Black Camp 21

by Bill Jones

  A few weak slivers of smoke still rose from the huts, but the fires inside were long dead. He should have told the woman to order more coal. Most of the prisoners here had already come through a Soviet winter. None of them would want to hang around for another like that one.

  The endless shivers were Goltz’s best friend.

  A little fuel might save everyone an awful lot of trouble.

  After five weeks away, Hartmann felt disorientated. But even at night, he could see how far the camp had spread. A few sodden tents still remained, but beyond the older Nissen huts a line of new warehouse dormitories extended out into the darkness and the camp floodlights shone on a gang of uniformed men patching a short section of perimeter wire.

  At the entrance to the SS compound, the group stopped. Through the fence, he could see the eight iron-roofed huts running up to the brooding silhouette of the latrine block, all terrifyingly familiar. Out of earshot, his two guards were talking in low voices to a lone sentry. He heard the words ‘German bastard’ and stepped slightly away. Already, his conversation with the English woman seemed like a trick of the mind.

  ‘You know where to go. Hut Six. Now fuck off.’

  Hartmann slipped between the men, and walked unaccompanied into the compound. As the gate closed behind him, the temperature seemed to drop. Or was that just him? Wherever there was light, the air shivered with frozen crystals, and the cold reached so far up through his boots that his teeth ached.

  On the threshold of his old hut he stopped, remembering the first time he’d stood there. Back then, it had felt like some sort of ending. Now he knew it had been anything but.

  With a lurch of dread, he turned the handle and went inside. Apart from a few disembodied snores, the place was hushed and the concrete floor felt like ice. Only the old blackness was there to greet him, nothing else, and by the time he climbed up into his bunk he was shaking uncontrollably.

  The next morning, when the men began to stir, Hartmann couldn’t be sure whether he had slept.

  For years, his nights had been the same. As a child, he would insist that he never slept at all, but when challenged to say how he’d passed away the hours, he could offer no explanation. The time had gone, but he didn’t know where. It was a mystery, just like his dreams. Everyone else forgot theirs, but Hartmann always insisted he could remember every one he’d ever had.

  Underneath their blankets, human shapes were twisting reluctantly in the darkness. Somewhere far away, a lone trumpet was blowing reveille. Down the full length of the block, men began to emerge fully clothed, fumbling for the buckets. In a moment, they’d all begin their bitter trudge to the washroom, the lucky ones clutching the blunt razor blades they’d traded for a meal, the rest content merely to hack at their beards with makeshift scissors.

  From what he could see, every bunk was full: eighty frozen souls.

  If Black Camp 21 existed – if Koenig and others really had been shipped up there – then there was no shortage of replacement prisoners, most of whom had the haunted demeanour of orphans.

  ‘They’re getting younger, Max. They’re even making me feel old.’

  The voice had come from beneath him. When he leaned over he saw an arm hanging casually from the bunk. At the end of it was the glow of a cigarette. The missing fingers told him all he needed to know.

  ‘We’ve been expecting you back. You’ve become something of a legend, you and your bumboy friend.’

  ‘Koenig. He’s called Koenig.’ Hartmann ignored the jibe.

  ‘I hear he’s been sent away. He’s going to miss all the fun.’

  ‘I can’t wait.’

  ‘Listen. That shit you told me about the blood . . .’ Zuhlsdorff had stood up close so only Hartmann could hear. ‘It was a joke, yes?’

  Hartmann rolled back on his bed with his hands behind his head.

  ‘Tell me, you fucking pig.’

  ‘It was a joke, Zuhlsdorff. Ha ha.’

  From the deep end of the hut, they could hear a poker raking over dead ashes, followed by a single furious shout. Suddenly a hundred or more fists were pounding the cold iron sides of their building.

  ‘It happens every day. Protests like this. All over the camp. There’s not enough fuel and the days are getting shorter,’ bellowed Zuhlsdorff, as he kicked at the bedframe in time to the beat. ‘Sometimes the Tommies come in and wave their guns, but they’re just as cold as we are. Everyone’s freezing to death, Max. We get a little coal for the evenings, but it’s not enough.’

  He drifted away to join the others in some indecipherable tribal chant, a baritone roar of defiance from which no one, including Hartmann, was exempt. He’d heard it before, numerous times, but this was uglier, and as the noise built he watched their faces, set hard and steely-eyed like the recruitment posters of the beautiful youths in grey helmets he’d once admired along the walls of Munich railway station, each one staring east under a black flag boasting two ragged lightning strikes. Waffen SS. Eintritt nach vollendetem 17. Lebensjahr.

  You can join when you’re seventeen. Seventeen. No wonder Rosterg felt old.

  Almost as quickly as it had risen, the chanting fell away. A line of men was filing out through the hut door, and a bitter draught was forcing the stragglers up on to their feet. Over the camp, the sky was slowly shifting to purple. Another two hours would pass before the sun heaved itself over the eastern horizon, bringing light but precious little heat.

  Wherever Hartmann looked, the prisoners were thumping life back into their feet and blowing hard into their hands. In thirty minutes’ time it would be roll call, and after that breakfast, the canteen, warmth. Even here, behind barbed wire in an alien country, the men embraced routine. Very few of them, Hartmann realised, had ever made a single decision for themselves.

  They behaved like children because they were children. Without a leader, they’d be sunk.

  Like everyone else, Hartmann was shuffling towards the exit, past the joyless barrel of the stove. A few yards ahead of him, a stooped giant appeared to be moving in the same direction. Mertens the U-boat man. He was still here.

  When they’d first met it had been difficult to picture him in a submarine. Alongside him now, the rest of them still looked like dwarfs. The fellow was a behemoth, a solitary giant walking alone with his thoughts. Some sort of farmer, Hartmann remembered, and he could sense that now in the fellow’s inscrutably distant air.

  ‘Max. My old friend.’

  A hand had reached out and locked around his wrist. Hartmann turned to his right. The grip was harder than before – and more calloused – but the voice was unchanged.

  ‘Sit down a moment. You’ll only have to queue for a sink if you go outside now. Or shit yourself waiting.’

  In the weak glow of electric light, Goltz looked exultant, excitedly patting a space on the edge of his bunk into which Hartmann slid.

  ‘Rosterg came to see you? Did he tell you much?’

  ‘I don’t know. How much is there to tell?’

  ‘Make a note in your diary, Max.’ The words made no sense. And his breath – like everyone’s – was still rank.

  ‘I don’t have a diary.’

  ‘December twenty-fourth. Christmas Eve,’ he hissed. ‘We’re going out.’

  Hartmann wasn’t sure whether to laugh. But then no one ever seemed to laugh much around Joachim Goltz.

  No one seemed to laugh much anywhere.

  Outside in the freezing December mist, it wasn’t hard to see why.

  For the rest of that day, Hartmann ticked away the hours. In solitary confinement, he’d become a master of wasted time. Between roll calls and meals – which he pushed away listlessly – he crawled on to his bunk and turned away from the card games and the chatter.

  For the first time in his captivity, his appetite had gone. There was too much to think about, and none of it was good. The woman had mentioned Black Camp 21, but now that he thought about it, he didn’t even really know where Scotland was, and he doubted anywhere coul
d be as cold as this.

  During the few hours of daylight they’d had, a hard fall of snow had obliterated all trace of the sun, and by the time the hut door was banged shut for the night he’d not said a word to another person since breakfast.

  From his perch, he could see that the stoves had been lit. Somehow, enough fuel had been filched to get them going again, for an hour or so, at least. Along the ceiling, black flue pipes were beginning to clank with the heat. Wherever there was space, wet hats and boots had been squeezed behind them to dry. Here and there, a few candles were burning and – to his surprise – a paraffin lamp had been placed on a box between his own bunk and the door.

  In the spread of its light, he could see that the hut was almost empty. Hartmann sat up. The only inmates left were congregating near the stove at the far end. The rest, it seemed, had been sent away, and prisoners he didn’t recognise were slipping in from outside to take their place.

  Fear zipped along his back. Not again. No one would save him for a second time.

  And yet everything was just like before. Bunks were being moved around to form a large square around the stove. A hush of anticipation had fallen over the entire space, broken only by Zuhlsdorff’s coughing from the mattress below – the same disturbing hack he’d heard all over the camp.

  Listening to the boy’s convulsions, you could easily believe the rumours that the sickrooms were overflowing with victims of a mystery virus which was decimating every compound. But very little spread faster in a prison camp than a lie, and bogus epidemics and fuel shortages played perfectly into Goltz’s hands.

  Nothing would suit him better now than a collapse in camp morale.

  ‘Don’t worry, Max. This isn’t about you.’ Rosterg had entered the hut, whispering his message to Hartmann as he passed.

  ‘No? Definitely?’

  ‘Absolutely not. Relax. They like you.’

  Unburdened, Hartmann slid from his bunk to join the other prisoners further down the hut. If there was a meeting, he was presumably expected to be part of it. Finding a gap in the makeshift wall, he kneeled close to the stove and began pushing tiny nuggets of coal though the opening at the top.

  From what he could see, around forty men had crammed into the space. Apart from the low crackle of the fire – and the rasp of melting slush across the roof – the hut was virtually silent, and it was a full five minutes before anyone spoke above the murmur.

  ‘Gentlemen, I think it’s time we got this going. Each of us has taken considerable risks to be here, and it would be a major setback if any of us were caught on our way back to our proper huts.’

  A flicker of firelight was playing on the golden frames of Rosterg’s spectacles and for the first time ever – to Hartmann’s ears – he sounded horribly nervous.

  ‘I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that what we will be discussing tonight could be a turning point in the entire war, or that any failure to maintain absolute secrecy will cost you your life.

  ‘As we are all well aware, the walls of these places have ears, so have absolutely no doubt that we will find out if you talk out of turn. Do please think about that very hard.’

  Rosterg turned and gestured to the rotund figure sitting on his right. Hartmann had seen him once before, back in the army compound: the Lagerführer.

  ‘I’ll now pass you over to our camp leader, Major Walter Bultmann.’

  As the major rose to his feet, everyone present felt a dip in the mood. Like all the officers, he’d been permitted to continue wearing his full German military uniform. Not for him, or his kind, the full force of the oncoming cold, or any of the other mundane deprivations of prison life.

  Everyone knew how they lived. Everyone had seen the heat rising all day and night from the chimneys in the officer compound. Everyone had heard the stories about free-flowing brandy and chocolate.

  ‘Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you.’

  Watching the major steady himself, Hartmann wondered if Rosterg’s warning had been aimed squarely at this man. The Führer’s contempt for his own senior officers was the one opinion that Hartmann shared, and if Goltz ever did break out no one else had quite so much to lose.

  It didn’t help that the major’s insipid voice sounded tired and shorn of conviction. Or that, at forty-four, he was more than twice the average age of his co-conspirators.

  ‘Well, it’s good to see you all here. It really is. Around this stove, we have the leaders of the four compounds. Welcome to all.’

  A few drops of sweat were running down the sides of his ears. His face had turned bright pink.

  ‘I’ve not much to say. Just a couple of things, though, before others go into the details. Firstly, as you know, this is not my personal operation. In the position that I hold, it would have been impossible for me to plan anything without the British finding out. So please don’t interpret my distance as a lack of commitment. Others have taken the lead role in this endeavour, and, when victory is assured, they will be thanked. Secondly, it’s vital that we all understand that this is about the entire camp. Not just a handful, not just the SS, or the Luftwaffe, or the Wehrmacht. This is about all of us. Everyone. When the call comes, we’re all going out together. Thank you. Heil Hitler.’

  In the square of bunks, a few backsides shuffled uncertainly. He was expecting us to clap, thought Hartmann. But no one had moved. After a moment of acute discomfort, the major sat down, grateful for Rosterg’s proffered handkerchief as yet more perspiration squeezed beneath the leather band of his cap.

  If nothing else, Bultmann had made sense of the gathering. Representatives of the entire camp were gathered around the stove. Goltz wasn’t just leading out his trusted SS cohorts. He was taking the whole damned prison population along with him, whether they wanted to leave or not.

  ‘Thank you, Rosterg. Thank you, Major.’

  Stirred by the heat, the air in the hut seemed to thicken. Hartmann couldn’t see where he was standing, but Goltz had started his address.

  ‘At the beginning of this war, we said we would fight on until victory or death. That was the pledge we took.’ There was a catch in his voice, as if he, too, was still battling against a cough. ‘Thanks to the brave efforts of many of you, I believe victory to be very close at hand.’

  Finally Hartmann had located him, standing slightly back between two of the bunks. There was a grim smile on his face and his voice was growing firmer.

  ‘Some of you probably think all this is mad. But that would be a serious mistake. All around us is weakness and cowardice and fear. Now is the perfect time to exploit it.’

  On either side of him, Hartmann felt the rustle of approval as Goltz moved forward into the centre of the group.

  ‘When better to take this place down than Christmas, when the guards are half pissed, half asleep and dreaming about their old age pensions?’

  From the darkness by the door, there was a whistle of approval. Goltz turned towards it with a grin and lifted his arms.

  ‘For some of us, the price of this famous victory will be death. For the rest of us . . . our prize will be London.’

  In that moment, his audience exploded. If there were guards listening, no one cared. Every man in the room had been rendered invincible, and when order returned, even Hartmann was not immune to his own fascination.

  For the next two hours, the plan was outlined in fine detail.

  Each compound was to form an elite fighting company of a hundred and fifty men. After darkness on Christmas Eve, these four companies – sub-divided into smaller sections of ten men apiece – would move on different targets.

  One was to break out and seize the army trucks located by Hartmann and Koenig. Another was tasked with overpowering guards in the main barracks and seizing every functioning weapon in the camp. The remaining two were to take control of the gates and gun towers before moving on to the American tank depot which one of Goltz’s numerous escapees had reportedly found nearby. The rest of the prison population would be expec
ted to storm the wire at all points until the entire camp was under German control.

  ‘When the world is opening its Christmas presents,’ Goltz declared, ‘we’ll be flying the swastika over this shithole!’

  Everyone had questions, and to Hartmann’s astonishment Goltz seemed prepared for them all, even his.

  ‘There are thousands of men here. When will they be told?’

  ‘At the last moment, Max. Maybe an hour or two before we go. The more people who know about this beforehand, the greater the chance of detection. Everyone can see the British are already worried about something. Next.’

  ‘We found planes at an airfield. How do they fit in?’

  ‘There are pilots in this camp, as you know. We’ll fly two planes out to the east coast to meet up with U-boat crews. The submarines will drop off weapons and special forces. If there are planes with sufficient range – which I know you doubt – they’ll be flown to Holland to liaise with the two airborne divisions that will be standing by to parachute in troops and supplies. The runway you found will be held at all costs for future landings.’

  ‘And once we’re out, once we’ve filled up the trucks with men and helped ourselves to these tanks, what then?’

  Hartmann checked himself. He was starting to sound too doubtful.

  ‘We’re less than a hundred miles from London. We can be there in a few hours. Before nightfall on Christmas Day, I believe that is where we will be. And now, I think you must all return to your compounds.’

  As the meeting broke up, Hartmann turned back towards his end of the hut. Leaning against the wall, close to his bed, was Heinz Bruling.

  ‘The mathematician from Hamburg. Did I detect your hand in any of that?’

  ‘Calculations and odds. Of course. What’s not to enjoy? I told you Goltz would shake things about a bit.’

  ‘Yes, but will it work? How does he know there will be submarines? Where does all this stuff come from?’

  ‘He’s been busy. A lot of thought has gone into this.’