A Coin for the Hangman

by Spurrier, Ralph

  “You’re right, Daphne. Who’d want to end up here, burnt in a fire?” George looked at Daffin and Reg who, in turn, looked down the road towards the camp and although none of the soldiers said anything, they all knew what he meant.

  They were there for another three weeks, clearing up and transferring those that were still alive to makeshift hospitals. Those that were already dead and those that died from the typhus which had run rife through the camp were put in heaps by the large pits dug by the Germans. The colonel had insisted that all the German guards should drag those thousands of bodies onto trucks and then put them next to the pits.

  “No gloves, absolutely no gloves. I want those bastards to clear up this mess with their bare hands. And when that’s done I want the civilians to come and see what they allowed to happen.”

  George and Reg had watched as the bulldozer shovelled the bodies into the huge pit like so much waste: the burgomasters from the local town stood immobile and unflinching with their hats in their hands as the sepulchral mess tumbled down, lifeless arms and legs windmilling through the dusty air.

  “Not one of them turned a hair, Daphne.” Reg had reported back later that afternoon. Daffin was in a large hall of the Panzer Training School processing the incoming supplies. “It could have been a boring third division football match for all the response we got out of them. Stood there like fuckin’ puddin’s they did.” He spat on the ground, and then, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth, “They knew what was going on here, that’s for certain.” He looked through the window and up into the blue sky now herring-boned with high cirrus cloud. “They must have smelt it for miles around.” Reg looked at the piles of cardboard boxes that had recently arrived.

  “What’s this lot then? Powdered milk? Bengal mix?” He hefted a box in his hands and was surprised by the lightness of the weight and the rattling–from inside. “Intriguing. Let’s have a butcher’s, shall we?”

  Daffin slipped his bayonet blade along the tape across the top of the first box and flipped open the tabs. Peering inside he laughed.

  “You’ll never guess, Sarge.” He closed the box up. “Go on. Think of the most useless item that these poor bastards could want right now.” Daffin smiled, one eyebrow raised in quizzical astonishment. Reg picked up another box and rattled it.

  “Johnnies? French letters?”

  Daffin laughed. “No such luck!”

  “Boot polish?”

  “Oooh, warm, Sarge. Very warm!”

  “Laces?”

  “Off the boil now.” Daffin gave the box another shake. “Give up?”

  “Gone on then, son, surprise me.”

  Daffin put the box back on the bench and ceremoniously opened the flaps of the lid. They both peered inside. Reg reached in and pulled out one of the small cartridges that lay on top of the pile.

  “What the fuck is this?” The cartridge had a seam around the middle and a winding knob at one end. “You’ve got to be kidding me? Please don’t tell me this is what I think it is.” He pulled open one of the cartridges and held up the glistening red end of a lipstick.

  “Bloody hell, just what the doctor ordered, eh?” He dug his hand into the box. “And hundreds of them. And how many boxes have we got, Daffin?”

  Daffin swept his arm over a pallet load that sat on the floor of the hall. “Two hundred, Sarge.”

  They both looked at the little bronze cartridge which George held aloft with its protruding red crayon and then looked at each other. Suddenly, without prompt or wink or nudge, they both broke out laughing, a laugh that echoed around the hall and out into the corridors and beyond even there, breaking out into the open square of the Panzer Training School. It was a laugh that punctured the vacuum of horror that had suffocated them both since they had first driven through the gates of Belsen a month before. And they laughed again at the box of lipsticks that Daffin held up and intoned in a mock priestly sing-song: “Introibo ad altare Dei.”

  And Reg roared all the louder as Daffin goose-stepped around the hall, the box of lipsticks held straight out at arm’s length as if he were holding the Holy Grail.

  “You fuckin’ heathen, Daphne.”

  Daffin stopped and held the box of lipsticks in the palm of one hand and covered it with the palm still holding the bayonet he had used to open the box.

  “Far from battle, O Lord, we bring you the genuine Charnel. Body and soul and blood and…” he paused as he opened the lid of the box and peered in, “…and still lipstick.” He made a moue of a face and set off once again, slapping his boots down on the concrete floor as he circled the hall, all the while Reg laughing and laughing until he thought he’d piss himself.

  The next day, Reg and Daffin went over to the hospital wards and began handing out the lipsticks to all except the sickest of women.

  “You mark my words, Daphne, the girls love this stuff.” Reg carried two of the boxes across the courtyard and through the swing doors where the orderly was spraying DDT dust over those who came in and went out. They closed their eyes as the spray nozzle hovered above their heads.

  They had been given no authority to hand out the lipsticks but the doctors and the newly arrived medical students were too busy to notice two soldiers going from bed to bed, placing a little bronze tube in the hands of the patients.

  “Here you go, love, a little present from a secret admirer.” Reg had stopped at the side of a bed on which lay a naked woman, her skin transparent and stretched almost to breaking point across the bones of her frame. He held the lipstick tube in front of her face so she could see what it was. The darkly hooded eyes, unfocussed like so many of the survivors, moved listlessly from Reg’s face to the object he was holding in his hand.

  “Here, let me show you.” He took the brass tube apart, twirling the wheel base. The bright red lipstick rose above the lip of the brass and as it did so Reg could see a sudden spark of recognition fire up in the woman’s eyes. A skeletal hand, the number tattooed on the wrist, rose from her side and took the tube from Reg, delicately holding it between thumb and forefinger, turning it this way and that before slowly lowering it towards her mouth. Tracing the shape of her mouth with her other hand, she moved the lipstick falteringly across the thin outer edges before rolling her lips together in a fashion that came naturally to her even though it had been many years since she had seen any lipstick, let alone used it. She lowered the brass tube and looked up at Reg, the faintest of smiles breaking through.

  “There. You look a treat. Be ready for Saturday night dance now, love. Save the first one for me, won’t you?” He put the top back on the lipstick and put it back in her hand. “Look after this. Gold dust these are!”

  By the end of the morning Reg and Daffin had handed out some 500 lipsticks and although, at first, the doctors were annoyed at what they saw as a waste of time and resources, they quickly began to see a remarkable change in the patients. Women who had appeared listless and uncaring of their appearance began to ask for brushes and combs. Patients who had lain immobile on their beds for days began to make short tours of the wards to visit friends, clothed in little more than a single blanket but always with the lipstick in their hands and a bright red line on their ashen faces. Reg observed the transformation and heard the medics’ wonder at the remarkable change in the attitude of the women and made a note to himself to keep back a box of those lipsticks for later use.

  The huts from the main camp were cleared then they were burnt, one by one. By the middle of May most of them had been razed to the ground. A few outlying huts still remained, including the barn which Reg, George and the others had discovered on the first day. Reg observed the gruesome ferrying of the dead from a distance – he had studiously avoided going anywhere near the barn since that first day – but saw that one of the British officers was making notes on a clipboard as each cadaver was brought out into the light. That evening when the final bodies had been removed, he tackled the officer as he returned to the mess.

  “Excuse me, Sir. H
ope you don’t mind me asking, but do you know how many people were in that barn? Me and the lads were the first in and, well…” He tailed off.

  The officer looked at Reg for a moment, unsure, but then peered at his clipboard and tapped the figures with his pen as he reeled off the figures.

  “Six hundred and fifty women, 840 men and what I assume were some 153 children, although sometimes it was difficult to tell the difference between adults and children, some of them were so emaciated.” He put the pen back in his jacket pocket and held the clipboard close to his chest for a moment before looking down once again as if he couldn’t quite understand the numbers he had just read out. Confronted with the enormity of the discoveries it seemed that both soldiers became rooted to the spot, unwilling or unable to comment any further. The anger and disbelief of the first few days had been specifically verbal but then had translated into physical violence towards the German guards, few of whom were now seen without some kind of wound or blood staining their faces. Now, the shock dissipated through days of tedium and exhausting work, the British soldiers counted the days until they could leave.

  Reg broke the silence. “With permission, Sir, would it be possible for me and the lads to give the torch to that barn? We’ve been posted on tomorrow afternoon and I’d…” he checked himself, “…we’d like to see this one go up in smoke, if you know what I mean.”

  “I don’t see why not, Sergeant. See the duty officer tomorrow morning and I’m sure he’ll fix you up.”

  Reg saluted as the officer turned and headed for the mess.

  So at 11.15 the next morning, Reg, under the supervision of the tank commander, sat in the cockpit of the flame thrower and sent spumes of petrol and flames battering against the wooden clapboard hull of the barn. Internally oiled and lubricated by the detritus of 1,643 humans, the wood caught light instantly and sent a mushroom cloud, black and billowing, into the sky. George and Daffin stood about fifty yards away from the barn, watching as first the roof fell in and then the walls became paper thin before subsiding into the sea of glowing ash.

  Burning the whale, Reg called it.

  George Tanner’s company was earmarked to be repatriated during August and September of ’45 but the army was looking for volunteers to stay on in Germany. In George’s view, the world was crumbling. News of the atomic bombs in Japan and the eventual end of the war there brought some relief, but the world now seemed utterly different from that of six years before and the civilization for which he had fought felt empty and unwelcoming. He had no-one to return to and no real job and he didn’t feel ready to be pushed to the bottom of the ladder. An army of occupation was now required and he made up his mind to stay where he was for the moment.

  On a warm but damp evening in September 1945, George and Reg shook hands with Daffin, Jones and the others from their company at the train station, not really knowing what to say. They grinned stupidly at each other, promising to meet up some day. Some day. The banter was forced, even George could see that.

  “Hoping to find yourself a nice fräulein over here, Sarge?” Jones offered a cigarette. “Bound to be a fair few going spare.”

  George smiled but said nothing.

  Jones ran his fingers through his thinning hair. “Going to feel a little odd going home. I’ve got a daughter I haven’t seen in a couple of years. She’s five now. She won’t recognize me.”

  The sudden mention of home and the renewing of an old life felt unsettling; few knew what they would be going back to. Jones had received a letter from his wife which seemed to upset him. The rest of them made an educated guess but said nothing. Oppos rarely confided personal – home – problems to each other. Blighty and the brothels of France and Germany had been two different worlds but now they were heading back to a country to settle down – but to what exactly?

  “Look after yourself, Sarge.” Daffin held out his hand to Reg. “Thanks for getting us – most of us anyway – through all this.”

  Reg took Daffin’s hand and firmly squeezed it.

  “I’d say it’s been a pleasure, Daphne, in other circumstances but…” he shrugged. “Still, we survived, didn’t we? Got to be grateful for that.”

  The train steamed into the station and they boarded, eagerly throwing their packs into the carriage and slamming the doors behind them. A whistle sounded from the engine.

  “You’re off, lads. Make it a good ‘un!” George shouted as the engine, blowing a plume of smoke, slowly jerked the carriages forward and away, the others waving and giving him the thumbs up as the train disappeared through the murk and drizzle, towards the west and home. Daffin continued to lean out the window of the train, looking back at the two sergeants standing on the platform. As the train gathered speed, Daffin watched the diminishing figures slowly turn away and walk out of the station, heading back into Germany.

  July 1946

  Chiemsee, Southern Bavaria

  George Tanner

  George walked by the shores of the lake on a day that was calm and warm. The world looked completely unchanged, as it had been for centuries in that corner of Germany. But in himself he knew he was sick. Sick with it all. Dirty: dirtied by what he had seen, what he had done. As he neared the jetty on which a few boats were moored he wondered if perhaps he should have returned with the other soldiers the previous year. Perhaps those things that were rotting away inside of him would have disappeared, but he wasn’t that confident. He was finally being demobbed and that was that. The army had taken their pound of flesh and it was he who was being pushed back home whether he liked it or not.

  After the others had left the year before he had been seconded to a small unit which was processing suspect SS officers at a small spa town, Baden Endorf, just up the road from the Chiemsee Lake. The army had taken over a large youth hostel on the outskirts of the town and quickly converted the dormitories into single cells and interrogation rooms. He had initially thought it might give him some way of exorcising the bad dreams he had of Belsen, finally erasing that bloody image, but he realized that all it did was tie him more closely to it. There was a saying when he was a lad: “If you don’t want to get your feet wet, don’t paddle in the stream.” If he wanted to get rid of those ghosts he knew now that he should have gone home with the others and got on with life.

  As it was they gave those SS suspects a really hard time. He found the other soldiers in his unit more than a little ready to hand out some violence on the prisoners and it hadn’t taken him long to be infected by the group mentality. In truth, and at first, he quite enjoyed the work but as the weeks went by he found himself becoming inured to the beatings and rifle buttings that he and his fellow soldiers carelessly handed out. One of the suspected SS officers had croaked it after a particularly good kicking. A rumour had gone around that this particular officer had been involved in a summary execution of British soldiers who had been captured close to the Rhine. There was no firm evidence but after a few too many beers one evening some of them had dragged him out of his cell and took him into the woods that surrounded the hostel. They had stuffed his mouth with his underpants until his head looked like a football and then kicked the fuck out of him, taking it in turns to boot him in the head. By the time they had finished there were no recognizable features left on the German officer, and George’s final kick had broken his neck. They buried the body in a shallow grave further in the woods. Although none of them really cared – including the CO – they didn’t want any awkward questions asked and if they didn’t have a body, well, they didn’t have it, did they? Got lost, ran away, escaped… whatever. The world was a mess so who cared if one murderer out of hundreds, thousands, got lost in the process? Not them, not him.

  George had come down to the little station at Chiemsee that morning, just by the ferry dock. He often walked here on his days off duty, if only to get away from the rest of them. The quiet of the pathway next to the lake, hemmed in on one side by the dense thickets of trees, became a regular haven and he would sit on the grassy ban
k and watch as the few small boats ploughed in delicate traceries from the town jetty towards the islands, hovering in the heat haze at the lake’s edge. In the distance the Austrian mountains – still topped with snow even in mid-summer – rose up from the lake.

  This was to be his very last visit however: he was scheduled to return to England for demob and, having strolled a mile or so around the lake’s edge, he retraced his steps to the town’s jetty and took one last look at the vast expanse of water stretching away into the distance. Normally this resort would have been bustling but now just a few locals took advantage of the warmth of the day to sit out on the promenade or walk by the lake. Scanning the panorama in front of him he suddenly noticed a single figure standing at the water’s edge, some hundred yards away. Even at that distance George could see that it was a young woman, one hand tugging her skirt up above her knees as she let the cold fringes of the lake eddy back and forth over her feet and calves. In her other hand she looked to be holding her shoes by the ankle straps and, as he watched, she stopped moving her feet in the wavelets and stood stock still, looking away towards the horizon. There was something about the figure and the sun and the light on water that caught his attention, setting up a spasm of melancholia and longing. As he stood there, hands in his pockets, wondering what the future in England could possibly hold for him – and this time tomorrow he would be well on his way back – the woman at the water’s edge turned her head and, George was sure, looked straight at him, although at that distance he couldn’t really make out the features of her face. A rush of emotion, shame almost, made him turn quickly away and walk, almost run, towards the path that led back to Baden Endorf.

  The lane that led from the lake to the hostel passed the small railway station that served the ferry at Chimesee, but now there was very little activity. Although he had walked past the abandoned station a number of times he hadn’t paid it much attention. Two collared doves flapping and dancing on the pitched roof of the little railway station caught his eye as he stopped to take more notice of the building. The booking office looked closed and lifeless and grassy tufts were beginning to force themselves through breaks in the concrete surface. What had once been carefully manicured hedges surrounding the station building were now leggy and overgrown. He walked off the path and over the two pairs of tracks that terminated at the buffers by the ferry. Stepping onto the low platform, he went over to a window that faced the tracks and peered through. It was difficult making out the interior because of the glare of the bright sun so he shaded his eyes, pressing close against the glass. He assumed it had probably been the station master’s office with an array of empty shelves against one wall and a large desk sitting in the centre of the room. There was no chair that he could see and apart from a large, closed ledger that sat on the desk top and a faded poster that advertised an Alpine railway scene, the rest of the room was completely empty. George moved away from the window and walked down the platform towards the door of the office. The ornate brass handle, now blemished with verdigris, turned ineffectively in his hand and a separate lock kept the glass-panelled door firmly closed. A small piece of dried putty dropped from the edge of the glass onto George’s hand and fell down to the platform surface next to his brightly polished boot. He stared down at the dirty white lump and hesitated for a moment before lifting the sole of his right foot and pressing his weight down. There was a satisfying crack of the crushed material.