The Perils and the Prize

by Jim Crossley

  “Hauptmann, you have been severely wounded and you are in a British military hospital on Malta. As soon as you are well enough you will be taken away from here and transferred to a military hospital in a safe place. I have to tell you now that we could not save your right arm; when your plane crashed, it was torn off above the elbow. The stump may give you some pain at first, but you’ll soon be right as rain.”

  “Right as rain.”

  Somehow the words echoed and re-echoed through Hans’ brain in the days which followed. He saw them somehow written on all the walls, slowly rotating and changing colour. He wanted to reach out and touch them but somehow he couldn’t. What did it mean? Pain – that meant something, he felt it every waking moment in his hospital bed, the nagging pain of a lost limb, the pain as the orderly none too gently removed his bandages and replaced them, the pain as the events of the day before his crash slowly gained form and reality in his head. But rain “right as rain”, what was that? Slowly, slowly the reality of his predicament floated to the top of his consciousness. Dimly he heard the familiar roar and scream of engines and felt the shudder of explosions as the island was shaken by attacking aircraft. Somehow, however, he didn’t care too much about any of this. Morphine was keeping him on a gentle “high” in which nothing really mattered as long as he was left to long solitary dozes, undisturbed and safe in his own little cocoon of drug-induced contentment.

  All this changed when he eventually arrived, still bedridden, in a hospital ship, at Gibraltar. Still unable to walk or stand, he was transferred to the hospital section of a prisoner-of-war camp and deposited alongside a sorry rank of wounded soldiers and airmen. Little by little the implications of his new circumstances had been coming home to him. Though his treatment at the hands of British medical staff had been reasonably efficient, he was a prisoner and could expect little in the way of comforts, at least, he thought, until Germany won the war. But lack of comforts was nothing compared to the terrible wound which kept him in debilitating pain all day, his missing arm, calling out to the rest of his body that it needed attention. But it was during the nights that a chilling, terrible reality gripped him, seized him with a terror he could not subdue. His arm! His arm gone! He remembered an old man who used to stumble about the estate at his home, grinning, simpering, appealing, showing his stump where once had been a strong limb and begging for pence. How could he ever do anything worthwhile, take any pleasure in life now? He, a poor cripple, useless, a thing to be pitied? Hans would cover his face and try to sob himself into some sort of sleep.

  He had been a few weeks in Gibraltar when a fresh detail of prisoners arrived. Fliegerkorps X had suffered another day of severe losses, this time because it had attempted a raid on Malta just when a new formation of British fighters became available and made mincemeat of a weakly escorted formation of Stukas. Numerous German aircrew officers had been fished out of the sea, six of them more or less severely burnt or wounded, and these were shipped to Gibraltar to await transfer to Britain. It so happened that all of these six were younger than Hans and were dedicated, fanatical, Nazis. News of the fate of Obersturmfuhrer Feldman had reached the aircrews soon after the attack on Rampant’s convoy and the SS had put their own gloss on it. According to them, Hans had fallen in love with a Jewess, murdered Feldman and betrayed the attack on the convoy to the British. He had then escaped from the ensuing air battle and given himself up to the enemy. It did not take these six long to make it clear to their erstwhile colleague that an ugly fate awaited him as soon as he was out of hospital and came within the clutches of the Nazi POW camp administration system. “You traitor aristocrats are all the same,” one of them hissed as he limped past Hans’ bed. “Jew lover, be careful when you come among us true Germans; we know how to deal with traitors.”

  The ex-German liner Minden embarked a sorry load of passengers for the voyage home to England. There were injured British, Allied and German stretcher cases, and three hundred lightly wounded Italian troops captured in North Africa. Among the Luftwaffe officer prisoners were the six who had been threatening Hans. Allied and enemy wounded were in separate but adjoining wards, the enemy casualties being rather casually guarded by a Pioneer Corps corporal and six men. There were two Royal Army Medical Corps doctors on board and a dozen QAIMNS nurses tried to make them all as comfortable as possible; they were assisted by a handful of male medical orderlies. Although she was painted dazzling white with huge red crosses all over her, Minden was far from safe as she steamed alone and unescorted up the Portuguese coast and across the Bay of Biscay. U-boats and enemy aircraft did not always respect the red crosses and mines were of course entirely blind to them. It was now autumn, but to everyone’s relief the weather was kind and the voyage started smoothly. At one point a German Condor aircraft flew close and took a careful look at the ship – she was cheered by any of the Luftwaffe men who could see her – but she flew away apparently satisfied that Minden was the genuine article.

  It was not until after this incident that Angela, who had been looking after some terribly burnt British tank crews, happened to walk through Hans’ ward. He glimpsed her as she passed. Immediately he felt something leap inside him.

  Could it be? Impossible?

  She did not see him but hurried on her mission. Hans waved his good arm and called to the soldier who was on duty in the ward.

  “That nurse, quick, I must see her.”

  “Why, what’s the matter, mate? She’s on another ward.”

  “Yes, but I must see her. I knew her before the war, in England.”

  “Don’t know nothing about that, anyway she’s busy. Tell you what though, you tell me her name and I’ll see if I can catch her when she next passes.”

  Impatient, Hans had to be content. Strangely, from that moment on, his condition began to improve rapidly. That very day, for the first time, he managed to get up and walk carefully about the ward, steadying himself with his one good arm. He kept a good eye on the guard and tried to get into conversation with him so as to be sure he wouldn’t forget his promise. The man proved uncommunicative. He was as good as his word, however, and when he met Angela in a corridor the following day, he spoke to her.

  “Excuse me, Miss, but there’s a Jerry patient, Mr von Pilsen, ’ee says as ’ee knows you back in Blighty. Seemed a nice enough bloke and quiet, so I says I’d let you know.”

  Angela almost dropped the bed pan she was carrying.

  “What! Not Hans! What’s he doing here? Is he badly wounded? I must go to him! Where is he?”

  Hans was sitting on his bed, trying to write with his left hand; he had suddenly realised that he should write to his parents, via the Red Cross, and to several other people in Germany. He was sure it would be allowed, but first of all there was a note for the guard to take to Angela. He struggled with the pencil, ashamed of the misshapen, ugly letters scrawled across the paper. Then there she was, running, yes, running towards his bed. He felt himself flush red in the face as he struggled to his feet. He tried pathetically to open both arms to embrace her and found himself off-balance, staggering to compensate for the gentle movement of the ship. Before he could fall, two strong brown arms were round him, gently lowering him onto the bed. This could only be Angela and her touch was still somehow familiar and reassuring. They sat side by side, unable to speak, each totally overcome by the other’s presence.

  Angela broke the silence.

  “Hans, oh, Hans, what happened? How badly are you hurt? Who is looking after you?”

  He did not answer, but sat still trembling with emotion. Eventually he looked at her, prim in her nurse’s uniform.

  “Oh, my love, what are you doing on this ship? This is war, this is dangerous, you should be safely at home. How can they have let you go to Gibraltar, to a war zone? You could get killed.”

  “Well, you seem to be the one who got closest to being killed. Tell me, what injuries do you have? How did it happen?”

  Hans told her about his crash, though not the r
eason for it, and, little by little, conversation started to flow more easily. War was a taboo subject; they remembered Cambridge, Shoreside Cottage, the dances they had had, their first meeting in Germany, then the tannoy summoned Angela away and off she hurried to another ward, not forgetting a swift kiss on his forehead and a promise to be back in the evening.

  Unfortunately, this encounter was not unobserved. Kurt Gronsen, the most senior of Hans’ fellow Luftwaffe casualties and the most fervent Nazi, had slipped into the ward to find his traitorous fellow officer obviously closely involved with an English girl, dressed as a nurse, but probably an intelligence agent, talking in fluent English. He was almost certainly telling her secret information about German forces at that very minute. As soon as the ship docked, von Pilsen would surely be snatched away by British intelligence and doubtless sent out on some other mission of betrayal. This must be stopped and he was the man who must do it. The problem was how? He had no weapon, and was himself suffering from an amputation, a foot removed when he was being cut out of his wrecked Stuka which had crashed on Malta. His injury, however, earned him permission to walk on deck for an hour or so each evening so as to get used to using crutches. Maybe he could put this short period of relative freedom to find some sort of weapon. That very afternoon he struck lucky. When no one was looking, he managed to get hold of a small hand axe which was stowed in a cabinet on deck, ready to be used to cut away the lines securing the lifeboats in case it was necessary to release them in a hurry. He managed to slip it into the leg of his trousers and, limping rather more painfully than usual, returned to his bed space and slipped the axe under his mattress. He made himself scarce that evening when Angela returned to see Hans. She had brought with her a much-prized can of Californian peaches which the two shared, sitting on the bunk. She had spoken to the medical officer in charge of Hans’ case and learnt from him of the loss of blood, the depression and the generally low morale of his charge.

  “Seemed a lot better this evening though, I thought,” he concluded. “Why are you interested?”

  “Oh, we met in England before the war,” she replied. “Nice boy, friend of my brother’s, so I couldn’t really ignore him when I saw him here.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you what I think he needs,” said the MO, “more fresh air. I’ve got an idea which might be helpful. Seeing as he’s a friend of yours we’ll move him up to Cabin 34B on the upper deck, it has a porthole open to the sea, and the poor Polish guy who was in there died last night so it’s empty. Get one of the orderlies to help and move him tonight if you like.”

  Angela told Hans about the spare cabin, saying that she thought that he ought to grab it at once before anyone else got wind of the possibility. Hans had no objection, so they moved his few things that evening and sat briefly together in the dark, close but not holding hands, watching the smooth sea rush past the sides of the ship as the moon looked benignly down on the water.

  Being a hospital ship sailing alone, Minden was not darkened but it was difficult to see in the ward where Hans’ old berth had been so that when Kurt got to his own bed that night he did not realise that his intended victim was not there. Just after midnight he retrieved the axe and crawled on all fours silently past the row of wounded sleepers. One blow to the forehead would put an end to the traitor, but he had to see clearly to do the deed. Heaving himself upright near the bedhead, he struck a match and looked down at the bed, axe at the ready. Empty! He swore under his breath; he must have the wrong bed. He looked at the sleepers on each side. Yes, they were the same as ever, only Hans had gone. Furious and confused, he heaved himself back to his own bed and passed the night sleepless and angry.

  In the morning he held a secret conference with his comrades. News of Hans’ move had by now percolated down the grapevine and it was clear that it was going to be less easy to reach him in his new abode. None of the plotters had any doubt that Germany was soon going to win the war, so whoever did the deed would return home as a Nazi hero long before British justice got round to punishing the murderer. Nevertheless, it would obviously be better if they could make Hans’ death seem like an accident. Several ingenious ideas were suggested but the best came from a young air gunner named Pilch. Pilch had noticed that the medicine trolley which came round each evening was easily accessible and not well guarded. He had also noticed that Hans was issued with a few grains of morphine each evening to help him to sleep. If somehow the dose could be increased to a lethal level, the job would be done, and could be blamed on a careless medical orderly. It would be quite easy to get at the dose as the various patients’ prescriptions were laid out on the trolley, each with a name tag. He and Kurt would watch the procedure with the trolley carefully that evening and do the deed the following day.

  It was dead easy. The nurse with the tray, Julia, was accompanied by a soldier who was supposed to keep order, but he was much more interested in “chatting up” Julia. Pilch, who spoke reasonable English, joined in a gentle tease of Julia while Kurt had a good look at the drugs on issue. Each patient’s envelope was sealed and contained his dose, details of which were written on the outside. He noticed that Hans was supposed to have twelve milligrams. of morphine. Jars containing the various drugs in use were kept on the bottom shelf of the trolley together with a weighing machine and various paraphernalia for making up the prescriptions. Kurt had no idea what a lethal dose of morphine might be but thought that if the dose was increased by a factor of ten it might be lethal. He would have to find some way of spiking Hans’ dose with copious extra morphine from the jars on the trolley. He practised sidling up to it while Julia was talking to a patient and found that he could quite easily lift the jar off the trolley without attracting attention. While doing this he also discovered that a stack of blank envelopes was stored in an open box on the bottom shelf. Seizing the moment, he snaffled two of these and hid them in his pocket. That night the conspirators worked on the envelopes and managed to make a passable forgery of the writing on the outside. It was now only a question of filling the forged envelope and substituting it for the proper one. The job had to be done that night. The prisoners had no way of knowing the ship’s position, but it was getting distinctly cooler so they guessed that they must be approaching the English Channel. If they waited much longer, the ship would have docked and Hans would be removed from their clutches for ever.

  The next evening, when the trolley came round, all was ready. Kurt had the trolley to himself for over a minute while the others contrived to drop someone’s dose on the floor and get the whole ward, including the nurse and the guard, on hands and knees, looking for it. Pilch tried to follow the party out of the ward and along to the cabin where Hans was confined to see that the job was fully carried through, but one of the guards stopped him, so he had to return to his comrades and spend the night hoping for some commotion which might indicate that a death had taken place. They were not disappointed. At about three in the morning there was some muffled conversation in the corridor and the sound of wheels told them that a corpse was being taken to the ship’s mortuary. In the morning it was confirmed. Prisoner von Pilsen had died from unknown causes during the night. There would be no time for a post mortem and the Minden could not stop for a formal burial at sea; a simple ceremony would take place with the ship under way. Prisoners were allowed on deck to watch the body being consigned to the deep, a bugler sounded a rather shaky last post and the weighted corpse plunged into the water. There was some surprise among the ship’s crew when a party of German prisoners broke into a hearty chorus of the Horst Wessel song and gave three cheers for the Fuhrer.

  The Nazis never guessed that their celebrations were premature. Hans was not a fool and had guessed that the threats made in Gibraltar were real and some attempt would be made to carry them out in the relatively relaxed atmosphere of the hospital ship. As soon as his health and morale began to improve on the ship, he started to try to work out a way of outwitting the clique of Nazi officers. He discussed the situation with Angela an
d they both agreed that they would need to attempt to outwit the plotters, and that the transfer to Cabin 34B gave them an excellent opportunity to do so. It was Angela who came up with the best scheme.

  Stanislas Potoski was a Polish corporal who had been terribly wounded by a mortar bomb which burst in his trench just outside Tobruk. His survival seemed so unlikely that there was some dispute as to whether it was worth shipping him to hospital in England at all, but eventually he was loaded onto Minden where he received intensive nursing during the first part of the voyage. On the day before the attempted murder, his luck ran out. A blood vessel burst and he died peacefully in his bed in the intensive care ward, with Angela and a colleague tenderly holding his hand. It wasn’t difficult for Angela to arrange for his body to be moved into 34B, while Hans moved quietly into the corporal’s place in the intensive care ward and pretended to be in far worse shape than he actually was. Luckily there were no other Polish speakers in the ward and no one except two of Angela’s colleagues, who were sworn to secrecy, noticed that the figure in the bed in the corner was no longer that of the suffering Pole but of a rapidly recovering German. As for Kurt’s carefully prepared morphine dose, it was delivered to cabin 34B occupied by the corpse and disposed of down the drain. For now, anyway, Hans was safe.

  Thinking about it later, Hans tried to recall what his relationship with Angela had been during those critical two days. Certainly she had been extraordinarily attentive to him, attending to his bandages herself and somehow bringing that spark of homeliness and comfort to his surroundings, which only a woman can bring. He was also flattered that she had believed his account of the threat from his fellow Luftwaffe officers immediately and, at some risk to herself, taken such imaginative and effective action. But had she shown love? Had the old magic returned now that he was no longer going to be bombing England? He simply didn’t know. He only remembered the gentle touch of her hand on his body, the chaste, sweet goodnight kisses, the warmth of the smile. His own feelings for her left no room for doubt. He was now more than ever deeply, dangerously, in love.