by L E Pembroke
Through the gloom I felt, rather than saw, a presence approaching me. Out of the dark, like peas popping from their shells, two small men suddenly stood in front of me. Were they the bantams who had sworn at me? Their heads, which barely reached my shoulder height, were covered by berets with a coloured ribbon attached, although later, at the inquiry, I couldn’t swear to the colour. Startled by their silent approach, I, with a quick intake of breath, took a step backwards. My gaze was fixed on their unsmiling worn faces.
‘Excuse me.’ They didn’t move or speak. I stepped to one side; they did the same. For them it was a game. I stepped in the other direction. They followed. Icy fingers of fear restricted my breath. I took another sideways step. I was off the path and on the road. They desisted. Tentatively I moved forward, lengthened my stride and increased my pace.
‘Jest a wee minute.’ The words, slurred and hollow sounding, rolled towards me; I will never forget my fear. Had they turned back and decided to follow me after all? I broke into a run, could hear footsteps coming up fast behind me.
A whisper of air on my left side: someone passed me. Impossible to breathe deeply, my breath came in noisy shallow gasps. Out of the dark one of them appeared in front of me. His ugly little face was thrust close to mine. He grinned. I stopped. I realised they were playing with me as a cat plays with a mouse. Where was the other one? The man in front of me stood so close I could smell his sour breath and even see the black gaps of missing teeth. His pinched wrinkled face was remarkably like that of a baby monkey. My heart hammered loudly; was he going to rape me?
‘Let me pass, please.’ My voice was raised. I was no longer merely fearful. I was furious. Where was the other one? All of a sudden my body recoiled with disgust. Behind me, pressing into my backside, I felt something hard.
‘How would youse like this between yer legs?’
Affronted, I whirled around, my fear forgotten. I lashed out with my arm and knocked his beret to the ground, but he had ducked in anticipation, the blow merely glancing off his skull. ‘Get away from me, you filthy creature,’ I screamed.
I knew – and of course he knew – that I was petrified and realised there would be no escape for me. It was like those terrible nightmares that I think most of us have suffered with, and I know many soldiers suffer with. Our wards were often noisy, turbulent places at night as soldiers relived their worst experiences. In such nightmares there’s no way of escaping a pack of brutal attackers until one awakens – panting, sweating and shaking with intolerable fear. But this was no nightmare; this was reality with no way out.
‘Uppity c—,’ snarled the one whose thin white shaft still pointed towards me. He lowered his head, charged and butted me cruelly in the stomach. I gasped, bent forward, then lurched backward. The other, who had previously barred my way, gripped both my arms from behind with his small hands – made strong, I suppose, by years of working with pick and shovel on the coal face.
The principal aggressor advanced. I felt his stale-smelling body almost suffocate me. I tried to butt him in the crotch with my head.
‘Old ’er still,’ he growled to the other one who tightened his grip on my arms.
He stepped back, straightened his leg and, with his booted foot, kicked for goal. His steel-capped boot smashed into my jaw. The crack was electrifying, the agony instantaneous. I was totally disabled and barely conscious. I felt myself topple back on to the uneven paving stones. Someone fell on me. I felt rough hands pulling at my skirt and pushing and probing seeking for the orifice within which he intended scattering his seed.
Part 4
The War, 1917–19
CHAPTER 14
ANDREW
I heard the sounds that told of violation – the raised voice, the slap, the scream and the crack of broken bone. I had been held up by a long queue of officers and men who were crowding into the Rail Transport Officer’s office to have their leave passes stamped. I was hoping against hope that Genevieve had waited for me, although it was now nearly 1830 hours, and the most time we would have together was less than an hour.
I turned towards the blood-curdling sounds of rage and frenzy, knowing as I did that I wouldn’t make it to Genevieve that night. I glimpsed them, acting like vicious children tormenting a helpless animal. The situation was clear. I acted instinctively. Competent with my fists, I grabbed the collar of the man hunched over the woman.
‘What the f—?’ The bantam shouted just before he felt the force of a right cross to the chin which lifted him into the air before leaving him senseless and spread-eagled on the ground. His lecherous comrade took off into the night.
I leant forward to pick up the woman. Utter shock, almost impossible to believe – the tortured face of the girl I hoped to be with that evening. I ignored her moaning and placed her across my shoulder. I didn’t run, imagining the further pain that jolting would cause. Instead, I strode towards the hospital casualty department. A nurse pushed forward a stretcher. I lowered her gently onto it, and when again I saw her poor distorted face, I wished I’d killed those cowardly and ruthless creatures.
‘Her jaw will have to be wired,’ someone said. Whatever treatment she needed it would probably be months before she recovered completely. There might be a skull fracture. I stayed by her side until, only minutes later, they wheeled her through the casualty department to theatres.
Unable to wait any longer, I left and sprinted towards the station. I would write to her, and the letter would be forwarded to England where they would send her for what I believed would be a long rehabilitation period. Thirty minutes after leaving the hospital, I dived into the last carriage as my train pulled away from the platform.
Crowded as troop trains always are, it was nevertheless quiet as trains going back to the front always are. The contrast in atmosphere to the noise of anticipation when we left our units to go on leave was almost too much to deal with. These were fellows who, only a week before, had been marvelling at their good fortune to be out of it, fellows who were noisily making plans for a week of celebration, a week of ‘wine, women and song’; a week without stress and gut-wrenching fear. That night, those fellows were half asleep, lolling on kit bags in corridors, many of them obviously badly hung over from their last night on the tiles. Others were silent and looking grim, wondering whether in the next few days they would run into the bullet with their name on it. It was so much more difficult to go back when one knew what to expect. However, I doubted whether any of them were experiencing anything like the crazy, mixed-up thoughts that tormented me.
I’d left girlfriends before, often – that’s what soldiers do. But most of us soon get over the enforced parting and become totally immersed in our profession of arms. This time my feelings were very different. There had been no commitment between us – no time for commitment – although I was fairly sure that if I’d met Jen in a sane world we’d have soon formed a lasting relationship. Funny thing, this strong attraction we feel for a particular person. She was a nice-looking woman, but not an outstanding beauty. Twenty-four years old, yet despite the experiences she must have had since joining the Army Nursing Service, she was obviously still a naive woman and completely lacking in guile and affectation. Perhaps that was why she appealed to me.
More important to me at that moment was how quickly would she recover and whether she would recover completely from the terrifying and appallingly invasive attack that those men had made on her. I knew I would write to her as soon as I had a free moment. It would probably be some time before she received my letter. What bothered me was whether or not I should reveal that I had been there and saw her at the time of the attempted rape. I had a feeling that now was not the time to tell her that I saw her when she was so vulnerable.
*
I had been back with the battalion less than twenty-four hours when I was ordered to lead a raid. These things had to be done, but being part of a raiding party was not the sort of thing any soldier would happily volunteer to do.
We were a s
ection of ten men detailed to steal up on the enemy in the dark, get as much information as possible quickly and take a couple of prisoners at the same time. Raids were the commonest form of intelligence-gathering at the battalion level.
We left our lines at 0200 hours on a moonless night with thick cloud cover. We crept noiselessly from our own position. We crossed no man’s land. We reached their lines of barbed wire in front of their forward trenches, cut them and crawled through. We maintained total silence and reached their main trench line without mishap. They were taken completely by surprise. We hurled our grenades; our men took two prisoners, then withdrew to cover us.
With one of the sergeants I searched for maps and plans. We could hear their reinforcements thundering up the traverses in response to the noise of the grenades. Time to get out. I was only a yard or two behind my sergeant. So near the completion of a successful raid.
I hoped he made it. That was my last conscious thought. I was fortunate – only a moment of intense pain as a volley of rifle fire ripped into my chest. The miracle was I wasn’t killed, although members of my section would have assumed I was.
*
I suppose it was a day or two later when I regained consciousness; before that I had been drifting, sometimes aware of voices and other times, probably as the morphine wore off, aware of pain. My first clear memory was of the stark white wall of a proper hospital ward opposite me. Then, as I turned my head very slightly, I saw a long line of beds with nurses and orderlies attending to the various patients. I thanked God for the miracle of my salvation and presumed I was in one of our own hospitals – until a nurse came up to me and spoke in German. She indicated to me that I was in hospital in Cologne. Once again I thought how damned stupid and utterly futile war is! We’d been maiming and killing each other for three years, then they took the trouble to send me back more than a hundred miles so that they could do a proper job patching me up.
I stayed in that hospital for several weeks, and I couldn’t have had more caring treatment. As soon as I was able to get about I was discharged under guard and commenced the long train journey east to prison camp.
*
There were three Allied prisoners travelling to camp that day. One was a morose-looking Frenchman with little English. Henri had lost a lower leg and been fitted with a wooden prosthesis by the Germans – a generous thing for the enemy to do, but then war is full of such strange paradoxes.
My other companion was Welsh, Gareth Evans, small, loquacious and cheerful despite his unsightly facial wounds. A grenade had exploded and fragments of metal ripped into the left side of his face; among other things, slicing off his outer ear. Evans, before the war, a tutor in the Language Department at Bristol University, had enlisted in 1914 in his local regiment, the South Wales Borderers. He spoke German fluently, an accomplishment that would prove invaluable to us in the near future.
Our destination was Clausthal Camp for Officers situated near Goslar in Lower Saxony. We marched through the gates on a dark, dank, ice-cold late afternoon with our boots crunching through six or eight inches of hard-packed snow. Despite the cold, prisoners stood outside the mess and clapped, whistled and cheered as we were escorted to an accommodation hut. Gareth and I gave them a cheerful wave while Henri stumped along beside us, grimly detached. We later discovered that prisoners always welcomed new arrivals, who for the next day or two provided them with the latest war news, thus creating a diverting respite from a deadly dull prison routine.
We were allotted bunks, then collected blankets, army issue jumpers and greatcoats from the camp Red Cross store. We then went to the mess block to meet our fellow captives.
Prisoners in the camp were from three nations: Britain, France and Russia; I was the one exception. The Russians, because of language difficulties, kept very much to themselves, although they did join in three-nation soccer matches. They were pleasant enough fellows who were expecting to be repatriated at any moment as Russia’s war with Germany was now over. I can tell you they had mixed feelings about returning home. They’d heard rumours that the new Russian leaders did not greet with open arms their soldiers who had been taken prisoner.
The English fellows played cricket among themselves, and rugby matches against the French. Some of us were determined to keep fit and spent an hour or so each day jogging around the exercise yard behind the camp buildings. We all played cards, provided by the Red Cross. Life in camp wasn’t arduous. It was just plain boring. Unlike other-rank camps, where the men do hard physical labour such as road-mending or mining, officer prisoners are not required to work. Within days, I found the aimless hanging around deadly dull and mentally debilitating. It was a blow to my pride to be treated like some family pet, fed and watered at regular intervals and locked away in my kennel if I misbehaved. Gareth felt exactly as I did.
Most prisoners recognised the need for intellectual challenge, and they formed various committees to devise a host of diverse activities. That wasn’t enough for me; I knew I’d never settle down in camp. I soon began thinking about possible methods of escape.
I understood the attitude of many of the fellows, some of whom had been fighting in France for more than three years; they just wanted to get home to their families in one piece, but I couldn’t help feeling differently from them. Perhaps if I’d had a wife and children to worry about, I might have been less eager to take risks. Those blokes were content to see out the war within the confines of the camp, with their regular supply of cabbage and potato soup being augmented by Red Cross rations. And who could blame them? I, on the other hand, believed it was my duty to try to escape.
I didn’t know how many of my company had survived, but I felt bound to get back to them rather than sit safely on my backside in northern Germany while they endured all the squalor and tension of life in the trenches. I would never forget the mud, the dampness seeping into our bones, the metal-grey sky and the constant stench of body odour, tobacco and excrement. The Belgian trenches were always waterlogged and swarming with black rats as big as cats. Our casualty rate soared in Belgium, and such illnesses as trench fever were rife. The numbers of fellows who went down with trench foot (caused by wearing saturated socks and often resulting in amputation of the foot) was simply horrifying.
What motivated Gareth to escape I wasn’t sure, although he had spoken often about his girl, named Gwen. He said he intended asking her to marry him the minute he got back home. He hoped his facial wounds wouldn’t be too much for her to cope with.
We had been at Clausthal for only a week when Gareth and I began to plan our escape. There was an escape committee, albeit almost defunct, because there had been no attempted escapes for more than a year; nevertheless their assistance proved invaluable. The fact that there had been no attempt to escape was a point in our favour because a certain laxity had developed among the guard; namely their patrol routine never varied. This inflexibility enabled us to plan a breakout during a thirty-second period when the section of perimeter fence closest to our mess was hidden from the view of the guard.
The camp was laid out as a rectangle and surrounded on all sides by a closely meshed fence, six metres high and topped with barbed wire. The front half held the sleeping huts and mess block; the back half, divided from the front by another high fence, was the exercise yard. The main gate was centrally placed at the front, with the guardhouse outside the wire to the right of it. Guard dogs roamed freely at night in the rear exercise yard, and the camp was illuminated by arc lights.
An escape through the back of the camp being impossible because of the dogs, we finally agreed upon a night escape through the wire close to the guardhouse. It wasn’t as risky as it sounds. Behind the guardhouse, but within the camp, prisoners had planted a vegetable garden near the mess. At that time of the year the garden contained only wild grasses and tall weeds, which would afford cover to a man crawling towards the wire with a pair of wire-cutters. That garden area was as black as pitch at night and perfect for those assigned to cut the wi
re.
The guard invariably came out of the guardhouse, turned right, then patrolled down the right side of the camp. He returned the same way, continued along the front fence, then turned down the left side of the camp where the accommodation huts blocked his view. At this stage we planned that one of the escape committee would crawl forward and cut the wire. He would flatten himself among the weeds until the guard passed behind the accommodation huts on his return journey. We were to wait, crouched against the wall of the mess, and take off through the hole after the guard’s next passing. It couldn’t have been simpler, and we were confident of success, especially as our guards were old and unfit for active service.
It was many hundred miles from Clausthal to the comparative safety of France so we decided to pose as a German peasant couple. One of the guards, a widower in his late fifties who smoked like a chimney, proved to be their weak link. Many prison guards were not trained and disciplined soldiers. We reckoned this particular chap could be persuaded to help us in return for a few marks and three or four packets of French or English cigarettes that came in Red Cross parcels.
He supplied the clothes we needed: for me, shapeless workmen’s overalls and for Gareth the usual peasant woman’s black, long, rough woollen dress, black shawl and a headscarf that would neatly cover Gareth’s facial wounds. A few intensive language lessons from my small friend left me competent enough in basic German phrases. Anyway, who would attempt to indulge in learned conversation with a tall, grim-faced, badly dressed yokel and his chubby, unprepossessing wife?
Apart from the sentry on duty, we believed there would be no chance of detection by guards, who, when off duty, huddled around an iron stove in the fug of the guardhouse. No, we didn’t fear the Germans, but their dogs could have given the game away if they had been permitted, as they should have been, to patrol around the front half of the camp at night as well as during the day. As always, when the heat was on, we had to subdue our worries and doubts about the outcome and concentrate solely on the split-second timing of our escape.