by Peter Haden
Tadzio tried to look as simple as possible. ‘Mogę to zrobić,’ he replied, ‘provided I can keep the farm.’ He hoped his confirmation that yes, he could do that, in exchange for keeping the farm, would satisfy the collaborator. It seemed that it had.
‘Maybe I can get you some canvas to put under a new roof,’ his visitor replied, his eyes lifting to the cottage. ‘You need a market for your produce and we need loyal suppliers.’
Tadzio pretended to be grateful for what was, in effect, a small bribe, and thanked him profusely.
There was still some seed in the barn, so he was ploughing an adjacent field with Kary when he saw a large civilian van drive into the yard. By the time he got there Collaborator, as Tadzio thought of him, was standing by the passenger door, cigarette in hand, together with a uniformed Wehrmacht non-commissioned officer. The driver was still behind the wheel. Two soldiers with rifles stood at the rear, one either side. The back doors were open. There were several baskets in the back from which emanated the clucking of chickens. They had also offloaded what looked to be several large sheets of folded canvas.
‘We have put two pigs in your pen,’ Collaborator told him, still without offering his name. ‘And we have some birds here for your chicken run. We have taken them from one of your neighbours who is no longer farming. ‘Opróżnij koszyki,’ he instructed, ‘empty the baskets, then bring them back, so that we can be on our way.’ He nodded towards the folded sheets that had been thrown on the ground behind the van. ‘Those might help for now. Maybe later you can re-thatch.’
‘And please be aware,’ the NCO added, ‘that whilst we accept you must eat, we also demand a very full and fair return on this investment. Those in the baskets are this year’s birds, so they will not start to lay until spring, then someone will return regularly for the eggs. When we are ready, we will butcher the pork ourselves. You will not see either of us again for a while,’ his hand waved to include Collaborator, ‘but one of my men will make regular inspections, so don’t imagine that you will not be watched. It would be most unfortunate,’ he emphasised, ‘were you not to keep your side of the bargain.’
He had spoken in German. Tadzio knew enough to understand what had been said, even though he did not have anything like Jan’s fluency.
‘Danke,’ he said simply, and hefted the first two baskets.
A few minutes later he returned the last of them to the back of the van and one of the soldiers closed the doors. With a curt nod Collaborator stubbed his cigarette underfoot and he and the Germans drove off.
Tadzio went back to Kary and his plough. Ten minutes later, Józek emerged from the line of trees - clearly he had been watching the farm.
‘I reckon you could overwinter another five or more pigs for us,’ he said, ‘as well as maybe thirty birds. They’re laying already, but not very well, and we are desperate for the eggs. But what will you do if they are seen by the Germans?’
‘Not really a problem,’ Tadzio replied. ‘I’ll tell them I went round all the other farms in the area and several of them were deserted, presumably because people fled from the Wehrmacht. Obviously, I collected all the stock I could. And in any case, whoever comes to keep an eye on me might not know exactly what was put here in the first place.’
‘Najgorsze co mogą zrobić, to cię okraść. The worst they can do is steal from you,’ he offered doubtfully, as if trying to convince himself, ‘but that’s a chance we have to take. We can’t winter our stock without shelter underneath wet trees.’
He looked round at the house, the barn and the farm. ‘There’s a lot to put right here, and now you have the stock as well as your fields and a fair-sized chicken farm. ‘Jak sobie poradzisz?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know how I’ll manage,’ Tadzio replied, ‘but the same thought had occurred to me. I’ll not pretend that it will be easy…’
‘If you don’t mind giving them a roof over their head,’ he was told, ‘I could get someone here to help you.’
Tadzio thought for a moment. ‘It’ll be a while before I can make the house habitable,’ he said slowly, ‘and till then there is only one small room in the barn. I don’t want another man living here in case the Germans get the wrong idea,’ he argued. ‘I have heard that they send anyone accused of being homosexual to a concentration camp.’
‘They do,’ agreed Józek, ‘but I wasn’t thinking of sending a man. ‘We have a number of women in the forest, as well as a sprinkling of Jews and intellectuals.’ He laughed. ‘The latter two are pretty much bugger-all use at the moment, but we are training them up.’ Józek paused for a moment. ‘Our conditions are a bit rough,’ he went on, ‘and it’s harder on the women, although they never complain. What I have in mind is a young girl called Hedda. She knows farming and she’s about your age. You would have some help, and you would be doing her a big favour.’
‘Jak wyjaśnię jej obecność?’ asked Tadzio.
‘You probably won’t have to explain her presence,’ Józek replied. ‘The Germans don’t know who was here when they came – for all they know she could have been hiding. It’s what she would have done if she had any sense.’
‘But Hedda’s a German name, isn’t it?’ queried Tadzio.
‘Tak,’ came the reply. ‘Quite right. Her mother’s Polish and her father German. Or they were,’ he added without explanation, ‘and she’s fluent in both languages. Hedda was brought up in both countries but she’s loyal to us. Believe me, I have seen with my own eyes what she can do with a machine pistol to a Werhmacht despatch motorcyclist.’
Tadzio thought about it. There was almost certainly no risk, and if he was going to have to deal with the German Commissariat there could be an advantage in having someone who could speak with them more easily in their own language.
The following morning, he was pinning canvas sheets onto damaged but still useable beams when a small group of people emerged from the woods onto his field. A woman was herding pigs with a long stick. Four men were carrying a bunch of fowl trussed by the legs over each shoulder. A pity, thought Tadzio. The birds would be distressed. It would probably be days before they started laying again.
Skilfully she guided the pigs into the pen. He came down off the ladder and waited.
‘Jestem Hedda,’ she said simply. ‘I’m Hedda.’ Like Jan, Tadzio was a little under two metres and broad shouldered and stocky. Unlike him, Hedda was almost his height but slim. She had a handsome rather than a traditionally beautiful face, with the fairest blond hair and most piercing blue eyes that Tadzio had ever seen – perhaps her German heritage. ‘Dali ci dwie maciory,’ she said. ‘They have given you two sows, so the Germans will already have put them to the boar. They are not showing yet, so it would have been within the last three weeks. You should have two litters in just under 114 days from now.’
So, she really did know her farming, thought Tadzio.
Their chickens offloaded into the run, the four men gathered round her protectively. ‘Witajcie,’ Tadzio said simply. After Tadzio had bid them welcome, one of the men produced a bottle of bimber from a side pocket of his jacket, opened it, and passed it to Tadzio. Now that the birds were no longer there, Tadzio saw that each man had a machine pistol slung on his back.
‘Zdrowie partyzantów,’ the partisan demanded.
Only late morning it might have been, but Tadzio took a deep swig gratefully – it was good moonshine wódka – then passed the bottle to Hedda. She swallowed a slightly less greedy helping. The four men followed Tadzio’s example. They had raised a toast to the resistance.
‘Powodzenia,’ said the owner of the bottle, returning it to Tadzio as a parting gift. ‘Good luck, and if anything goes wrong, and you can make it, you are always welcome to join us. Hedda knows the way.’
Later in the day she salvaged some more pots and pans from the kitchen and lit the stove. ‘This scrawny one is a bit of a runt,’ she told him, returning
from the chicken run. ‘I know you are not well off for meat, so this is a small gesture of appreciation from your visitor yesterday.’ A couple of hours later, they took it in turns to spoon chicken stew, potatoes and chunks of cabbage from the pot. It was the finest meal Tadzio had eaten since returning to his beloved Poland.
Chapter 13
They were in the general area of Celle, northeast of Hannover and south of Hamburg. It was fairly flat, open farming countryside. To Jan it looked prosperous. They had spent the previous night in a small hotel similar to the one found on the first night, but Renate had booked two rooms. Jan felt guilty that he had been disappointed but knew it was only right. Herr und Frau Raschdorf would have excused the first night, and at least now his conscience was clear.
Next morning they pushed on in the general direction of Hannover. But once round the city, they were running low on fuel.
‘I don’t really want to use what we have in the cans,’ Jan told her, ‘so the first chance we get I would like to stop and fill up.’
But it was as if the masters of the Third Reich had efficiently taken control of all war-essential commodities. The next garage they came to had two rifle-carrying Wehrmacht sentries standing in the entrance to the forecourt. ‘Don’t even stop,’ Renate told him quickly. ‘Just keep going.’
Eventually Jan had no choice. He had to put the contents of one of their two, precious twenty litre jerricans into the tank. ‘Either we buy fuel soon, we steal it, or we start walking,’ he told Renate desperately. ‘Johann has given me some siphoning kit – if we can find a vehicle we’ll be all right. A small country house would be best, somewhere without staff but affluent enough maybe to have a car in a garage. Safer than trying to do it on the street in some town – although if we have to, late evening or early morning would be best.’
They drove on for another hour, but by now the tank was pretty low. They passed a farm set back from the road – it looked a very solid, comfortable house but not too grand. And there was a barn which probably housed more than one vehicle. Most of all, a large Mercedes stood in front of the double door.
Jan drove on for a half kilometre or so, then reversed off onto a forest track. ‘That last place would do,’ he said bluntly. ‘If the tank on that Mercedes is only half full, it will fill up this Opel as well as the can we have used. I’m inclined to wait for a few hours then pay them a visit. What do you think?’
‘I don’t like it,’ she responded anxiously, ‘did you see the flags?’
‘Ja,’ Jan confirmed. From a pole pointing up and outwards from the house hung a red, swastika-embellished war banner. A similar small flag flew from the wing of the Mercedes. ‘So he’s a Nazi, but I don’t see that it makes any difference. We’re stealing petrol. That’s all there is to it.
‘You should be safe enough here,’ he told her. ‘And I’ll leave you your father’s revolver. But I need to watch that place for a while. Find out who’s there – how many people. Then I’ll come back and we can decide what to do. Try to get some rest,’ he suggested, although he knew that would be almost impossible.
Jan was a country boy – he could poach with the best of them. In less than an hour he had moved silently through the copses and fields till he had a clear view of the front of the house. A chauffeur drove the Mercedes into the barn. Jan moved till he had an equally good view of the rear. At about half past eight a small group of people, presumably servants and the chauffeur with them, left the house. By ten, with the lights on and the curtains still undrawn, Jan had seen only one man move from room to room. He was reasonably certain that he was alone in the house.
At about half past eleven the occupant stood in a downstairs study window, brandy balloon in hand, then drained his glass. The light was extinguished and a few seconds later another switched on in the master bedroom. Jan gave it an hour, then returned to the Opel and Renate.
‘We’re clear to go,’ he told here. ‘I watched someone put the Mercedes in the barn, and there’s no lock, just a closing beam. I can put the full can into our tank, then fill both of them, although it will probably take two trips before everything is topped up and we are on our way.’
‘Just be careful,’ she told him.
‘I will,’ he replied. ‘And you stay here.’
Entering the barn was as quick, silent and easy as Jan had hoped. It was dark, but with just enough ambient moonlight to make out the shape of the Mercedes. Jan took off the filler cap and pushed the length of rubber hose into the fuel tank, feeling a slight resistance when it touched bottom.
He sucked. Despite his best intentions, he brought up a small amount of fuel that he had to spit onto the floor of the barn. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand he spat several more times, then released his pinch-grip on his end of the hose and pushed it into the empty can. There was a gratifying “swish” as the transfer began.
Jan closed the top of the second can and made ready to leave. He would have to return, but after this exercise did not envisage a problem. Not, that is, until he was suddently bathed in light from a hand torch. Held deliberately within the beam was a German Army pistol. It would have been foolish to imagine that it was not already cocked. Also in the pool of light, on a slip lead, was a huge Alsation. The dog was silent, but his teeth were bared. It was a trained attack dog, and Jan knew that its handler had only to release one end of the leash and he would be in serious trouble – that’s if he did not collect a bullet at the same time.
‘Hände hoch!’ came the brisk, confident command, reinforced by an upward flick of the end of the barrel. Even if he had not spoken a word of German, the meaning would have been clear. Slowly, Jan raised his hands and faced the light. The dog, the torch and the light were just inside the barn door. Jan was almost blinded when a powerful overhead light came on, the man’s right hand leaving the switch to re-aim the pistol.
Jan saw that his captor was wearing the boots and jodhpur-like trousers of the SS. ‘You are stealing my petrol.’ The accusation was a statement, not a question. ‘So, I have a choice. Either I shoot you, or I give you to Rolfi here. That’s how you were detected – he is trained to alert me but not to bark. And believe me, if he attacked you would not survive him either.’
‘Yes, I was taking petrol,’ Jan told him, thinking that his only chance was to admit his crime and hope for a degree of clemency. ‘We have run out and cannot buy any. But I would happily pay you… I would have left the money… I could give it to you now,’ he added quickly.
‘I don’t think so,’ came the reply. ‘The automatic was lifted into the aim.’
‘Please,’ said Jan desperately, ‘you can’t murder me just for this… it’s against the law.’
‘Your accent says you are not from round here – further east, I would guess,’ the German replied. ‘Let me tell you something. Since 1934 the SS have not been under the jurisdiction of the civilian courts. We are responsible only to ourselves. And no Hauptamt SS Gericht, no SS main court, is ever going to convict a senior officer for shooting a thief in the night.’
His captor’s arm extended, the weapon raised into the aim. Jan knew he had only seconds to save himself. He was still cursing the fact that he had left the Webley with Renate when the explosive crack of a round was the last thing he heard.
‘Dzisiaj mamy czwartek, trudno uwierzyć, że jutro minie tydzień od dnia ataku Niemiec na Polskę. Today’s Thursday – it’s hard to believe that a week ago tomorrow the Germans invaded Poland,’ Hedda told him, as they huddled round the stove sharing the rest of the partisan’s bimber. They were talking well into the night. ‘Co będziesz dzisiaj robił?’ she asked. ‘What do you plan to do tomorrow?’
‘Well, some of the fields are ploughed ready for sowing in the spring,’ he told her. ‘What with the chickens and pigs, plus what we should be able to harvest after the Germans have driven over our land, we have enough for two people to survive the winter. But I’m q
uite keen to repair the farmhouse. I don’t fancy this barn, once the weather really turns cold.’
They could sleep well enough on two beds of hay within a wall of bales, but it was already cold at night and would only get worse. Washing would be primitive – either a kitchen sink open to the elements or a bucket from the yard pump when the other was outside of their “room” to offer privacy. Hedda agreed that they would probably survive the Polish winter, but in the barn it would be hard and uncomfortable. ‘Niektóre krokwie wyglądają dobrze, nawet jeśli są trochę przypalone. Some of the roof timbers are all right, if a bit burnt,’ Tadzio mused, ‘but several are completely gone. Somehow, I have to replace them.’
‘Przecież mieszkasz tuż obok jednego z największych lasów w Polsce,’ she chided him. ‘You live almost next door to one of the biggest forests in Poland. I have seen some log splitters in the barn and a lump hammer. After breakfast, we’ll take Kary and a couple of axes and cut a few trees – they don’t have to be that big to make a rough replacement for the roof beams. If we split each trunk, we’ll only need to cut maybe four or five young trees. Fir would be best – it won’t last forever, but for now it’s soft and easy to use. You can always cut some oak later, after the war.’
‘Maybe there won’t be an “after the war”,’ said Tadzio wearily. ‘Perhaps we will live out our lives under the rule of Germans.’
‘Może, ale nie wydaje mi się,’ Hedda replied. ‘Maybe, but I don’t think so. I’m not sure Hitler expected to have to fight England and France,’ she offered, ‘and I would not be surprised if Russia and America were involved eventually. Our country might not exist for a while,’ she admitted, ‘but even if there is no Poland, there will always be Poles. Our duty is to survive and wait for the future. For now, that means we farm for the invaders, but we also farm for our own resistance. I kiedykolwiek i gdziekolwiek zdołamy, podejmiemy walkę z Niemcami!’ she finished vehemently. ‘And whenever we can, we take the fight to the Germans!’