by David Roy
‘I’ve thought about that plenty of times but I actually think he would have died anyway. As far as I know practically every fighter pilot got shot down and killed eventually. Probably better off out of it. That sounds a bit harsh but that’s how it was.’
Around them, conversations - muted for the most part - carried on. Men talked about their day at work and the weather. In German occupied Northern Ireland there was little else to talk about. Sam, however, kept his counsel…. or that was how it appeared. In reality he could think of nothing to say. He was used to talking to men about the war, imprisonment and ambitions large and small, most of which would never be realised. But now he was talking to a woman and all he could think of to say was something along the lines of, ‘you’re beautiful.’ He had no idea if such plain speaking was acceptable (or wise) or how she would react to hearing these words, were he to utter them, of course. So, he just kept quiet.
‘You must be glad to be home, Sam’, she said eventually, ending what for her had just been a companionable silence. She had more experience of normality and knew that it wasn’t necessary to fill up every silence with small talk. Sam, on the other hand, feared that his inability to do exactly that would count against him and suddenly his head was reeling and he was confused. He wondered if he had just fallen in love.
‘Aye, it's good. But it's strange, too. People actin’ funny. Germans here….’
She shot him a warning look and he remembered. ‘Oh Aye - forbidden. Verboten, should I say.’
‘Sam!’, she hissed.
‘Sorry.’
‘Be careful, Sam. Really careful.’
The conversation moved on, with Sam finally taking the advice he had been given. This was the way it would be from now on. The easy-going banter that typified the Northern Irish pub was gone and, as if to illustrate the need for this new way of doing things, two military policemen walked in, easily identified by the polished metal breast plates that adorned their uniforms. Sam cast a professional eye over their turnout. Both men were, although he hated to even think it, immaculate. From their polished jackboots to their spotless grey-green uniforms and helmets, they exuded authority. These were the Ordnungspolizei, who formed a sort of police garrison in Belfast.
Hush descended on the pub - a cliché brought to life. Sam grasped his pint as if they had come expressly to remove it. The drinkers tried not to look at the alien presence but one never knew what was about to happen at these times. Despite their reputation for order and method, the arrests made, the punishments sometimes summarily given by their new masters, seemed to defy logic. Unpredictable, they could be friendly, attempting in their own stiff, formal way to make friends amongst the locals and then, seemingly without warning, descend into a fury, outraged at some unintended slight. Nancy had seen men dragged from buses, for crimes that no-one would ever hear about. She had heard of raids on houses, beating and most ominously of all, disappearances.
And when someone ceased to exist in this way it was just as well to join in with the charade. Those weeping wailing women who found that their husbands never came home from work, or who were dragged from their beds well, you just steered clear of them. You couldn’t be associated with such things in any way. Those who complained and those men of authority in the previous regime, all too often disappeared into the same void as those whom they sought to protect.
The two police began to pace slowly, casually through the crowded pub. People carried on with their conversations, though their mouths ran dry and their normal pattern of speech hid out in the darkest recesses of their brains. The policemen knew exactly the effect they were having and secretly revelled in it. True, they were hard men, one a former detective in Hamburg, the other a copper in Munich but they no longer needed to exercise the toughness that was part of their make-up. They had policed in Poland and Belgium. They knew that the folk of these defeated nations had no fight in them. Their job was so easy now. Even when they provoked a bit of action they rarely got any.
‘Just act normal.’
‘I will.’
‘They all speak English’, said Nancy.
‘I’m not going to say anything. I’m just here for a drink, Nancy. Okay.’
‘Okay.’
Sam sipped his beer, smiled and then downed the rest. Surely what could be more natural and innocent than to order another? He stood, the chair scraping noisily on the floor, wobbled slightly and made his way to the bar. A few drinkers looked at him but most preferred to hide guiltily behind their pints. The policemen were used to people looking furtive. In their world anyone could be guilty of anything at any time. The police were practically free to invent crimes on demand. Sam's behaviour was unusual.
‘Papers’, demanded the Munich policeman, tapping Sam lightly on the shoulder. Sam had just set down his glass and now turned. He took in the P38, safe in its holster as he reached for the little identity card which nestled in his inside pocket. This he handed over. His face betrayed no emotion.
‘Just released from a POW camp', stated the German, flatly.
‘Yes.’
‘You must be glad to get home?’
‘Yes.’
From their table Nancy watched nervously, willing him to say as little as possible.
‘Things have changed?’
‘Some things.’
‘For the better?’, said the policeman with a gently mocking smile. His trap was so obvious as to not be a trap at all. ‘You don’t have to answer that’, he added, handing back the ID card. ‘If you obey the rules everything will be okay, Mr Beattie. We are fair people.’ Sam just nodded his reply and the German turned on his heel. Seconds later both policemen left and the volume of conversation picked up.
‘That’s what it’s like, Sam. German police, suspicion, people turning against other people just to keep themselves safe. Everyone’s afraid.’
Sam nodded and spoke sadly. ‘This sort of thing doesn’t bring out the best in people.’
‘No.’ Nancy pushed her hair back from her face and smiled at Sam. ‘All the same it’s good to see you Sam. I wish the circumstances were better. You should be some sort of war hero….’ Sam nodded and shrugged, thinking of the medal he’d won. ‘But no-one wants heroes. We lost the war, everyone’s terrified of the future and everything you did doesn’t count for anything. You’d be as well forgetting about it, almost.’
‘Who said I hadn’t?’
‘I doubt you have, Sam. You were in it right from the start. You can’t easily forget…. except you just have to.’
‘No heroes?’
‘None. Just people who keep their heads down.’
Sam nodded again. ‘Another drink?’, he said.
1944
The Fleet roamed the Pacific picking off Japanese shipping and supporting the USA as they rolled up the Japanese Empire island by island. The aircraft carriers now operated American planes, Hellcats and Avengers mostly and the capital ships sailed from bases on the east coast and Canada. It gave Churchill some consolation to know that the British war effort was still continuing and he hoped that it was enough to make the Americans come up with a way of liberating Europe. Both he and the ailing Roosevelt had been to see Stalin, hoping to find some accommodation whereby the latter would run the Nazis out of Europe and facilitate the restoration of the democratic governments of the occupied states. Stalin had enjoyed having these two statesmen in Moscow, had greeted them warmly, wined and dined them and made no such undertaking at all. He was winning the war in Europe and didn’t need their help. The Americans had sent him some bombers and tanks but the latter in particular were not as good as their T34s and were certainly no match for the new generation of German tanks. Stalin was spilling Russian blood on a huge scale, but there was plenty to spill.
Meanwhile, Churchill and King George IV visited the Commonwealth and British troops who fought the Japanese. They wished that they had enough to fight the Germans instead. The few thousand remaining British soldiers alongside Indians, Canadians,
New Zealanders and Australians were in good spirits but then they were still free men. They preferred not to think about their families back home and suspected that they would never see them again.
In Russia the tide had turned against the Germans. The Romanian, Hungarian and Italian armies had collapsed entirely and the thousands of former Russians fighting for Germany were distinctly edgy. Had they not already burned their bridges in spectacular and decisive fashion many would have deserted. And so they fought on for want of an alternative. The Germans had lost the battles for control of Leningrad and Stalingrad, had never quite reached Moscow and had lost over a million men. The professional soldiers of the Wehrmacht from the beginning of the war had almost all lost their lives and for the remainder…. fighting on in the intense, crippling cold with tanks that froze, no air cover and the fear of attack from Cossacks or partisans, was marginally better than falling prisoner to the Russians. That was viewed as being the same as a prolonged death. Even some ardent Nazis were starting to view the campaign as a mistake. Defeat made them question the worthiness of their cause and the likelihood of their own survival in the wake of the Russian storm. Within months, or maybe just weeks the borders of Poland and Romania would be threatened. The top German generals, Guderian, Von Runstedt, plus some rising stars like Rommel, surveyed their maps with dismay. Their genius was for lightning war - Blitzkrieg. The Wehrmacht’s doctrine was for counterattack. But these things were harder and harder to do as a sea of German blood spilled into the tainted soil of Russia. The Generals were not defensively-minded and more junior commanders were adept at improvisation, swiftly turning around dangerous situations and surprising their enemies…. except it didn’t seem to work any longer. There was always a new Russian horde to contend with.
Hitler became more unpredictable by the day. He seemed to have trouble in controlling his movements and veered from intense optimism when he surveyed the map of Western Europe to furious despair when he cast a glance at Eastern Europe. He railed against his commanders and ordered them to halt the Russian advance. They must not get beyond their own borders he said. Occupying forces in France, the Low Countries and Scandinavia were formed into new divisions and sent to stop the Red Army. By June of 1944 they appeared to have done just that.
Hitler enjoyed visiting his armament factories, touring his empire with an entourage which included Speer and Goebbels. He would watch demonstrations of the new King Tiger tanks built by Porsche (not realising that these would not be a match for the new generation of Josef Stalin tanks being produced in the USSR), have the principles of the new atomic bomb explained to him or watch flight trials of the new jet bombers being built in Germany and Britain. The atomic weapons would be ready by 1945 claimed his scientists, rather unwisely. These could of course be fitted to the V1 and V2s that he was sending east as part of his counterattack against the Soviets. Hitler assumed that within a short time he would be using the Luftwaffe to pound Russian cities into submission with virtually no loss of German life. On these visits it seemed as if everything would turn out right. Technology would win the war against the ignorant peasants from the east. His spirits lifted and even the effects of the incipient Alzheimer’s that had begun to wrack his body, seemed to ease.
Belfast
The shipyard launched the new German aircraft carrier. It was named ‘Bismarck’ and would carry forty-eight Focke-Wulf FW190s in addition to an unspecified number of new single-engined bombers being developed by Heinkel. Now the superstructure was being added and the essential apparatus that would make it into the equivalent a small fighting town was being added. Already however, the hull of a new super carrier - superfluzeugträger - which would carry jets, had been laid down. Within a year it would dominate the entire shipyard and was watched with interest by everyone in the city.
Hitler hoped that his new modern navy would be able to turn the tide in the Pacific for his Japanese allies as well as striking a blow against American prestige. Time was running out.
Sam was given a job, labouring on the edges of Belfast Lough. The Germans had decided to reclaim some land from the icy grey waters and every day lorries brought waste, stone and soil to be dumped into the sea just to the east of Holywood. Sam’s workmates had, like himself, been in the armed forces with one or two ex-cons brought in for good measure. They were watched closely by overseers who spoke neither German nor English but who knew the difference between hard graft and idleness. The labourers were fearful of these men but in truth they never dispensed anything more than the occasional word of admonishment and then usually only in the presence of some visiting Nazi engineer or officer.
They worked in all weathers but were paid relatively well and fed. They were, in a limited way, content. Contentment was easier to achieve on a full stomach, with money in your pocket and the safety of employment. In many ways only working for their new masters offered any of them security. Since they were working for the state they could capitalise upon the privilege, getting extra food for their families and, to some extent, less interference from the authorities. Pride could take a back seat. There was no value in pride, just as there was no shame in working for the Germans. These notions were obsolete.
Still, the work was hard and Sam didn’t see eye to eye with all of his colleagues. Most of them were fine, he thought, but certainly not all. The workers were sufficiently pragmatic to know that they were all in the same metaphorical boat and therefore had to be seen to be pulling together for a common cause. Happily, for the workers, the Germans in charge of the project cared little for meaningless shows of loyalty to the Nazi regime. Oaths and ceremonies meant nothing to them but elsewhere displays of affection for Hitler and his regime were becoming more and more ostentatious, as if failure in this respect meant certain death. The new manager of the rope works had photographs of prominent Nazis adorning the walls. When the new manager of Shorts aircraft factory discovered this, he did a similar thing but with bigger photographs.
The normally taciturn and reticent Northern Irish workers were drawn forcefully into this grim charade. The lunacy of 'political correctness' became a self-fulfilling prophecy of jingoistic, nationalistic nonsense from which few were free. But not so with the plan to reclaim the land on the southern edge of Belfast Lough. The project engineer, Dr Roessler, was an Austrian, with distant (but not distant enough, in his personal estimation) Jewish relatives.
It was not his intention to make his men work to death or to become phoney Nazis. He simply wanted the job to be done and felt that feeding, paying and leaving the men with some pride would be enough to ensure some sort of shallow loyalty to him. He was right, of course, but even with men who realised that they were on to a relatively good thing, there was someone who upset the pathetic aspirations of his workmates. His name was ‘Tucker’.
Tucker was fat, ginger and tough. His freckled face was punctuated by blackheads and boils and his hair stuck out in several unwashed directions. His real name was Tommy Gibbons and he hailed from a poor family from the city side of the Falls Road area. The Gibbons, three boys, two girls plus their parents and one set of grandparents, were Protestants living on the edge of a Catholic area and most of them had worked only spasmodically in bakeries, factories and markets. They were poorly educated, unskilled and unwashed, which in part explained why their forays into the world of employment were usually short-lived. Tucker had been in the Royal Army Medical Corps during the war, but his lack of personal hygiene meant that his NCOs kept him away from any wounded soldiers for fear that the would become not only wounded but infected too.
Tucker laughed coarsely and told obscene jokes that for a time drew faint smiles from the others. After a while his crudity and poor work rate began to pall and he would have become an isolated figure had he not almost forcefully kept in with the other men. Although no-one liked him it proved difficult to say so, such was his menace and force of personality. Tucker was garrulous but untrustworthy, the latter trait more than enough in those uncertain days to render him
dangerous.
‘I’m surprised that a scrawny wee shite like you can do this work, Beattie’, he said. You could hear the sneer in his voice. They’d been building a sewage outlet for two days, rolling huge concrete pipe sections into place and then pushing, levering and hammering them until they joined together. It was work which really needed some heavy machinery but why waste the money…. ? An average man could stand inside the pipe, his height becoming a rough indication of its diameter.
‘Don’t you worry about me, Tucker. I can work as well as any man.’
‘Oh, I wasn’t worried. Just want to make sure you’re pullin’ your weight.’ Sam put down the crow bar he’d been using, let it lie next to his side. He shook his head and let loose a coarse-gentle blast of air which was a cross between a laugh and a snort.
‘What’s that mean?’, said Gibbons. His brow was furrowed. Sam recognised that he was in that dangerous mood when he would look for some offence to take.
‘Nothin’, he said. The other men had stopped to watch the exchange but now urged Sam to resume work. Beside him Roy Boyd, Antrim farmer, said, ‘ignore him. Let’s get this done.’ Sam bent to lever the pipe again.
‘No. Not ‘nothin’. What do ya mean?’, said Tucker. He was clearly in the mood for a confrontation.
‘I don’t mean anything, Tucker’, said Sam without looking up. Gibbons had been mixing cement, although they all knew that his bulk and strength would have been better used in shifting the pipe, but now he stopped altogether and began the inexorable process which would lead to a fight. They’d all seen it before. Gibbons would be in a rage soon.
‘Say what you said, Beattie, ya little shit.’
‘He didn’t say anything, Tucker’, said Roy Boyd. ‘Just drop it.’
‘I’ll fuckin’ drop him’, said Gibbons. He was already on his way over, his ugly fat face deformed with anger. Sam straightened up just in time to duck as the first punch flailed through the air like a spent bullet. He stepped back as did the others and the pipe, now unattended, rocked backwards and forwards. Furiously Gibbons threw another punch but Sam sidestepped it and his assailant went off balance, falling against the pipe.