Do the Birds Still Sing in Hell?

by Horace Greasley

  No. There were no trucks full of soldiers, no tanks or heavy artillery. They were SS staff cars and Horace knew instinctively they were here to search for a radio. It was a well-executed and brutal exercise, designed to show the prisoners there was still plenty of fight left in the German war machine. The SS went into the barracks and the staff quarters heavy handed and noisily. Any prisoner a little slow in responding to the early morning alarm call would be kicked out of bed and receive several blows from the butt of a rifle. It took no more than three minutes before every prisoner in the camp stood outside in the cold October air of Silesia, some in little more than a vest and underpants.

  A large, evil-looking SS officer with a dark moustache began speaking.

  ‘Prisoners of the Fatherland, we are here tonight to right a few wrongs. We are not stupid and we know that a communications network has been set up in one of the camps in the area. We have reason to believe it is here at Freiwaldau.’

  Horace glanced across at Jock Strain and next-in-line Jimmy White. Horace hoped that he was not looking as frightened as they were, though he suspected he was.

  ‘Keep calm,’ a voice whispered. It was Flapper. ‘They know fuck all, they’re only guessing.’

  ‘Pretty good guess,’ Horace retorted.

  The officer continued. He pulled out a sheet of paper. ‘First, we must tell you the way the war is going. You have been receiving nonsense from your country. They would have you believe that the army of the glorious German Fatherland is on the run.’

  The officer let out a forced laugh. The minor ranks around him smiled on cue; one or two of them laughed along with the officer.

  ‘Nothing could be further from the truth, you stupid English dogs.’

  The officer pulled out a pair of glasses from his pocket and put them on. He peered over the top of the lenses at the assembled prisoners. ‘This news comes from an intercepted American broadcast.’ He looked up again and smiled. ‘This is not German propaganda; it comes from your own side.

  ‘Germany has put down the Warsaw uprising while the so-called glorious Russian Army stood by and watched.’

  He read from a list. It was brief and succinct and gave a wholly different opinion from that which Horace had been hearing from the BBC over recent weeks. He tried hard to block out the officer’s voice but the events he was relaying had happened; he’d heard them with his own ears but from a British perspective.

  ‘We are winning the battle of Debrecan against your Russian allies.’ He paused, looked up. ‘You had better hope that you never ever meet a Russian soldier. They are worse than animals and kill and fuck anything that moves. They are truly devils sent from hell.’ He went back to the paper. ‘Our Japanese friends are winning the battle of Leyte Gulf and have gained control of the Pacific Ocean.’

  The German officer spoke for ten minutes. He delivered his speech well and a few murmurs of discontent reverberated in the still, cool air.

  It’s all lies, Horace wanted to shout out, German propaganda. But then again, what if it really had come from the Americans? That would mean the BBC had been broadcasting lies and the war wasn’t coming to an end. Horace’s mind was in turmoil until he looked at the German guards. They weren’t smiling, weren’t sticking their chests out proudly. They had the same dejected look on their faces as they’d had for several weeks. Horace smiled, kicked Jock’s ankle discreetly and nodded his head in the direction of two German guards.

  ‘Look,’ he whispered quietly. ‘Look at those fuckers, they don’t believe him either.’ Jock looked over and Horace watched as a smile replaced the frown he’d worn earlier. In a bizarre relay game, prisoner upon prisoner was kicked, poked or prodded and made aware of the look on their captors’ faces. At that moment Horace understood that the real news coming in each night from London simply had to continue finding its way to the 3000 Allied prisoners in the region.

  The SS lined up outside the main sleeping barracks of Oflag VIII G Freiwaldau. The officer signalled and in they went. The prisoners could see them through the open windows, their uniforms lit up from the dim lights in the hut. They trashed the entire barracks. Bunks were broken, mattresses and pillows torn open and the personal belongings of the prisoners were brought out into the compound. Letters from home, photographs, books, magazines and rations from Red Cross parcels were all placed in a big pile before being doused in petrol and set alight.

  Inside, the SS were still busy, ripping out shelves and punching in the panels above the prisoners’ beds. One of the German guards was systematically destroying sections of the false ceiling with the butt of his rifle.

  Horace feared the worst.

  Someone whispered, ‘Stay calm, Jim.’

  Horace was aware that the eyes of a hundred prisoners were trained on him. Everyone in the camp knew that the radio was housed in a panel above his bed. Everyone knew he’d got the parts into the camp, it was his responsibility and he’d insisted the radio was to be built into his section of the wall.

  The SS and the camp guards made their way back into the compound. They’d found nothing.

  The officer held a two-minute meeting with one of his underlings then nodded in the direction of the prison staff quarters. His troops and the guards moved quickly towards the open door. Horace swore his legs were about to give up the fight. The SS officer placed his hands behind his back, smiled at the prisoners and followed his troops into the hut.

  Horace closed his eyes. The noise of the staff quarters being systematically torn apart was bad enough as he envisaged the scene inside. He heard the bunks being turned upside down and the mattresses being split with a knife. Worse still was the splinter of wood coming from the panels and the ceiling. The total destruction lasted no more than five minutes and then an eerie silence ensued. As the guards and the SS made their way out in to the darkness, Horace noticed one or two had smiles on their faces.

  They had found something.

  Last out was the German SS officer. He stood in the doorway and looked along the line of the assembled prisoners. He looked angry. Taking a deep breath, he bellowed at the top of his voice: ‘Bring me the barber!’

  Horace swayed one way then the other, on the point of collapse. This was it – his number was up. Two German guards took him by the arms and frogmarched him towards the entrance of the hut. The radio had been found, found above his bed. He would be shot, but what about the others? Incredibly, right at this moment he was thinking of others. He thought about his roommates. What would happen to them? Would they be implicated too? He thought of Rose. They’d want to know his supplier.

  Right there and then he made a suicidal decision. He couldn’t take the chance of interrogation; he loved Rose too much for that. He was strong, a stubborn bastard, Flapper and Jock and the rest of the lads would always say, but just how strong and how stubborn was he? He couldn’t take the chance of breaking under interrogation and revealing Rosa’s name. On his way out of the hut he’d break free and make a run for the forest. He’d be cut down in a hail of bullets and Rose would be safe. His English Rose… safe.

  Horace was physically dragged to his bunk and ordered to stand to attention. The SS officer had lost his temper and stood no more than three or four inches from his face, shouting and cursing. Horace looked over his shoulder.

  The shelf and the panelling were intact.

  ‘You filthy fucking English Scheißer!’

  Horace looked at the overfilled tin can of cigarettes and the ash and discarded butts on the shelf. There were chocolate papers and a mouldy tin of bully beef. He watched as a fly made its way over a crumb of stale bread. A sticky patch of some unknown dried liquid covered the far end next to the window.

  ‘Hurensohn – son of a whore – never in my life have I seen such a filthy bastard as you!’

  The shelf remained untouched, the German officer refusing to let his men come into contact with such filth, such grime. The SS man cuffed Horace across the cheek and he fell to the floor. Never had he been so pleas
ed to receive such a blow to the face.

  His plan had worked. He looked around at the sheer wanton vandalism that had been carried out on his colleagues’ beds and their surrounding area. His bunk remained untouched. The shelf hadn’t been moved an inch and the panels that hid the equipment necessary to produce the camp journal remained in place. What tickled him more than anything was watching the SS officer standing just inches from what it was he was looking for.

  The SS officer proceeded to kick and punch Horace back outside and into line, and the prisoners were made to stand in the cold for another hour. No one could quite understand why Jim Greasley stood the whole time with a smile on his face while his teeth chattered.

  The radio had survived. It was business as usual.

  Several weeks later in the camp at Oberlangendorf the commandant sent for his next in command. ‘I have a job for you, Brecken.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘I want you to accompany Andrezj Netzer and the work party into the forest today.’

  ‘Yes, Commandant.’

  ‘When you get a moment take Netzer deep into the forest.’ The commandant paused, stroking his chin. ‘Tell him you have a special job for him, make him feel important…’ He smiled. ‘He likes that.’

  ‘Yes, Commandant.’

  ‘And Brecken…’

  ‘Commandant?’

  ‘Put a bullet into the back of his head and leave him to the wolves.’

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY

  Horace lay on his bunk. He was having one of those reflective moments, the sort of moment that all prisoners go through. He had been imprisoned for four and a half years… years that should have been the best of his life.

  He’d been on the verge of manhood when he’d been sent to war without being consulted all those years ago. He’d established a successful career, discovered the fairer sex and enjoyed the weekend dances and the times with his father and mother and his siblings. He’d played football and cricket and boxed in Leicester as a youngster. He’d had so much to give, so much to see and do. Yet with the flutter of a white handkerchief it had all been taken away from him.

  He’d missed four Christmases. They were always notified when it was Christmas Day and some of the prisoners kept note of the date and carried a calendar of sorts through the year. But normally in the camps one day just rolled into another. As Christmas Day was his birthday, he’d missed four birthday celebrations too. He remembered the cup of tea with whisky his father gave him every year and pictured the scene in the kitchen as his dad toasted his good health. Christmas Day in the camp was the worst day of the year for Horace Greasley.

  But this year could be different. He was contemplating the craziest invitation he’d ever received: to escape and have Christmas dinner at Rosa’s family home in Klimontow, a village in Silesia. It all seemed so easy as it was explained to him. Rose and her father had planned it well. The roads would be quiet on Christmas morning, she’d explained, and it was the only day of the year that the Germans didn’t insist on an early morning roll call at the camp. They gave the prisoners the day off and left them very much to their own devices. Rose was right… he wouldn’t be missed.

  Herr Rauchbach would be waiting at the crossroads five miles from the camp. The journey to the family home would take a little over an hour and awaiting him would be a goose with all the trimmings and the finest bottle of Silesian wine. They’d start with a traditional fish salad and finish with Christmas pudding and chocolates.

  A family Christmas, thought Horace, more than likely a fire in the hearth and perhaps even a drop of whisky. He’d need to try and think of a gift for Rose. Nothing to think of really: he had six squares of chocolate left from his last Red Cross parcel – that was it.

  But other thoughts also crossed his mind. Why go back to the camp after the day’s festivities? The war was all but over, or so they’d been told by the BBC. Even the British Home Guard had been told to stand down, such was the lack of threat from the now toothless German war machine, and the Japanese were increasingly turning to kamikaze tactics, a sure sign of desperation.

  Worse was wondering what the reaction of the German commandant and his command would be when they finally received the news that they’d been dreading, that the war was lost. Why spare the prisoners’ lives? Why hand them over to the Russians or Americans or the Red Cross? Surely such an exercise was fraught with danger? Taking the prisoners out into the forest and disposing of them would be the easiest course of action.

  Horace thought back to the night of the radio search and the Germans burning all the prisoners’ personal effects. Head it simply been forward planning, denying that the prisoners had even been there? Had Horace’s many letters even arrived home?

  The more he thought about it the more the Rauchbach household appealed. Why not hide there for a month or two?

  It was 7am on 23 December 1944. Horace called a private meeting with his closest friends prior to the morning’s roll call. Jock Strain, Flapper, Freddie Rogers and David Crump sat on the floor of the staff quarters, all suspecting what Horace was about to announce.

  The men sat in resigned silence as Horace made clear his intentions. In one way it was another sign that the war was without a doubt coming to an end. The prisoners knew it, as did the family of Horace’s girlfriend, and every one of the prisoners had witnessed the change in the guards. After Horace had made the announcement his friends said very little. The men went out onto parade and afterwards resumed their usual work roles. Horace walked over to the makeshift barbershop with lead in his boots and a heavy heart.

  The cigarettes containing the previous evening’s news were distributed as normal. Freddie Rogers and David Crump were on an outside party four kilometres from the camp. They had talked little of their good friend’s imminent departure and eased the moment by handing out more cigarettes than was normal. It had come to the attention of two German guards.

  ‘They hand cigarettes out like presents, Brecken.’

  Sergeant Brecken stood watching the two prisoners. ‘Yes, they are feeling generous. They know they do not have many days left. But if you notice they receive cigarettes from the same men a few days later.’

  The guard, Froud, furrowed his brow. ‘And what does that mean, exactly?’

  Brecken shrugged his shoulders. ‘It means they are playing at being home when cigarettes were in plentiful supply. They are trying to re-enact their Friday and Saturday nights in their towns and cities in England. They are giving Christmas presents. They are not giving them away, Froud, they are simply playing give and take… happy friends. It’s an act, a charade.’

  ‘Herr Feldwebel, I would…’

  The senior man from the camp held up a hand. ‘Silence. I have more important things to deal with than worrying about Englishmen giving out cigarettes.’

  Brecken slung his rifle onto his shoulder and walked over to Freddie Rogers and David Crump. A Silesian man was begging for a cigarette but Rogers and Crump were flatly refusing.

  ‘Why do you not give this man the gift of tobacco, prisoner?’ Brecken asked Freddie Rogers.

  ‘He is not my friend, sir,’ Rogers replied without thinking for a second. ‘I have not seen him before. I only give cigarettes to my friends.’

  The German’s theory that the prisoners were playing out a game was confirmed. He turned to the Silesian.

  ‘Come, Netzer, come with me into the forest. I have a special assignment for you.’

  ‘A special job?’ Andrezj Netzer stuttered. A smile crept across his face. ‘Yes, sir. Straight away, sir.’

  The German walked away into the forest and the Silesian scuttled after him. Brecken stroked the butt of his rifle as if it were a small puppy. His finger momentarily located the trigger before checking that the safety lock had been disengaged.

  Christmas morning 1944. After another flawless escape Horace lay shivering in the fringe of the forest looking back at the camp. He studied the barrack room and the staff quarters a
nd the window he’d used to such good effect in the past two years.

  Everything seemed so quiet. Flapper had already replaced the bars. Horace watched as two cold, bored and hungry-looking guards passed the window without even looking up. He thought about the good and not so good times he’d shared with Flapper and Jock and the rest of the lads sleeping soundly in their beds, looking forward perhaps to their last Christmas morning under German control.

  He had left the escape till later than usual, just after 5.30, giving plenty of cover of darkness before the sun came up. The meeting with Rose would take place at 6.30, two kilometres from the camp on the main road out.

  Rose stood silhouetted in the darkness, a solitary figure stamping her feet occasionally, trying desperately to ward off the cold. He watched her for a couple of minutes as she peered down the road in the direction of the camp. He crept up on her from the forest and threw his arms around her. She gave out a little squeal as he turned her around and kissed her. She broke the embrace quickly.

  ‘Come quickly, Father is waiting.’ She took his hand and began to walk away.

  Horace made no attempt to move; she was aware of the resistance immediately. She looked deep into his sad eyes and knew. Her own tears started before she spoke.

  ‘What is it, Jim? Talk to me.’

  Horace shook his head. ‘I cannot come, Rose, you know that.’

  ‘But why, Jim? Please, we…’

  He held a finger to her lips as a tear fell to the ground.

  ‘You know why.’

  ‘No, I don’t… tell me.’

  Horace sighed, took her hand and walked slowly up the road. ‘I must see your father and thank him, but I won’t place you at risk any more than I’ve already done.’