by Alan Evans
He wondered and worried about Sarah. He had spoken to the old cook as the flaming shell of the house fell in on itself. She said the girl had left home suddenly and without any explanation being offered by her parents. “There were — men — came around asking for her, asking questions.” The old woman’s eyes shifted constantly, never resting on Kurt’s face for more than a fraction of a second before flicking away. She was afraid of the hard-eyed men who had come to the house but now enjoyed being the centre of attention. “And Herr Bauer had been saying some terrible things about the Führer and the Party. So I’d given in my notice and I’d finished tonight. He’d paid me. I was lucky there.”
It was easy to get her to talk but she did not know what had happened to Sarah.
*
That night, a week after driving out of Warsaw, she and Hannah were at Poznan. They had meandered along the border with East Prussia, that slow progress forced on them by the Polish roads; Hannah had not exaggerated their poor condition. It was while they were in Poznan that the news broke of the non-aggression pact signed by Russia and Germany.
They were sitting at a table outside their hotel and the Poles seated around them were hushed, listening to a radio broadcast. One of them murmured a translation from the Polish for Hannah, his voice hardly above a whisper as he listened, telling her of the pact. Sarah was abstracted, worried because the Bristol had still not telephoned with any word from Berlin. She saw the stricken expressions on the faces of the crowd and Hannah tight-lipped. Sarah asked, “Is that bad news?”
Hannah answered her, “I think Stalin has just put the noose around Poland’s neck.”
*
In the early hours of the 31st August Kurt Larsen, like all the others aboard Brandenburg and Graf Spee, knew that noose was about to be snapped tight. The two ships now cruised in mid-Atlantic, well clear of shipping lanes, only waiting for the order from OKM to begin the hunt and the slaughter. Hitler had determined on war, set the day and the time and they knew it.
Larsen stood alone on the upper deck of Brandenburg in the first paling of the dawn and wondered what lay ahead for him and the others in her crew. Death or glory? The first was possible but the second? There was no glory in commerce raiding and that was to be the task of these two tigers of the sea. But sinking the enemy’s merchant fleet cut off his supplies, spread his defences thinly as they searched for raiders, demoralised his people. Commerce raiding was a good tactic and this was war.
Kurt faced it sombrely.
*
Able Seaman Robert Hurst woke in the first grey light to a hammering at the door of the hotel room in Rio de Janeiro. It took him a second to realise he was not in his hammock aboard Ajax and recall the events of the previous night: meeting Maria again and taking her out on the town, blowing the pay saved over weeks spent at sea. Then the hotel room and the bed, her mouth on his and her body writhing under him …
She was beside him in the bed now, naked and clinging to him, frightened at being shocked from sleep. A voice bawled outside and the hammering went on, the door shaking. Hurst sat up, ran a hand through his hair and said, voice thick with sleep, “What the hell’s going on?”
Maria said, “It is my husband.”
Hurst was awake now. He grabbed her hands to examine them again — he had held them last night — but they were still innocent of rings on the finger that counted. The sheet was crumpled around her waist and he looked at her pointing breasts and wanted her again. But he said, “You never mentioned a husband. Not when we put into Rio before, and not last night.”
The girl shrugged, recovering her poise. This was nothing new to her. “He goes away to Santos on business for days and leaves me alone.” She pouted, then the voice bellowed outside again and she said, “But he has come back early. That is Jesus, my husband.”
“Jesus! You’re right there!” The door shook in its frame and Hurst leapt out of the bed and shoved it across the floor until it was jammed against the door. He looked for his clothes, swept them up from the chair where they lay and dragged on his trousers. He picked up his cap with its ribbon lettered ‘HMS Ajax’ and jammed it on his head. The rest he rolled into a bundle inside his jumper and tucked it under his arm.
He drew the curtains, looked out of the window and saw there was no fire escape, only a rainwater pipe running down the wall a yard away. It looked solidly fixed but if it wasn’t … He peered down at the drop below, four storeys to fall and a paved yard at the bottom. He shrugged and accepted the risk, as the door burst free of the lock and grated open an inch or so before the weight of the bed halted it. Maria screamed as the face of Jesus showed in the narrow gap, dark and twisted with rage and jealousy. Then it crumpled as he stared at the bare-breasted girl in the bed, drew back from the door, disappeared.
Maria saw she was safe and leaned back on her elbows, relaxed. She called softly to Hurst, “He will weep and shout but then I will make it up with him. Next time your ship comes I will be in the Liverpool Bar.”
He had first met her there, when Ajax had previously visited Rio. She spoke good English and said she worked for a British firm in Rio. She could not take him home because her parents were an old-fashioned pair and very strict. Hurst thought now that she had told him all kinds of tales while all the time there was Jesus. And this was not the first time, he was not the first; she was smiling at him now. Tomorrow or maybe tonight, just as soon as Jesus the meal ticket had gone to Santos, she would be back in the Liverpool Bar.
Hurst was not afraid of Jesus but had no wish to face his misery. He said, “To hell with you.” He tied the bundle of clothes around his neck by the sleeves of his jumper and swung out of the window. The pipe took his weight except for the last length that pulled clear of the wall. He fell ten feet but landed crouching. Quickly he dressed and walked away.
He found a boat from Ajax at the quayside, ferrying off libertymen returning to the ship. The cox’n told him, “You’re bloody lucky. We’re the last boat and we’re just off.”
“We’re not sailing till tomorrow.”
“That’s what you think. The old man has changed his mind. We’re sailing now.”
Hurst thought that he owed Jesus for that. Left to his own devices he would not have returned to the ship until his leave was done and she would have sailed and left him adrift in a strange port.
Then when Ajax was at sea ‘Clear lower deck’ was piped through the ship. The ship’s company gathered on the upper deck and the ‘old man’, Captain Woodhouse, stood on a capstan and addressed them. As always, he rocked back and forward on his heels as he told them that a warning telegram had been received from Admiralty and war was imminent.
It came as a bolt from the blue. Few of them took any interest in world politics and the worsening position in Europe had passed them by. They were working hard, playing hard and enjoying it. They had grown accustomed to the round of a port, girls, beer and transgressions followed by punishment and a few weeks at sea, then another port and more girls, beer … In their hearts they had known that it would end some time. But in a war!
As they fell out and went below someone said sadly, “That could ha’ been our last run ashore for a bit.”
Hurst thought, Or our last run ashore. Finish.
He had never been at war before.
*
Hannah drove the Ford out of Katowice that morning with the top down, the girl at her side. As they walked from their hotel to the car Sarah glanced at Hannah, dressed in cotton trousers and shirt, old tennis shoes — yet still seeming stylish. Sarah envied her easy grace and was glad the older woman was there to turn to.
When they were out on the road and headed for the border Sarah asked, “Are we going into Germany?” She kept her tone deliberately casual, though she knew that entering Germany could lead to her arrest — and worse. But she had not told Hannah about her flight from Berlin and the reason for it.
Hannah shook her head, “I should think the border is closed, or very few people are be
ing allowed to cross, the international situation being as it is.” But Hannah knew that if the Gestapo had tried to kidnap her in Spain they would snap her up if they found her in Germany.
Sarah, relieved, now asked as one who doubted the possibility, “Do you think there might be war?”
“Might?” Hannah glanced sidewise at her, “I think it’s a little stronger than that.”
Sarah shrugged, “But we’ve had these crises before, first when Hitler marched into Austria and then when he invaded Czechoslovakia. There was talk of war both times but it came to nothing.”
“You mean the politicians backed down.”
Sarah’s temper showed as she burst out angrily, “They’ve no bloody guts! The end is always the same. Hitler gets what he wants and everybody accepts it. Him and his bully boys trample over people but nobody does anything!”
Hannah was startled by the girl’s anger, and asked, “What would you do?”
“I’ve—” Sarah stopped there. She had almost blurted out her activities in the organisation but then remembered again that some or all of her friends would still be at risk — if they had not already been rounded up. So she only said, “I’d fight.”
Hannah saw Sarah’s determination and warned, “War is awful. It brutalises people, drives them into holes in the ground, tears them apart.” She knew. She went on slowly, “I think this time might be different. I think the Poles will fight. Your country and France are pledged to support her.” But she saw Sarah was not convinced, and sat staring ahead, her mouth pressed into a thin line.
At the border they slowed for the frontier posts but the barriers were raised and the sentries on the Polish side waved them on. Hannah waved back and said, “May as well have a closer look. We can turn around halfway over.” But then as she drove across the short stretch of no-man’s-land she saw the German sentries laconically imitating the Poles. And she thought that this might be her last chance to peep into Germany, even this remote part, before war came. Because she thought it would come, and soon. She grinned at Sarah and said, “Looks like it’s open house. Let’s take them up on it.” Sarah opened her mouth to call a protest, an appeal, but she was too late. The Ford slid past the raised barrier and they were in Germany.
They drove on in silence, Hannah uneasy now, instinct warning her that all was not right, Sarah apprehensive. So for a minute or more the road curled through forest but then Sarah called, “Slow down! See that?”
She raised her hand but Hannah, in the act of changing down, snapped, “Don’t point!” And then went on, “I see them now.” Her attention had been fixed on the winding road and she had not been able to peer into the green shaded gloom under the trees on either side. Sarah had, and seen the trucks and tanks spaced out, each under its earth-and green-tinted camouflage net. And under each net sprawled the crew of the tank or truck; she could see them move and the pale blink of their faces as they turned to stare out at the road and the cruising Ford.
Sarah said, “There are hundreds of them!”
Hannah nodded; they were driving slowly past an army hidden in bivouac. On and on. The forest was full of the high trucks and the squat tanks in their drab war-paint. Until they came to a side road and Hannah turned into it, braked the Ford but kept its engine running. She said, “Now let’s see if we can get away with it.”
Sarah glanced at her quickly, “What do you mean?”
“They let us in.” Hannah engaged reverse and swung back onto the main road but now the bonnet of the Ford pointed the way they had come. “But will they let us out? Because I think we’ve seen more than we should.”
She let out the clutch so the car rolled forward and then changed up until she was in top gear, but held the speed down to a steady fifty kilometres per hour.
Sarah asked, “Can’t we go faster?” She wanted to be safe across the border as soon as possible.
But Hannah refused, “If we look to be running they’ll stop us. You can’t drive faster than a bullet.”
Sarah remembered the German frontier guards with their rifles slung over their shoulders.
The soldiers hidden in the forest under the camouflage nets watched them pass as they had done before and made no move to stop them. The road wound on interminably but finally straightened to run down to the border. The barrier was still raised on the German side but Hannah saw one of the two sentries glance back along the road towards them and then lounge over to the barrier. To lower it?
Hannah’s foot twitched on the accelerator and she warned quietly, “Hold on. If he starts to lower it then I put my foot on the gas and we go through. Keep your head down.” They rolled down to the border, still at that steady 50 kph, and the sentry at the barrier made some adjustment then turned from it. He and the other soldier faced the Ford. Their big steel helmets with the visors hid their eyes in deep shadow from the glare of the sun overhead. Hannah changed down to trundle past the barrier and one of the sentries lifted his hand. For a moment she thought he would hold out the flat of it for her to stop. She was ready to go, to hunch down from the shots that would follow. Then he flapped the hand lazily, gesturing to her to go on. She drove past him and on over the bridge, back into Poland.
Sarah let out her pent breath in a sigh. She glanced across at Hannah, still driving steadily, composed. Sarah said, “All in the day’s work for you, I suppose.”
Hannah grinned but shook her head, “I’d like to act blasé but that scared me. To tell you the truth, they don’t like me over there and I’ve been warned to keep out, for my health.”
Sarah was tempted then to tell of her own fears, but hesitated, remembered that this woman was now something more than an acquaintance but not yet a friend.
At Katowice Hannah informed the Poles of what she had seen across the border in Germany but the officers at headquarters there only nodded and shrugged. They knew already.
Their rooms in the hotel were side by side. The distant rumbling woke Sarah in the darkness before the first dawn light and she saw the flashes against the night sky. At first she thought it was a storm but then realised this was like no storm she had ever seen. She had drawn back the curtains from her window before settling down to sleep. Now she threw aside the covers and ran to it. She peered out at the flickering curtain of red, orange and yellow light that shimmered along the western horizon. She knew the border lay that way but—
There came a rapid knocking at her door, then it opened and Hannah, wrapped in a robe, joined her at the window. Sarah asked, “What is it?” She suspected the truth but was reluctant to believe it, wanted to be told she was wrong.
Hannah swallowed and then said sadly, “I think it’s the start of the war. That’s gunfire.”
Sarah stared at the man-made Northern Lights painting the sky, listened to the factory-produced thunder, and said, “Are you sure?”
“Certain. I saw it in Spain.” And there was the reason for that sadness. She had seen it before.
But this war was not like Spain. This was faster. Hannah hunted for copy and Sarah went with her, both running for cover when the bombing started, then crawling out cautiously afterwards. But just before noon of the next day Hannah spent some time telephoning her stories of that morning and talking to her contacts in Warsaw. Then she made another call, listened briefly then lowered the telephone to yell across the hall of the hotel to Sarah, “Grab our bags and throw them in the car!” Sarah did, and slid in behind the wheel as Hannah ran down the steps from the front door and jumped into the Ford, vaulting over the closed door into her seat. She panted, “I paid the bill and phoned that last copy through. Drive like hell, honey. Right now the army is pulling out of this place because it’s about to be surrounded. And the word I get from Warsaw is that the whole front is collapsing!”
They drove to Czestochowa. The road was bad, crowded and they were bombed twice. They did not reach Czestochowa till late afternoon and then they found the main street full of troops on the march. They were heading eastward, away from the firing. Han
nah questioned several officers before she found one who spoke English. He sat in an open touring car at a cross-roads, consulting a map spread on his knee while his driver wolfed a chunk of bread. He told Hannah, “The garrison is leaving — a withdrawal — because the Germans are using motorised columns. They are moving quickly, outflanking our lines. They are almost around Czestochowa.”
The two women drove on, slowly overtaking the long, long columns of trudging men with their huge packs and slung rifles. The soldiers moved in a cloud of dust kicked up by the tramping boots and ran with sweat from the baking heat of the sun. Hannah and Sarah took an hour or more to pass them and the open-topped Ford became overlaid with dust, their hands and faces gritty with it. They looked out on the hurrying soldiers with unease. This was a withdrawal? Or a retreat? Hannah said, “That’s an entire division on the march, five thousand men or more.”
They made better speed as they left the marching infantry behind and halted only as darkness fell. They pulled off the road and prepared to eat what food they had and then to sleep in the car and go on at first light. As they ate they watched the false dawn of the gunfire on the horizon and listened to its grumbling. It did not sound far away.
They had barely finished their scratch meal of meat, hard bread and rough wine drunk from the bottle when another car pulled up on the road. It was an open tourer and a figure got down from the passenger seat alongside the driver and crossed to them. Hannah shone her torch on him and they saw it was the officer they had talked with in Czestochowa. She switched off the torch with an apology, but not before they had seen that the young officer’s face was haggard.