, and after a lengthy journey in which the days merged into a blur and the nights involved staying in a number of camps where the POWs were put in a compound separate from the resident inmates of whichever camp they were in, more of their number died. Some of these overnight camps had Russian POWs on the other side of barbed-wire fences and Jed could see that the prisoners were in a terrible state, frail and malnourished, with a ghastly stench drifting on the air which Jock told him came from decaying corpses.

  ‘The Nazis like the Russians even less than they like us,’ Jock said grimly. ‘They’re being worked and starved to death like the Jews, poor beggars. What state the world’ll be in when this war’s over is anyone’s guess because some things can’t be forgiven or forgotten.’

  They were allowed no contact with the Russians, separated as they were by barbed-wire fences, but Jed and the others found that the rats had no respect for these fences. They were huge, the size of cats, and were feeding on the corpses of the Russian POWs. They would often come running through to their side of the camp once darkness fell. They knew the rats had been feasting on human flesh because of the smell of them, a smell Jed didn’t want ever to experience again in the rest of his life.

  Another train journey took the convoy of POWs into southern Poland, and here they were given over to a new and different batch of German guards. As soon as Jed looked at them he knew they were a different kettle of fish from the ones who had stopped and let the POWs bathe in the stream and wash their clothes. These were dead-eyed with hard faces. One of the Italians in their number stumbled as they were marched in line through huge gates into a slabbed yard surrounded by high walls, and by putting out a hand to save himself happened to brush against the arm of one of the guards. As the man righted himself the guard swung his nine-pound rifle at the side of the prisoner’s head and there was the awful sound of crushing bone. The Italian fell like a stone, dead before he even reached the ground.

  For a moment Jed stood stock-still, shocked to the core, before Jock nudged him to keep walking. The Italian had been a particular friend of Leonardo and they all heard the cry, something between a shriek and a roar, that Leonardo gave as he launched himself on the guard. It was a futile act; Leonardo had no hope of avenging the man’s death. He was plucked off the guard immediately by two others while the original guard screamed something in his face, drew a revolver and shot him at point-blank range. The whole episode had lasted no longer than thirty seconds.

  Again it was Jock prodding him violently in the back that prompted Jed to move, his voice low as he murmured, ‘Don’t even think about it. Keep walking, these are SS.’

  Sure now that they were all going to die, Jed walked in line into the long concrete building in the yard. His thoughts full of Cora, he willed her to know that he loved her, that somehow over the miles separating them she would know he loved her. The guards lined up in front of them and they were told to strip while several Germans in white coats came in the door. Once they were as naked as the day they were bor
n, the POWs had a pungent white powder puffed over them by a couple of the white-coated men, between their legs, under their arms and over their feet while their clothes were sprayed with something eye-watering.

  Jed glanced at Jock and Neville. They were nothing but skin and bone like him; now they resembled some kind of strange white wraiths.

  One by one the men, still naked, had their hair cropped short and then were told to put their clothes on once more, after which they were walked out into the yard. They had no idea what day it was, merely that it was late May or maybe June. The air in the yard was warm and faintly scented by the fir trees they had passed; all Jed could think about was Leonardo. One moment the man he thought of as a friend had been alive, the next his brains had splattered the ground.

  ‘All right?’ Jock was standing at the side of him, hands thrust in his trouser pockets. ‘You couldn’t have done anything, laddie. Better to live to fight another day. Our time’ll come.’

  Jed nodded. He didn’t believe it and he doubted if Jock did either, but the alternative, to give up, wasn’t an option. Once again the words Wilfred had said to him came into his mind and his eyes narrowed. Couldn’t kill in cold blood? Just give him the chance.

  Come nightfall they were given a kind of watery green soup that smelt disgusting and tasted worse, along with lumps of hard grainy bread, and told to sleep in the yard on the slabs.

  The next morning they boarded a train again and the reason for the previous day’s fumigation became clear. This time they were in normal rail carriages with a corridor down one side and small compartments, the sort of train ordinary civilians might travel on. Clearly the Germans wanted to cut down the possibility of the train being infected with lice and fleas and anything else the POWs might be carrying.

  Mentally and physically exhausted, Jed sat between Jock and Neville as the train rolled through quite pleasant countryside. He’d lain awake all night on the cold slabs thinking of Cora and home, of Leonardo and the other Italian, of the misery of the Russians in their foul camps and of the terrible things he’d seen and heard about over the last weeks. Now he was too tired to think and it was a blessed relief.