Airborne

by Robert Radcliffe

  ‘Which means?’

  ‘Slovenly.’

  Alford visibly pales. He’s going to hit him now, I think, he’s going to grab this Nazi bastard by the throat and punch his lights out. Following which we’ll all be taken out and shot, and good riddance. But he doesn’t. Instead he straightens slowly up to his full six feet, brings himself to attention, fixes his eyes on the wall above Möglich’s head and speaks, slowly and quietly to Pettifer.

  ‘Translate this word for word, Padre. This facility is an utter disgrace. It directly contravenes Article One of the 1929 Geneva Convention, specifically relating to the treatment of wounded ex-combatants. I am currently preparing a report in which I list its failures, shortcomings and abuses, which are criminal in nature, and for which Major Möglich, as commandant, is personally responsible. And the moment Germany loses this war, which Major Möglich knows will be very soon, I will file this report with the relevant authorities, and personally ensure he is brought to trial for his criminal complicity.’

  We hold our breaths as Pettifer translates. Now it’s Möglich’s turn to go pale, then puce with rage. But before he can respond, Alford hands him a sheet.

  ‘This is a list of our requirements. If Major Möglich will attend to it, immediately and without prevarication, I will consider modifying my report in his favour.’ And with that he turns and marches from the room.

  *

  The very next morning Lieutenant Colonel Bill Alford is removed from our midst and we never see him again. Only much later do I learn that he survives the war, leaves the army and returns to general practice at his home in Scotland. Whether he ever files his report I don’t know, but his threat to Möglich works to an extent, because over the next days and weeks the situation improves marginally. Extra hut space is allocated, medical equipment and supplies begin appearing, more bedding, precious Red Cross parcels too, to boost rations and provide currency for barter. Control over bathing, cooking and heating is slowly wrested from the French; the sick and injured receive treatment. Stalag XIB will never be a proper hospital camp, and will remain harsh and depressing, but the Paras will survive it.

  Mostly without me, as it turns out, because later that second day I’m summoned to Möglich’s office. After a sleepless night on a straw palliasse this comes as a shock, and as I’m frog-marched across the compound between two guards I can only rack my brains in apprehension. Did he see me nodding during Alford’s outburst? Is it because I smiled at the Hitler gangster reference? Is it to do with the escape attempt on the train? None of the above, as it turns out, unforgettably.

  ‘Three of your seriously sick are to be transferred to hospital in Bergen,’ Möglich says through an aide who translates. ‘You will accompany them and return with medical supplies. Transportation leaves in one hour. Dismiss.’

  I’ve no idea where this comes from, but assume it’s to do with Alford’s list of demands and silently thank him, especially as Theo’s name is on the list. Why I’m chosen as escort is a mystery, but to get out of that camp, even for a few hours, is a blessed relief. I’m even issued with travel rations: a paper bag with black bread, sausage and an apple, and an hour later, hastily washed and shaved and with the stretchers safely loaded, and me up front between driver and guard, the grey army ambulance rumbles out through the gates. Bergen is only ten miles from Fallingbostel so we’re soon trundling along the cobbled streets of a trim-looking town and pulling up beside the hospital, which appears modern. With my charges safely inside I’m shown to a lobby and told to wait. Minutes pass. I sink into a seat, a German newspaper catching my eye. Front-page photographs portray a lavish state funeral. The glorious hero Rommel has died, it turns out, following injuries received fighting in France.

  ‘Herr Doctor Garland?’ A female voice stirs me from reverie. ‘I’m Doctor Inge Brandt. How do you do.’ Clear English, forties, petite, prematurely grey, white-coated, not smiling but warily polite. Startled, I get to my feet.

  ‘Oh, hello, how do you do?’

  ‘Shall we visit your patients?’

  I follow her upstairs and we spend the next hour going through the details: names and service numbers, nature and description of injuries, treatment received so far, treatment proposed, medication required and so on. Throughout it all she takes notes but also watches me closely, and questions me, such that I start to feel I’m the one being assessed, not the patients, which is unnerving. We get to Theo last. He remains pale and unresponsive but it’s a relief to see him in a proper bed with clean sheets and fresh bandages. As we arrive a nurse is setting up a drip in his arm.

  ‘Ah, the craniotomy my husband spoke of,’ Inge says. ‘We’re starting him on penicillin as you can see, and we’ve replaced the drain you installed, for something more… conventional? I hope you approve.’

  I am now deeply baffled. ‘What? Oh yes, well, it was only a temporary… Excuse me, did you say your husband? And now I think of it, how do you know my name?’

  ‘Yes.’ Her eyes brighten fractionally. ‘I apologize, Doctor. My husband is Gerhardt Brandt, Major Brandt that is, the officer in charge of your train?’

  Who watched so closely while I operated on Theo. And expressed such heartfelt regret at Cliff Poutney’s death. The penny drops. ‘He arranged this?’

  ‘He said he would try to help.’

  ‘But how? I mean, by what authority?’

  ‘That is not your concern.’

  Not Alford then, or even Möglich, but an unknown German major showing humanity. Or someone even higher. Inge returns to Theo, we continue discussing his case, she continues to watch me closely, and continues to ask odd questions.

  ‘Would I be correct in thinking you are a man of your word, Doctor Garland?’

  ‘I’d like to think so. Why?’

  ‘No reason. Do you agree this patient’s best interests would not be served by sending him back to your camp?’

  ‘Completely. It would kill him in days.’

  ‘I agree. What is your view of the progress of the war?’

  ‘You’re going to lose it! In the next six months probably. Why, what’s your view?’

  ‘I don’t have one. Not on its progress. Only its effects.’

  ‘Which are?’

  ‘Never mind.’ She looks at the window, pausing. Outside, late-autumn clouds punctuate the piercing blue. ‘We’re on a journey, the German people. Like a train. We thought we knew the destination, but we don’t. Now it is unknown. But malevolent. Like that story by Conrad.’

  ‘The Heart of Darkness.’

  ‘Yes.’ She turns back to Theo. ‘You’re on it now, you two. Germany’s train journey. As, how do you say, spectators?’

  ‘Reluctant ones, I assure you!’ I lower my voice. ‘Why do not the German people simply remove the driver?’

  But she just stiffens, and starts tugging Theo’s sheets straight, and changes the subject again. ‘I understand you are lacking medical supplies.’

  ‘Yes, dreadfully. The camp commandant seems less than helpful.’

  ‘I will give you what we can spare. And try to arrange more.’

  ‘That’s very generous.’

  ‘Although it is not easy – we are very short ourselves.’ She gestures to the window. ‘Out there. This whole area around Bergen, you know, has many tens of thousands of labourers, from all different parts of the Reich. They work in farms and factories for the war effort. And live in large camps.’

  ‘Like the Stammlager I’ve just come from?’

  ‘That is a small military prison, for soldiers, who are not forced to work. I’m talking about civilians, men and women. In huge forced-labour camps.’

  ‘I don’t know of those.’

  Her eyes lock on mine. ‘Would you like to see one?’

  Much later I realize she and her husband must have discussed this, and somehow concluded I could be trusted not to betray them. Which is a huge leap of faith by any standards. Having procured my word not to escape, Inge leads me back down to the lobby,
explaining that as medical director she has responsibility for several outlying clinics she is required to visit, and therefore has use of a car. At reception she signs forms and tells them she is escorting the British doctor to one of these clinics, in order that he can witness Germany’s excellent healthcare system for himself. Then we walk unchallenged out into the sunshine. Just like that. Dazzled, I inhale deeply, smelling autumn leaves and rain-washed streets, revelling in the fresh air and freedom. No stench of latrines or putrefaction, no wires, no guards or guns, no soldiers, just a quiet road in a quiet town, mothers pushing prams, children playing, pensioners sitting on a bench. No war anywhere. It’s blissfully refreshing.

  ‘Remember your promise,’ Inge says, sensing my thoughts.

  ‘Of course.’ I nod and open the car door.

  She puts her hand to the key, but then pauses. ‘What you are about to see is not known of outside Germany, do you understand?’

  ‘Yes I do.’

  ‘But it needs to be.’

  Barely five minutes out of town we come to the place, past a village called Belsen. As we drive, the usual thick pine woodland suddenly gives way to a vast wired plain stretching away for miles, and filled with tents and huts and ramshackle shelters as far as the eye can see. A kind of dusty smog hangs over the place. Smoke rises from dozens of fires; the ground is littered with people, possessions and rubbish. Shanty town, is my first reaction, like a slum in India or somewhere, huge, overcrowded, filthy, seen in a picture in a magazine. We drive on along the fence, Inge watchful now, repeatedly craning her neck and checking the rear-view mirror; suddenly she brakes and turns down a dirt track beside the fence.

  ‘This is part of the women’s section. I make rendezvous here when I can. But we can only stop for a minute.’

  A hundred yards on gaggles of people can be seen gathering near the fence. Drawing nearer I see they are women; as we approach they surge like a tide towards the wire. The car stops. Inge immediately jumps out and goes to the fence where perhaps a hundred women are hurrying towards her. All are grossly emaciated, barely skin and bones encased in rags, tattered home clothes or pyjamas made from a coarse striped sackcloth. Many wear crudely fashioned scarves and coats, few have serviceable shoes, most are barefoot. As I approach they see me and recoil, as though frightened by my uniform. ‘Englischer Doktor,’ Inge soothes, and starts handing small packages through the wire. ‘Medicines,’ she explains. ‘It’s not much – everything is carefully inventoried, but we manage some analgesics, anti-bacterials and so on. Malnutrition is the worst problem, that and contagious disease.’

  I draw near, dumbfounded. A terrible smell hangs over the place, like death and decay. A hand reaches to me through the strands, more a claw, the skin scabbed, parchment thin, the nails black and broken. I take it, squeeze gently, but it is cold and unresponsive; immediately it withdraws only to be replaced by others. I look at the faces, the expressions, not afraid now, only desperate and appealing, the eyes and teeth too big for the sunken cheeks, the hair matted and lifeless. I remember my ration pack and, pulling it out, pass it through. It vanishes in a second. I search my pockets: cigarettes, matches, a cotton handkerchief, all go through; still the hands beseech for more.

  ‘We must go. Guards patrol regularly.’

  I glance up, searching over the heads, but the size, the scale of the place are beyond comprehension. A city of suffering. ‘How many are there?’

  ‘In the whole camp? Nobody knows. Thirty thousand? Forty? Some estimates are as high as seventy.’

  ‘Who are they?’

  ‘Poles, Slavs, Hungarian, Jews, Gypsies, Russians. The Nazis house them here, feed them on nothing, work them until they die and then replace them with more. The women work in satellite camps, in gunpowder and armaments factories until they are too sick to carry on. Deaths from starvation and disease run at hundreds every day. Last year there was a typhoid epidemic which killed ten thousand. No outside medical help is allowed. Come, we must leave now.’

  We return to the car. She starts up, manoeuvres it round and speeds off. I glance back: the women are still at the fence.

  ‘I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘Don’t say anything. Not now. The repercussions for us both would be fatal. You are a witness, that is all. A witness, remember that.’

  We drive back along the road into the forest until the camp is swallowed behind us. As if it never existed. Then she pulls up and switches off. ‘We can’t go back yet. It would look suspicious.’ I check my watch: barely fifteen minutes since we left the hospital. A clean, orderly environment in a tidy little town populated by normal German people. She opens the glove box and produces a crumpled pack. There’s only one cigarette left. I light it for her – her fingers are trembling. Mine aren’t. They’re too numb to take it in.

  ‘Don’t they know?’

  She blows smoke. ‘What?’

  ‘The people, the townspeople of Bergen. Five minutes from their door is a vast camp of people suffering terrible cruelty, with a population the size of a small city. Don’t they know?’

  ‘They know but they don’t say.’

  Fallingbostel. I recall the inhabitants’ indifference, glancing away as we marched past. ‘Why not, for God’s sake?’

  ‘It’s called oppression, Doctor!’ Her eyes flash angrily. ‘The German people are oppressed, don’t you know that by now? We exist in a climate of fear and reprisal. Disobey a rule, complain about something, express dissent, and you simply disappear!’

  ‘But—’

  ‘And I didn’t bring you here only to receive a lecture!’

  ‘No. No, you’re right. I’m sorry.’

  She draws heavily on the cigarette and then offers it to me. The faintest hint of lipstick stains the paper; the tobacco tastes coarse and bitter. Suddenly we hear the rumble of approaching motors. She stiffens and then presses against me in a fake embrace. We freeze. I sense the slightness of her body and a hint of scent. A column of army vehicles goes by in the direction of the camp. At its rear is an open staff car with officers in the back. One glances at us as he passes; seconds later the column is gone. Inge slumps back into her seat. Only now do I realize the risk she is taking.

  ‘You are putting yourself in terrible danger.’

  ‘There’s more.’ She lowers her head to the wheel. ‘There’s worse.’

  ‘Worse? What could be worse?’

  ‘East. Far to the east, in Poland. Other camps. Gerhardt told me, he knows of them. They are secret, and guarded by the SS.’

  ‘What kind of camps?’

  ‘Camps for killing people. By the tens of thousand.’

  CHAPTER 10

  Ironically it was in Portsmouth, from where he had left England so eagerly twelve weeks earlier, that the Royal Navy now deposited Theo, together with thirty other 51st Highland Division survivors. With only a salt-stained battledress and borrowed boots to his name, he clumped down the gang-plank to the dockside, where his details were recorded, he was issued with two pounds in cash and a travel warrant for the railway, and instructed to report to his regiment within forty-eight hours. But he didn’t report, he stayed in Portsmouth, spending that night in the same bus shelter as in March, then several days wandering the city’s streets. He ate at soup kitchens and a seamen’s mission, slept on park benches or bus shelters, stayed out of doors and spoke to no one, walking miles each day or simply sitting on the beach and staring out to sea. Eventually his two pounds were gone, his borrowed boots split and his vagabond existence ended when a policeman advised him to ‘cut along home’ before the MPs picked him up.

  Walking up the road to the Kingston boarding house that evening felt like re-entering a forgotten dream. He stood at the threshold, beset with memories; then he knocked, the door opened, and Eleni Popodopolous fell on him like the prodigal son.

  ‘My Lor’, my heaven!’ she screeched, sweeping him into a bosomy clinch. ‘Thank God you still alive! Where you been, you bad boy, we been so worry!’
r />   ‘Hello, Eleni. I’ve been in France.’

  ‘France! Blimey and look the state of you! Oh, your poor mother, so terrible, so terrible, my God! Winterbottom, look! Look, Theodoros here, he here!’

  ‘So he is.’ A uniformed figure appeared. ‘And not a moment too soon.’

  ‘Soon? Why? What’s happened?’

  ‘My God, he know nothing!’ Eleni dissolved into sobbing. ‘He know nothing!’

  ‘Know what? Eleni, where’s Mother?’

  ‘She gone!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She carted off bloody prison! Two days ago!’

  She pulled him through to the parlour where between cups of tea and avalanches of questions, he learned that plain-clothes policemen had arrived unannounced at the door two days earlier and arrested Carla.

  ‘But why? What did she do?’

  ‘She didn’t do nothing, my dear! She Italian!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘They rounding you all up like horses!’

  ‘Rounding up where?’

  ‘At the races!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It true, I swear. Kempton, the horse-races place, they got a prison there!’

  He shook his head, the dream illusion rapidly turning to nightmare. He looked at Winterbottom, watching from an armchair. ‘Please, what is this?’

  Winterbottom sat forward. ‘It’s called the Emergency Powers Defence Act, Theo. Following Italy’s entry into the war, all Italian nationals living in Britain have been categorized according to perceived threat, “A” being high risk, “B” being medium, “C” being low. And those unfortunately finding themselves in the first two categories are subject to immediate arrest and, er, internment. Your mother, it turns out, included.’

  ‘But she hates Fascism! She’s spent her whole life opposing it!’

  Winterbottom shrugged. ‘It seems she cropped up on some Home Office list as “politically active” and that was enough for the authorities to haul her in.’

  ‘She’s active trying to get independence from Italy!’ Theo was shocked. And bewildered. A week ago he had been fighting for his life in Normandy. Then days more mindlessly tramping the streets of Portsmouth. Now this. It was too much, beyond assimilating. ‘I, um, I must find her, go to her, I—’