Do the Birds Still Sing in Hell?

by Horace Greasley

  Horace repeated his statement in German, told the guard he would normally have asked for permission to use the toilets through the workshops but didn’t want to disturb the guard’s well-earned rest. The guard lowered his rifle, seemingly satisfied. As he walked away he signalled for the prisoner to resume his duties and Horace released a huge sigh of relief deep from within his lungs.

  It was late August 1941 and the summer weather had been quite pleasant on the whole, with lots of sunshine and warm, sultry days. The German offensive into Russia was stalling: although they’d captured Smolensk and over 300,000 Russians, the first signs were beginning to appear that a siege of Leningrad was materialising. On 30 August the rain began in earnest. It came down in torrents hour after hour and the men in the quarry were soaked to the bone. Horace shivered and struggled with his pickaxe. On more than one occasion it slipped from the marble, coming to rest on the ground a few inches from his foot. He looked across towards the German guards standing under a makeshift tarpaulin shelter, smoking cigarettes and smiling. In his best German and with his most doleful eyes he pleaded with them.

  ‘It’s too dangerous, sir. The marble is too slippery.’

  ‘Continue,’ one of them said with a gesture of his hand. Rosa’s father looked on.

  For another two hours the men half-heartedly chipped and picked away at the slippery white rock. Two at a time, when the marble had been chipped and shaped to an adequate size, they moved each slab the 50 yards or so to a flatbed lorry. John Knight and Danny Staines shuffled across slowly, their fingers tenuously gripping the wet marble as best they could. Danny Staines was tired. He was visibly shivering and of course he was hungry. He was thinking of his ration of cabbage soup later that day, he was thinking about the fistful of bread he had saved and how he’d cleverly hidden it in a dry spot beneath his bunk. He wasn’t concentrating and as John Knight signalled by way of a nodding head, the two men heaved upwards with the huge effort needed to lift the marble onto the wooden floor of the lorry.

  The result was catastrophic. Staines’ timing was just a split second slower than John Knight’s and the slab tipped unevenly towards him. On a normal day the men’s grip on the marble would be firm, their concentration would be better and the two men would immediately right the marble with a quick twist of the wrist or a pull of the shoulder. Not today. Both men realised the danger immediately and they reacted accordingly, tightening their grip on the rock. It was futile. The wet surface of the marble was impossible to hold and the 40lb load tipped violently and dropped three feet onto the bridge of Danny Staines’ foot.

  The crack of the bone and the subsequent squeal could be heard by every man in the quarry. Rosa’s father came running from the workshop with the camp commandant in close pursuit. Rosa’s father was angry and shouted at the commandant.

  ‘I told you this would happen!’ he screamed at the German guards.

  ‘Too dangerous,’ Horace picked up in a heated German conversation. Then, ‘impossible conditions’. Within 20 minutes all of the men were confined to their respective huts.

  Danny Staines’ foot was reset into a position that loosely resembled the shape of the foot he’d started the day with, but without any anaesthetic or even a mouthful of whisky to deaden the pain. It was crudely splinted and bandaged up with strips of flannelette. He would be reprieved of his duties for nearly six weeks but would walk with a limp for the rest of his life.

  The rain continued for many days. At first the men were glad of the rest, a chance to recuperate and recharge their batteries. Some had worked non-stop, without a day off for over two years. But then boredom set in and the continued noise of the heavy rain on the roof of the wooden hut began to take its toll. A few arguments broke out for little or no reason and then a full-blown fist fight developed between two men over a matchstick during a card game. Sergeant Owen, the official go-between, decided to take some action, and after helping break up the scrap, made his way over to the commandant’s office. He returned within 15 minutes with a smile on his face as big as the mouth of the Thames.

  ‘Come on lads, time for some sport.’

  ‘What sort of sport?’ Horace asked him.

  ‘You’ll find out soon enough.’

  As Horace left the hut along with the rest of the men he imagined the rain just might be getting a little lighter. And yes, he looked up, pointed overhead and turned to John Knight.

  ‘Blue sky, John. I do believe it’s beginning to clear up.’

  The men followed on behind the sergeant as he led them through the compound and up the hill towards the area where the blasting and splitting of the marble seams took place. Six German guards accompanied them. The sergeant scrambled up the hill and stood looking over the huge natural basin carved out by nature and man-made dynamite in more recent years. It was completely flooded and filled with water, the size of a football pitch.

  ‘We’re going swimming, chaps. Time to strip off.’

  Horace hadn’t been fully immersed in water for nearly three years. He remembered the day with clarity: Christmas Day 1939. He’d slipped into a hot bath whilst absent without leave in his parents’ house in Ibstock. After that it had been army regulation showers, which although pleasant enough, just weren’t the same as submerging an aching body in hot water. Then there was the hell of Fort Eight at Posen. Not a bath, not a shower, nothing.

  As he stood watching his fellow prisoners diving naked into the deep milky water, a kind of magnetism drew him forward and he began to unbutton his shirt. He was wary, always had been. His father had taken him and Harold as youngsters to the public baths in Leicester every Saturday. He’d stressed the importance of being able to swim and Horace remembered with clarity the moment he’d scrambled and struggled across the short distance of the width of the pool to claim the prize of an official swimmer. He remembered being presented with a sheet of paper that announced he’d swum the required 25 yards.

  But he had never been totally happy swimming in water. Several weeks later on a warm summer’s day trip to Skegness, Daisy and Harold and their father had frolicked in the sea and although Horace had wanted to dive head first into those breaking waves, wanted to swim far out like his dad, something held him back. There was a certain wariness, a certain respect for the powerful breakers crashing onto the shore and a fear of the massive expanse of water as far as the eye could see. Harold hadn’t helped when he’d explained that the eye could see eight miles out to sea until the natural curve of the earth forced the ocean to disappear from view. He’d been out as far as his waist that day, but hadn’t even attempted anything that resembled a swim.

  But today was different. Today he would swim. Today he would immerse himself in the warm waters of this natural pool. That’s what he told himself as he removed his trousers and stood naked at the water’s edge. It was a swimming pool. Just like the baths in Leicester. He watched the men jumping from the huge logs that now floated in the water. The logs were used to roll the huge slabs of marble to different areas of the quarry and had been neatly stacked up at the far side the last time he remembered. Now they acted as diving platforms as they bobbed up and down, half submerged in the milky water in front of him.

  Rosa’s father stood close by, muttering to himself as he surveyed the scene. ‘It will take bloody days to pump this water out. More production lost.’

  It was an unreal moment. Horace standing naked as Herr Rauchbach looked on.

  ‘Come on, Jim, take a swim with your friends.’ He looked around and surveyed the scene, shook his head and laughed. ‘So many bare arses, Jim, so many English dicks.’

  Horace looked straight at him and grinned.

  ‘And you, Jim, more lucky than most, a popular man with the ladies back home, eh?’

  If only you knew, mate, Horace thought to himself as he leapt into the water.

  The cold water took his breath away as the initial shock kicked in. Within 20 seconds, however, Horace was in a world he’d never experienced before. He’d lost hi
s fear and for the first time in his life he swam for real. Perhaps because he’d stared death in the face, witnessed awful events since the beginning of the war, the fear of it didn’t seem to matter anymore. Twenty feet from the shore now, he pushed out, breasting the water, his limbs loose in a fluent motion, his breathing controlled. He laughed as he remembered the desperate stiff-armed, stiff-legged, out-of-breath 12-year-old in Leicester baths, the fearful soul at the water’s edge in Skegness.

  ‘C’mon Jim, up here!’ It was Flapper balancing on a log, ready to dive off. ‘It’s just like fucking Clacton on Sea in July.’

  Darkie Evans, a mixed race Welsh Guard from Cardiff, sat alongside him. ‘Up here, Jim boyo. This end of the log is Llandudno.’

  Horace struck out for the huge log, his confidence growing with each stroke. Each man was in their own seaside world, his brain beaming him back to a childhood long since forgotten. Horace in Skeggy, Garwood in Clacton, the Welsh in Llandudno and the Scots in Ayr or Dunoon or Portree.

  As Flapper dived out over Horace’s head the log began to spin. Evans cursed as he lost his balance and fell into the water and Horace reached out for the log, aware that he had begun to breathe just a little harder. The log was still spinning as Horace reached it, and its immense saturated weight made it impossible to stop. It was slowing down and Horace began to tread water, his face just inches from it.

  He saw the two-inch diameter bolt for only a split second. Two or three bolts were drilled into every log to give the ropes attached to it a better grip. The bolt protruded no more than five inches. As the three-ton log turned a full circle in the water the bolt crashed into Horace’s skull and his world began to spin out of control.

  He was under the log now and his newfound confidence had evaporated in an instant. The stiffness was back in his arms and legs as he struggled for air, aware of the foul-tasting water mixed with his own blood entering his mouth and stinging and biting at the sensitive membrane of his lungs. A nauseous feeling washed over him as he vomited, polluting the water still further. And a struggle. A struggle to reach out for the surface, just a few tantalising feet above him. The log had moved, he could see the sunlight above him and legs and faces peering down into the depths of the water below. Not far to go. Two strokes, three, four at the most and he struck out for the surface, willing his arms and legs to respond to the signals being sent out from his brain.

  Something wasn’t working. Lack of oxygen, perhaps? The surface of the water and safety and the lifeblood of air were being sucked further and further away. The legs were smaller now… he could no longer make out the characteristics of the faces above him. The shapes blended into each other and then the desperation and the panic subsided and he floated, suspended in a womb-like trance as a smile flickered across his face and a wonderful feeling of inner contentment washed over him.

  No more war, no more suffering, just beautiful images of his family. The smiling, always contented face of his beautiful mother and a photograph from long ago of Mum as a 20-year-old, pretty and proud, the most elegant girl in the world. An image of Dad in the fields that day, gun in hand, and rabbits, and Dad’s fiercely proud expression as the shot rang out and young Horace beamed a smile that neither Dad nor he would ever forget.

  Final images now. Daisy, Sybil and Harold, baby Derick. Christmas, the snow, whisky in tea and a roaring fire. And ultimately a picture of Horace. Someone looking down, Horace floating… his arms and legs suspended like a puppet with no master. Horace in water, water mixed with blood, and another smile… and then blackness… and peace.

  CHAPTER

  TEN

  Rosa lay on her bed crying. She couldn’t believe the news her father had delivered only moments before. She’d needed to hide her feelings as he’d explained about the accident and how they’d fought in vain to revive the prisoner known as Jim, on the banks of the flooded quarry. They’d pressed and pounded at his chest for what seemed like an eternity and after a few minutes Henryk Rauchbach had left, realising that the frantic prisoners were pursuing a hopeless cause.

  The shock at hearing his name had stopped her heart beating. The first man she’d loved, the only man she’d given herself to freely… dead. She managed to control her emotions for the briefest of moments and made a lame excuse about returning to her room. Now, in the confines of her attic room of her parents’ house, she buried her face into her pillow as the tears flowed in torrents.

  Horace was back in the sick bay again. He remembered nothing of the incident – nature’s way. His first recollection was of spewing a torrent of foul-tasting water from his lungs and the smiling faces of Darkie Evans, Flapper, and Sergeant Owen. The German guards showed no emotion at all. They cared neither one way nor the other whether a prisoner lived or died. It was just one less mouth to feed.

  Darkie Evans explained how he’d saved his life. Somehow, Horace thought, the Welshman would never let him forget it. ‘I could barely make you out under there, Jim. The water was like bloody milk, boyo!’

  Flapper looked on smiling, content to allow the Welshman his moment of glory and say how he deserved it. Flapper had gone under too and thought it was hopeless: the water was clouded from the chalky silt at the bottom and he could barely see a few feet in front of him.

  ‘You must have been 20 feet from the surface. You weren’t moving at all, my friend,’

  How Evans had spotted him Flapper would never know.

  ‘I went back to the surface for a deep breath, told the laddos and Flapper here I’d seen you.’

  Flapper spoke. ‘Darkie got to you first; two of us followed him down. He must have the eyes of a fucking owl, Jim, I swear. I couldn’t see fuck all, just the legs of our Welsh friend.’

  Darkie Evans looked on smiling, his chest swelling by the minute.

  ‘I managed to hook a hand under your armpit and started pulling you up. Fuck me, boyo, you were a heavy old lump!’

  ‘I took a hold of the other arm,’ Flapper said. ‘And Robbie Roberts helped drag you to the shore. I swear the MO worked on you for ten minutes, Jim. We all thought you’d had it.’

  ‘I don’t remember a thing,’ Horace said in a voice that resembled a whisper, aware of how tender his throat was.

  Henryk Rauchbach delivered the good news to his daughter the following evening as they sat around the table having the family evening meal. Again, Rosa congratulated herself at her ability to conceal her emotions. Her father and mother would not suspect a thing, she thought to herself.

  As was the nightly ritual, she cleared the table and prepared to wash the dirty dishes. As she made her way into the small kitchen her parents looked at each other. They thought it most unusual that their daughter hadn’t eaten a bite since Herr Rauchbach had delivered the news on the prisoner known as Jim.

  Horace followed Rauchbach through a small copse, weighed down with a heavy drill and a canvas bag containing several drill bits. Horace had been stood down from the morning’s roll call and asked to report to the office. Rosa’s father explained Horace was being assigned to a new part of the camp for a different duty.

  ‘I chose you, Jim, because you are intelligent and you have a way with your hands,’ Rauchbach explained as they made their way to the top of the hill that looked over the once-flooded quarry. ‘I have watched you cutting the men’s hair. So precise and careful. This is what I need for this job.’

  He made his way across to the huge marble slabs. ‘This marble is too big to move and must be broken down.’ He dropped to his knees, took the pack from his back and unzipped it. ‘We do this with dynamite.’

  He opened the bag, exposing the small sticks of explosive about the same size as a small candle. ‘But we must do it carefully and precisely and each stick of dynamite must be positioned exactly right in order to split the marble, not blow it to hell.’ He smiled. ‘It’s a skilled job, Jim. One I think you can handle. But before you go getting any ideas you won’t be working the explosives. No. You will be the drilling man. The explosives wi
ll be the job of a German. Can’t go letting you prisoners loose with bombs now, can we?’

  Rauchbach stood up and laughed again. ‘This morning you watch and learn, this afternoon you take over.’

  For the next four hours Rauchbach drilled a series of strategically placed holes in the huge slabs. He explained to Horace how to spot the seams and the natural fault lines in the stone where the marble would be at its weakest. Horace watched as the explosive charges detonated and how the marble seemed to fall apart effortlessly as if a huge knife had separated a block of butter. On one occasion Rauchbach cursed in German when the marble cracked rather than split. ‘I fucked up there, Jim,’ he said as he examined the marble. ‘Here, see.’ He pointed to the rock face. ‘The hole was a fraction out of line and this is the result.’

  Rauchbach stretched, rubbed at the base of his back and squeezed gently. He kicked the handle of the drill so it was pointing at Horace. ‘Your turn now, Jim. I think you’ve seen enough.’

  Horace took to his new job well. He’d been given a break, a chance to escape the back-breaking ten-hour days of labour-intensive, monotonous work. This was a job that needed a little thought, a little skill, a little patience. Horace drilled and Rauchbach filled the holes with the explosive charges. As the first seam split along the line of perfectly placed holes, Rauchbach grinned.

  ‘You are a natural, Jim. It’s time for my lunch – you get on with it.’ Rauchbach pointed at the slabs lying ten feet from the forest. ‘Make a start on those; we’ll split them after lunch.’

  Horace looked around. No guards, no other prisoners. Rauchbach caught the look.

  ‘Yes, Jim, I trust you. Don’t go letting me down and running off.’

  And then Rosa’s father said something that sent a shiver up his spine.

  ‘Somehow, Jim, I don’t think you will. This camp has certain attractions; it’s by no means the worst.’