by Leo Kessler
‘Yes, of course, Herr Pfarrer,’ Otto agreed hastily, happy that the first stage of his plan was working without a hitch. ‘He is a bit of an old fart-cannon, our Hans.’
Pastor Mueller disappeared and Otto prayed fervently he would never see that round, plump face with the faded blue eyes ever again.
The tension inside Adolf was electric. The escapers lay like cocoons in their white underwear, while at their head, Kraemer, his face sweating in the light of the little flickering candle, waited in excited anticipation. Behind him Todt kept craning his head round – as if he were attempting to hurry along the pastor to the rear – and dislodged a little shower of earth and pebbles each time he did so. Behind him Hans or someone was breathing in harsh shallow gasps like a dying man. Kraemer cursed yet once again and wished it would be midnight soon.
‘Ten seconds,’ Todt hissed behind him, passing the word along. ‘Begin countdown!’
Trying to calm his racing heart, the big man started to count off the seconds, while to the rear of the line, Pastor Mueller did the same, his eyes fixed on the green glowing dial of his wristwatch, beads of sweat dropping from his forehead; in spite of the fact that Otto was still above, presumably pumping.
‘Three… two… one… Midnight!’
‘Midnight!’ the joyous signal hissed from mouth to mouth up the line of sweating, tense men. ‘Midnight!’
'Midnight!’ Todt barked sharply.
Kraemer needed no urging. He dowsed the candle immediately. Now they were in pitch-darkness, as he started to claw away at the remaining earth. The air became cooler. With difficulty the giant restrained himself. Gingerly, very gingerly, he picked the soil out with extreme care and then he felt no resistance whatsoever and knew he was through. Icy air and flurries of snowflakes were beating against his upturned face. He gasped for breath and commenced widening the hole, ears faintly picking up the drunken singing of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ from the Tommies quarters. He grinned suddenly, in spite of his inner tension, as he remembered the English text. ‘These particular old acquaintances’ll be long gone soon, comrades,’ he whispered to himself happily, reaching himself up... to receive the shock of his life.
They were well beyond the wire with its stork-legged towers, as planned, but only ten metres away, glimpsed clearly in spite of the whirling snow, there was a Tommy soldier – there was no mistaking those piss-pot helmets they wore – and he was staring alert straight in Kraemer’s direction. He ducked his head.
‘What the hell’s going on?’ Todt rapped angrily. ‘Move it, you stupid Navy shit!’
The sentry heard the angry whisper immediately. He shouted something. A whistle shrilled alarmingly. A siren howled. There was the sound of motors starting up. Men were running abruptly everywhere.
‘Go on, Kraemer!’ Todt screamed fervently. ‘Make a run for it now while there’s still time!’
Kraemer swallowed hard and threw himself up and out of the hole.
‘Halt, or… or I’ll fire!’ the unknown Tommy shouted through the howling gale.
But Kraemer was already running heavily for the cover of a copse of trees some twenty metres away, followed by Todt, blundering crazily through the ankle-deep snow.
‘Stop, or I’ll shoot!’ the Tommy cried a little uncertainly. ‘I will! Promise!’
The two of them kept running, zig-zagging desperately. The sentry said ‘Oh, Christ,’ and pressed his trigger.
More by luck than good judgement, his first bullet struck the leading man. He staggered, his outstretched arms fanning the air like a seaside minstrel shaking his white-gloved hands at the end of his song, and then with dramatic suddenness he pitched face-forward into the snow and lay still.
‘Jesus wept,’ the sentry moaned, letting his rifle drop out of abruptly nerveless hands, 'I’ve shot him.’
‘Nicht schiessett Posten,’ Todt screamed frantically and came to a sudden halt, throwing up his hands in a paroxysm of fear. ‘Bitte nicht schiessen!’
And then he was standing there, starkly outlined in the harsh silver light of the searchlights which had flicked on the length of the wire, directing their beams outwards, the tears streaming down his thin shifty face. ‘Bitte!… Ich will nicht sterben!’
The Tommy, shaking a little, raised his rifle a second time. But then a shadow raised itself up behind him, a shiv glinted in a crossing searchlight beam...
Otto tensed against the concrete support of the main gate, heart beating wildly, knowing that now he could be shot at any moment. The chaotic firing and the hard fingers of light probing the whirling white gloom – fortunately on the other side of the wire – told him that the Tommies were desperate. This was good: his plan was working. But he didn't feel glad about it.
Renate, the dead air-gunner’s ‘little friend’ had passed on the hint about the breakout to the right quarter. The Tommies had been waiting all right; the drunken singing had been a very good ruse indeed to lull the tunnellers into just the correct mood. The question now was – what were they going to do next?
Otto suddenly felt himself overcome with a wave of panic. The saliva dried up in his mouth. In spite of the freezing weather, he broke out in a cold sweat. His brain felt numb with fear. If some stupid sentry spotted him now, crouched down next to the gate, there could only be one outcome. Why didn’t he turn and run like hell back to the safety of his hut before it was too late? There was still time.
No, a firm little voice inside him barked. You're not going back Otto – not to that Nazi gang! You're going to get out of here, do you hear that? Out! Have courage… you're going to do it. Stick it out just a few moments more… Just as that voice faded away, there was a roar of motors coming straight for the main gate. Harsh commands were barked nearby. The gate started to swing open. Dim blacked-out lights flashed momentarily, as the convoy of trucks sped into the camp. Otto knew what they were going to do. The men inside the metal steeds, white shrouded, helmeted figures with fixed bayonets, would attempt to seal off the other exit to the tunnel so that none of Pastor Mueller’s men would escape. He pressed himself against the concrete post, praying that his long white underwear suit would camouflage him. It did. Running soldiers ran by him as if he wasn’t even there.
Whistles shrilled. Men bellowed harsh orders. He could hear Pastor Mueller’s voice protesting angrily. ‘But I am a Man of the Cloth, I tell you… a priest! I’ll protest to the Swiss Red Cross about this… The King will hear – ’ There was a thud, a soft moan, and Pastor Mueller was heard no more.
In spite of his fear, Otto grinned. The fat bastard had taken one in the kisser at long last. The air-gunner had not died in vain. Next moment he was slipping by the one remaining sentry, obviously focussing on what was happening inside the camp, and running out into the whirling gale. The road to Hull was open.
Otto was free again.
CHAPTER 12
In years to come Otto would never understand how he made it across ‘the Yorkshire Mountains’, as he called them, that terrible snowbound New Year’s Eve and morning. The nightmare trek that follows, left a lasting impression on Otto Stahl. Even today, shovelling down ‘English-style paella’ in that expatriate bar-restaurant on the Spanish coast and washing the muck down with a very un-English-style chilled champagne, a normally unsentimental, cynical old rogue like Otto could remember that night ‘in the wilds of Yorkshire with every man’s hand against me’ very vividly: ‘It was like that English book of theirs, Withering Heights, written by that Lesbian lady’. ‘Wuthering’, I had been about to correct him, but then on second thoughts, withering did seem to describe the place better.
L.K.
At first the going across the flat plain that led eastwards from York was tough but possible. Using his compass the best he could, he followed the course of the winding road leading towards Hull, sticking to the fields, ploughing doggedly through the ankle-deep snow, head bent against the gale.
But after an hour of battling the snow, he gave up the fields and returned to the road, t
elling himself that nobody would be about on a night like this. But he was mistaken. In spite of the wartime shortages and terrible weather, the sturdy Yorkshire folk celebrated the New Year in one way or other.
He crept by a lonely farm-labourer’s cottage. The regular squeaking of the bedsprings coining inside the tumbledown place indicated exactly how the humble farmworker was celebrating. Despite the freezing cold, Otto grinned and, wiping the snowflakes from his crimson face, whispered, ‘Prost Neujahr!’
From inside a woman cried as if in answer, ‘Haven’t yer come yet, Arthur? 'Cos its 1941 already, yer know!’
Otto disappeared into the night.
At three that morning, he was resting against a skeletal tree at the base of a great hill, preparing to ascend it by rubbing his weary calf muscles and clapping his arms around himself to keep warm. It was then that the sound of drunken singing startled him. A minute later a civilian came staggering down the hill out of the whirling storm, propelling his beer-filled belly in front of him, as a doting mother might push the pram containing her beloved first-born, singing, ‘Show me the way to go home, I’m tired and I want to go to bed… ’
He saw Otto, standing petrified with fear against the tree. Politely, he tipped his cap, belched and said thickly, ‘Loverley night for it, ain’t it, chum?’ He belched again and Otto reeled back as the beer-laden breath struck him in the face, and then the drunk was gone, staggering off into the gloom.
At 4.30am he was creeping through the little town of Market Weighton. The British had removed all the place-name signs back in 1940 during the Invasion scare, but Otto had no difficulty in identifying the place. There were ‘Market Weighton General Store’, ‘Market Weighton Post Office’, ‘Market Weighton Yorkshire Penny Savings Bank’ all along the little main street.
Before him loomed yet another climb – ‘like the Bavarian Alps it is in Yorkshire,’ he cursed forty years later. ‘You’d need to be a mountain goat to live there!’ – and again he paused to prepare himself for the climb, and again he realised that there were still people about. Opposite him there was a chink of light coming from a badly placed black-out curtain. Curiosity overcame his fear and he crept across to peer in.
He could only see part of the scene taking place within. The oil-lamp, the room’s only means of illumination, kept flickering badly in a draught.
An elderly man stood there looking very serious, with what looked like forceps in his hands, while, next to him, a much younger fellow in a collarless striped shirt held a handkerchief to his eyes, as if he were crying, both their shadows wavering and magnified gigantically behind them on the rough wall. A baby was whimpering.
What the devil's going on, Otto asked himself. Had a child just been born? What was happening to the mother? Was there something seriously wrong? The looks on the two men’s faces seemed to indicate that. Otto didn’t know. He shook his head and struggled on, disappearing into the white whirling storm yet once again. In years to come, what had happened in that little house that night would always intrigue him. More than once he promised himself he would go back to Market Weighton and try to find out, but always the thought of those ‘Yorkshire mountains’ made him change his mind.
At six he was passing through Beverley. To his right the great Gothic Cathedral seemed to be sinking into the snow like some huge liner struck by an iceberg. Miserably he trailed through the deserted market square. A stray dog looked at him enquiringly, then it raised its shivering hind-leg and pissed contemptuously against the Fire Service’s static water-tank. An exhausted Otto nodded.
‘I know just how you feel,’ he croaked in German.
Now he was only ten kilometres from Hull and he estimated he would reach the port before it became light. He forced himself to plod on.
‘Four miles to Hull.’ He had just made out the fading sign on a garage wall when he caught the first strains of a chorus of strong voices. He dodged behind a wrecked Triumph Super 7, lying there in the court, half submerged by snow.
A platoon of soldiers, swaying from side to side wildly, appeared out of the storm, kicking what looked like a beer-barrel in front of them, guided by a soldier who appeared to be wearing a pair of silk bloomers on his head and carrying a hissing carbide lantern in his hand.
‘Drunk last night, drunk the night before, gonna get drunk tonight like we never got drunk before. Cos we are the boys of the East Riding Yeomanry!’ They staggered by a crouched Otto singing wildly. ‘Where was the engine-driver when the boiler bust? They found his bollocks… and the same to you. Bollocks…’
With that derisive bellow they disappeared into the storm once more and Otto came out of his cover, marvelling yet once again at the stamina of the English. Give them lukewarm beer enough, he told himself as he plodded on, and they'll go to the end of the god-forsaken world. No wonder they owned one third of the earth. They’d done it on lukewarm beer.
One hour later he staggered into the entrance of an air-raid shelter, built of brick, above ground and smelling strongly of cat’s pee, fish-and-chips and unwashed bodies. Tired as he was, he scouted it out carefully. In the usual careless English fashion, the door was not locked as it would have been in Germany – something for which he was grateful. He crept inside – and there stood a line of wooden bunks, without mattresses of course, but such beautiful bunks lined with planks all the same. His weary heart leapt with joy. With a groan of delight he collapsed on the one in the furthest corner. Exactly sixty seconds later, Otto was fast asleep in that smelly, icy interior, snoring lightly. He was in Hull at last. His nightmare journey was over.
Otto knew Swedes. As a boy, he had seen them often enough in Stralsund, coming off the coastal freighters that plied their trade between the Swedish Baltic ports and the German one. He recalled them as mostly blond young men with strangely unformed, somehow innocent faces (for sailors) and no noses. They would step off their ships, head immediately for the first store selling schnapps, and emerge already guzzling the forbidden spirit straight from the bottle. He'd heard that in their own northern homeland the stuff was severely rationed. They would set off looking for what appeared to be the second most important thing in their onshore life – women.
Now, sitting in that smelly Hull air-raid shelter, eating his bread and bully, washing the tasteless stuff down with tea, Otto planned his next step. Shivering a little with the cold, he reasoned he'd be most likely to come across Swedes where those two essential commodities were in abundance: easy booze and even easier women.
But how do I find such places, he asked himself. That's the question.
Three o’clock in the afternoon, 1st January 1941, Otto set off. The collar of his battle-dress was thrust up, his head was bent, and he slogged through the dreary red-brick streets of the port. He was following his well-trained nose, heading towards the water.
At first, as he trudged through the Yorkshire port city, heavy with the overpowering odour of stale fish, he thought the shabby civilians and the abundant servicemen, were watching him. But after a while, when no one stopped him and asked for his papers, he concluded they weren’t. They were too concerned with having to face another year in this dreary place to be worried by strangers, however dishevelled and outlandish their appearance. Besides, he told himself, they had seen ragged seamen who looked as if they hadn’t washed or shaved for all their lives.
Otto, he said to himself, you're nothing novel here in this arsehole of the world.
Around four he found himself in the centre of the port. Now the stink of fish and stagnant seawater combined made him want to vomit. He fought back the almost overwhelming desire and concentrated on his surroundings. He could see ladies of the night on all sides, standing in doorways, legs spread supposedly provocatively, whispering their professional endearments to passing males, stopping and pretending to fasten their garters when middle-aged Bobbies passed or poker-faced MPs, eyes like gimlets.
Naturally, servicemen were everywhere, viewing the whores, trying to make up their minds, egg
ing each other on, fingering their shillings in their pockets, wondering if they could afford the prostitutes’ services, perhaps scared that the ‘women-of-the town’ might give them something else besides a cheap thrill.
The sight of the young Englishmen parading up and down made Otto grin. They were much more timid than those German customers of his back in France. Boy, how he wanted to just lie on a beach in the sun, drinking Champagne right that moment. He looked around him. Instead, he was sniffing out Swedes on this shabby main street, which would be shattered out of existence, like so much of Hull, before this New Year was out.
But still, sex was what everyone was after.
‘Sex fiends of the world unite’, he whispered to himself in German and the whore he happened to be passing at that moment, called hoarsely from a doorway:
‘I ain’t got me teeth this afternoon, sailor boy… I could give yer a right treat for two and a tanner.’ She grinned at him and clapped toothless gums together noiselessly.
Otto fled.
Looking back to make sure the old toothless one wasn't following, he wasn't focussing on where he was going. Turning round again, he all but bumped into a lively group of young sailors, their Royal Navy caps set at a definitely non-regulation angle, laughing and talking loud. Skirting them quickly, he slowed to inspect them. These guys might lead me straight to my destination, he thought.
The lads were jaunty, ignoring the significant looks of the more sober civilians, telling them they shouldn't disturb the grey gloom of this grey coastal city. They knew they had a fifty-fifty chance of surviving the year. Otto thought of the devastatingly effective German submarine attacks he'd read about in the newly-created paper Das Reich back in France, the only article he'd looked at before throwing the thing away in disgust. His countrymen were sinking Royal Navy ships ten-a-penny, or whatever the English phrase was. If these young seamen wanted to be loud, they would be loud, and that was that.