by Bill Jones
‘We need your names,’ he said. ‘You need to dress.’
‘I am Karl Eschner. And this is Walther Sieber. We were both Panzergrenadiers.’
Koenig stepped forward menacingly into the boy’s space.
‘Sorry. I meant we are still both Panzergrenadiers.’
‘And your hut numbers?’
‘Walther is in seventeen. I am in nineteen. Easy to remember. Same as our ages.’ He turned round and pointed. ‘Over there. Quite close to each other.’
‘Look. I know you’re scared, Karl. But you have to wear this.’ Hartmann had picked up his own prison suit and was handing it across.
‘What will happen to us in your compound?’
‘Nothing. I absolutely promise you. Nothing. You’ve been chosen because you’re loyal. Not because you’re in trouble.’
‘Do you think we will ever swap back?’ The boy’s voice was breaking with tears.
‘Yes, we will. Of course we will. I just don’t know how soon. Now dress.’
At Karl’s side, the boy called Walther had already pulled on Koenig’s clothes. Soon all four were ready to go. The choir had stopped. It was getting late and the two young soldiers still looked reluctant to move.
‘You are Max Hartmann now, Karl. Remember that. And your friend here is Erich Koenig. Where you’re going . . . however crap you’re feeling, you always walk tall. You don’t slouch. OK?’
The trace of a smile had appeared on Eschner’s face. Koenig and Sieber were shaking hands.
‘Follow the sticks in the dirt. Someone will meet you at the other end. Hut Six. The cold one.’
With a kindly pat from Hartmann, the boys left, eyes down and running for the telltale wooden markers. If he could, Rosterg would look out for them. Just so long as they kept quiet and remembered their new names. Hartmann turned to Koenig.
‘I’ll be Karl. You can be Walther. The younger one.’
‘Fine by me, Karl.’
Ten seconds later – with two yellow moons glowing on the backs of their tunics – they were standing inside their new compound.
21
It would be a long week before Hartmann got outside.
For both of them, life in their borrowed skins required adjustments neither had anticipated. After the bellicose austerity of the SS compound, they awoke in a softer world, a place of kitchen-sink contentment.
In almost every physical way, Hut 6 and Hartmann’s new residence of Hut 19 were identical. Outside, the sun bounced off the same curved sheets of corrugated iron. Inside it, another eighty young men slept out their nights on cold, rickety bunks.
By day, life was divided between metronomic roll calls and meals. And by night, the prisoners shivered and snored and masturbated just the same. However, when he looked deeper, it wasn’t difficult to identify what separated his former berth from this new one. He could see it in every face. He could sense it in the wooden toys that the POWs whittled for their children. In the matchstick ships in bottles, and the slippers crafted from cardboard and sacking; in the choirs and the football teams; in the ukulele bands and the boxing tournaments; in the thriving black market; in the night classes in physics and shorthand; in the blackout sheets being used as blackboards.
If there was satisfaction that their war was over, Hartmann never heard it spoken. And yet the incontrovertible evidence for it was everywhere, in the way these men walked and talked and in their rustic yearning for peace.
Goltz could send in a battalion of Rollkommandos but he’d never change a thing. V2 rockets. Secret weapons. Counterattacks. No one here cared, or not enough, anyway; not yet. If necessary, they’d swear their loyalty to Hitler and proclaim their willingness to die. Some would mean it. Most wouldn’t. In France or under the sea, death had already skirted far too close. Here, the food was good and the war was lost, and however many heretic noses Koenig flattened, he wouldn’t shift things an inch. At best, the two infiltrators could sow doubt and denounce a few noisy waverers. In reality, Hartmann concluded, Goltz’s mission felt like an imbecilic waste of time.
Just for appearance’s sake, while it lasted, he would peddle the Nazi hard line. It would be suicidal not to show willing. These days, you never knew who might be watching.
By dawn on his first day, the word was already out. In the toilet block, he’d been blanked; every pair of eyes snapping quickly away whenever contact was made. As he’d tidied his bedroll and walked to the 6 a.m. roll call, the collective icy shoulder had persisted.
Temperatures overnight had plummeted, and each man on the parade ground was desperate for his fried bread and tea. Three lines ahead, he could make out Koenig’s thick curls; one of two thousand souls, maybe more, streaming into formation. Even the wounded were being guided into position on their crutches.
When the last prisoner was in place, the bugle stopped. Military policemen with sheets of names began working backwards, line by line. As they drew closer to Koenig, Hartmann saw his friend stiffen and then turn, glancing quickly over both shoulders. He’s looking for me, Hartmann realised. He’s forgotten who he is.
‘Hamann.’
‘Present.’
‘Rottlander.’
‘Present.’
The guard had stopped at the end of Koenig’s line. ‘Sieber.’
No one spoke. The unanswered name remained hanging in the sunless air. Grey vapour was rising from damp uniforms and the only sound was the stamping of bloodless feet. All around Koenig, heads were swivelling.
They’d been stupid. Of course. Why hadn’t they expected this? Sieber’s friends were looking for him among the vast block of faces.
‘Sieber. Walther Sieber.’
Come on, willed Hartmann. Come on. His fists were balled uselessly at his side.
‘Present.’ Koenig’s voice, quiet and catching in his throat.
‘You are Sieber?’
‘I am. Present and correct.’ Stronger now. And louder.
‘Wake yourself up, lad,’ bellowed the British soldier.
Koenig’s head stayed bowed. No one had betrayed him, but everyone knew. A few minutes later, as the torrent of men surged towards the canteen, they sought each other out.
Hartmann spoke softly. ‘It makes no difference. It was never going to be a secret for more than a few hours.’
‘I was right. They fucking despise us. Why?’ On every side of them, the rush of men pressed silently on, faces forward.
‘Welcome to the new Germany.’
‘What exactly is it we’re supposed to do here anyway?’
‘Make sure they’re more frightened of us than they are of the British. It shouldn’t be difficult.’ Hartmann was looking intently at his friend. ‘But that doesn’t mean you have to hurt anyone. Being seen around will be enough.’
Koenig looked doubtful. ‘Just a little rough stuff, maybe?’
After that, they had joined the line of men clutching their priceless meal tokens.
But it was lonely, lonelier than Hartmann had ever imagined. Wherever he wandered, the air curdled around him.
During the day, when the weather was fine, the huts emptied and the compound crackled with energy. Fence posts became goalposts. Huts became impromptu nets over which wooden sticks were tossed between teams howling with laughter. Huddles of men listened as the camp newspaper – printed, written and edited by the British – was read aloud to hoots of derision and disbelief. From every corner rose the unrestrained buzz of chatter and from every word of it, Hartmann was excluded. Even his most gentle, stumbling overtures were resisted.
On his second morning – as reveille sounded – he’d climbed blearily down past his shivering bunkmate in the darkness. As always, every trace of warmth had fled in the night through the wafer-thin roof.
‘It doesn’t get any easier. Maybe we should soon be asking for stoves.’ Wrestling on his stiff boots, Hartmann had momentarily forgotten they were different. In the blackness, a half-sleeping body turned towards his voice.
‘Who are
you really? What’s your name?’ A shape, a bundle. Still too dark to make out a face.
‘I know yours,’ said Hartmann. ‘You’re Juncker, I think. I’m Karl Eschner.’
By the same evening, the bottom bunk had been stripped of bedding and abandoned. Whoever had occupied it was gone. On the wall above his own bed, a dark cross had been daubed on to the metal in human shit and two dead rats had been left on his pillow. Calmly he’d carried them to the latrine bucket where they were still floating the next morning. It was irksome, but he could live with being compared to the Black Death.
‘That’s fucking disgusting,’ Koenig swore when Hartmann told him.
‘Don’t, Koenig. Please don’t.’
Two days later, Juncker had been found beaten unconscious. Both his arms were broken.
As the week progressed, Hartmann had enjoyed being in the company of humans again – albeit as a spectator – and his sleeping had dramatically improved. Sometimes, during the long dark evenings, he eavesdropped as the soldiers read letters from home to each other. And although the nights were getting colder, his dreams had returned and Alize was in all of them.
It wasn’t something he could explain, but she felt closer now, as if the possibility of being reunited was a thought finding its time. For weeks, months – years – he’d gone into almost every day expecting to die. Hearing the soft voices of his fellow-prisoners sharing their clumsily penned expressions of love had unlocked a prospect he’d held in quarantine for too long.
Maybe the glorious weather helped. Since the night of his trial, the camp had sizzled under what the British called an Indian summer, and as autumn knocked the skies seemed stuck in blue. For a few precious hours each day, it felt like August again. By midday, with their backs against the huts, it was warm enough for the men to strip off their shirts. But after dark, with the first frosts biting, the men counted the hours until dawn.
On the afternoon of his seventh day, Hartmann’s hut had received a visitor: Wolfgang Rosterg, sweeping in out of the sun, with a handkerchief clutched to his brow.
‘Too hot. Too hot,’ he’d said to no one in particular.
Alongside him was a shorter man, turning to fat, wearing the uniform of an army major; the Lagerführer, Hartmann presumed. Walter Bultmann, Rosterg’s ‘little faggot’.
Observing them together, it wasn’t difficult to work out the command structure. Before speaking, the major always consulted his aide for advice, and while Rosterg’s eyes seemed to penetrate every visible corner of the room, Bultmann’s face wore a look of perpetual disengagement. Even when his lips were moving, it felt – to Hartmann – as if Rosterg’s words were coming out.
‘Good afternoon, men. Another lovely day and two bits of news.’ Someone towards the back of the hut was sniggering. ‘Firstly, we’ve brought you this week’s copy of the camp newspaper. And secondly, we can tell you that from the beginning of October, we’ve persuaded the British to install two stoves in each of the huts.’
The cheering was as loud as it was sudden. As fists thumped the roof, Rosterg stepped in front of the major and held up his hands for silence. While the din subsided, he took off his glasses and wiped the sweat from the frame. When they were nudged back into place, he was looking directly at Hartmann.
‘We should add that the newspaper is written by the British and that every word of it may be a lie. Despite what you might read in there, our fine comrades in Europe might be turning this round.’ The clamour in the hut had receded. ‘And when you get your stoves, do please try not to burn the furniture.’ Immediately the hut was shaken by joyous uproar. ‘Thank you, Hut Nineteen. The major and I have a lot of people to tell. Enjoy the sun while it lasts.’
A few minutes later, when Hartmann slipped outside, Rosterg was waiting for him.
‘You’re growing a beard, Rosterg. It suits you.’
‘You noticed. I’m touched. Life here seems to be suiting you too. You look well.’
As they spoke, the two men worked their way to the rear of the hut.
‘We haven’t got long, Max. I really shouldn’t be seen in your company.’ From hut after hut, they could hear cheering. News about the stoves was spreading fast. ‘As you’ll have realised, they’re simple people. They want to carve wood, not dig tunnels.’
‘Listen. I owe you a thank you.’
‘Don’t flatter yourself, young man. Your peregrinations have done us all a favour. Goltz would have exploded without this.’
‘What do you tell him?’ Hartmann asked. ‘Not the truth, obviously. If he knew what they were like . . .’
‘The same things I always tell him: that when it comes to it, soldiers will follow orders; that they might be simple, but they’re not fools.’
‘I want to ask a favour.’
‘You need to be very careful. That moron Zuhlsdorff loathes you.’
‘I still need a favour.’
‘Everyone needs favours.’
‘I want to get out.’
‘Really? You surprise me. I thought you might have learned your lesson.’
‘Not escape. I don’t want to get shot. I want to dig ditches. I want to work outside. I want to come back at night with blisters on my hands. I want you to get me on a work party.’
‘You want to go out and come back in? You’re serious?’
‘Correct. At least to begin with.’
‘Nothing could be easier, Max. You won’t be popular, but consider it done.’
‘Thank you. And, for the record, I’m not exactly popular now.’
22
Hartmann knew what he had to do. Rosterg had briefed him well.
All week he’d watched carefully as truckloads of prisoners rolled out of the camp after roll call, returning footsore and tanned eight hours later. From a distance, the selection process had seemed entirely haphazard, but armed with Rosterg’s reassurances he felt ready to give it a go.
‘Promise me you’ll come back,’ Koenig had pleaded over breakfast.
‘I’ll come back,’ he’d reassured him. ‘And I’ll bring you some smokes.’
Everyone understood the game, even the guards. Happy prisoners didn’t make trouble, and contraband – provided you could either eat or smoke it – made them happy.
Outside the wire, where life was governed by ration books, the locals looked enviously at the food mountain being shipped into the camp each day. And every day, in the spirit of rapprochement, a little slice of that mountain trickled back out again.
Walking away from the canteen, Hartmann could feel the bacon in his tunic pocket. Twelve rashers stolen by his friend, and from the smell, not too recently. Almost every prisoner on the work parties would be the same. Cheese and meat going out. Tobacco and maybe a drop of Scotch coming back.
A few hundred miles away, mused Hartmann, we are tossing grenades at each other. Here we shake hands over a sausage and a Senior Service.
On the parade square, prisoners were massing around the wire either side of the main gate. Beyond it, he could see lorries, and a line of flatbed trailers hitched to tractors. On previous days, around two hundred men had been selected for outside work. Today, as always, there were ten times that number hoping to get lucky. Very few of them were talking and a mood of hunched concentration hung over proceedings. Each was a player in a desperate lottery and every pair of eyes was locked on the large boards being hung on the fence ahead of them. Earlier, over breakfast, selected prisoners had each been given a numbered metal disc by their hut commander. If the same number was chalked on to a board, they’d be attached to a work party. If it wasn’t, someone else would get their chance tomorrow.
Hartmann had found his at the bottom of his tea and had no idea how it had got there. Now it was in the palm of his hand. A three had been crudely scratched into the tin. Over the crush of heads, he could see guards furiously copying numbers on to the boards from their lists. Every one provoked a cheer, and exultant prisoners were pushing their way to the front.
A new
board was going up. A plump soldier was looking down at his sheets of paper and lifting his chalk. A three. Hartmann unclenched his fingers and checked again. He was going out. Out. Across the width of the square, crestfallen men were turning back towards their huts. Alongside him, twenty lines of jubilant ones – twelve in each – were having their discs checked under the eye of a handful of policemen on bicycles.
‘Group One, ditch-digging . . . Group Two, hedge-cutting . . .’
The camp gates had been dragged open. In single file, the prisoners were marching out to their transports. Hartmann could feel his pulse galloping. A policeman was blowing his whistle. He was next.
‘Group Three, apple-picking. That’s the green tractor over on the right.’
At that moment, nothing had ever felt better. Sitting on a trailer, legs dangling from the side, there was no war. Along the straggle of hedgerows he caught the loamy scents of late summer between black wafts of diesel. Much further away, behind distant teams of Clydesdales, he could see seagulls scrapping above the ripe dark narcotic of freshly ploughed fields.
Closing his eyes, he remembered the train journey from Southampton. And further back, the frowsy scent of stocks in a Munich garden. Opening them, he saw twelve pairs of legs happily swaying and just one soldier on a motorcycle following behind.
When the tractor stopped, the men were led between the drooping boughs of a vast orchard, where empty boxes and a few patched-up stepladders were waiting for them. Stretched out in a broad line, each man worked silently down his own allotted row, stretching up for the swollen fruit, lost for those minutes in the depths of a deep green tunnel. Only when they reached the field’s edge could they ease their backs and enjoy the soothing drift of the open country before turning back inside their canopy of leaves. After four hours, when a whistle summoned them to a lunch break, all of them were exhausted.
Under an oak tree, along the edge of a stony lane, Hartmann watched the breeze stirring a soft storm of thistledown. Somewhere behind him a green woodpecker was laughing. Reaching back, he pulled two plump blackberries from a spiky straggle, popping one in his mouth and crushing the other between his fingers. Fascinated, he watched as the tiny purple explosions spattered his face with bitter juice.