Do the Birds Still Sing in Hell?

by Horace Greasley

  But he couldn’t. She was the enemy.

  He reached to the floor and pulled up his trousers, gazing at the beautiful shape of her young backside, the form of her hips and her firm thighs still tantalisingly parted, revealing the downy cleft of pubic hair.

  Rosa made no attempt to move. She whimpered quietly, almost purred like a cat. He wanted to hold her; he wanted to tell her how special the moment had been. He wanted to kiss and caress her and walk in the summer sunshine discussing the lovemaking like he had with Eva oh, so long ago. He wanted to plan their next tryst, their next forbidden moment of death-defying passion.

  Without a word Horace turned and left the workshop. He strolled almost casually into the still, warm afternoon air as a tear ran the length of his face and fell onto the parched dusty ground.

  It wasn’t a dream. It had happened. The first rays of the early morning sun strained through the barred windows and picked their way through the tiny particles of dust that always seemed to hang in the air. Horace lay awake, the only one of the 30 prisoners.

  It had happened. He’d screwed one of the enemy’s girls right there in a prisoner of war camp, right there under the noses of the German guards, of the camp commandant and even more incredibly, under the nose of her father who couldn’t have been more than 25 yards away.

  It wasn’t a dream. He lay there with a peculiar satisfied smile on his face. Half-starved, incarcerated, a slave and a puppet to the enemy who could command of him anything they wanted and take his life anytime they wanted, yet he was still smiling. Oh, how he wished he could tell them everything he’d achieved. How he wished he could tell these fucking bastards about how much shit he’d thrown in their comrades’ faces, how he wished he could tell them about the many victories he’d achieved during his time with them.

  But most of all he wished he could tell them how he’d fucked one of their own, right there under their noses. She chose me, he wanted to tell them. Even as a downtrodden, filth-ridden, half-starved, enslaved creature with a status lower than a sewer rat… she’d chosen him above them. His hair was unkempt, the flesh hung from his bones, his second-hand, ill-fitting dead man’s uniform flattered him little. As he remembered the SS soldiers’ lectures at the first camp and their claims that the German man would always be his superior, he laughed out loud at the fact he’d just blown that theory out of the water.

  ‘What the fuck have you got to laugh about, Jim, you mad bastard?’

  It was Flapper.

  Horace leaned over the top bunk. Flapper’s eyes had just opened.

  ‘Don’t you see how they’ll never beat us, Flapper? They can take our freedom but they’ll never beat us. We’re better than them, bigger than them.’

  He wanted to tell his friends and comrades, his fellow prisoners all about his conquest. He wanted to tell them, boost their morale; he wanted every single one of them to laugh behind the Germans’ backs. But he couldn’t.

  Flapper groaned then let out a deep sigh. ‘Like I say, Jim, you’re one mad bastard.’

  Horace leapt from his bunk. He had to tell them to be strong, never to give up hope. He didn’t know where the inspiration came from or who or what had given him the power of oration, but something strange happened as he delivered his lecture to his friend. A few others around them had begun to waken; he turned to face them.

  ‘We’ll win this war, lads, I’m telling you, we just need to believe it deep in our hearts and if we want it badly enough, if we want that Austrian eunuch to get his comeuppance then that’s what will happen. We must hold our heads up high. When they turn that key at night, when they dish out the orders and the beatings, we must believe in ourselves, believe we are better than them.’

  To a man they had congregated in front of Horace. Several lay on the floor in a sleepy trance listening to the emotional rant of a miner’s son from a small village in Leicestershire. They could have been listening to one of Churchill’s finest speeches, such was his impassioned delivery.

  ‘Have you noticed lately how quiet the Germans are? Remember how they taunted us almost weekly about the bombing of London and how the Luftwaffe controlled the skies over Europe? Remember them singing and dancing as they announced that Coventry had been razed to the ground, and how they’d bombed Liverpool and Bristol? Remember, lads, remember?’

  A few heads nodded, a few murmurs of agreement. The moments when the German soldiers and camp commandant delivered their version of the way the war was going were the low points for the prisoners. They had no way of knowing whether the Germans were telling the truth. Sure, they would exaggerate, everyone knew that, but just how far would they go? Had a few bombs fallen on the outskirts of Coventry or, as the Germans were suggesting, had it been decimated and flattened? No one knew. The civilian workers in the camp had offered titbits of information but even they were listening to their radio sets in an occupied land. Just how much were the news reports influenced by the Germans?

  ‘Well, they aren’t fucking singing and dancing now, are they? In fact when was the last time you saw a smile on the bastards’ faces? That’s because we are winning, lads. The tide is turning.’

  In reality nobody was winning the war. Every country involved was on the losing side. The young men of Britain and France and Russia and Germany were being massacred. The broken bodies of civilian men women and children right across Europe and beyond littered the city streets.

  But far worse things were happening in the concentration camps in Germany and Poland and Czechoslovakia as Hitler began to implement his master plan for world domination. Hitler and his generals had begun the mass extermination of whole nations, ethnic and religious groups, gypsies, homosexuals and the mentally unstable. Although at the time the POWs didn’t know it, the Second World War would become the deadliest and most destructive war in human history, claiming an estimated 72 million lives. Hitler’s regime would wipe nearly five million Jews off the face of the earth, gassing them in the concentration camps of Eastern Europe. The Polish nation would lose over 16 per cent of its entire population and by the end of the war nearly 27 million Russians would have lost their lives.

  Unfortunately, by the summer of 1941 the war was showing no sign of slowing down. In 1941 alone, Yugoslavia, Russia, Bulgaria, Finland and Hungary were dragged into the conflict. Towards the end of the year the Japanese would attack Pearl Harbor in Hawaii where a huge American naval fleet lay at anchor, dragging the most powerful nation on earth into the Second World War. Horace didn’t know any of this as he continued.

  ‘So you think the war’s coming to an end, Jim?’ asked a corporal from the King’s Own Scottish Borderers.

  Horace spoke with a passion, with a sincere belief that it was. He wanted to believe it, simply had to believe it, but nothing could have been further from the truth. Little did he know as he sat on Garwood’s bunk while the entire dormitory listened to him, that he would be involved in the conflict for another four long years.

  ‘We must laugh at them, laugh at them behind their backs. Sure they can turn the key each evening and they can make us work ten hours a day, but the irony is we are working on the gravestones of their comrades.’

  Horace grinned like a Cheshire cat. ‘How fucking great is that?’

  The assembled men broke out into raucous laughter.

  ‘Let us work harder, let’s smile and laugh and joke as we cut each slab. Let us taunt the Germans as we carve each cross, tell them “This one’s for you” with a big smile.’

  ‘Only the ones that don’t speak English, Jim,’ Ernie Mountain interjected. ‘Remember, you took a good beating at the last camp because one of the bastards spoke English.’

  Horace paused for a few seconds as he recalled those dark days. But he also remembered how he took strength and an inner pride from the incident. He remembered those first few tentative steps from the medical room and although physically he was as weak as a kitten, mentally he was as strong as two lions. He remembered looking at the men in the back of the lorry as
they left that hell hole. A mass of human misery – dejected, almost defeated, skin pulled tightly round their cheekbones, eyes hollow and sunken. Some wore hats to protect them from the cold, some had none, just shaven heads with sporadic tufts of straw like hair. Living, breathing corpses.

  Horace’s impromptu speech came to an abrupt end.

  ‘Steigen Sie aus!’ – ‘Get out!’ – the German guards screamed as they burst into the dormitory. Horace couldn’t help feeling their tone appeared more aggressive than normal. His suspicions were confirmed as they took their place on parade and two German SS officers stood talking with the camp commandant over on the far side of the compound. At the sight of their uniforms Horace’s blood turned to ice. The memories came flooding back: the cruelty of the SS men on the long march to Luxembourg and the pleasure and joy they seemed to radiate during the beatings and killings in the first camp.

  They walked over towards the POWs on parade. Even the camp commandant looked ill at ease in their company. They looked evil, stone-faced and thin-lipped. God knows what evil acts these two men had carried out. Horace recalled the rumours of the death camps, the massacres and mass executions of the Poles and Slavs and wondered, just wondered, if the stories could be true. He wondered about the selection and recruitment procedures for the SS. Did they deliberately choose the evil-looking ones? Was there a series of initiation ceremonies they all had to go through? Did they need to demonstrate just how bad they were before they were accepted into the ranks?

  One of the SS officers stepped forward. He spoke perfect English, almost fluent. He announced that the SS would be inspecting the camp once a month. He’d heard reports that the current regime was too soft. The prisoners must remember that they were prisoners, slave workers, and they must show respect to the master German race.

  He announced that the working day would be longer. Horace didn’t mind, more time with Rosa, more German crosses. He smiled.

  In an instant the SS officer caught the look and walked over to where Horace stood. ‘Is something funny, English pig?’ he bellowed, inches from Horace’s face. He drew his Luger pistol from his holster. He waved the gun in front of Horace’s face. ‘Do you think this is funny?’

  Horace’s experience told him to keep quiet. Anything he said, any gesture he made would be turned around and construed as an insult.

  ‘Answer me! Do you think this is funny?’

  Horace remained silent.

  ‘Don’t you understand your own language, you English dog?’

  The SS officer cocked the pistol and held it at arm’s length, inches from Horace’s face.

  Horace’s legs took on an involuntary tremble as beads of perspiration appeared on his forehead.

  ‘Sweating like a little English pig,’ the officer announced, and in one swift, powerful movement with all the strength he could muster, he clattered Horace across the side of the head with the handle of the gun.

  It was a blow that would have felled an elephant. Horace staggered sideways as the pain from the blow registered; blood trickled from a wound above his temple. He bounced into John Knight, the camp outbuildings spun around him and the SS officer who had assaulted him seemed to become two or three. He wanted to collapse, wanted to fall to the ground and sleep, nature’s way. He steadied himself, took a second or two and resumed his position in the line-up. He stood to attention, puffed out his chest and bit into his bottom lip in an attempt to quell the pain.

  The German officer had already turned to walk away. Perhaps he would have been happy knocking the prisoner into unconsciousness. A show of strength, a warning, the end of the matter? Not now. The prisoner had defied him; insulted him. He had taken the full force of the blow and remained standing. It was time to teach him a lesson. Flapper Garwood looked into the SS officer’s eyes and knew what he was thinking. A fist this time propelled into Horace’s solar plexus. It was a good shot. Horace winced and fell to his knees, his head resting in the dirt. Already he’d tensed up and was preparing to make a huge effort to get to his feet.

  Flapper looked down at the ground, hoping and praying his good friend would stay there. ‘Stay down, you stubborn bastard,’ he whispered out of the corner of his mouth. The German officer heard him and now pointed the gun at Flapper in confusion. He had hate in his eyes and his finger on the trigger.

  ‘What did you say?’ the SS officer screamed at Garwood, his attention now focused on the big man from Essex. He took a step nearer, venom in his eyes. The other guards had run towards them, rifles trained on the prisoners, and the camp commandant stood in between, trying to calm everyone down.

  ‘Please Hartmut, leave them, let us go. We can drink some coffee, have some nice cakes.’ The commandant had a hold of the officer’s sleeve. ‘The men from Switzerland are here again next week – please don’t give me any more problems.’

  A silence ensued. The SS officer paused. The line of POWs stood terrified, wondering whether they were about to witness another execution, or even two. The decision was resting solely on the shoulders of one man. As the officer thought long and hard, he turned and together with the camp commandant, made for the mess hall. As the door to the building was opened the officer stepped through. If he’d turned and looked back towards the line of prisoners he would have seen a slightly out of breath prisoner, bruised and slightly bloody, standing unaided on his own two feet with a broad grin etched across his face.

  CHAPTER

  NINE

  Sixteen express trains thundered through Horace’s head when he awoke in his bunk the following morning. His whole body ached as if he’d been kicked and stamped on by an entire regiment of German soldiers. ‘Jesus, Flapper,’ he called to his mate below, ‘I don’t half hurt.’

  ‘Serves you right. You’re a stubborn cunt. That’s why you hurt, because you wouldn’t go down when the Nazi bastard hit you with his Luger, because you wanted to prove you were better than he was.’

  ‘I am better than he is.’

  ‘It’s gonna get you killed though, mate. You have to learn to play the game. Everyone here knows you’re better than them; you don’t have to keep proving it.’

  Horace could remember very little about the incident. The blow from the Luger had been a good one. He remembered standing to attention and grinning, and he remembered the taste of the blood as it crept into the side of his mouth, but the rest was a blur. Flapper explained the full story as Horace sat and listened with pride and a feeling that he’d been a little bit stupid, all for the sake of another small victory.

  Gradually over the next few hours his memory returned. He remembered the camp and the guards and the quarry and the work and the workshops, and then he remembered Rosa and that moment.

  Rosa reappeared exactly two weeks after her last visit. Horace remembered the moment with clarity. She was wearing a steel-grey pair of riding britches and a pair of black leather boots. He would later find out that she was an accomplished horsewoman and spent every spare moment she had tending and riding the horses on a nearby farm. Unusually, her hair was dishevelled, a little unkempt and her clothing was soiled, her hands a little dirty. She seemed a little embarrassed as she spoke. ‘Please forgive my appearance, gentlemen. I have been tending to the horses. Today they needed cleaning.’

  Forgive my appearance? Horace thought. My foot! She looked positively stunning. It was a hot day and the exertion of her work in the stables had brought a natural glow to her face. Her skin shone, glistening with a fine sheen of perspiration. Her slightly damp clothing clung to her beautiful form and her eyes were bright, her pupils fully dilated as she gazed at her incarcerated English lover – and the sexual tension could have been cut with a knife. Horace’s heart began to beat a little faster and his breathing intensified. He became aware that he too was beginning to perspire and in an instant those familiar feelings welled up inside him as the blood began to pump round his body. She certainly hadn’t ignored him. Horace thought this might have been her reaction after she’d left the workshop and r
ealised the danger they had placed themselves in.

  But surely it couldn’t happen again, could it? It was a one-off, a chance in a million that they’d taken and through sheer luck managed to get through without being caught. His thoughts drifted back to the workshop, the moment his fingers had first entered her tender, moist vagina and how she had squirmed and moaned. He recalled the moment he had first thrust into her, how she had gasped with pain and pleasure and how he had pumped and thrust for all he was worth until he had eventually climaxed.

  It was a one-off, he reminded himself, something that would never happen again. He had his memories. They couldn’t be taken away from him, but there was simply no way he would entertain any thoughts of placing this beautiful young girl in such danger ever again. It would be their secret and they would survive.

  Rosa had never felt this way before. This man had awoken emotions in her that she had never before experienced. She couldn’t pinpoint what it was exactly. Was it the danger of being caught that had heightened her pleasure so much? Was it the fact that this man had been the first, or was it something deeper? Perhaps even love?

  She didn’t know. He’d been so aggressive and yet at the same time so tender. He’d hurt her as he’d forced himself inside her and yet awoken feelings of sexual desire she could only have dreamed of. As she looked at him right now, standing there in a dirty shirt and trousers that hung loosely on his tortured skeletal frame, bruising around his head and eyes and an embarrassed impish schoolboy look on his face, she trembled as she thought back to that earth-shattering moment when he’d ejaculated inside her and something incredible had happened to her right there and then as she lay face down on a dirty workbench.