Into the Darkest Day: An emotional and totally gripping WW2 historical novel

by Kate Hewitt

  Guy turned back to Simon with an air of expectancy. “So you, young man, were asking about Matthew Lawson, as he was known.”

  “Was known?” Simon raised questioning eyebrows. “It’s the only name I’ve heard.”

  “Well, it wasn’t his real name, of course.” Guy looked between the pair of them. “But I guess you didn’t get that far in your research?” he surmised with a slight smugness that made Abby smile. Here was a man who was enjoying having—and telling—a secret.

  “The only thing we know about Matthew Lawson,” Simon said with a self-deprecating smile, “is that he was in the 82nd Airborne, and he received a Distinguished Service Cross for acts of bravery in May 1945, which came into the possession of Abby’s grandfather, Tom Reese.”

  “Ah,” Guy said again, sounding unsurprised, and Abby felt a frisson of apprehension ripple through her.

  “What do you know about him?” she asked.

  “About your grandfather? Not very much at all, I’m afraid. Not as much as you do, I’m sure. I only talked to him a handful of times, if that. We didn’t move in the same circles, as it were, even though we were both in the 508th.”

  “Oh.” Abby wasn’t sure whether she felt disappointed or not.

  “But Matthew Lawson, I knew quite a bit,” Guy continued. “If I can say that. We were Ritchie Boys together.”

  Abby stared at him, her gaze as blank as Simon’s seemed.

  “Ritchie Boys?” Simon repeated.

  “You haven’t heard of us, I see.” Guy almost sounded pleased; here was another secret he could share. “Amazing how few people know our story, even now.”

  “What is your story?” Abby asked.

  Guy settled back into his seat, readying to tell the tale. “Ritchie Boys were part of an American covert operation in the Second World War. We trained at Camp Ritchie—hence the name—in the art of interrogation and psychological warfare. After D-Day, we were brought in to question prisoners of war on the front lines.”

  “Wow.” Simon looked impressed. “That’s quite a job. Was there a reason you were chosen particularly for that task?”

  “There certainly was.” Guy laughed. “We were chosen because we were German.”

  Abby and Simon both stared, trying to make sense of that information.

  “German,” Simon repeated slowly, shaking his head. “I don’t—”

  “German Jews,” Guy clarified. “Not all of us were, to be sure, although we were all German speakers, which was why we were chosen. But a good few of us were emigrants, refugees from the war, or before it. I left Germany in ’36, Matthew—or really, Matthaus—in ’38. I was lucky, my family came with me.” He paused, the corners of his mouth drooping down like a basset hound’s as he shook his head slowly. “Matthaus wasn’t so lucky.”

  “Matthaus? That was his German name?”

  “Yes, Matthaus Weiss. He took the name Lawson because it sounded less German. Less Jewish. I changed Wessel to West. As much as I’d like to say otherwise, that sort of thing mattered. More than once we had a pistol waved in our faces as we were accused of being spies. Many of the German-born Ritchie Boys did the same.”

  “And you were both part of the 82nd Airborne in this capacity… as Ritchie Boys?”

  “Yes, we parachuted into Normandy the night before D-Day. Nearly got ourselves killed.” Guy smiled in nostalgic remembrance. “I don’t think I’ve ever been as terrified as the moment I landed in an apple orchard and realized there was a nest of Germans not a hundred feet from me.”

  Abby gasped and Simon leaned forward. “What did you do?”

  “Ran like hell,” Guy said with a chuckle. “Like any other sane fool, I should think. They fired, of course, but they missed. Matthew had a similar experience, as I recall. Threw a grenade behind him and kept running.”

  “Wow.” It was hard to imagine this wrinkled, wispy-haired man running like hell, never mind parachuting into enemy territory or interrogating Nazis.

  “And Matthew—Matthaus?” Simon continued. “You were friends?”

  “Of a sort, yes, certainly. We were the only Ritchie Boys in the 508th, although some others came and went. We had a lot of freedom to move between units. But I don’t know how well I could say I knew Matthew. He was always a quiet one. Kept to himself, even with me. Neither of us wanted to talk about our old lives, or all we’d lost. No one did. It simply wasn’t the done thing back then. You just shut your mouth and got on with it.”

  “But you worked together? As… interrogators?”

  “Oh, yes. It was quite a job, let me tell you.” Guy crossed one leg over the other, seeming to enjoy himself. “We did all sorts of things. You’d think we were crazy now, but it was wild and fun and sobering and terrifying all at once. Ritchie Boys were able to move between battalions and regiments, up to the front lines and back, here and there and everywhere, answering to hardly anyone, to get the results we needed.” He let out a raspy chuckle. “We lent our hand to all kinds of crazy things. I remember in London they had us writing fake messages in German and sending them to Europe by carrier pigeon, hoping the Nazis would think they were from their own spies. As far as I know it didn’t work.” He shook his head, smiling. “And then there was a time, right near the end of the war, when I dressed up as a Russian officer and we threatened a Nazi or two that they’d be sent to the Gulag if they didn’t cooperate. They were scared of that more than anything.” Guy gave another snort of laughter. “Matthew would threaten that he was going to bring in Commissar Karkozy. They didn’t believe us until I marched in, with my fur hat and my big coat and some medals we’d taken off some Soviets—I knew a little Russian back then, but the truth is I made half of it up, and they almost always believed the whole thing.” He laughed again, and Abby found herself smiling at the bizarre image—Guy dressed up like a Russian, Matthew threatening the Gulag. It was funny and horrible and hard to believe it had actually happened, and yet it had.

  “That sounds like an amazing story,” Simon said with a chuckle. He looked impressed. “You must have so many to tell.”

  “Not many people to listen to them, these days.” Guy’s smile faltered and he let out a weary sigh.

  At ninety-seven, Abby supposed, there wouldn’t be too many people left who shared your memories, or even cared about them. It had to be lonely, growing so old.

  “We’d like to listen to them,” Simon assured him. “But first, can I ask, do you know about Matthaus Weiss’ Distinguished Service Cross? He received it in May 1945. Were you there then? Do you know what he received it for?”

  Guy’s smiled slipped right off his face then, and he looked away, suddenly seeming reluctant to impart any more information.

  Simon glanced at Abby, and she shrugged, frowning. After the older man’s genial recollections, this felt like something else entirely, a memory he didn’t want to recall, never mind share. A ghost was in the room with them, drifting silently.

  “Ye-es,” Guy finally said slowly. “I know what he received it for. But you have to understand something. My family got out.”

  The words seemed to hang in the air before falling into the stillness, creating ripples.

  Simon shifted in his seat. “What—what are you saying, exactly?”

  Guy looked at him bleakly. “What do you think I’m saying, son? Matthew was a Jew, the same as me. His family were Jews. He left his mother and a couple of brothers and sisters—I can’t remember how many, but a fair few—back in Germany. His father had already died, that I remember. Beaten to death during Kristallnacht. Matthew’s mother hid him in a cupboard and he escaped the next day.”

  Abby let out a soft gasp of horror. She’d heard of such things, of course; she’d studied the Holocaust in history class and read novels about it and seen Schindler’s List; she’d been to the museum in DC and had watched documentaries about survivors, and yet, even so, she’d never heard or felt it as starkly as that, the reality of it right there in the room with them.

  Guy nodde
d somberly, accepting their reactions. “You couldn’t imagine how it was, now. We couldn’t even imagine it back then. We’d heard things, of course. Rumors. Whispers. Just a bit here and there—trains going east, ghettoes put up, stories of dark things that no one really liked to say or even think about. We didn’t credit any of it, not really. We couldn’t. Because to believe it…” He shook his head slowly. “It was simply too terrible to think about. Even though Matthew and I both saw some terrible things before we left Germany before the war, we still hoped it wouldn’t get as bad as that. That it couldn’t.”

  “I can understand that,” Abby said quietly. She paused, before continuing hesitantly, “So Matthew’s family…”

  “They’d been left behind in some little town in what was part of Germany but is now Poland—Posen, the province was, although I can’t remember the name of the town. He got out—took him months of hiding and finally getting passage on a Spanish freighter to America. He didn’t talk about it much at all, but I know it ate at him, especially as we got closer to Germany, and then right into the heart of it all. He wanted to find out what had happened to his family. It drove him more than anything else.” He paused, his face seeming to have collapsed in on itself in sadness. “And then… then we came to Wobbelin.”

  There was a note of finality to Guy’s voice that Abby didn’t understand.

  “I haven’t heard of that,” Simon said and Guy let out a gusty sigh that seemed to come from the depths of his weary being.

  “We’d been through a lot by then. The drop into Normandy, the disaster of the Waal bridge, the horror of Ardennes—the Battle of the Bulge as they called it later—and then that final push into Germany. The war was almost over, we were so sure, it was as if we could taste it. Abandoned Panzers, artillery and ammunition just left in rusty heaps on the side of a road, Dutch and then even German villagers welcoming us with open arms, kissing us on our cheeks. One hundred and fifty thousand German soldiers surrendered in a single morning. We saw them going by in droves, trying to escape the Soviets. They were more frightened of the Soviets than us. We knew it was only a matter of time, and not much at that.”

  “So… Wobbelin?” Simon let the words hang in the air, a question, an admission of ignorance. Abby had never heard the name before either.

  Guy’s hand trembled as he covered his eyes briefly, and Abby reached out and touched his other hand lightly, a gesture of comfort she felt compelled to give. He dropped his hand from his eyes and gave her a kindly, watery smile. “I didn’t go to see it. I… I couldn’t. Three miles away and we could smell the place.” He gave a little shudder. “That was bad enough. You just knew… and yet you didn’t. You couldn’t. You could never imagine. Never guess.”

  “It was a concentration camp,” Simon surmised softly.

  Guy nodded. “Matthew was determined to see it for himself. A couple of them went. Intelligence officers. They had to. But Matthew…” He shook his head. “He wanted answers, and I’m sorry to say he found some of them there. He wasn’t the same, after. He didn’t say a word of it to me, not one word, but he wasn’t the same. I remember he came back into the camp and it was as if he was… as if he was blind. He didn’t look anyone in the eye, just walked straight past everyone as if they didn’t exist, right to the canteen and got himself a shot of whiskey. Downed it in one go, and then another, and no one stopped him. I went to ask him how he was, but he didn’t answer. He didn’t even look at me. And, to my shame, I let him be. Looking back, I wish I hadn’t, but I was scared.” Guy hung his head, the shame he still felt like a shroud over him. “I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to hear. Of course I did, we had to, later. A few days later, we had a funeral service for everyone who died there. We made the townspeople dig the graves. They’d known all along, of course, and had done nothing.” He swallowed. “So many graves… I’d seen a lot in the war, but I’d never seen anything like that. I remember, one of the Nazi officers was smoking while the chaplain gave his address. And Matthew—” He stopped.

  Simon leaned forward. “And Matthew?”

  “He took out his pistol and pressed it to the man’s forehead. That wasn’t as much of a shock as it might sound—tempers ran high and those Nazi officers were right bastards.” He shot Abby an apologetic smile. “Sorry, miss.”

  “Don’t be,” she answered. “They were that and more.”

  “We were tough with them. Too tough sometimes, but still. You couldn’t help but feel they deserved it. But that time… I was standing near him, and I saw his finger tremble on the trigger. I realized he wasn’t just doing it for show, a fit of temper, nothing more—he was really struggling. He wanted to kill that arrogant SOB. I couldn’t blame him, but I also knew he couldn’t do it. I told him to back off, and Matthew looked at me then like I was the one he wanted to shoot in the head. For a second I actually thought he might, but then he put away his pistol and the Nazi stamped out his cigarette, thank God. I don’t know what would have happened if he hadn’t.”

  “My goodness.” Abby could picture it all, as clear as a photograph, or a film. She could feel the tension, and she had an urge to shiver.

  “I’ve never even heard of Wobbelin, I’m ashamed to admit,” Simon said quietly.

  Guy nodded in understanding. “It wasn’t one of the big ones, like Auschwitz or Dachau. They’d only set it up a couple of months before, as a—well, as a holding pen, as awful as that sounds. Bringing the survivors of the other camps to one place. They were trying to get rid of the evidence, by that point, of what they’d done.” His face twisted with remembered bitterness and even hatred. “They might have acted as if they had all the answers, their damned Final Solution, but they knew how evil they were, and they tried to hide it from the rest of the world, damn them to hell and back.”

  Abby swallowed. Her throat felt thick and tears pricked her eyes, and she wasn’t quite sure why. She’d heard horrible stories before, and yet this only felt far more personal, far more real. She wasn’t related to Matthaus Weiss; she’d barely heard of him, had only seen the one photograph, in front of the Mathers’ house. And yet she felt almost unbearably moved by Guy’s story, by Matthew’s anguish.

  “So did Matthew find out what happened to his family?” Simon asked after a moment. “Had they been in the camps?”

  Guy shook his head. “I never found out about that. He never told me, and the truth is, we barely spoke after that terrible day, the day of the funeral. He was angry at first, and then everything was happening all at once—Hitler killed himself, and then the Germans were surrendering, and Matthew was seconded somewhere else quite quickly, to interrogate some Nazis. I’m sorry to say I never saw him again. None of the Ritchie Boys kept in touch, as far as I know. It just wasn’t done. We’d had a different war than everyone else, being both Germans and Jews.” He smiled sadly. “I wish we had stayed in touch. It’s good talking about these things—good, but hard.”

  “So you don’t know what happened to Matthew after the war? If he came back to America, or…?”

  Guy shook his head. “I don’t know a thing.”

  “What about Tom Reese?”

  “Tom Reese…” Guy scratched his chin thoughtfully. “Like I said, I wasn’t friends with him, although he and Matthew stuck together a bit. They were dating a pair of sisters, as I recall. British girls.”

  “Sisters?” Simon perked up at that. “Do you mean Sophie and Lily Mather? My grandmother is Sophie.”’

  “Those may have been their names. I’m afraid I didn’t pay close attention, and Matthew didn’t tell me about his love life, or anything else. But even so, I could tell he was awful sweet on her.”

  “And Tom and Sophie?” Abby asked after a moment. “Do you know what happened to them?”

  Guy shook his head. “Tom was wounded in Ardennes, I know that much. Shot in the leg. He was shipped back to England and saw the last days of war out in a military hospital in London. Matthew told me about it, but he seemed quite tight-lipped about the
whole thing. I always got the sense there might have been a bit of bad blood between them, but I never got to the bottom of it, not that I asked.” He smiled apologetically at them both. “I’m sorry I don’t have more to tell you. You probably thought I did, inviting you to come all this way, but the truth is no one wants to talk about those days anymore. I was so glad someone took an interest.”

  “We’re so glad we came,” Simon assured him, and Abby murmured the same. “You didn’t actually say what Matthew Weiss received his Cross for—do you remember specifically?”

  “He interrogated some Nazi officers,” Guy said slowly, his tone heavy with sadness. “Thoroughly nasty characters, I’m sure. I heard from someone else that he’d got some information out of them about the camps. It couldn’t have been easy, in any respect, especially after seeing Wobbelin.”

  “Thank you,” Simon said quietly. He glanced at Abby, his eyes dark with imagined sorrow. No, it couldn’t have been easy.

  They stayed for another hour, looking over Guy’s photo albums and hearing more about his life both during the war and after. He’d married a woman he’d met after the war, a nurse, and they’d lived in Minneapolis for their whole marriage, until she’d died fifteen years ago. They hadn’t been able to have children.

  “I feel as if I’ve lived a whole life in a matter of hours,” Abby said as they walked back to the car. It was already dusk, the air humid and warm, and as thick as a blanket. “I’m exhausted, but my mind is spinning.”

  “Mine too.” Simon blew out a breath. “It’s all so incredible. I’m still taking it in.” He jangled his keys. “We can check into the hotel and order room service, unless you feel like going out?”

  “No, that sounds perfect. I really am tired.”