Do the Birds Still Sing in Hell?

by Horace Greasley

  As Horace lay on the floor – he must have been out for a second or two – the Scots whooped and cheered as David Valentine delivered a stern lecture to the smiling, apologetic Scot.

  Garwood spoke just once, another pearl of wisdom. ‘Rules out the window, Jim. Get the dirty cunt.’

  Horace was aware of the blood covering his face and of a different surge of adrenaline coursing through his veins. It was anger this time as he raised himself to his feet. The English boys roared him on as the Scots booed and hissed, called him an idiot. One shouted at McLachlan to ‘murder him.’

  But McLachlan didn’t hear him. He had seen the look on Horace’s face and was more than a little worried as the bloodied battler came towards him. Horace’s hands took up the guard again and he was grinning through the blood.

  ‘Right, you dirty Scottish bastard, time to fight your way.’

  Horace wasn’t controlled. He didn’t jab and run. Instead he launched into McLachlan with a venom and a fury that the Scot just couldn’t cope with. McLachlan’s hands covered his head as he stood slightly stooped. Horace rained punches down on him and hammered two perfectly executed upper cuts into his chin, picking his spot perfectly between the elbows. The Scot was on the ropes and his corner men silenced as Valentine signalled the end of the first round.

  McLachlan sat on the stool as his fellow countrymen plied him with water and attempted to stem the flow of blood from his right eye, his nose and a huge, protruding fat lip. The big man was a mess, breathing heavily.

  As Valentine announced round two Horace sprang to his feet. The Scot was almost pushed into the centre of the ring and Horace continued where he left off. McLachlan’s hands were no longer able to protect his head and Horace moved in for the kill. Two left jabs, each one delivered with accuracy and power. McLachlan’s head jerked back. His legs were gone and his crossed eyes focused on no one in particular. Horace moved forward and tightened his right fist. The Scot stepped back and made a last attempt to protect himself. Horace almost felt sorry for him as his perfectly executed right cross smashed into his cheekbone and McLachlan hit the deck.

  Garwood gave a slow, dignified clap as he returned to the corner. The English boys cheered as the Scots licked their wounds.

  ‘One more thing, Flapper,’ Horace said as he took a drink of water and turned. ‘I’m not quite finished.’

  He walked casually over to the assembled Scots, where McLachlan was showing slight signs of regaining consciousness. Horace spoke. ‘You called me a cunt, didn’t you?’ McLachlan looked up just as Horace threw his favourite right cross. Another perfect strike, another Scot on the floor of number three hut.

  Horace looked at the rest of them. ‘Anybody else want a go?’

  A deafening silence ensued.

  The following morning McLachlan was led out onto parade by two of his mates. His legs were fine, his balance perfect – it was just that his two eyes were closed and he could not see an inch in front of him. The German guards questioned him immediately. McLachlan played the game and explained he had slipped in the shower and fallen. The Germans doubted his reply but reluctantly accepted his explanation. Strangely, Horace felt sorry for him. It would be another 24 hours before he regained his sight.

  Life in the camp returned to normal, and the animosity between the Scots and the English did not fester. There was a kind of accepted respect for Horace, though not many words or conversations were exchanged. And as expected, McLachlan’s whistles were no more.

  CHAPTER

  ELEVEN

  It was December 1941. The Japanese were about to make a mistake they would regret for many years to come. They were about to bring America into the Second World War. As they eyed up the majority of the American fleet stationed at Pearl Harbor, they figured a quick, aggressive strike would break the back and resolve of the US Navy.

  About three times a week Horace was appointed to drilling duties on top of the hill overlooking the camp. His skill with the drill improved almost every time. Once, sometimes twice a week, Rauchbach would leave him to his own devices and every so often Rosa would appear. It was here in the forest above the camp that Horace continued his love making with the owner’s daughter – Rose, as he’d now begun to call her – right through the winter of 1941/42. He had explained that he didn’t want to make love to a German girl and asked if she had any objections to being rechristened. He wanted her to become his English Rose, and she seemed to positively revel in it. It was their secret, their path to a new life.

  The winter was not as severe as the year before in that hellhole of a first camp. Horace thought back and wondered how they’d survived. The two of them made love in warm rain and cold rain and several times on a carpet of snow as the winter weather turned, the bitter piercing cold penetrating their bodies and taking their senses to a heightened level of arousal. They laughed as they collected their damp clothing and shivered as they dressed each other and marvelled at their daring exploits just a few hundred yards from the German guards.

  Life in the quarry camp was bearable for Horace, especially with his English Rose, but he could not control the guilt and often thought of escape as winter turned to spring. He discussed it with Rose. Always she tried to talk him out of it. She explained the geography and the lack of success of previous escapees and of course it all made perfect sense, but it was something he couldn’t shake from the back of his mind. He asked Rose if she could bring him a map and reluctantly, between tears, she agreed. Horace felt he had spent enough time in the quarry camp, enough time with his captors. The map never arrived. After a few weeks he stopped asking. Without a map escape was impossible. Rose knew this.

  The following week Rose approached him on top of the hill as he finished the last of a line of strategically measured holes in a particularly large slab of marble. He noticed her eyes immediately – they were glazed over with tears. Her bottom lip trembled and she quivered all over. The map, he thought to himself, she has the map. And he thought of the danger he had forced her into. He was wrong. There was no map.

  Rose was crying now as she delivered the news that her father had told her the night before. Horace and his companions were to be on the move again. They were being transferred to another camp. Rauchbach delivered the news personally while on parade the following morning. He looked sad but resigned to the fact that the German hierarchy had decided to rid him of a band of men he had personally trained to a highly productive, well-oiled machine. He wished the men well, and said that conditions in the next camp were better than he could provide. There were more showers, more facilities and even hot running water, and he hinted that the rations would increase too. It was a more modern camp with a concert hall and games facilities, he went on to say. On the whole Horace’s fellow prisoners seemed pleased – a little wary, but pleased.

  There was no reason to doubt this German standing in front of them. He had been honest and fair in everything he had said. He had increased their food, improved conditions and seemed to have the welfare of the prisoners genuinely at heart. Some would argue in the huts at night that he was only interested in production and the prisoners were merely a tool with which to meet his objectives, but nevertheless Rauchbach delivered his final address well as the German guards looked on uncomfortably. In a final goodwill gesture Rauchbach explained that the prisoners would be spared their work detail that day. He had organised a last supper with extra bread and coffee and biscuits by way of a thank you to the prisoners. They could relax and recharge their batteries and prepare for the long journey ahead the following morning.

  The men hung around their huts for the rest of the day. They chatted about the new camp and what their new surroundings would bring them. Most seemed happy, almost excited at the prospect of new surroundings and the improved conditions that Rauchbach had promised. Horace lay alone with his thoughts on his bunk. He did not care about improved conditions, was not interested in increased rations or concert halls or games rooms. It was at this point he realised how muc
h he would miss Rose. Horace understood that for the first time in his life he had fallen in love. It was a forbidden love; one he should never have embarked on. It was a love that the Germans had brought to a premature close.

  The following morning Horace sat in an all too familiar position in the back of the German troop-carrying lorry as it left the camp. Flapper sat opposite. It was déjà vu. Horace peered out of the back of the lorry, watching carefully mile after mile. He tried to take note of the landmarks, the twists and turns in the road and the T-junctions and the signs. It was all so futile.

  Horace realised the impossibility of the situation: he didn’t even know the name of the village in which Rose lived. Why hadn’t he asked her on that last meeting? An hour into the journey it dawned on him that even if he did manage to escape from the next camp, it would be simply impossible to find his way back to Rose.

  He had never felt this way before about any girl. His heart ached. He felt nauseous, his mouth was dry and he wanted to burst into tears and sob like a nine-year-old schoolboy, such were his feelings for this girl. His good friend Flapper tried once or twice to strike up a conversation but almost telepathically understood. Horace buried his head in his hands and fought back the tears.

  CHAPTER

  TWELVE

  After a three-hour journey, the men were welcomed at the new camp with lunch. It was the same old cabbage soup, but with flecks of meat and whole vegetables. A big bucket of bread sat in the middle of the new compound and the men were allowed to take as much as they wanted without restriction. A sign of things to come, perhaps?

  The men seemed happy as they chatted in the early afternoon sunshine. Flapper tried once again to strike up a conversation with Horace, his speech impaired by the overloaded portions of bread hanging from his mouth.

  ‘Come on, Jim. Aren’t you eating?’

  ‘I’m not hungry,’ Horace replied. ‘A touch of travel sickness,’ he explained limply.

  Flapper spoke again as flecks of bread exploded from his mouth.

  ‘I don’t understand you. The cunts have starved us for two years, then they lay on a fucking feast and you’re not fucking hungry. I swear, Jim,’ the big man said, ‘there is something seriously wrong with you.’

  I wish I could tell you, mate, Horace thought to himself. I wish I could tell you.

  Rauchbach had been right about the new camp, at Freiwaldau in Czechoslovakia. It was altogether different, with more food, better sanitation and washing facilities, and a new shower block with ten shower roses in a row. And for the first time… warm water.

  There were no sentries in watchtowers and not much barbed wire – another indication that the Germans knew escape was pointless. The main camp compound was roughly the size of two large football pitches with outbuildings containing guard rooms, staff rooms, a main office, a shower room and a small concert hall. The walls of these buildings formed the walls of the camp and on the edge between the huts and the forest, a huge vegetable plot. In another huge L-shaped position were the barrack rooms where the prisoners slept and ate and a huge toilet block where 40 men could sit and shit at any given time. Still no privacy, but nevertheless a little cleaner than the last camp.

  The buildings formed a huge square and at the top end of the camp was the main entrance, watched over 24 hours a day by at least half a dozen guards. The gaps between the buildings were protected and secured with impregnable barbed wire.

  Horace met another prisoner, Billy Strain from Falkirk in Scotland, who would become a great friend. Like most prisoners from Scotland he would become affectionately renamed Jock. His cooking skills had been discovered by the Germans and he worked the prisoner kitchen, sharing the staff quarters with Horace and a number of other key workers.

  Later that week, for the first time in over two and a half years, Horace would receive a letter from home. It was written by his mother. The letter was as expected: it had been vetted by the English bureaucrats in the UK and the German authorities in the camp. Everyone was well, his mother wrote, though no mention of any names. Horace wondered about Harold. Where was he? Was he alive? Mother hoped the war would soon be over, but again no mention of any news on how it was going or who was winning the fight. The letter was more or less chapter and verse the same as the dozens of other letters that had been sent to the other prisoners, as if the writer had been told what to write by the official at the war office. Still, the delivery of the letter pleased Horace, and he breathed a mighty sigh of relief that his family knew he was still alive.

  But nothing could shake off the depression he was feeling at the loss of Rose. She was in his waking thoughts and was the last thing he thought of each evening. He tormented himself over her safety and although she had expressed her undying love that final time they lay together naked in the forest at the quarry camp, he wondered how long it would be before she found another lover to replace him. She was a young attractive girl in the prime of her life. He had introduced her to the pleasures of the flesh and she had responded eagerly with an unbridled passion. She had been a willing lover, eager to please and keen to experiment and after that oh, so special first orgasm she had wanted more and more. Of course she would find a new lover. Horace just prayed he would not be German.

  It was late September 1942, and the first chills of the oncoming winter had begun to be felt on the early morning parades. On the Russian front the German troops had reached the suburbs of Stalingrad. Horace tried desperately to shake off his depression, but it was not easy. Gradually he thought of Rose less and less, but still she was with him every day.

  One morning, for the first time, the men were issued with Red Cross parcels. They contained chocolate and cigarettes, matches, candles, tins of bully beef and powdered Nestlé milk. The camp was comfortable, and again Horace’s guilt rose to the surface. He was well fed, slept well on an individual bunk with a mattress of sorts, and the working day was a manageable eight hours. Again Horace was the camp barber. He worked hard on the conversations with the prisoners whose hair he was cutting. In camp three there was no need to shave the heads to the bare scalp: body lice were an exception rather than the rule. The familiar skill of cutting hair, as opposed to simply shaving it all off, returned quickly. Maintaining the conversations was hard work. They had been in Leicester and in Torquay and in the previous two camps, but a good conversation was a distraction and squeezed out all thoughts of the lover he had left behind.

  Most of the men he talked with were working on the log piles in the camp grounds. The logs were cut into manageable piles that were loaded onto flatbed lorries and taken to a factory on the perimeter of the camp. It was here that the wood would be cut into fine shavings and used as ‘wood wool’ for bedding and upholstery for the German war effort. Other men worked in the huge pine forests that surrounded the camps, felling the trees, stripping them of their branches before bringing them back to the camp. It was one of these men returning from his duty one day who would give Horace the fright of his life.

  Dave Crump sat down in the barber’s chair with a huge grin on his face.

  ‘What are you so happy about, Dave?’ Horace asked.

  The man could contain his good news no longer.

  ‘I saw Rose today,’ he grinned. ‘At least that’s what she said her name was.’

  Horace’s scissors took on an involuntary life of their own as he lopped a big chunk from the prisoner’s head.

  ‘Whoa, Jim, you’ll have my bloody eye out. Just put the bloody scissors down for a minute, please.’

  Horace did as he was told but was unsure if his so-called friend was playing a sick joke. No, he couldn’t be. If he’d said Rosa, perhaps – but no, he’d said Rose, he’d definitely said Rose.

  ‘What do you mean, you saw Rose? We were on that bloody truck for three hours. You’ve been working less than a mile away from the camp. How… what…?’

  ‘If you shut your face, Jim, I’ll tell you.’ The man paused, took a deep breath. ‘Rose told me she’s been looking
for you for months. She came up to this camp sometime last week. It takes about an hour by train from the village she lives in. She said she recognised some of the men on the outside party. She plucked up courage to speak to me, asked if there was a barber in my camp called Jim.’

  Horace couldn’t believe the man sitting in front of him. It did not seem possible. Dave reached into his pocket. He pulled out a letter.

  ‘It’s for you, Jim. She’s written it for you.’

  He handed the letter to Horace who sank onto the floor as his legs buckled and gave way. Dave excused himself and said he would return later to have his hair finished. He didn’t fancy a date with the scissors in Horace’s current state.

  Horace’s hands were shaking uncontrollably as he broke the seal of the envelope. The letter was not signed, nor was it addressed to him personally. Rose had been clever, all too aware that the letter might fall into German hands. Horace brought the paper to his nose and breathed in hard. He detected the faintest aroma, the musky, slightly perfumed smell of Rosa Rauchbach. Her written English was faultless.

  Dearest

  My Father would not tell me where it was you had been sent, only that the conditions were much better and the food would be good. I hope you are keeping well. I miss you. I miss our times together and wonder if there is any way I can see you.

  You are not on one of the outside working parties. I have checked them all. I have been searching the camps for many months now, almost given up hope of seeing you ever again. I have taken the train to many places and walked through the forests to Lamsdorf, Sagan, Teschen, Silberberg and Sternberg. I have seen many sad men but no one that I recognised until I walked to Freiwaldau just over a week ago. It was six kilometres to the forest where the men work and gradually I began to recognise some men from the quarry. I looked and looked but could not see you. I returned back home each evening and as soon as the train starts moving I cry. Goodness knows what the other passengers must think. Eventually I found the courage and spoke with your friend and he tells me you are confined to camp cutting the men’s hair. I had so hoped you would be working in the forest and we could have seen each other.