Beneath a Frosty Moon

by Rita Bradshaw

  ‘Funny, but I didn’t think this was the time for a cosy little chat,’ he yelled back, hearing Jock chuckle appreciatively. And in spite of the bombs raining down on the camp just a short distance away, Jed smiled. This was what enabled you to live and survive in hell, he thought as a shower of dirt sprinkled over him, this looking out for each other. He thought he’d had pals before he had joined up but the comradeship that had been forged under fire with Jock and Neville and the others was beyond anything he’d experienced before or was likely to experience again. He’d seen starving men giving up their rations for a sick friend, or put themselves in the way of a brutal beating to protect a weaker individual who wouldn’t survive more ill treatment. Amongst all the senseless murder, the cruelty, the bestial acts that defied belief, there were bonds the Nazis couldn’t break. Which in the face of unimaginable suffering was an incredible accolade to the human spirit; this defining choice men made of refusing to become mindless autonomous beings just looking out for themselves.

  The bombing continued for a long time. It was freezing cold on the snow-covered ground and many of the men curled themselves into a foetal position to try and keep as warm as they could, along with cursing the Nazis and the Russians in equal measure. In spite of the noise and imminent danger Jed dozed once or twice, a mixture of starvation and exhaustion being a powerful sedative. Jock was actually snoring at the side of him.

  It was still dark when the raid finished. Jed and the others emerged from their dents in the ground to find that their barracks had been blown to bits although several other blocks were still intact. They stood shivering in the icy air, listening to the Russian guns in the distance that were getting louder. The sound was heartening and terrifying at the same time.

  A couple of the watchtowers had been destroyed during the night and the German guards were in a foul mood, ordering the POWs into two columns and telling them they were leaving the camp. Jed looked at Jock and Neville. Did that mean they were going to be led away into the countryside and shot? Anything was possible. Short of getting shot right now, however, they had no other choice but to do what the guards demanded. The Germans were well wrapped up against the sub-zero temperatures in their thick uniforms and greatcoats, but not so the POWs, and as Jed looked down the columns of men there were some who looked as though they could barely stand, let alone march. Nevertheless, at first light they were taken out through the gates of the camp that like the fences were laced with heavy twists of vicious barbed wire, and towards the south-west. Jed wondered if there were any Jews left in Auschwitz after the orgy of killing and burning that had gone on in the last weeks as the Allies had advanced, or whether the SS had managed to destroy them all in the gas chambers.

  They’d only gone a short distance when Neville nudged him and pointed to a striped mound at the side of the track. It was one of the Jewish POWs, covered with a dusting of snow and frozen solid by the heavy frost. The Wehrmacht guards barked for them to keep walking and indeed there was no point in stopping, since it was clear the man was long dead. One of the crude wooden clogs the Jews had worn was lying a foot or so away from the body and seemed infinitely pathetic, summing up the impossibility of any of the men surviving in their thin rags and practically bare feet.

  ‘They’ve taken the poor blighters on a death march,’ Neville murmured as within a minute or so they came across the stiffened corpses of more people, some of whom had been shot where they’d fallen and left, and a number of others dumped in ditches at the side of the track.

  ‘What do you think this is then?’ said Jock behind them. ‘A Sunday-school picnic?’

  That first day as they walked they came across more and more striped bodies, so many that it soon became horrifically commonplace. By the time night fell Jed wondered if any of the Jewish prisoners would survive their march to who knew where. And would he and the others? One of their number, a young thin strip of a lad called Charley, had already collapsed through fatigue and cold. He had been unable to get up when the guards had ordered him to, but when they’d pointed their rifles at him two of his pals had hoisted him to his feet, telling the Germans they would take turns in carrying him piggyback fashion. They had all wondered if the three would be shot on the spot, but the guards were not the SS and had merely shrugged uninterestedly and let them do as they wanted.

  When they stopped for the night the guards set up their machine guns on tripods, whether as a warning to anyone who had ideas of trying to escape or because they were worried about the Russians, Jed didn’t know, but it made everyone jumpy. They had no idea where they were headed or what was planned for them, and after the things they had witnessed at Auschwitz no one had any faith in the rules of the Geneva Convention being adhered to by the Nazis. They had come to a kind of clearing in thick woodland that made it easier for the guards to watch them during the night but which gave no shelter from the bitter cold and snow. Dressed as they were, to sleep was to die, and so, exhausted though Jed was, he merely dozed along with everyone else, and if anyone appeared to be going into a deeper sleep he was woken up by those nearest him.

  The guards had doled out a few hard biscuits once the POWs were sitting in the clearing and Jed ate his so quickly he almost choked. The long march over snow and ice in the bitter cold, and not least the increasing number of frozen corpses in their striped rags, had taken its toll on everyone and there was little talk among the men. Even Jock, the undisputed joker of their hut, was subdued. It had become clear that the Germans had rounded up all the Jewish prisoners who were capable of walking for the march, no doubt hoping to wring some more work out of them, but that few would survive. Jed glanced round the POWs as the first faint light of morning streaked the night sky. Even among their own number there were those who weren’t going to make it. Starvation and numbing cold had been bad enough to cope with back at the camp, but now they were expected to march miles at a brisk pace and some of the lads weren’t up to it, like young Charley for instance. He’d been severely beaten some months before by one of the guards when he’d tried to prevent a young Jewish boy from being kicked to death, and had never really recovered.

  The guards had a truck holding their equipment and supplies and the day before a couple of them had ridden in the vehicle with the driver for two or three hours, before alternating with those walking with the column of prisoners. Jed watched as one of the guards brought out more of the cardboard-tasting biscuits from the back of the truck and distributed them among the POWs.

  Charley’s pals had to feed him his quota, persuading him to eat when he tried to refuse, but when it came to the time the prisoners were told to stand up and form a line, it became apparent Charley hadn’t the strength. His friends lifted him, hoisting him onto the back of one of them as the guards watched dispassionately. Filled with a sudden fury, Jed called to the nearest German, ‘Your truck – can’t he ride in the back of your truck?’

  Cold blue eyes stared back at him and for an answer the guard walked over until they were eyeball to eyeball and then drove his rifle butt into Jed’s stomach with enough force to send him keeling over. For a moment he couldn’t breathe through the pain. He was vaguely aware of Jock and Neville dragging him to his feet, much as Charley’s pals had done, and Jock muttering, ‘That’s enough of the heroics, laddie,’ and then the column began moving. He stumbled along between Jock and Neville, practically doubled up and feeling as sick as a dog, but after some hundreds of yards the pain lessened and he was able to straighten himself although his stomach muscles were screaming.

  Within minutes the procession was walking alongside more frozen bodies, and so it continued all day. A couple of guards rode in the truck, taking turns with their comrades as they had done the day before, but apart from the occasional brief stop for the prisoners to relieve themselves they marched all that day. It was four o’clock in the afternoon and snowing in the wind when Charley dropped off the back of the man who was carrying him. At what point the boy had died no one knew, but he was quite dead w
hen he hit the ground.

  One of the two guards who strode over to inspect what was going on was the German who’d punched Jed in the stomach with his rifle earlier, and he stared at Charley without the slightest flicker of feeling on his young face. He couldn’t have been more than Charley’s age himself and had probably been one of the Hitler Youth, indoctrinated from childhood as to his place in the ‘master race’. He saw Jed staring at him, and in spite of Jock hissing, ‘Look away,’ Jed continued to let his face express his hatred and revulsion.

  When the guard motioned for Jed to go forward, he did so, stopping in front of the German without veiling his expression. ‘You, and you –’ the guard pointed to the man who had been carrying Charley – ‘put him in zhere.’ He flicked his gloved hand towards the ditch running at the side of the track.

  Jed stared at the Nazi. He knew what the German wanted him to do and that was to refuse to dump Charley’s body into the ditch as though it was a sack of rubbish. It would give the guard the excuse he needed to shoot him. For a moment he considered doing just that. Then he crouched over with the other man and together they tenderly lifted Charley between them, stepping down into the four feet of snow and laying the body to rest as gently as though they were settling Charley into a soft comfortable bed. Jed heard the guard say something, contempt in his voice, but he didn’t look at him as he climbed out of the ditch, walking back to his place in the column. He was aware of Jock letting out his breath in a deep sigh of relief.

  In an aside, Jed muttered, ‘I’ll kill him before this is over if I get half a chance. I swear it, Jock. I’ll squeeze the life out of him with my bare hands.’

  ‘You and me both, laddie. You and me both.’

  A half-mile or so along the track from where they’d left Charley, the column came to a burned-out farmhouse that looked as though it had been deserted for some time. There was a large barn at the back of it that was still intact, however, and the guards marshalled them into it. Bedding down in the straw it contained was infinitely preferable to the previous night, and although Jed went to sleep with his stomach growling, it was a relief to be able to give in to the exhaustion knowing he was in no fear of freezing to death while he slept.

  In the morning the column continued to head west, and so it was in the days ahead. Frozen striped bodies by the wayside; nights spent sleeping out in the snow when no shelter of any kind was available; constant gnawing hunger as even the biscuits became fewer, and still no idea where they were ultimately bound for.

  It was on the seventh day of the march, around midday, that Jed suddenly realized they hadn’t come across any Auschwitz victims for a couple of hours. The corpses hadn’t gradually become less but had stopped abruptly, and it was this that told him that the convoy was now on a different route from that which the Jews had taken. On that day too, with food now very scarce, he and the other POWs – under the guards’ watchful eye – stole what they could carry of a crop of winter vegetables from the fields either side of the road. That night the guards lit a fire and they cooked the lot and for once prisoners and Germans alike went to sleep with full stomachs. From that point on most of what they ate was of necessity stolen from fields, barns and even cottage gardens, but still they were hungry all the time.

  It wasn’t the hunger or exhaustion or even the aches and pains in his frail body that was the hardest to bear, though, Jed thought one night as he lay awake between Jock and Neville on the frozen ground. It was Cora flitting into his mind if he allowed himself to sleep on the nights they were under some kind of shelter. Each time he awoke after dreaming about her, the pain of losing her was as raw as the first day he had left the farm. If, by some miracle, he made it through to the end of the war, he would still be facing a life without her because she must hate him now. Had she turned to Wilfred for comfort? His guts twisted. But why ask the road you know? Wilfred would have made sure of it. Damn it, he’d been such a fool.

  He must have dropped into a light doze eventually because although he could hear Neville rousing him and Jock it was on the perimeter of his consciousness. Somehow he made himself sit up, shaking his head to dispel the fogginess in his mind and taking a couple of the raw carrots Neville had given him as his share from what the convoy had stolen the day before.

  That day they saw mountains in the distance and the track steepened. The further they climbed the colder it got, the snow whipping skin and turning into little ice balls in beards and hair. Jed noticed that the guards rotated who rode in the truck and who walked with the prisoners more often now, the Germans marching for no more than an hour or so without a break, but the punishing pace didn’t lessen in spite of the conditions. Several more POWs succumbed to exhaustion and the weather, each of the four men who died falling to sleep at night in the snow and not waking up. Jed, Jock and Neville took turns each night to sit up for a couple of hours, ensuring that the two who were dozing didn’t go into that deeper sleep from which there was no awakening.

  After a few days the route began to slowly level out and then they found themselves beginning to descend. It made walking easier and the further they went the less cold it became, although on the third day of the descent when they spent the night in a ramshackle outbuilding attached to an abandoned and derelict farmhouse, when Jock pulled off one of his boots he left part of a toe behind. Jed had lost the sensation in his feet more than once, causing him to stamp and jump in spite of his exhaustion in an attempt to stave off frostbite, and after staring aghast at Jock he took off his own boots in fear and trepidation, immensely relieved when ten very dirty and very smelly toes still firmly attached to his feet greeted him.

  Jock took the loss of the toe in his usual pragmatic way. ‘Could have been worse,’ he said wryly. ‘A toe or two I can do without as long as my wedding tackle’s in place. The wife wouldn’t be too impressed if I left that halfway up a mountain.’

  They were tending to march about twenty miles or so each day, and once they had left the mountains and were back in open country again, they all noticed that the guards were a lot more jumpy. They were in partisan territory and the Germans clearly were edgy about an attack. Each night they set up their machine guns on tripods facing away from the circle of POWs and into the darkness beyond, and once or twice in the middle of the night one guard or another fired off a volley into the blackness thinking he had seen something, causing hope and consternation in equal measure in the POWs. Jed knew they couldn’t escape without outside help – they were under armed guard all the time and the Nazis wouldn’t hesitate to shoot first and ask questions later – but in a shoot-out with the Germans and the partisans it was likely a good number of the prisoners would be killed. Jed had already decided, however, that anything would be better than this march and slowly being starved to death. If a chance to escape occurred he’d take it, whether he ended up with a bullet through his head or not. The convoy was now mostly surviving on mangel-wurzels stolen from the fields, any remaining supplies in the truck being reserved for the guards.

  Jed had ceased wondering where their eventual destination was. Days had turned into weeks and the Germans had taken them through Ratibor in Silesia and on into Czechoslovakia, passing through Pardubice on the river Elbe and then Prague. More of their number had died but now with each death the guards did at least let the POWs dig a grave by the wayside and bury their comrades with the dignity they hadn’t been afforded in life. It seemed the Nazis were getting as weary as they were, and disillusioned with the war in general. Not that Jed doubted for a moment that they would execute a POW at the drop of a hat, but the ferocious arrogance that had characterized every last one of the guards was not so much in evidence. When they passed through the outskirts of villages and towns and the local people – Czechs rather than ethnic Germans – gave the POWs bread or lumps of cheese or anything they had to hand, the guards didn’t try to prevent it as at one time they would have done. Jed didn’t think it was out of pity or any feeling for their fellow man but simply that they didn’t c
are any more. They were beaten – they had lost the war and they knew it – but the motions still had to be gone through. The glorious future that Hitler had promised each and every one of them was crumbling about their ears but orders still had to be obeyed and they would deliver the POWs to their destination even if they died doing so.

  Jock was struggling by the time the column came to the outskirts of Cheb. His damaged foot had become infected and was oozing pus. The thick greenish-yellow liquid stank to high heaven and his ankle was so swollen that the skin looked as though it was ready to burst open. Jed knew the guards would do nothing to help; another POW buried at the wayside meant little to them except for the inconvenience of having to delay the march for a while.

  The column stopped for the night in a huge barn full of straw and to their delight, in a corner of the building and covered with dirty sacks, were piles of potatoes, obviously stored away and hidden by the owner of the farm. Within minutes the POWs had gathered wood and lit a fire just outside the barn to cook the lot, the guards making sure they had their share first. Jed and Neville carried their potatoes and Jock’s over to where their friend was sitting, his face grey and tight with pain from his injured foot. Jed waited until they’d all eaten their fill. It was the first time in weeks their stomachs had been full and for what he had to say it was better received when replete.

  He looked straight at Jock and said, ‘You know that infection’s going to spread and at the very least you’re likely to lose your leg.’

  Jock stared at him, taken aback. ‘If you’re trying to cheer me up you’re doing a miserable job.’