Winter in Wartime

by Jan Terlouw

  “No. Of course not. I’m certain no one read it. I hid it in one of the chickens’ nesting boxes. But what about you, Dirk, did you… I mean, they tortured you. Didn’t you give them Bertus’s name? I thought…”

  Everyone was silent. Dirk had fallen back onto the bed again. He’d closed his eyes, and he looked exhausted.

  “They beat me to within an inch of my life,” he said quietly, “but I swear to you that I didn’t give anything away.”

  He was breathing with difficulty through his damaged nose. Jack gestured to Michiel: leave him be.

  “I’ll see what food and blankets I can rustle up. Be back tomorrow afternoon at the latest,” whispered Michiel. “Can you cope by yourselves until then?”

  Jack nodded.

  “Don’t take any unnecessary risks. We’ll manage.”

  “OK, see you then. Take good care of him.”

  “Roger.”

  Michiel set to work gathering as much food as he could. He went to see Mr Coenen, a farmer who was a good friend of his, and bought ham, eggs, butter and cheese. He begged a loaf of bread from the baker. The big box in the attic provided another couple of horse blankets. Buying the provisions cost him nearly all his money; that was going to be a problem in the days ahead.

  Unfortunately, by then it was too late to go to the woods. He’d have to wait until the next day. When morning came, he was lucky. His mother said she was popping out with Jochem for an hour or so. That gave him a chance to boil the eggs. He even remembered to take some salt. The problem was: how could he get to the wood without being noticed, when he was carrying such a large package?

  So Michiel decided to split the delivery. First he took one blanket, with some of the food wrapped up inside, which he hid close to the place where he usually began his crawl through the trees. Then he went home for the rest. As far as he could tell, no one had shown any more interest in him than usual, and by about eleven o’clock he was making his way through the young spruces, struggling to drag the two parcels behind him.

  Dirk seemed to have perked up a little. There was more colour in his cheeks and his one eye looked bright, although the other was still swollen shut.

  To Michiel’s surprise, the pile of leaves had doubled in size.

  “Where did all those leaves come from?” he asked suspiciously.

  “Oh, they blew in here by themselves,” said Jack.

  “Really? There wasn’t a breath of wind at home.”

  “Well, if you really want to know, I went out yesterday at dusk to that beech wood over there, and I fetched some leaves. I promise no one saw me, though.”

  “How did it go with your leg?”

  “Fine.”

  “Well, that’s good news. Congratulations.”

  “Thank you.”

  When Michiel had unpacked everything, the two young men were delighted and full of praise for him. Then there was silence, as they satisfied their hunger.

  After everyone had finished eating, Michiel said, “I have a problem.”

  “Me too,” said Dirk. “More like six. What’s yours?”

  “I’ve run out of money. The local farmers aren’t profiteers, but I still have to pay them something for what they give me.”

  “I’ve got an idea,” said Dirk after some pondering.

  “That’s good. Let’s hear it.”

  “Talk to my mother. She needs to know I’m safe. Not my father, though. He’d be so scared that he’d end up giving everything away. Mother can tell him later, and then at least he won’t know that you have anything to do with it. Just tell her that I’m in good shape, but I can’t go to see her yet because it’s not safe. And say that I’ll need a food package every week, which you can deliver. She’ll sort everything out, you’ll see.”

  “Great. Then that’s what I’ll do.”

  Again, they sat in silence for a while, and then Dirk said, “What’s the weather like?”

  “Not bad. A bit cloudy.”

  “That’s better than clear. We could do without frost, even with the blankets you brought. Reckon it’s going to stay that way?”

  “I don’t know much about the weather. And, of course, we haven’t had a radio for ages.”

  “I’ll go and take a look at the sky myself.”

  Dirk walked to the entrance. He was limping so badly that Michiel couldn’t help wincing.

  “Did they do that to you?”

  Dirk nodded.

  “You know I’ve got a score to settle with the man who gave me away, don’t you? I’ll tell you something. I jumped off the train at Stroe. A good friend of mine lives not far from there, in Garderen, and I could have gone into hiding with him. But I came here instead. That’s because I’m determined to find out who the traitor is around here.”

  “It’s Schafter,” said Michiel.

  “Schafter? How do you know that? I thought Schafter was…”

  “You thought Schafter was what?”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe he really is a collaborator—who knows? I never would have thought it, though. I reckoned he was just pretending to be in cahoots with them for some reason. But I could be wrong.”

  “Yes. You’re wrong,” said Michiel. “I have the proof.”

  “Go on then. Out with it.”

  “It’s a long story. You tell your story first, and then I’ll tell you what I know.”

  “Alright,” said Dirk, “here goes. I’ll start at the beginning.”

  Dirk’s Story

  “At the beginning of the war, back in 1941, I was working in forestry. I was given the job of planting three plots of spruces, here, in Dagdaler Wood. I was about eighteen at the time, and although there wasn’t much sign of the war around here yet, I decided on an impulse to make a hiding place. You never know when you might need one. No one would ever find it in the middle of a section of closely planted trees. I didn’t tell anyone at all about it. Even later, when I joined the resistance, I still kept it to myself.

  “The hiding place came in handy when I found Jack with a broken leg and a hole in his shoulder. First I took him to see a doctor who was in hiding nearby. The doctor was caught soon after that. I have no idea where he got the plaster from. I think he cobbled it together himself somehow, out of glue and chalk or something.”

  “Erica said she thought the plaster was a bit odd,” said Michiel.

  “Anyway, Jack got patched up and I dragged him to this hideout.”

  “As we already know,” said Michiel.

  “Yes, but I don’t know exactly what you know, do I? I thought we were both going to tell the whole story, weren’t we?”

  “Sorry. Please go on,” said Michiel.

  “I didn’t tell the other resistance members anything about Jack,” continued Dirk. “I wasn’t entirely sure that everyone was to be trusted. You know, one of the members was—and maybe still is—a certain Schafter. He sometimes said that he went along with the Germans just to pull the wool over their eyes. I always believed him. Going by what you’ve said, Michiel, I’m afraid I may have been too trusting. Anyway, I didn’t say anything about Jack, and if you think about it, Jack’s hiding place here is just about the only thing that hasn’t been given away. That makes you think, doesn’t it? So, last autumn, our commander gave us the order to raid the rations office in Lagezande. Three of us. Me, Willem Stomp, who’s now dead, and another man who escaped, and I’d better not tell you his name. The commander thought three men were enough. He said no one else knew anything about it.”

  “The commander? You mean Mr Postma?”

  Dirk stared at Michiel, startled. “How do you know that?”

  “Lucky guess. Go on.”

  “Well, I thought, if anything goes wrong, Jack’s going to starve to death. If I gave my letter directly to Bertus, who was also in the resistance, then he’d know I had something to hide. I didn’t want to risk that. So I gave it to you, Michiel. If everything had gone according to plan, Bertus would never have found out about the letter’s existence.
He still doesn’t know anything about it, as far as I’m aware. I’d always thought you seemed pretty level-headed, and so I decided I could trust you.”

  “Well, even though I messed up just about everything, you were right to trust me,” Michiel said sadly.

  “Yes, I believe you, Michiel. But listen. At the rations office in Lagezande, we walked right into an ambush. They were waiting for us. Do you understand what that means? Someone had betrayed us. But who? Who knew about the plans? The three of us who were going to carry it out. Mr Postma, who said he’d told no one else. And you, Michiel. That was it.”

  “Could the third man, the one who got away, have just pretended to escape and actually given away the plan beforehand?”

  “I thought about that too. It seems very unlikely to me. I’ll tell you why in a minute.”

  “What happened during the raid?”

  “That’s the thing. We’d agreed that the third man would be on the lookout and that Willem and I would go inside. The Germans had probably expected the third man to stand guard close to the door, because they’d hidden behind the hedge just by the rations office. But we’d agreed that he’d walk in a big circle around the building to make sure no one came near. So he’d already stayed behind to take up position when Willem and I reached the office. We’d just opened the front door when the Germans leapt out. With at least fifteen guns aimed right at us. I knew we didn’t stand a chance, so I put my hands in the air. But Willem ran into the office, vaulted over the counter, and then bolted through the door into a back room, where he tried to escape through the window. He’d underestimated the Krauts though. They’d also positioned a couple of men around the back of the building and they shot him dead on the spot. I heard the shots but I didn’t know exactly what had happened. By then they were pushing me towards their truck. ‘Where is the third man?’ they kept snarling. Well, I played dumb, said I didn’t understand any German—which is more or less true—and I told them it had just been the two of us. ‘We already have the second one,’ they grinned and they threw Willem’s body into the truck. I tried to see if there was anything I could do to help him, but they hit me in the face and told me he was past help. And then they started going on about the third man again. What I want to know is: how were they so sure that there were three of us?”

  Michiel and Jack had no answer for him.

  “Someone gave us away, I’m sure of that. They knew exactly what we were planning. Maybe it was Schafter. Maybe he eavesdropped on our conversation with Postma. Maybe he found some of Postma’s notes. I’m curious to hear what you have to say about it, Michiel. I just want to know. I want certainty. Because what I had to go through in prison, it was so… so…” He paused. “Whoever it was who sent me into that trap… I’m going to make sure he’s punished.”

  Dirk gave a loud sniff before continuing his story.

  “They went on looking for a long time, but they eventually gave up. And if it was the third man who betrayed us, would they really have kept looking for him that long? They took me to the barracks. Let me stew for three days. And then the interrogation began.”

  “Wait a moment,” said Michiel. “You mean they didn’t ask you straightaway about Bertus and the resistance and so on?”

  “No, not until three days later.”

  “Then why did they come for Bertus the next day? To be honest, I was convinced that they’d tortured you so badly that you’d given them his name. Sorry about that, but then you did think I’d let someone read the letter too.”

  “Don’t worry about it. So yes, they only started asking questions after three days. At first it was all fairly civilized. The commander isn’t such a bad chap. He clearly wanted to find out if there was some kind of underground organization behind the raid. I denied it. I said that Willem and I had come up with the plan and carried it out by ourselves. He didn’t really swallow that, but I don’t think he knew for certain that I was lying. Then he started asking me about the third man. I told him yet again that there’d been no third man, but that time it was obvious that he knew it wasn’t true. He told me I’d be wise to tell him who it was, because otherwise he’d hand me over to the SS. He said they had some good ways to make people talk. He wasn’t wrong. I was transferred to Amersfoort. Again, they left me alone for a while at first. Then the SS interrogations began. They always made me strip naked, so that it hurt more when they kicked me with their big boots. ‘The name! The name!’ they kept yelling and I told them over and over again that there’d been only two of us, and then they’d knock me to the ground and two or three of them would kick me, aiming for my stomach and my face, until I was unconscious.”

  “And you still didn’t give him away?” asked Michiel, pale with misery as he listened to Dirk’s tale. “Why not? How could you bear it?”

  “I don’t know the answer to that myself,” said Dirk. “Every time I lay there, back on my bunk, bruised and curled up in pain, I thought: I can’t keep doing this, next time I’ll tell them everything I know. But when I saw their vicious faces again, I didn’t tell them after all.

  “Then, one day, they didn’t beat me up. The SS officer who always interrogated me was all smiles instead. He said that, for my own sake, I should reconsider and give them the name of the third man. All he’d get was a year or two in prison. He was being so pleasant that I almost fell for it. But then I remembered all the things they’d done to me, and I kept my mouth firmly shut. And that spiteful look came over his face again. I thought the beating was about to begin, but no, he told me to get dressed. I was only too happy to do so. But when I reached my socks, he told me to wait a moment. And said I should put my right foot on his desk. So I did. He took out a truncheon, gave it a stroke and then asked in a silky voice if I was sure there hadn’t been a third man. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘absolutely certain.’ So then he broke every one of my toes with his truncheon and invited me to put my other foot on the desk.”

  Michiel gasped. “The bastard,” he said.

  Jack just winced.

  “Anyway,” said Dirk, “my shoes were on the small side, but I still had to put them on; my toes are completely deformed now. The strange thing is that I didn’t even mind it that much, because they left me alone for a long time after that. Let me tell you, I’d rather have broken toes than an interrogation every other day.

  “Then, a few days ago, they decided to move us. No one told us where we were going. They put us on one of those trains with separate compartments, each with its own door, you know the kind. There were nine of us in each compartment, with one armed SS guard. I was determined to try to escape if the slightest opportunity presented itself. Most of the other eight lads looked like they’d been interrogated a few times too. If that was true, I was sure they’d dare to risk an escape attempt as well.

  “When the train started moving, I soon noticed we were heading towards Apeldoorn. I knew the train always slows down between Amersfoort and Apeldoorn as it goes around the bend by Stroe. In a whisper, I suggested to the others that we should jump out of the train at that point. We weren’t supposed to be talking, and I was counting on the SS man not knowing any Dutch. I was right about that, but his ears were working just fine; he whacked me in the ribs with the butt of his gun. The others had already got the message, though. But as we approached Stroe, we realized to our horror that the door was locked.”

  “So you tried to open the door with the guard there?” asked Michiel.

  “By then, the guard was already… No, don’t ask. Two lads from Rotterdam, who were sitting next to him, had taken care of that. But, anyway, the door was locked and that gave us a real fright. No need to wonder what would have happened if they’d found us in there with a dead Kraut, when we got to Apeldoorn. But yes, when your back’s up against the wall, there’s no telling what you can do—one of the boys used the soldier’s bayonet to force the door open before we reached the bend. As the train slowed down, we jumped out, one after the other, all nine of us. One man didn’t make it. He hit his
head on a post.”

  “And the Germans didn’t notice?”

  “They certainly did. They shot at us through the windows. But it was pretty dark and luckily the train didn’t stop. They didn’t hit anyone. That was where our luck ended, though. The eight of us were discussing what we should do, stick together or go our separate ways, when a German patrol came along. Random bad luck. Of course we knew there were patrols by the railway lines, but the likelihood of them coming along right at that moment… Anyway, we heard them coming and we dived into a ditch. But they’d obviously heard something too, because one of them yelled out: ‘Halt. Password.’ He’d hardly spoken the words when Krijn, one of our gang, began shooting like mad. He was a commando or a paratrooper or something like that, and he’d been clever enough to take the Kraut’s submachine gun from the train. He got at least three of them with that first round of shots. The others took cover and began shooting back. Except for Krijn, all we could do was try to make ourselves invisible—we had no weapons. ‘Run!’ Krijn yelled. ‘I’ll keep them busy.’ So we all crept away, along the ditch, and looked for hiding places, every man for himself. The shooting went on for a while. I don’t know whether Krijn got out of there alive, but it wouldn’t surprise me. He didn’t seem like the kind of man who’d be easy to kill. A real daredevil type. And I’ve already told you the rest. I hid in a hedge for a day, and I dragged my way here that night.”

  Telling the story had tired Dirk out. He fell back onto the leaves, with his hands behind his head.

  “And now you can hardly walk?” asked Michiel.

  “I can still manage a bit, or I’d never have got here from Stroe. When the war’s over, maybe some surgeon will be able to put my toes right. My eyes and my nose and the other injuries should heal by themselves. Most of the damage to my face is because of the jump from the train, by the way. I landed badly. But that’s enough about that. It’s in the past, doesn’t really matter. What I want to know is: who is the traitor here in De Vlank?”