War Clouds Gather

by Peter Watt

  ‘I think my little sister has a crush on the man who helped us,’ Donald said teasingly as they sat down on the plush, velvet lounges. ‘Why would you say that?’ Sarah said with a scowl. ‘I hardly noticed him.’

  ‘Is that why you told me our hero had gentle eyes?’ Olivia added with a mischievous smile. ‘You are only a child and should not notice such things.’

  Sarah turned on Olivia. ‘I told you that in confidence. Besides, you said you thought the young man was rather dashing in a brutish way.’

  ‘Oh, ladies,’ Donald said. ‘How could you find anything handsome about that chap? He’s probably descended from convicts, and most likely a member of one of those Sydney criminal gangs.’

  ‘Well, he saved us from a sticky situation,’ James Jnr said. ‘He has my vote of thanks. Do you think that your father will be able to track him down?’

  ‘I am sure it will not be hard to find a six-foot-something Aussie boxer who speaks German and is attractive to our respective sisters,’ Donald chuckled. ‘When my father finds him I bet he gives him a suitable reward.’

  *

  George Macintosh was a man of his word. After discreet questions of his influential German hosts, he found himself in a German police station speaking with the officer in charge – a burly man with a sweeping moustache.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ the policeman said, thumbing through a record book of arrests. ‘I remember the man. The SA attempted to lay a charge of assault against him but a Luftwaffe officer interceded to have the charge withdrawn.’

  George was intrigued. Whoever had been the saviour of his children was an interesting person if he wielded power through the German armed forces. ‘Who was the air force officer?’ George asked.

  The burly policeman scratched his bald head as he flipped to another page. ‘Flight Lieutenant Fritz Lang,’ he replied. The name did not register with George.

  ‘Who was the Australian man you had in custody?’ he asked.

  ‘A Mr David Macintosh. Residential address: Lae in New Guinea.’

  For a shocked moment George thought he might have to sit down. There could only be one David Macintosh fitting those particulars. Over the years he had almost forgotten about his nephew, whom he’d last heard was living on a copra plantation belonging to his German grandmother, Karolina Schumann.

  ‘That man is a dangerous Jew,’ George said quietly and the policeman looked at him questioningly.

  ‘He said that he was an Australian who had come to visit the games in Berlin,’ the German said with a frown.

  ‘I know this man,’ George replied angrily. ‘He is not only a Jew but also a communist agitator. I think it was a mistake that you let him go and I will be informing my friends in the government of your decision.’

  George could see the big policeman suddenly turn pale and start to sweat. ‘We will pick him up immediately,’ he replied in a shaky voice. ‘But it will not be easy as he seems to have friends in the Luftwaffe and his release was signed for by an Australian lawyer, a Mr Sean Duffy.’

  At the mention of the man who had once been his wife Louise’s lover, it was George’s turn to pale. David was the only real obstacle to his complete control of the Macintosh empire, but getting him out of the way would not be easy while Sean Duffy was protecting him. When he turned twenty-one years of age David would inherit a sizeable chunk of the family fortune. How old was he now? George thought in desperation. Nineteen, twenty? No, he would be closer to twenty. And the perfect opportunity to do his nephew serious harm was at his fingertips. David was in a country where both Jews and communists were hunted down and sent to concentration camps.

  ‘Do not be concerned about Mr Duffy,’ George finally said when he had collected his thoughts. ‘You have a duty to arrest the Jew, David Macintosh.’

  ‘It will be done, Sir George,’ the policeman said. ‘We know where he is staying in Berlin.’

  George returned to the limousine that had been provided for him by his German hosts. He was smiling grimly to himself as the vehicle pulled into the traffic. Already he was formulating a lie for his children about their mysterious saviour. Lying came easily to Sir George Macintosh.

  *

  ‘The good news is that I found your white knight,’ George said to his daughter and son in their suite of rooms at the hotel. ‘But the bad news is that he has already departed the country and did not leave a forwarding address.’

  George noted the disappointed look on Sarah’s face but the expression of relief on his son’s.

  ‘What is his name?’ Sarah asked. ‘It may be possible to locate him when we return to Sydney.’

  ‘I am afraid it has been ascertained by the German police that he gave a false name when they arrested him. No one knows who he is.’

  ‘That is a shame,’ Sarah sighed. ‘I so wanted to express my personal thanks to him.’

  George inwardly squirmed at the thought of such an event occurring. David was, after all, Sarah’s first cousin whom she had never been told existed. Never mind, George told himself, David Macintosh would soon cease to exist anyway. There was a special place he had heard about – Dachau. It was said to be a place of re-education, but many never returned from the concentration camp set up by the Führer in the first years of his dictatorship to house those he considered enemies of fascism. Germans were reluctant to talk about the establishment but George had no doubt that David would find himself behind the barbed-wire fences of the camp within days, never to be heard of again.

  *

  David strapped down his suitcase and glanced around the hotel room, making sure he had not forgotten any of his personal items. The door opened and Sean Duffy appeared.

  ‘Ready to leave, old chap?’ Sean asked and David replied that he was.

  ‘You can wander downstairs and ensure that our taxi is ready,’ Sean said. ‘My legs are a bit wobbly this morning.’

  ‘Not surprised, Uncle Sean,’ David grinned. ‘You certainly put away a bit of grog last night.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ Sean sighed. ‘I bumped into a couple of old German soldiers who spoke English – of a kind; turned out they had fought at Fromelles, just like I did. Strange how old enemies can seem like friends after all these years.’

  Satisfied that everything was packed, David walked down the stairs of the modest hotel. The hoteliers had proved warm and friendly but David was looking forward to moving on to London where Sean had legal business on behalf of a client.

  David bid good morning to the middle-aged hotelier’s wife standing behind the reception counter and stepped out onto the street to see if the taxi was waiting to take them to the railway station.

  He glanced up and down the busy road and his eyes immediately fell on a dark car directly in front of the glass doors of the hotel. Suddenly he was aware that two men in long black leather overcoats and dark hats were behind him as a hand gripped his elbow.

  ‘Mr David Macintosh,’ a voice growled in German. ‘Based on Article One of the Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of the People and State of 28 February 1933, you are taken into protective custody in the interest of public security and order. Reason: suspicion of activities inimical to the state.’

  The way the man droned the statement made David think he had said the words many times before. The young Australian experienced a cold chill of fear. He knew he was in the hands of the dreaded SS. A truck pulled up then and brown-shirted men spilled out onto the street.

  ‘I am an Australian citizen,’ he exclaimed. ‘You do not have the right to arrest me.’

  David had hardly finished his protest when he felt himself propelled towards the dark sedan’s open back door where another black-coated man sat. The brown-shirted SA men had formed a semicircle around him to back up their SS comrades. Escaping would be impossible.

  David was jammed in between two SS men and the car sped away.

  *

  Sean waited for some minutes, annoyed that David had not returned. With a sigh he hobbled down the stairs,
cursing his hangover. When he reached the small reception area he saw the hotelier’s wife and immediately recognised the frightened expression on her face.

  ‘What is it, Mrs Gottfried?’ Sean asked in his limited German.

  For a moment she could not answer; finally, with tears in her eyes, she said, ‘The SS have arrested Mr Macintosh and taken him away.’

  Sean stood staring out of the glass doors onto the street in a state of confusion. Why in hell had the SS arrested David? As a criminal lawyer he knew the Third Reich had little regard for democratic laws and he felt a terrible fear for David’s life. Hadn’t Karolina objected to her beloved grandson visiting Germany, and hadn’t Sean given his word that David would be safe in his care? Confused and frightened, Sean tottered uncertainly on his tin legs, a legacy from a war that had destroyed a generation of his friends. Even now war clouds were gathering again, just as Winston Churchill had warned, and Sean was very afraid that the coming storm would claim the young man he loved as his own son.

  3

  Work Sets You Free. David read the metal sign as the truck packed with silent men drove under the archway. The order to dismount from the truck was shouted by an officer of the SS and the men tumbled from the back to be shoved and prodded into ranks. A few former soldiers among the prisoners fell in and David thought it wise to follow their example. They stood silently while the SS officer, a man in his thirties wearing an immaculate black uniform, highly polished knee-length boots and a gleaming diagonal belt across his chest, strode up to face the prisoners.

  ‘You are men whom the state has identified as filth,’ he bellowed, hands on his hips. ‘The rules here are simple. Our motto is that there is one way to freedom. Its milestones are obedience, zeal, honesty, order, cleanliness, temperance, truth, sense of sacrifice and love for the Fatherland. Our commandant, Herr Eicke, has had those very words painted in large letters on the roof of one of the buildings. We will re-educate you to take your place back in society. I warn you now that you will be hung if you politicise, give speeches or hold meetings, form cliques, loiter around with others for the purpose of supplying the propaganda machine of the opposition with atrocity stories, collect information about the camp, talk to others about it or smuggle information out into the hands of foreign visitors. You will be shot attempting to escape or disobeying any order given by a guard. That is all you have to know for now.’

  David listened in despair and growing fear, finally realising that he was alone and far from the safety of home. ‘Where are we?’ he whispered to the man beside him.

  ‘Dachau, you fool,’ the man answered from the corner of his mouth.

  The next few hours were a nightmare as the latest arrivals were processed. David was stripped naked, showered with cold water from hoses, thrown a used uniform of striped pants, a jacket and a dirty white shirt that had a hole with dark staining around it in the back. Next, his head was shaved and he was ordered to a building on the other side of the square to be interrogated.

  He was forced to stand to attention in another gloomy room where he was asked his name. When he attempted to protest his detention, he felt the stinging blow of a whip across his back. David desisted and fell into line with the questioning. At the end of the brief interview he was handed a red tag indicating his status as a communist.

  Eventually he was marched to a wooden barracks where he was allocated a room. Each hut was divided into five rooms, each containing two rows of bunks stacked three high that could house fifty-four prisoners. David glanced around at the other men in his living area and noticed a smattering of green labels. He knew from the processing interview that the green labels were for those prisoners convicted of criminal acts by the courts.

  David stood with fifty other prisoners outside the long barracks. A prisoner wearing a green tag appeared in front of them. He was as big as David and had a vicious look about him. ‘My name is not important to you swine,’ he said in a loud voice. ‘All you have to know is that I have been appointed the sergeant prisoner in charge of discipline for this hut. Your lives are in my hands, but know this: I don’t care if you live or die. But if you put my job in danger I will personally deal with you as the filth that you are.’

  The prisoner sergeant stepped forward and strode down the line of men before him, stopping occasionally as if he were a high-ranking officer inspecting a parade of soldiers. David was in the first rank and from the corner of his eye he could see the big man approaching. When he came to David he stopped and stared at him.

  ‘What is your name, swine?’ he asked.

  ‘David Macintosh,’ David replied, looking the man in the eye and hoping that he was not being disrespectful.

  ‘You speak like a foreigner,’ the sergeant prisoner said in an icy voice. ‘Are you a foreign spy?’

  ‘No,’ David replied and felt a hard object slam into his solar plexus, forcing the air from his lungs. As he slowly sank to his knees, he felt a crack across the back of his skull, causing a red haze to swim before his eyes.

  ‘Our Führer has no time for you red filth,’ the prisoner sergeant said, stepping back and revealing the small hardwood club he had taken from the waistline of his trousers. ‘This man will learn that communism is the scourge of the German people and must be wiped out along with Jews, gypsies, homosexuals and anyone else who threatens our great country. Heil Hitler!’

  David fought to gain his breath as he knelt on the ground. His size had obviously made him a target and he had been singled out as an example to the other men that they would be foolish to even think about resisting their guards.

  ‘Get up, prisoner filth,’ the prisoner sergeant roared and David struggled to his feet to take his place in the front rank. No one dared move to help the young Australian.

  They were marched into the hut where David was allocated a bottom bunk and for the first time since he had arrived he found himself alone with his fellow prisoners. A boy no older than sixteen climbed to the uppermost bunk above David, sobbing and whimpering for his mother.

  ‘Shut up, kid,’ someone yelled. The boy stopped calling for his mother, but continued to sob quietly.

  It was now that a deep despair really gripped David as the stench of unwashed bodies, vomit and even decomposition assailed him. He shivered with the memory of gaunt-faced men with sunken eye sockets, their dirty uniforms hanging from skinny frames. They had obviously been in the camp long enough to be half starved to death. They said nothing at the sight of the new prisoners, but quietly shuffled away to their own bunks.

  David could see that there was no mattress or blankets on the wooden slats that made up his bunk, but he was grateful to be away from the constant shouted commands of the brown- and black-shirted guards. He slumped onto his back and lay miserably staring at the slats of the bunk above him.

  ‘Are you a foreigner?’ a voice from above asked in German. David quickly snapped out of his self-pity.

  ‘I am an Australian,’ he replied and saw the head of the questioner lean over the edge of the bunk. It was the face of a kind looking man in his thirties. He wore spectacles and had a round face.

  ‘My name is Günter Schmidt,’ he said without offering his hand. ‘I was a schoolteacher before I came here. I saw you were also in our truck. What has brought you to our wonderful country? Do you have a name?’

  ‘David Macintosh,’ David replied. ‘I came here to see the Olympic Games and then have a look around. My mother was born in Germany and I hoped to find some of her relatives. Why are you here?’

  ‘I questioned some of Herr Hitler’s policies to my senior class and one of my students from the Hitler Youth reported me to the SS,’ Günter replied. ‘That is all it takes and they have given me a red label like you. I am not a communist but that does not matter to the government.’

  ‘Silence,’ the voice of the sergeant prisoner roared down the hallway. Both men obeyed. A long night passed but David did not sleep. They had not been fed. The dark hours were broken by the sobbing of the y
oung man in the top bunk and by the itching from lice infesting the barracks.

  ‘Appelle!’ Rollcall was shouted down the barracks just as David fell into a semi-sleep. It was still pitch-black and the crashing of boots could be heard everywhere as guards fell upon the barracks.

  David rolled from his bunk and onto his feet. Günter Schmidt fell in beside David and they both looked to the top bunk because the young boy had not joined them. It was then that David noticed the dark, slick liquid dripping down the side of the wooden slatted bed to the floor. He hoisted himself up to look into the top bunk and saw the boy lying on his back, eyes open and staring blindly at the dirty ceiling. His arm was extended and lay in a pool of congealing blood. Beside him was a slither of glass and David could see that the boy had slit his wrist.

  Shaken, David stumbled back to the floor. ‘He killed himself,’ he said in a dull voice, and the former schoolteacher crossed himself with a muttered prayer. They fell out onto the parade ground in front of the barracks. The order was to stand to attention, so they waited for a good half-hour in the cool early morning gloom. When a man fell from the ranks a brown-shirted guard stepped forward to deliver a terrible beating. Others joined to kick the man until he struggled to his feet and stood to attention again, blood smearing his face.

  David was wondering if it could get any worse when his attention was drawn to one of the guards who had helped deliver the beating.

  ‘God, no!’ he moaned softly. David recognised the brown-shirted guard as the man he had knocked down in the café garden in Berlin. The guard glanced in David’s direction and even in the semi-darkness David could see the sudden recognition. The expression on the guard’s face changed from surprise to grim satisfaction.

  David knew that things were about to get a lot worse.

  *

  Sean Duffy stood at the gates of a building that was more like a medieval castle than a house. It had taken him two days to travel to the von Fellmann estate in Prussia, and he prayed that his journey would not be in vain.

  After David disappeared, Sean had managed to discover that he had been taken by the Gestapo, but no one would tell him where. As a matter of fact, no one would even admit to David being snatched from the street, and Sean had seen the fear in their eyes when he’d asked. Even the young air force officer, Fritz Lang, had not been able to help as the SS held sway over all other government departments and the military. He had apologised and it was then that Sean had realised he must seek out a senior member of the armed forces and beg for help.