Before The Brightest Dawn (The Half-Bloods Trilogy Book 3)

by Jana Petken

  ******

  London, England

  29 September 1944

  The British soldier opened the three metre-by-three metre cell door and gestured with his thumb for Wilmot to get up off the floor. “Right, we have a change of scenery for you, Staff Sergeant. Come with us; you’ve got visitors.”

  After handcuffing Wilmot’s wrists, two British soldiers escorted him along a corridor and up the stairs. Wilmot was both dreading and excited about seeing his family; he presumed they were the visitors the Englishman, Heller, had promised him the previous day. His heart cried out for his mother, but it also thumped with an anger he couldn’t still.

  ‘Do not bring that traitor to see me,’ he had demanded of a shocked Heller. ‘My father was dead to me, and he still is.’

  He regretted the harsh words now, as he regretted many of his previous temper tantrums. He did want to see his father, but only because he needed to tell him what he thought of him to his face, and then, hopefully, rebuild their relationship down the road. He loved his papa, but all he’d thought about on his long, thirty-hour flight across the Atlantic Ocean on the Yankee Clipper seaplane, and since then in his cell, was how he could possibly forgive his father’s betrayal and at the same time remain loyal to Germany. The two didn’t go hand in hand.

  “In you go,” the British soldier said, poking Wilmot in the back as he stood in an open doorway.

  Wilmot entered the sparsely furnished room with the customary desk and chairs as its centrepiece. Another room, he thought. More forms to fill out, and more tedious questions to answer. He was annoyed with the British. He was a Wehrmacht NCO, but they hadn’t allowed him to wear his uniform. ‘Isn’t that against the rules of the Geneva Convention?’ he had asked Heller.

  “Take a seat,” the soldier ordered, then he had given Wilmot a meaningful glare as he removed the handcuffs and left the room, closing the door behind him.

  Wilmot let out a dejected sigh and slumped angrily into the hard chair. What the hell am I doing here when I should be working in Mr Barrett’s fields, or sitting at his kitchen table eating Mrs Barrett’s waffles with syrup whilst gazing at my love, Dottie? Thank God, he’d had the foresight to pen a note for Dottie and leave it with Egon. It had read:

  I have been sent away, but I will return for you, my darling, Dottie. Do not forget me or think I have abandoned you. You will see me one day soon, and we will marry. Promise me you will wait.

  Egon had been devastated. He had cried at the news, but Wilmot had been more concerned at the time about his friend forgetting to pass Dottie the note at the camp hospital…

  The door opened. Wilmot stood, turned, and came face to face with his mother. She looked older; grey peppering her black hair, wrinkles around her eyes, her loving smile, tremulous and hesitant. His Mama, wrapped in a black coat, looking like a vulnerable little bird, gasping at the sight of his scarred, disfigured face.

  “My darling boy,” she said, rushing into his arms. “My baby … my Wilmot … my son!”

  He pushed her gently away to look at her at arm’s length. He was crying, but the hot tears streaming unabated down his face felt wonderful and real, as his emotions, smothered for years, surged and almost overwhelmed him.

  Laura helped an overawed Wilmot to the chair, pulled over another one, and sat so close to her son, their knees brushed together. “Please don’t cry, Willie. I’m here … I’m here,” she sobbed, cupping his wet face in her hands.

  Wilmot whispered through his wracking sobs, “Mutti, I never thought I would see you again. Even when I got your letters in America, I didn’t dare to think about us being together like this. I’ve missed you. I’ve wanted to tell you about all the terrible things I have done, and all the horrors I have seen … and the things that were done to me. Mutti, do you hate me for serving Germany?”

  “Oh, Son, no … no, of course, I don’t.”

  As they hugged again, Wilmot realised he had not planned to ask that last question. Why should he be in any way apologetic for supporting the Third Reich when he had grown up in a house with a father who had been a loyal Nazi Party financial donor? He pulled away again, still overwhelmed with joy, but now also being nagged by a more malevolent inner voice.

  “I know about my father being alive. You were wrong to lie to me.”

  “Wilmot…”

  “Please, don’t speak – don’t defend Father or yourself…”

  “She has nothing to defend. If you want to get angry, Son, you will do it with me. Leave your mother out of this.”

  Wilmot turned sharply in the chair, saw Dieter standing in the doorway, then turned back to Laura. “I can’t...”

  “Yes, you can, and you will,” Laura said decisively, standing. “I will come back after you and your father talk.” She bent down, kissed Wilmot’s forehead, and then gazed at his face. “My darling, darling beautiful boy,” she sobbed again.

  After Laura had left, Wilmot glared at Dieter, who sat in a chair on the other side of the desk. Every bone in his body wanted him to get up, kiss his father’s cheek and shake his hand, but bitterness and the memory of his staggering grief on the Russian Front when he’d received Kriminaldirektor Biermann’s letter announcing that Dieter Vogel had been killed in a bomb attack, still haunted him.

  “Mr Heller told me you didn’t want to see me,” Dieter eventually said, breaking the silence.

  “That’s right, so why are you here?”

  Dieter flinched as if he’d been slapped across the face. He coughed, then recovered to say, “I will speak, Wilmot, and if you don’t like what I have to say, I will leave. Is that okay?”

  Wilmot was breathless. Unable to handle the emotional turmoil, he begged, “Please go.”

  “No, not until I explain my reasons to you.”

  Wilmot felt a tightness in his chest. He took in a long breath, then let it out. “Father, please, leave me. This is too much for me. I am a prisoner of war, and I shouldn’t be getting special treatment from the British, who are my enemy. I don’t want it.”

  Dieter’s eyes filled up with hurt, but again he recovered. He sniffed, then smoothed down his moustache with his fingers; the thick white line across his top lip was the remnant of the beard he had finally shaved off that morning. Then with his eyes glued to Wilmot’s face, he began his story, timidly at first, but becoming more passionate as he went through the years leading to the present.

  “… I don’t regret any of it, Son. Had I thought we could have unseated Hitler by democratic means, I would have stayed to fight him, but we both know he is a dictator who has never respected the rights of others’ political ideals, race, or religion.”

  Wilmot swallowed painfully. He was shocked, even though he had long suspected the Führer’s crimes against the peoples of Europe. He was saddened by his father’s accounts of gas being fabricated in German and Polish factories, of special chambers with ovens in which Jews and other ethnic races were burnt after being gassed to death. He was disturbed by his father’s calculations on the numbers of death camps being built to house and kill citizens across the continent. He was also disgusted by his portrayal of Kriminaldirektor Biermann, who had been nothing but kind to him.

  His fellow prisoners in Kansas had whispered about atrocities and racial cleansing going on in Poland; about Jews and Christians disappearing by the thousands. Wehrmacht soldiers who had recently arrived in Kansas from France had also mentioned the deportations of hundreds of thousands of Jews. Some had gone as far as to suggest they were being exterminated. But since Günter’s beating in Hut 64, Wilmot had steered clear of all discussions on the state of the war now being fought against the Allies on European soil; instead, he had poured his energy into helping Günter regain fitness, protecting Egon’s back from bullies, and being creative in the Hobby Hall to impress his sweet Dottie. This talk was unbearable, yet his father went on and on…

  “… we have proof, Son. The Polish Resistance had a man inside a camp called Auschwitz. He witnessed with his
own eyes what I have described to you. Of course, none of it is public knowledge…”

  Wilmot’s head was exploding. He glared at Dieter with eyes narrowed with pain. “That’s enough! Please, no more, Papa – no more of this talk. You are a traitor; that’s the truth you’re skirting with all this nonsense about slaughters and racial cleansing. You are the criminal, not the Third Reich!”

  Dieter looked at his son levelly, man-to-man, and Wilmot felt his stomach knot. When his father spoke, his voice was almost unbearably soft. “I would so much rather be a traitor, my Son, than an accomplice to genocide. That is the truth.”

  An hour later, Dieter, Laura and Heller discussed Wilmot’s future in a pub opposite the prison where Wilmot was being held. Dieter had not made a breakthrough with Wilmot, but Laura had assured her husband that despite the anger and hurt, their little boy was still the loving son he had always been.

  “My son hates me. I’m not certain he will ever forgive me, Laura,” Dieter said.

  “He needs time, Dieter. When I went back in, he was weeping. My love, you mustn’t be hard on him or yourself. Learning you were alive and working for the enemy must have been a terrible shock for him,” Laura responded, giving his hand an affectionate squeeze.

  “He’ll have time to come to terms with it where he’s going,” Heller said.

  “Will we be able to visit him?” Laura asked.

  “No, I’m sorry, Laura, but this is as far as I can take this. You won’t be able to visit him or deliver packages or notes by hand. He must not be seen to have ties to England or to receive any privileges other than those that are given to his fellow prisoners.”

  “Jonathan is right, dear. We don’t want the hardcore Nazi prisoners to pick on him.” Dieter downed the whisky he’d ordered to settle his nerves. “What happens now, Jonathan?”

  “His destination should remain secret, and I count on you that it will.” Heller’s eyes bored into Laura.

  “Of course. Who am I going to tell?”

  “Hannah and Judith mustn’t know.”

  “Oh,” Laura’s face fell. “I promise, I won’t say a word.”

  “He’s being transported to Winter Quarter Camp, in Ascot, Berkshire. Your son is clever. He asked me what his cover story will be when he suddenly arrives at a camp full of suspicious Germans. He knows what to say, and he knows how to behave.” Heller smiled at the Vogels whose faces were strained with concern. “He’s a decent man. He’ll get through this, and you will too. Hold on to this thought … when the war ends and he’s released, you can both meet him at the camp’s gates and take him home. Be patient, Laura.”

  Laura, who had started crying again, clutched Heller’s hand. “Knowing he’s in England will help us get through this too. I don’t know how to thank you, Jonathan. You really are a godsend to my family.”

  Epilogue

  I

  Mauthausen-Gusen Concentration Camp,

  Austria, 5 May 1945

  Kurt opened his eyes from a restless nap and stared up at the wooden ceiling above his bunk. Today. It must be today, he thought. He rolled onto his side and dry-heaved over the edge of the bed, then groaned with stomach pains as he turned again to lie on his back. It was past dawn. A brilliant white light was shining through the glassless, barred window, breaking on the side of his face. The sun was up, but he wasn’t going anywhere: no work in the quarry, no roll call, no possible death at the hands of the SS for no other reason than he was still breathing and was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It had been an astonishing three days, during which the lives and futures of the inmates had been turned on their heads, and the seemingly omnipotent SS and Gestapo guards had run for the hills in fear.

  Kurt twisted his head to the right. Romek, lying in the same bunk, was as still as a dead man, his lips parted, his face serene – but he was breathing. Nothing, not even the brutish Kapos had managed to end Romek Gabula.

  The young man lying on Romek’s right-hand side was unequivocally dead and probably had been for hours; rigour mortis had set in, and he was as stiff as the wooden board they lay on. His caved-in face with harshly protruding cheekbone ridges made his eyes look as though they had been pushed into deep hollows. His dropped jaw and gaping mouth revealed bare gums and a swollen black tongue, and old facial scars were black against his whitish-grey, waxy skin. Bogdan, his long-time Polish friend, had fought hard in Warsaw and was a hero to his people. How undeserving he was of this cruel, undignified end which left him the equal of every other corpse in the camp.

  Kurt shook Romek a second time. “Come on, Romek, wake up. Romek, I must tell you about last night.”

  “Shut up, Kurt. I will not move from here until someone with proper authority arrives. Everyone has gone mad, and I’m not dying now in a chaos of our own making.”

  Kurt pulled out his winning card. “The SS guards have left and so has Commandant Ziereis. Most of the Austrian police have also gone. We’re hunting for Kapos. Don’t you want revenge?”

  Romek checked Bogdan’s pulse, then pushed his corpse off the bed. “Psiakrew – damn it, Bogdan.” With a heavy heart, he rolled onto his side to face Kurt. “It’s really happening?” His emaciated face brightened with the possibility of liberation.

  “Yes. The Volksstrum militia and the Vienna firemen they brought in have left, too. Guess where I was three hours ago?”

  Romek groaned, “No riddles, please.”

  “I went to the kitchens. Prisoners were swarming all over it, looking for food. A fight broke out, and people were stabbed with carving knives. I managed to get this.”

  Kurt, who had been hiding the unopened tin of sardines in his baggy inmate trousers, whipped it out like magic. “When you feel well enough to get up, we’ll go look for something to open it with.”

  “I see you got yourself a shirt at last,” Romek croaked, his lips turning up in a slight smile.

  “And I also brought one for you,” Kurt said, pulling it out from under his thigh. Men were like gluttons, rigging themselves out with four or five shirts and two or three pairs of trousers. “After we left the kitchens, I followed the crowd to the Kommandantur’s offices. I shouldn’t have gone there. Another fight started over some tins of food hidden in Ziereis’ desk drawers. They destroyed the place…”

  Kurt stopped talking and studied Romek. His friend’s skin was pasty, and his breathing was laboured. He looked worse than he had the previous day. “You’re right, Romek. You stay where you are … no sense in both of us going out there. If there’s food and water, I will find it and bring it back. Don’t you dare die on me.”

  “I’ll try not to,” Romek said, a strange quiescence in his voice as he stared again at Bogdan.

  Kurt was worried sick, both literally and figuratively. About three hundred prisoners were dying from typhus every day. Since January, Jews who had been in the death camps in and around Poland had been arriving in their thousands from death marches, as those who had walked the hundreds of miles called them. According to recently arrived Jews, thousands of people had died on the road or were shot because they couldn’t keep up on the gruelling march. More had died than arrived, one man stated poetically.

  Kurt didn’t know how many prisoners were now in the camp; by some accounts, maybe fifty … sixty thousand. For the first time since arriving at Mauthausen, he had spoken to Hungarian Jews who had been sent directly from Auschwitz to the Mauthausen subcamp of Gusen to work in the munition’s factories.

  Was Romek dying of typhus? Kurt wondered, glancing at his friend whose eyes were now closed. God, he hoped not. The camp was rife with disease, lacking in clothing, shoes and linens, and not a loaf of bread was to be found anywhere. The subcamps, Gusen I and II, were filled beyond human limits. There were as many as five sick men to a narrow camp bunk, and it wouldn’t surprise him if Romek had caught the disease through head lice from the recently arrived men whose heads had not yet been shaved. If help did not come today, the dead would pile up, and Romek would be amongst them
.

  Deciding it was time to move, Kurt rolled again, using every muscle as he laboriously swung his scrawny legs over the edge of the bed. Since being deported from Warsaw at the end of the uprising, he had lost almost a third his body weight. He could lie on the bunk with Romek to wait for an Allied army to liberate the camp, but he was also afraid he’d die if he didn’t keep his mind occupied and his body moving. He hid the tin of sardines in the folds of Romek’s oversized shirt; it would be safe there while he searched for an opener. Then, without shoes, Kurt went to join the prisoners who had organised resistance operations.

  By 1000 hours, news that a group of prisoners had sabotaged the factories came back to Kurt and the men he was with. In the mayhem of the last three days, the transportation system had broken down. A few men decided to take their chances and flee the camp on foot, but Kurt was against that idea. Dangers lurked outside the fences; he’d pointed out to fellow Germans wanting to leave.

  ‘SS soldiers are probably still in the vicinity. And where do you think you’re going to find food, medical help, or clothing for the nights that are still cold? The Americans or British will be here soon. They will find this place, eventually.’ But they left, regardless of him cautioning them to wait for the Allies, rumoured to be in Austria.

  Along with another fifteen men, Kurt made his way to Block 6 where it was reported that a group of German scum and Kapos were taking refuge. The prisoners, armed with sticks, rocks from the quarry, and their wooden-soled shoes were weak with hunger; nonetheless, between them, they managed to knock down the hut’s door and enter.

  Inside, Kapos, who had a week earlier beaten inmates with batons for not transporting rocks up the one hundred and eighty-six steps from the quarry floor to the main camp quickly enough, cowered with block bosses and room chiefs. These men, who had over the years been complicit in the murders of tens of thousands of prisoners of numerous nationalities, were now on their knees begging to be spared with a hundred pathetic excuses on their tongues. “They made me do it – I didn’t want to help them – I was a prisoner, like you.” On and on they gave their contemptible apologies for the torture and death they had caused.