by Robert Ryan
‘Oh, yes. Of course. Christ. So … you think the escape from Devizes and this order are related in some way? Hitler is planning a parachute drop in England, behind the lines?’
Dansey went back to attacking the crust of his pie. ‘You know, Donald, I bloody well hope not.’ He waved the fork. ‘But you get security tightened, eh? Just in case.’
Cameron Ross’s Fitzrovia flat was too small for Uli and him together but, if he admitted the truth to himself, he was too superstitious to move. After his father’s near miss, and with several rockets falling every day, he had this vision that he would settle them into Belgravia or Mayfair and the following day a V2 would come crashing through the roof, killing them both.
So they made do, not minding too much about bumping into each other, about the tiny galley kitchen or the inadequate water heater.
Ross arrived home one Saturday evening with a clutch of parcels under his arms. ‘What a day!’ he exclaimed.
Uli was lying in front of the gas fire, books and notepad in front of her.
‘I managed to find both of us shoes—I’ve guessed your size.’
‘Thirty-seven,’ she said.
‘Blimey,’ he said. ‘I’m only an eight and a half.’
‘I think it is about a four and a half in your sizes.’
Ross looked crestfallen. ‘I got a five.’
‘Then I’ll pad the toe. Let me see.’
As they unwrapped the string and brown paper, he said: ‘And I might have a turkey for Christmas.’
‘What sort of turkey?’
‘A dead one, I hope. There is this butcher on Goodge Street that dad knows—’
‘More of your father’s contacts?’
‘Look, if it’s a proper bird, I’d take it from Hitler himself. We have to go on a list and they are drawing names out of a hat.’
‘Well, that’s democracy of a kind, I suppose. Lovely.’ Uli held up the shoe, which she thought was rather matronly and clunky. But she inhaled the smell of leather gratefully. ‘Where did you get these?’
‘Cockfosters. Near the Cage up there. Old pre-war stock. Not the height of fashion … it’s all our coupons gone, I’m afraid.’
‘They’ll be fine.’ She kissed him. ‘Thank you. What’s in there?’ She indicated a small brown paper bag that Ross had tossed onto an armchair.
‘Ah. Christmas present.’ It was a beautiful antique silver box that he had seen in a jeweller’s, just the right size for what he had in mind.
‘It’s weeks away.’
‘Four weeks. You have to buy when you see these days.’
‘Can I look?’
‘No.’ He changed the subject. ‘What have you been doing?’
Uli had an atlas open at a map of the United States, and had scribbled down names on a notepad. ‘I have been looking at places I’d like to visit when the war is over. Places that won’t care too much about me being German. Where the people don’t have to know. Look. Alber-kew-kew. What a fabulous name.’
He corrected her pronunciation.
‘Well, whatever it is, it sounds wonderful. And Oatmeal, Texas? So funny. Phoenix. What must a city named after a mythical bird be like?’
‘Not as exotic as you imagine it, I suspect.’
‘You don’t know, you’ve never been,’ she said, as if he were spoiling her dream. ‘And there’s New York, of course. Texas again. Lub-bock. Lubbock.’ She rolled the word around her mouth. ‘So much to see. I found a New Berlin somewhere.’
He was as gentle as he could be. ‘I think they’ve changed it. All the places called Berlin changed their names in 1942.’
‘Oh. Of course. Of course they would have.’
‘I can’t believe you want to go back across the Atlantic so soon.’
‘Only when there are no U-boats.’ Uli felt a tightening of her stomach again as she thought of Erich out there, his submarine slipping silently through the blackest seas. At least, she hoped he was there. He hadn’t been processed through any of the southeastern Cages, she was fairly sure, which meant either he’d come in through some other part of the country, or he was still on patrol, or …
‘Come here.’ Ross sat down and stroked her hair as she moved closer to him. They both caught the distant thud of an explosion. ‘Uli?’
‘Mmmm.’
‘Marry me.’ He felt her tense, then relax. She must have known it was coming, he thought. ‘I’ll shave for the ceremony. Promise.’
She laughed. He still felt self-conscious about the beard, but she thought it gave him a raffish air. ‘Ask me again. When this is all over. Please.’
‘You think I won’t?’ he asked, trying to keep the disappointment from his voice.
Uli suddenly felt very cold. She shuffled closer to the bluish flames of the fire. ‘Will we live through this, Cam?’
Ross recognised the feeling gripping her. An icicle in the heart, even though he couldn’t know that it was the thought of Erich floating face down in the grey Atlantic that had caused her so much distress. He reached over and pulled her back to him. ‘Of course. We’ve come this far. What’s going to stop us now?’
The new guards had arrived at the beginning of December on a grey drizzly day. Mud was everywhere, sticking to boots and trampled on them into the huts. The other ranks’ compound, being lower down the slope, was the worst affected, and the authorities had rigged up duckboards, which themselves sank into the quagmire.
The reinforcements were mostly veteran soldiers, either invalided out of the army or too old for combat, but they didn’t look like pushovers. If anything, they treated the inmates with even more disdain than the Poles.
On the day after they arrived, Erich was summoned to the SS hut. As usual, he toyed with the idea of refusing, but there seemed no point. Schuller was at the ‘executive desk’ he had created, near the door. This was where the punishment tribunals were held once a week. Erich wondered if he had somehow transgressed the SS code that the madman was trying to impose. So far there had only been a handful of beatings, but they also imposed shunnings—when it was forbidden to speak to or even acknowledge a fellow prisoner. In the long run it was probably more painful and effective than a straightforward thrashing.
Schuller looked up from his writing. ‘Erich. Sit.’
Erich did as he was told. Schuller indicated the half-dozen men in the centre of the room, who suddenly started singing. Swamping the microphone, it was called. Certainly any listener was likely to take a break while the men went through their repertoire of marching songs.
‘What are you doing?’ asked Erich.
‘Notes on every man in this part of the camp. Name, age, background, Party affiliation, if any, willingness to carry on the fight.’
‘How do I rate?’
Schuller shook his head. ‘You and Dietrich are in the middle. You help, but only when asked. Yet you were in the Hitler Youth.’
‘This may seem rather obvious, Schuller, but I was young then.’
‘Nevertheless, you felt the call. You can feel it again.’
Erich didn’t answer.
‘We need some stones gathered. I am assigning one man from each hut to accumulate a reserve of them.’
‘Stones?’
‘Stones for throwing.’
‘You’re planning on breaking out with stones?’
‘Not quite. You’ll see.’
‘So I’m our hut’s stone collector.’
‘Yes. A stockpile. By the weekend.’
Erich stood. ‘I’ve been meaning to ask you, Schuller.’ He leant forward. ‘How many men do you hope to get out?’
‘Here, or from all the camps?’
‘Both.’
‘Well, here a few hundred. There is a shortage of good material at Stanhope.’
‘And if you include the others?’
‘If the letters coordinating this from Germany have got through to the right people—and I have no reason to doubt it—then about …’ There was a glint in Schuller’s eye as he
said: ‘Seven thousand.’
The stones were used on the Saturday night. They were flung at the fence, causing the tethered dogs to throw themselves against the wire, yapping furiously. The searchlights flicked on, the precious flares lit. Guards with Lee Enfields or Thompsons appeared, stomped around for half an hour and, grumbling, went back to their warm guardrooms. An hour later it happened again. And again. Then sporadically throughout the following fortnight. After a time, the dogs stopped reacting so wildly, and only one unlucky guard was sent out. The flares were no longer wasted. By the middle of December, the British were thoroughly bored of the prank. Which was exactly what Schuller wanted.
The letter from Erich’s father came on the tenth of December. The first two sentences began with T, one of the codes that told Erich there was a message within, based on the last word in each line. Decoding was laborious work, but eventually he had it. Snow was falling outside and the ground was firming up under the cold as he trudged towards the SS hut. Inside, they were still singing. Didn’t those bastards ever get tired of it? How could you sing about marching towards England when you were a prisoner in the country?
He looked at the message one more time. No weapons were coming. No paratroops, it said. But Schuller would like this message. ‘The Führer’s Order of the Day. Men of the Freedom Movement. The hour of our liberation is approaching and it is the duty of every German to fight with arms in hand against world Jewry.’ Then a date for action. Something was going to happen in just six days, on 16 December 1944.
Thirty-Two
15 DECEMBER 1944
The hand on his shoulder shook Erich awake. He rolled over to see Kroll, one of Schuller’s thugs, with his finger to his lips. Several other men had been woken. They all quickly dressed in their warmest clothes. As Erich pulled on his sweater, he saw Dietrich staring at him from his bunk. He winked. Dietrich pressed his thumb between his middle and index fingers in a ‘good luck’ gesture. So Werner hadn’t been chosen. Erich pulled on his boots and followed the little group as they pressed themselves into the shadows and shuffled their way to the SS hut. Inside it was crammed with prisoners, all well wrapped up against the cold, and the body odour was overpowering. Nobody spoke. They had discovered that the microphones were not manned very much after lights out—presumably volunteers to listen to thirty men farting and snoring for eight hours were thin on the ground.
‘I thought it was tomorrow,’ Erich whispered to Schuller.
‘That was the general idea. Here. Map. Flashlight. Pass. We are going out in twos. Your mission is written on the corner of the map. Read it, tear the corner off, eat it.’
Erich stepped under one of the lamps and read the tiny writing. He was to head east and rendezvous with a submarine that would be waiting off the coast of Suffolk, near somewhere called Dunwich, in three nights’ time. He looked at the map. It was crude, but serviceable.
‘What have you got?’ asked the Luftwaffe man next to him.
‘East. You?’
‘South,’ said the airman glumly. ‘To London. Sacrificial lamb.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘We get to bluff the British into thinking it’s a strike at London. My guess is that the SS get to the coast meanwhile and zip off back to Germany.’
Erich hated to say it, but that had a ring of truth. ‘What are you going to do?’
The man lowered his voice. ‘Once I get through the fence? Whatever I feel like.’
Schuller loomed over the Luftwaffe man’s shoulder but he appeared not to have heard. ‘All set?’
‘Yes. I need to get my gloves from the rec room,’ said Erich. In there were the thick canvas gloves he’d used when building the hut. ‘It’s freezing outside. Couldn’t you have done this in summer?’
‘We have more darkness this way. We travel at night, hide by day. First pair go out in ten minutes.’
‘Who am I going with?’ Erich asked.
‘You’re coming with me,’ said Schuller.
There was a corridor of darkness stretching from the hut compound to the rear fence. The dogs had been heavily dosed with the curry powder, there was no moon and the twin holes in the fences had already been cut by Hetz. Schuller and Erich were the ninth pair to go. The SS man gave a stiff-armed salute to the rest of his men and they were off, crouched low, running towards the wire. The sound of their feet on the icy ground seemed deafening to Erich, but nothing stirred in the towers.
Erich wondered what he was doing. He had stood there in the billiard room, gloves in hand, letting time tick away, considering his options. He had decided that, among other things, at the first opportunity he should give Schuller the slip. He could imagine the fool deciding to go out in a blaze of glory while facing down some English patrol. It was the thought of that which made him act. As he had run down the steps of the recreation hut, he had slammed into Dietrich.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ Erich had asked him.
‘Trying to find out what is going on.’
Erich told him the plan.
‘He’s quite insane. He has to be stopped. They’ll blame us all.’ Dietrich had gripped his arm. ‘Don’t go.’
‘I have to,’ Erich had said, thinking of how compromised his family were, thanks to the coded letters. ‘Good luck, Werner’ had been his final words to his friend as he pushed by.
‘Here,’ whispered Schuller, snapping him out of it. The hole was less than a metre across, with jagged edges from the makeshift cutters, and they had to crawl to get through. Schuller made Erich go first, and then he followed. Erich reached the second fence without problems and as he stepped into the ploughed field the air somehow smelled different. Freer.
‘Just think, all over England and Scotland men are doing this,’ said Schuller triumphantly. ‘Come.’
They started to tramp across the field, half-stumbling over the frozen furrows. Blackness began to envelop them as the weak light from the camp petered out. Erich looked back. He could make out the dark shapes of two more escapees at the hole. ‘How do you know?’
‘Because this is what we came to England for,’ said Schuller.
‘How do you mean?’
‘Quiet.’
Erich heard a lorry change gear in the distance, then the engine noise receded. They crossed the field, more by touch and instinct than sight. Erich was glad of the thick gloves as they felt their way along a bramble hedge. They located and climbed a stile and felt tarmac beneath their feet. ‘This way,’ said Schuller. ‘Stay close.’
Erich’s eyes had adjusted now, and there was enough starlight for him to at least make out the edges of the road they were walking along. ‘What did you mean about coming to England for this?’ Erich asked.
He listened while Schuller explained that in Italy he had been summoned by the great Skorzeny himself and offered a mission against England. It involved being deliberately captured by the Allies and sent back to England to a PoW camp, where he and his men were to organise an escape committee. At a set date, to be delivered by code, he and the other SS volunteers scattered across the country were to stage a mass breakout of German PoWs. ‘The aim is to get as many men from behind the wire as possible,’ Schuller concluded.
‘And to march on London?’
‘March on London. Steal planes from American bases to bomb harbours, fight our way to the sea to be picked up by ships and submarines. A thousand different tasks …’
Erich shook his head. ‘That’s ridiculous.’
‘I know.’ He heard Schuller laugh. It certainly didn’t seem amusing to Erich. The SS man was clearly caught up in a crazy fantasy. ‘Here.’
Erich nearly walked into it. It was the Austin A10 that they could always see from the wire in daylight. Schuller bent down and began feeling on top of each tyre in turn. ‘There should be keys somewhere. Damn.’ He stood. ‘Can you get this piece of shit going?’
If he said no, would it all be over? Something glinted in the feeble light. Schuller had a knife. ‘Yes,’ Erich
said.
It took Erich ten minutes to hot-wire the car. He had just got it running when they heard a voice from behind them. ‘Hello—what are you two doing?’
Schuller turned and a diffuse beam from a gauze-wrapped blackout torch flashed in his eyes. ‘Hey,’ he protested.
‘Sorry.’ The man flicked the beam aside. ‘What you doin’ here at this time of night?’ It was a policeman, but an old one. What they called a Special. Probably the local busybody.
‘We are Poles. Guards,’ said Schuller, in his heavily accented English. ‘Just off duty.’ He pointed to the softest of glows in the fields behind. ‘From the camp.’
The SS man flashed his phoney ID, constructed from badges on the garments lent by the English and official-looking crests traced from foreign coins. Erich noticed that he kept one hand behind his back. The knife was ready.
‘Oh. Right. This your car?’
‘Yes. We leave it here most days.’
‘I been wonderin’ whose it was. OK, off you go, lads. Take care.’
Making sure not to demonstrate unseemly haste they climbed in, Schuller driving, and pulled away, the car jerking as he got used to the clutch.
‘Christ,’ said Erich, his heart pounding.
‘I know. We have to get ourselves a gun. Look in the glove compartment.’
Erich opened it. He could see something under a piece of paper. He reached in and touched the cold metal. ‘Nothing,’ he said, slamming it shut.
‘The cretinous idiots. Their orders were perfectly clear. Leave the keys on the front wheel and a gun in the glove compartment. It’s not difficult, is it?’
‘I don’t understand what you hope to achieve—’
‘Maximum disruption. With so many Germans out there, so many different plots, it will be chaos for the next few days. It is timed to coincide with a major offensive in Europe. The British will think it’s Armageddon.’
‘So what exactly are we doing?’
‘Oh, we have a plan. Those of us who volunteered really do have a mission. We are going to meet that submarine.’ Schuller slapped Erich’s knee. ‘Hinkel, my friend, we are going back to Germany to fight for the Fatherland.’