Heronfield

by Dorinda Balchin

  Tony’s eyes were wide. What more could the haunted young man tell him? Surely there could be nothing worse than what he had heard already? But there was.

  “The ovens are on the ground floor. In the basement they execute those who have been convicted of capital crimes in the camp.”

  “Capital crimes?”

  “Yes. Insubordination. Attempting to escape. Smiling in ranks. Stealing or smuggling food.”

  Tony thought of the potatoes he had brought into camp each evening and shuddered. He knew that the Germans viewed it seriously. But he had not thought he would be executed if he was caught. He swallowed hard.

  “Do they shoot them?”

  “Shoot them?” The young man laughed, a hollow empty sound devoid of all humour that made Tony’s skin crawl. “They would see that as a waste of ammunition. The guards put a short slip noose around their necks. They hang them from hooks about eight feet above the floor. It takes a long time for them to die. Their faces go red, their eyes bulge out of their sockets, their tongues go black and swollen. If the guards are impatient and think they are taking too long to die, they beat their brains out with a club.”

  Tony felt physically sick. His body shivered uncontrollably. He closed his eyes as the lifeless voice continued.

  “They cut the bodies down. We have to put them into a lift which takes them up to the ground floor. They are put on a miniature railway of metal litters, which takes them from the lift platform to the furnace doors. It is all terribly efficient.”

  Henri and Tony looked at each other, unable to hide their horror. Henri looked down at the potatoes which Tony had brought to cook. They were now clenched tightly in his fists.

  “They had better be the last.”

  Tony looked down at them. How could two such small and muddy items be responsible for the torture and death of a man? Should he stop smuggling them? He looked at Henri.

  “We must eat more than our rations to survive. But I won’t bring them every day. And I’ll only bring enough for us. I won’t be able to trade for other things, but I won’t stop bringing in food for you and me. If I get caught I’ll be killed. But if I don’t bring it in, we’ll die anyway.”

  “I don’t want to be responsible for your death.”

  “You won’t be. I’ll be bringing them in for myself anyway.” Tony looked at the young man.

  “Are you all right?”

  The young man nodded slowly. “Yes. But I won’t go back there.”

  Tony said nothing. He did not know he would have coped with what this young man had seen and experienced. He was lucky not to have gone insane. But how could they help him to avoid going back? It was Henri who spoke. He put a comforting arm around the young man’s shoulders.

  “You must smuggle yourself into a work party from one of the huts. Make it look as though you’ve always been there.”

  “They’ll be looking for me.”

  Tony thought for a moment then held out his hand. “Let me see your tattoo.”

  The young man frowned questioningly, but rolled up his left sleeve and held out his arm. Tony took hold of it and looked at the number. 503110. He nodded thoughtfully.

  “If you could get hold of something valuable enough, you could bribe one of the tattooists to change that 3 to an 8. I’m sorry, but it’s the best idea I can come up with.”

  The young man looked at him through haunted eyes.

  “Thank you. I’ll risk anything not to go back there. I’ll join another hut, and try to get hold of something valuable.” He stood up. “I’ll leave you now. Thank you for trying to help me.” He turned and walked away.

  Tony watched him leave. His hatred of the Germans increased, until it was like a red mist before his eyes. A tyrant such as Hitler who could create such a living hell did not deserve to live. He prayed fervently that the war would soon be over, and Buchenwald and its horrors wiped forever from the face of the earth.

  The following morning roll call was completed in record time. Tony wondered if there would be a chance of getting over to see Henri again before the work parties set out, but to his surprise, the men were not dismissed after roll call. The SS guards stood with guns pointed at the prisoners, as Major Hase approached with long, angry strides. Tony had rarely seen him inside the camp. He wondered what could possibly be important enough for him to enter now. The major finally halted, and stood where all the prisoners could see him. His face was thunderous.

  “A prisoner has chosen to leave another part of the camp, because he does not like his work. I want that man to step forward now.”

  No one moved. Tony knew it was the young man he had met the previous evening. He cursed himself for not realising that the Germans would not let him go without a fight. He knew too much about their secret operation. They did not intend him, or the others who worked at the crematoria, to be alive when the war ended. Tony did not know where the young man had gone, and hoped he was well hidden. But deep in his heart, he knew that he had little chance of avoiding a thorough German search.

  Major Hase began to tap his cane against the leather top of his boot.

  “No-one is willing to step forward? Then we will do this the hard way. Show your numbers.”

  The prisoners rolled up their left sleeves and held out their arms as the guards began to make their way along the seemingly endless rows, checking each number as they went. Time passed slowly. The guards checked and double-checked to make sure that they did not pass over the missing prisoner. An hour after the checking began, a scuffle broke out, in the ranks stationed in front of the hut nearest the fence. A guard dragged a struggling figure out from amongst his fellows, and threw him down onto the ground. Tony recognised the young man, and his heart went out to him. He could expect no beating or withholding of rations. The only punishment the Germans would think fit was execution, and there was no-one more aware of what that punishment entailed than the prisoner himself.

  Major Hase crossed the compound, to where the nameless man grovelled in the dirt.

  “Did you think you could escape?” he bellowed, his voice so loud that all the prisoners could hear. “No one escapes from Buchenwald!” He brought his cane down across the young man’s shoulders. Once, twice, three times. Then he kicked him in the ribs, before stepping back. “On your feet, scum.”

  The young man struggled to his feet. His eyes were wild with fear as they darted all around, seeking an escape route which did not exist. The major turned to the guard who had found the missing prisoner.

  “Take him back to his own hut for punishment.”

  “No!” With a cry of despair the young man evaded the guard’s grasp. He threw himself at the fence less than ten feet away. As he touched it, he screamed. His body convulsed as the surge of electricity flowed through him. Sparks flew all around him, as he gripped tightly to the only object which gave him some choice in this hell on earth. As Tony watched the young man suffer and die on the wire, the full realisation of his own situation finally hit him. There was no hope of escape by prisoners who were too weak to do anything but work and sleep. And if the rumours of the gas chambers reached the rest of the camp, the Germans would make sure that none of them survived the war to tell the Allies what was happening. With tears in his eyes, he watched the inert body being carried away towards the ovens. He wondered how long it would be before his turn came.

  172

  Two days later, Henri was released from Barrack 61 and sent back to work. His body and mind, barely healed after the ravages of typhus, were subjected to the gruelling work party once again. Now that November was dragging to a close and December fast approaching, the ground was becoming iron hard and difficult to dig. Henri struggled on, barely able to stand for the roll call each evening. He was determined he would not let the Germans class him as unfit and transfer him to the secret, hidden part of camp, where his life would be measured in hours rather than days. At last the ground became rock hard and impossible to dig with the wooden spades provided. Henri’s work par
ty was stood down until spring. The Frenchman doubted that any of them would still be alive when spring came. The rations were not increased to help their weakened bodies combat the cold, and each hut was only allowed enough wood to enable them to light the fire for two or three hours a day. But at least he no longer wasted energy digging the mass graves in the woods.

  Tony was also glad that there was no more work for the next few months. The fields were now empty of potatoes, so he was unable to supplement their rations. He knew that their best chance of survival was to sit still to conserve energy, to keep as warm as possible and wait for the long cold winter to pass. It was bitterly cold in the hut most of the time. The two friends were glad of the extra blankets Tony had been able to procure while he still had access to potatoes. Every morning as they crawled from their relatively warm cocoon, they saw the bodies of those who had succumbed to the cold during the night being carried from the hut, and left in a heap for the death carts to collect. The sound of hoarse coughing was now continual. Henri and Tony both contracted an ailment which made their lungs burn, and forced them into long hard bouts of coughing, which made their ribs ache and left them gasping for breath.

  The cold seeped into Tony’s bones and seemed to settle in his injured shoulder. He now found it painful to move the left arm at all, and what little mobility there was was considerably reduced. He took to tucking his arm inside his shirt, holding it close and immobile against his ribs, which now had nothing but skin covering them so that the contours of each individual bone could be seen. His left leg had held up well. Though he still limped, he was grateful that he could walk, for if he had been unable to reach the kitchen hut, he would not have received his daily ration of the thin watery soup. He would already have been amongst those whose bodies had been reduced to ashes in the crematoria.

  Both Henri and Tony seemed to be playing host to hundreds of fleas and lice which burrowed into their skin and sucked their weakened blood but these were minor irritations. The sores which covered their bodies were by far the most dangerous of their ailments. If they were not kept relatively clean they would become infected. They had seen that happen in many others, who had cried in agony as the infection spread. It led to fever and eventually death. The hollow in Tony’s calf, where the flesh and muscle had been carried away in Saint Nazaire, had been susceptible to sores ever since he had arrived at Buchenwald. But now the lack of vitamins was taking its effect and his strength was diminishing daily as the sores spread rapidly, eating away at the remaining flesh. All he could do was scrape away the putrescence and try to keep the sores clean. Some, very few, of the sores on his body and arms healed over, leaving scabs and scarred flesh. But he felt that the ones on his leg would never heal, and it was only be a matter of time before gangrene set in.

  The enforced inactivity of winter, the cold and the pain, caused his mind to retreat as much as possible from the hardships which surrounded him. He frequently sought refuge in thoughts of home. Often he closed his eyes to feel the warmth of the summer sun on his upturned face and hear the sound of birds singing in the trees. Many times he smiled, as he imagined himself walking with Sarah and watching the heron rise from the reed bed. Somehow that picture seemed to epitomise for him all that was beautiful and true in the free world he had left so far behind. He tried often to reach out and touch Sarah’s face with his fingertips, only to feel his hand brush the wooden wall, and to open his eyes to the life which threatened to consume him. At times like that he wished he had taken the golden heron with him into France and could hold it now, to see its beauty and feel some tangible link with home, some proof that this living hell was not all there was to life, and that there was something for him to go back to if he survived. As the endless days dragged by he spent more and more time in the imaginary world inside his head. He sought strength and comfort from a time and life long in the past, but which still had the power to uphold him in his hours of greatest need.

  173

  While Tony languished in Buchenwald, a place seemingly isolated from the civilised world, that world he had left behind him continued to tear itself apart in a war to which everyone but Hitler could see the only possible outcome. While most of the protagonists were eager for peace, the German Fuhrer continued to wage war as though he still had massive armies at his beck and call, and the eventual victory would be his.

  By the end of August, Hitler’s first secret weapon, the V-1, was suffering great losses in the skies above southern England. British fighter aircraft and guns were bringing down eighty per cent of the pilotless planes before they could do any damage. The Allies felt that the danger from the rockets was now over. They were wrong. On 8th September, the first of Hitler’s V-2 rockets hit London. This time there was no warning. The missile approached high above the city, then dropped with its devastating cargo on a population unaware of its approach. As the days passed and more of the V-2’s came over, there was limited panic. People did not know what was happening, only that at any time, day or night, an explosion might occur which could wipe out a whole street killing all in its vicinity. There was no warning, and no time to seek shelter. It was not until 10th November that the Government admitted that the country was being attacked by rockets. Although there was some fear, at least people knew what was happening. They faced the new threat with stoicism.

  The Allied offensive in Northern Europe slowed during September, as the supply lines became extended. Troops had to wait for the necessities of warfare to catch up with them, as they moved inexorably onwards. By the end of the month, the Germans had used the breathing space to stabilise their defences. Although the Allies continued to push the enemy front, they made little progress over the next weeks and months. Whilst the Allies were almost static on the Western Front, in the east the Russians continued to make progress. Finland sued for peace on 2nd September and Romania on the 12th. By October, the Russians had entered East Prussia, and were drawing ever closer to the heart of the Third Reich.

  While the war in Europe continued on land, the war at sea in the Far East did not slow. On 20th October, the largest naval engagement in history began, with the Americans defending their beachheads at Leyte in the Philippines. Over the next four days, two hundred and eighty two warships pounded each other with their huge guns. The superior power of the American forces was eventually victorious, and the foothold strengthened. German naval sea power was at an all-time low in the west. Their one remaining battleship, the Tirpitz, sought to evade the British during November, but the unequal struggle was eventually lost. The German navy lost its last vestige of glory as the Tirpitz sank beneath the waves.

  On 15th December, the Germans began a massive offensive on the Western Front. They pushed forwards into the Ardennes, through a narrow corridor which divided the Allied forces. In an effort to take Bastogne, the Germans reached within six miles of the river Meuse. The Battle of the Bulge had begun.

  174

  Bobby pulled the greatcoat tighter around his shoulders. He listened to the captain, who explained the situation quickly, eager to be out of the cold wind.

  “The Germans are moving on Bastogne, where our forces have been cut off. McAuliffe is holding out. The Germans seem short of oil. All of our dumps that were in their path were fired, so they have got no supplies from us. Montgomery has been put in charge of the battle. Our orders are to push east as fast as we can, to bring relief to Bastogne. Be ready to move at seven a.m.”

  As the Captain turned and walked swiftly away, the soldier to Bobby’s right snorted derisively.

  “Monty! Haven’t we Americans got enough leaders of our own, without borrowing from the British?”

  “It’s their war too, you know.” Bobby looked at his compatriot thoughtfully. “Don’t forget that they have been fighting for years longer than us. They have the right to be in at the kill.”

  “Yes. They fought for years, but they made no progress till we joined in.”

  Bobby shook his head in disbelief. People who thought like that
had no idea of what the British had endured while they fought alone. What was worse, they did not want to know. As Bobby made his way back to his makeshift shelter, he looked up at the heavy clouds. If they held out, there would be no air cover again in the morning. It seemed as if even the forces of nature were conspiring to aid the enemy.

  The sky was still grey and cloudy the next morning as the Americans moved out, and they had not been on the road for long before it started to rain. As Bobby drew closer to the front line, he passed columns of wounded moving back down the lines. He wondered how bad things were up ahead. At noon they crossed the Meuse, swollen with its burden of rain rushing down the hillsides in overflowing streams. They could hear the sound of heavy guns in the distance, competing with the thunder overhead. The day grew dark long before evening, and Bobby was not sure what time it was when they finally halted and settled for the night. Up ahead the sky was lit by the bright flashes of exploding shells. The earth shook as though in pain from the destruction which men, the least of her children, wreaked upon her.

  Bobby was awoken by someone shaking his shoulder.

  “Come on. It’s time to move out.”

  He sat up and tried unsuccessfully to shake some of the water from his greatcoat. It was still dark. Some instinct told him that was the darkness of the storm. The day must have begun some time earlier. He opened a can of beef and ate hungrily, before taking a drink of cold water from his bottle. Picking up his rifle, he joined the rest of his company as they moved forward through the widely spaced trees. The line of men stretched away to the right and left. In neither direction could he see its end, each soldier moving steadily forward through the cold, wet landscape. Within an hour they had reached the forward positions, and dug in just over the crest of a low hill. From there they could see the immense German forces surrounding Bastogne. A young soldier to Bobby’s right frowned.