Black Camp 21

by Bill Jones

  A few yards away, their guard was sitting astride his bike aiming his rifle at imaginary planes. From around a curve in the lane, two figures were approaching, accompanied by a small, yapping dog. One was a girl, carrying a basket. The other, an elderly man, relied on a long, crooked stick. Wiping the sticky drops from his face, Hartmann sat up quickly and waited.

  She was sixteen, maybe less, with strong, bare legs and glossy black curls falling across the shoulders of a simple white dress. To the twelve young men now watching her, in their sweat-darkened prison garb, she seemed like a visitation. And when she stopped in front of them and smiled, no one had the remotest idea what to do or say.

  ‘I know you can’t understand me but my name is Alice. This is my grandfather, and we’ve come to say thank you for helping us on our farm.’

  The men shuffled uneasily. The dog – a Jack Russell – was trotting among them twitching its nose in apparent disgust.

  ‘We’ve brought some home-made lemonade, and some bread.’ The girl peeled back a muslin cloth from one half of the basket. ‘We’ve also got a few things you might like to take back.’ Pulling the cloth away completely, she revealed packs of cigarettes and a handful of ring-bound notebooks. ‘I don’t suppose any of you speak English?’

  ‘Yes. I do.’ Hartmann stood up, wiped his hand, and offered it first to the old man and then to his granddaughter. ‘This is most kind. You have a beautiful farm. I’m sure we’re all very pleased to be able to make things up to you.’

  After that, the trading began. Within minutes, almost every prisoner had completed his exchange and was swigging contentedly from a stone bottle. Warm, crusty loaves were being torn apart. Cigarettes were being shaken from their boxes.

  ‘They’ll need a match,’ Hartmann said politely. Their guard, he noticed, was now looking studiously in the wrong direction.

  ‘Of course.’ The girl turned to her grandfather, who passed over a box of Swan Vestas. ‘No need to give them back. They’re easy to come by.’

  She looked down. The dog was sniffing dementedly around Hartmann’s leg.

  ‘He can smell meat, I think. You’re the only one who’s done no business.’

  He felt his tunic pocket. He’d forgotten. The bacon was still there. ‘I’m not sure you’ve got anything I want.’

  The girl – Alice – smiled, and glanced sheepishly at the old man. It was too cruel that they shared a name. ‘What do you want? Try me.’

  ‘A pencil. Your paper is no good without a pencil.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  For the second time that morning, Hartmann was conscious of his own heart; the steady pump of a warning. ‘That you help me by sending the letter I write to Germany.’ He looked round. The guard was swiping a clump of nettles with a stick.

  The girl’s brow creased, and she tugged at a loose hair on her cheek. ‘It’s all right. I won’t tell him. But you already have a right to send letters. I’m sure you do. You don’t need me for that.’

  Hartmann wondered how much he should tell her. ‘It’s complicated.’ The bacon was hanging limply from his outstretched hand.

  ‘What’s she called?’

  ‘Alize. It’s German for Alice.’

  When the whistle sounded, Hartmann tucked the notepaper into his jacket. Four hours later, when the sun had dipped behind the trees, they were allowed to stop. All around them, towers of wooden crates swayed under the weight of their labours.

  Elation had given way to weariness. No longer working, the prisoners found themselves shivering under a clearing sky. Hartmann would return tomorrow. The others might not. He could feel the sharp edges of the token between his fingers. There were benefits to being feared. No one would ever dare ask for it back.

  He wondered if that, more than the cold, was why the men had fallen silent, or whether their hours of freedom had depressed them. What was it his father said? Sometimes a morsel was harder to digest than a mountain? As the camp drew nearer, he looked up and back. A single star had broken cover in the east. Road dust glowed in the yellow beam of the guard’s motorcycle.

  ‘First time out? You’ll need to go easy on those blisters.’

  Hartmann looked to his left. Another face he’d forget, barely visible. For a thousand reasons, he felt no inclination to talk.

  ‘I think I’d kill myself if I couldn’t get out. Most of us here are the same.’

  ‘You don’t hand your work token back?’

  ‘Not for ages. People are lazy. They’d rather have the cigarettes than the graft.’

  The tractor had stopped. Beyond the gates, the prison camp stretched out under a battery of lampposts. Smoke was rising smoothly from the roof of the barracks.

  ‘I’ve worked every day for two weeks. I could live in this country when it’s all over.’ They were inside now, and the prisoners were slipping off towards the canteen. ‘Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  Hartmann didn’t answer. No point. By the next day, everyone on the work party would know who he really was – or who he really wasn’t. And where he was from.

  After that, no one would speak to him again.

  From:

  4th Wiltshire Home Guard

  To:

  Chief Constable, Lt Col. Sir Hoel Llewellyn KBE, DSO, DL

  Date:

  1 Sept. 1944

  We have been informed by the local police inspector that we are to stand by in the event of trouble arising with Prisoners of War.

  Will you kindly advise if the Home Office may be approached for loss of earnings, injuries sustained (if any) and subsistence allowance in the event of a turnout? Also, will the assistance of outlying companies be sought in view of the very small area controlled by this company?

  The Home Guard will be most willing to assist in any way, but – as must be abundantly clear – we are limited both by our numbers and by the physical capacity of many of our volunteers.

  Currently there are no reasons to fear any unwelcome ‘activity’ at Devizes, but we are told there are elements there who may prove troublesome in the future.

  Regards, etc.

  23

  The following morning, after breakfast, Koenig disappeared into the kitchen, returning with fistfuls of sausage.

  ‘You could get out too,’ Hartmann told him.

  ‘Not interested. Not just yet, anyway.’

  There wasn’t time to ask why. All around them, men were surging down the camp’s concrete pathways, and lines were already forming in front of the chalkboards. Hartmann saw his own number going up last, causing another flotilla of despondent faces to turn away yet again. He felt a wave of raw anger coming from the prisoners jostling back. Pockets of men were jeering and the token felt hot in his hand, making him clutch it even tighter. He was learning to live with the hate. It might not be fair, but he was going out again.

  ‘Fucking Nazi cunt.’ Hands were on his back, pushing. A boot had swung into his shin, hard. ‘Fuck off back where you came from.’

  As he stumbled, a fist bounced off the back of his head. ‘Screw Hitler.’

  There were shouts from the wire – English voices – and when he straightened his back the crowd had drifted away. Whoever they’d been, if their names ever reached Goltz, they were dead.

  Ahead of him, the gates were being opened. No policemen today. It was probably a Saturday. Everyone on the trailer had seen what happened. When he tried to climb on board, no one would let him.

  On the road behind, he could hear the approaching burble of a motorcycle. As he stepped aside, it pulled up with a spray of dirt. Astride it was the same young guard from yesterday, with the same decrepit rifle slung over his back.

  ‘Norton four-ninety? Nice,’ said Hartmann.

  The driver grinned. He looked about sixteen and his teeth were black. ‘Hop on, Kraut. It isn’t far.’

  Like the day before, he worked alone all morning, staving off hunger with stolen apples. Overnight, his muscles had tightened, and a dull ache was pulsing in his leg. T
he boxes seemed to fill more slowly. But after a few hours, once the morning mist had burned away, he found a steady rhythm, working hard to push away the possibility that the girl might never come back.

  Around noon, the whistle sounded. Immediately, Hartmann looked both ways up the lane. No one in sight. He retrieved his tunic from the side of the field and walked stiffly towards the oak tree for lunch. As he sat down, he could smell it: the peppery bite of bratwurst, the taste of home.

  ‘They’ve eaten it all.’ It was the guard, still lining up his sights on phantom targets. ‘They don’t seem to like you right much, do they?’

  Hartmann smiled. You could get anything in a war if you knew how. Someone would surely come. He needed it to be her.

  He wasn’t alone. Everyone in the work party seemed tense. When the dog finally appeared, driven frantic by the smell of meat, they relaxed. Once again, the guard took himself off, nodding politely to the girl and her grandfather as they passed on the lane. Hartmann sat up. She was wearing a red dress, and her hair was tied back. Her eyebrows, he noticed, were thick and black like a man’s. It wasn’t hard to imagine her naked and so he did. When she found his face in the shadow of the tree and smiled, a rare tingle of delight passed through his groin. Later on, like all the men there, he would relieve it.

  ‘I’ll sort out the others first. Is that all right?’

  ‘Of course. There’s no hurry.’

  He felt confident. She would not have let him down. After a few minutes, her basket was empty.

  ‘Hello again, Alice.’ Behind her, the rest of the work party were lighting up, no longer interested. ‘Have you got something for me?’

  The girl’s grandfather had disappeared. Without asking, she sat down beside the prisoner, smoothing her dress carefully along her thighs. ‘Yesterday you said it was complicated. What’s complicated?’

  A large plane was landing somewhere nearby, followed quickly by another. It felt uncomfortable to be having this conversation in a Wiltshire field with a teenager he didn’t know.

  ‘You’re SS, aren’t you? You’re not a soldier like them.’

  ‘What makes you think that?’ He could feel her eyes walking all over his face. He didn’t want to look.

  ‘Because you’re not the first I’ve met. There’ve been others like you who’ve come out.’

  ‘Like me? How are we different?’

  ‘Mostly the others seem a bit happier. Does that sound silly?’ Her grandfather was limping back towards them with a box full of eggs.

  ‘Have you got my pencil?’

  ‘Why don’t you trust the camp to send your letters?’

  ‘I’d trust you more.’

  ‘I’ll give you the pencil if you show me a picture of your Alice.’ She was flirting. Her head was thrown back, and her knees had parted slightly, forcing the red dress up across bare legs. When their eyes locked, she grinned. A stalk of grass hung like a dare from the scarlet smear of her mouth.

  ‘I don’t have a photograph. Not any more.’ He could still smell it, twisting and burning.

  ‘Tell me what she looks like, then. I’ll bet she’s not as pretty as me.’

  Hartmann wondered what would happen if he put his hand between her legs, if he sought out her wetness. Even the thought felt suicidal. Dizzied by it, he stood up awkwardly and jabbed his hands in his trouser pockets. ‘I’ve got a sausage here for you, Alice.’

  Her laughter was a glorious girlish thing, a high-pitched screech which rang across the sombre fields. As she stumbled chuckling to her feet, Hartmann reached out and slipped his fingers around her wrist. Against the gritty leather of his own skin, hers felt smooth like ancient driftwood. When he released it, he was holding the stub of a pencil.

  ‘The horrible truth is that I remember less and less about her,’ he whispered.

  ‘Bring me the letter,’ said Alice, still smiling. ‘I’ll post it on one condition.’

  ‘What might that be?’

  ‘No more sausage jokes.’

  The rest of the day passed quickly. All afternoon, words swirled in Hartmann’s brain; promises and declarations of love which dissolved in his quest for the perfect phrase. When the trailer dropped them back at the camp, he was too absorbed to notice anything unusual. There’d been a little more space on the wagon, but he’d thought nothing of it.

  ‘You’ve done it again, you fucking moron.’

  A white-faced sergeant – wearing a uniform that looked two sizes too large – was yelling at their solitary adolescent guard.

  ‘Count them again, fuckwit. You left here with twelve. You’ve come back with ten.’

  It wasn’t unusual. The whitecaps called them walkabouts, the low-grade escapees whose curiosity drove them to wander. At worst, they slept rough for a few nights, throttled the odd chicken, and tried ringing Germany from a telephone box. At best, they made for the pubs in Devizes where they pleaded with the bar staff for a pint of beer. If they were lucky, they’d manage two before the military police rolled up. If they could play the piano, they’d get a rum thrown in as well.

  And yet to Hartmann, the camp’s indifference to its own security seemed dangerously misjudged. There were insufficient guards; the perimeter wire was patchily constructed; and the prevailing ethos of gentlemanly trust felt like a mismatch against brutes like Mertens and Zuhlsdorff. Every day, hundreds more prisoners were arriving, and every day, a handful wandered out of the main gates unnoticed, often sauntering back in for their tea around dusk.

  ‘Sorry, Sarge. They must have jumped off on the way back.’

  The place was a joke. When the absentees were rounded up by the local constabulary, they’d be hauled back for two weeks’ solitary and basic rations. As he crossed the parade ground alone, Hartmann glanced up at the two guard towers. Only one of them was manned. Worse than a joke.

  Clutching the pencil in his fist, he pushed open the door of Hut 19. At each end, a huge black stove was roaring out heat. Bultmann – or rather Rosterg – had been true to his word. Climbing up on to his bunk, he caught an echo of the farm girl’s fragrance on his fingers. His hand slid beneath his waistband. A minute was all it would take, less probably. No, Max, he thought. Priorities. Letter first, that later. My darling Alize . . .

  It was impossible. This was why he’d written so little in London. There were a hundred questions – a thousand. He could list them all, one by one. Where are you? How are you? Who are you? Or he could chronicle his own experiences in carefully sanitised headlines. But he was alive, well fed, warm – and she . . .

  The worst of it was not knowing; not knowing her and not knowing anything about her current circumstances. At that moment, she might be stumbling through blazing rubble pursued by Soviet rapists. She might be strung out on a road with a child and a million dead-eyed refuges.

  Ten thousand questions. My darling Alize . . .

  In frustration, he pummelled the side of the hut with his fist. The metal felt warm. No one would shiver tonight.

  My darling Alize . . . If you got my last letter you will know I was alive in September. If you get this, you will know I am still here. Better than that, I am safe and uninjured, and have every reason to believe that I will make it back home in one piece. With all my heart, I pray that you can say the same . . .

  He stopped. It was true what the girl said. Most of the army prisoners wrote home every week, but so far very few letters had come back. Everyone had their theories, but no one knew why. In the army compound, he’d heard some people say that their letters were never sent in the first place, and in the SS compound, writing of any kind was deemed unmanly.

  Using the farm girl was a risk, but it got round the censors and gave him a chance.

  If she has been true to her word this has been posted by a local girl called – guess what? – Alice. So there is still kindness in this world despite our best endeavours. By my best guess it is now early October. The weather has been fair, and I am in a prison camp near a town called Devizes. The food
here is plentiful and the guards behave decently. Time passes slowly, I’m afraid, but I shouldn’t complain. There are no bullets, no shells, no bombs, and pneumonia is probably my biggest danger. The rain here is worse than home!

  The light in the hut was fading. In the centre, around the stove door, he could see a perfect square of orange flame.

  I wonder constantly if we have a child, and if we do what he or she looks like. Beautiful, like you, I expect. Remember those days in the attic? We hear rumours about the war, but nothing more so I can’t even guess when we will meet, or how all this will end. But I promise you this. I will come back with no guilt, no shame and no secrets. It is hard sometimes but I am still trying to be a good man, someone a child might be proud of! Stay safe. Stay close. Stay true. Stay mine for ever. One day when you look towards the sunshine it will be me walking towards your arms. So wherever and whenever, please know this. I WILL find you. All my love. Max.

  It would do. Between Alize and him, three vast forces were fighting for a continent. If his letter slipped through, it would be a miracle. Folding it carefully, he fashioned a crude envelope from a second piece of paper and addressed it to his father’s house in Munich. She wouldn’t be there, but it was a start. Someone might find it and pass it on. A chain of kindness, that’s all it would need; a chain of hands through the ruins of Europe starting with a teenager in a Wiltshire cornfield.

  Hartmann sagged back. The unfamiliar heat had risen, making him feel drowsy and calm. When he awoke, eight hours later, he was still clutching the letter. Outside, a thunderstorm had broken, clattering rain down the sheets of iron. During morning roll call, spikes of lightning danced around the camp, releasing an earthy smell which clung to the men’s noses.

  ‘Like mushrooms,’ Koenig had said, as they wandered to the canteen.