by Bill Jones
‘Read it again. Slowly. Don’t miss anything out.’
Everyone on the train soon knew a garbled version of what the report said. From one end to the other, a cheer built until it was picked up by every single prisoner. And as that noise faded, a sustained, steady clap took over, spreading into each steamy compartment, until every man was banging his hands together. Several of them stood on the seats and jeered at the line of anxious guards looking in from the corridor.
‘SS marschiert in Feindesland
Und singt ein Teufelslied . . .’
Someone was singing the SS marching song in a perfect, unbroken castrato.
‘Wo wir sind da geht’s immer vorwärts
Und der Teufel der lacht nur dazu!
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!’
‘Tell them what it means,’ ordered Goltz. ‘Tell them we can teach them the words.’
Hartmann slid open the door. Two rifles were immediately aimed at his belly.
‘Don’t get excited. I speak English. I just wondered if you’d like a translation.’
‘Go and tell him to shut his fucking mouth.’
‘It says that the SS marches in enemy land and sings a devil’s song. Wherever they go, they always go forward and the devil merely laughs. And then there’s the laughing bit. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.’
‘Hilarious.’ One of the guards was looking away, down the corridor. He smirked. ‘Let’s see if this makes him laugh.’
Out of Hartmann’s sight, a door had been rocked back hard. There was a dull thump, and the solitary voice fell silent.
Later, when the engines crashed into the snowdrift, most of the men were sleeping.
Since London, they’d grown accustomed to the random stops. None of them lasted for long, a few hours, at most. Everyone assumed this one would be the same.
With the day’s first feeble light, however, that presumption quickly changed. On one side, a wall of thick snow rose steeply above the height of the train, shielding them from the landscape beyond. On the other, every living thing between them and the sea had vanished.
As the temperature inside tumbled, the men quickly came round. Each of them reached for the thick coats and hats on the racks. From the front they could hear melted snow hissing on the boilers. Out of the frosted windows, they could make out guards with shovels and lanterns trudging past them in thigh-deep snow.
‘We’re stuck,’ said Mertens. ‘The heating will be off until we get moving again.’
To Hartmann, it seemed as if the dawn couldn’t be bothered. Apart from a peculiar grey glow, the morning offered no light. Although the wind had eased, there was no sun and no warmth. No one fed them, or spoke to them, and just a single guard was left in each carriage.
Up front, the rest were busily cursing their way through the blockage. Every sound seemed to be amplified by the stillness and the cold was beyond anything they’d ever experienced. Nothing could keep you warm in this. If the prisoners wanted to escape, that would be fine. No one would give chase. A few minutes in these temperatures and they’d be dead anyway.
By mid-morning, the noises changed. Coal was being tossed into the fireboxes. There was laughter as the digging party tumbled back inside, knocking matted clumps of ice from their greatcoats. Without warning they were jerking backwards, slowly and with a deafening eruption of steam.
After a few minutes they stopped again. Every face was pressed to a window. When the train switched gears, the long limb of metal and wood stiffened until it was inching back towards the drift, so slowly they could hear the snow squeaking under its wheels.
‘Jesus. Look at that.’
Everyone on the train had seen it.
It was Bultmann, just a few yards away, in cap and full uniform, sitting upright in a deep fold of snow. His eyes were frozen open, and his right arm was straight, as if it had collapsed in a dying salute.
Just one set of footprints led out to his corpse.
There were none coming back.
From:
Lieutenant-Colonel Archibald Wilson, Commandant, Camp 21, Comrie.
To:
Alexander Scotland, London Cage.
Date:
18th Dec. 1944
Although I’m fully aware they’ve nowhere else to go, I think you should know what is happening up here. Very shortly we will have 4,000 of Germany’s worst, and the safe management of these brutes is exerting a strain on my staff no one could possibly have anticipated.
Behind the wire, the SS run what is effectively a secret police force, complete with routine beatings and punishments for ‘anti-Nazi behaviour’. Any of the sad individuals found ‘guilty’ are told that their property will be confiscated and their families liquidated, once the war is satisfactorily concluded. It is, in short, a terror state in miniature and recent developments on the continent have merely added to the insufferable swagger of the SS bullies who preside over it.
We must disagree over the imminent arrival of the Polish guards. I fear they may make things significantly worse. However, I have noted your other remarks on the party in transit which includes Herr Goltz. We will do what we can to restrain him, while encouraging the ‘softer’ elements you described. Maybe the weather will help. Not even Russia can compete with the winter we’re expecting this year in the Highlands.
Archie
39
It was much calmer on the train after that.
There were no celebrations, and all the ecstasy of the previous night had disappeared. As he had no friends – and his body had been left in the snow – the major was quickly forgotten; another insignificant casualty, nothing more.
Most of the prisoners had been moving constantly since the summer, and they were content to gape blankly at the dull waters of the North Sea, wondering if their journey would ever end.
Few of them expected to get back to the front. Instead their hatred was turning inwards, seeking objects among their own. If Goltz felt satisfied by Bultmann’s death, he hadn’t said so. Apart from a low grunt of satisfaction, he’d said nothing.
By mid-morning they were switching trains in Edinburgh. By noon, they were crossing the Forth Bridge in scintillating winter light, crowding their faces to the glass to watch the fishing boats under the giant central arch of the span.
On the northern side of the river, the scenery quickly changed. In place of the soft lowland hills, there were mountains from which ice-crusted rivers curled around spurs of Scots pine, and down past turreted Gothic mansions cut from deep red granite. If anything, the winter had bitten even deeper here. Every tree seemed exhausted by its burden of snow, and apart from a few tractors, the roads looked impassable.
In Perth, a plough blade was bolted to their lead train, and along the flat valley bottoms their progress was swift. With no reason to, Hartmann began to feel they were getting close. All around them, the horizons were closing in. Beyond the freshly turned fields and the neat hedges the terrain rose steeply, and the way forward seemed closed by a distant line of rocky peaks.
Before, they’d been riding the main route north. Now they were trundling along a branch line, moving west alongside villages nestled in woodsmoke and whiteness. Never in the last five years had Hartmann seen anywhere so untouched by the war. And then, just as he remembered the train and its cargo of two hundred black hearts, they stopped.
There was a white sign on the platform with the town’s name picked out in large black capitals.
COMRIE.
Up front, their two locomotives were cooling noisily, and the pistons were releasing a few dying gasps of steam. In a flurry of boots and commands, the guards were tumbling out into formation, shoulder to shoulder, with every eye focused on the prisoners stepping awkwardly from their six carriages.
Judging by the colour of the sky, Hartmann reckoned they had less than two hours’ good daylight left. Wherever they were going, it would have to be near by.
In the thrill of being outside, no one else was thinking that far ahead. Since London, they�
�d been recycling their own stinking breath, and the Highland air tasted sweet. Among the crowd of tired faces, beneath their ragged assortment of woolly hats and army caps, Hartmann sensed a kind of happiness. When the order came to march, everyone was glad to stretch their legs. They turned left out of the tiny station on to a single street smothered in snow.
On each side, sturdy stone houses and shops ran away towards a church topped by the elegant taper of a grey steeple, and a clock which read five past two. There were multicoloured Christmas lights in the windows and every door was jammed with spectators. Without instruction, the prisoners had straightened their backs and dropped into formation; two abreast, legs kicked high, they strode down the centre of the road.
Alongside them, small gangs of red-faced children ran whooping and shouting in an accent Hartmann couldn’t comprehend. Everywhere he turned, the locals seemed curious but unintimidated. Not even the goosestep, or the lusty refrain of the singing, seemed to trouble them. Nothing provoked a reaction more alarming than the occasional snowball. Either they’d seen it before, or they knew where the Germans were heading.
At the church they turned left over a wide river, heading south along a straight road towards a line of low hills. A hook of moon was just visible above the horizon and a bitter breeze was pushing down on to their backs off the northern snowfields. No one was singing now, and every man had his hands thrust deep into his pockets. Just here, the valley plain was wide and featureless, offering no shelter for either the prisoners or the sheep which stared after the near-silent line of intruders.
Since leaving the station, Hartmann had been walking alongside Rosterg. ‘You saw what happened to Bultmann?’ Icy smoke seemed to hang in the air around Hartmann’s mouth as he spoke.
‘Of course. He wasn’t a stupid man. He would have known what was coming.’ There was a terrible droop in the older man’s voice. ‘Doing it that way must have felt like a better option.’
‘Goltz thought he was the rat.’
‘Goltz was mistaken.’
‘Someone must have told the British.’ Hartmann was looking for a clue on Rosterg’s face. The only thing there was exhaustion. ‘If it wasn’t Bultmann, then he’s done somebody a big favour.’
‘Still so naïve, Max.’ Rosterg checked to make sure no one was listening. Two buzzards were tracing giant circles overhead. ‘These people are completely mad,’ he continued. ‘They’re being eaten alive by their own paranoia. They’ve got nothing left to feed on but each other. All the major did was deprive Goltz of a confession. Inside his head, he’ll still be wondering. Who was it? Who was it?’
‘He’ll get bored eventually. There’ll be other distractions here. We just have to get through the winter.’
‘And then what? The wine cellar? Home? Feels like a very long way away right now. The Russians have probably drunk right through it already.’
‘Chin up, Rosterg. The Russians don’t like wine.’
‘Take care in here, my young friend.’ The convoy had slowed and Rosterg’s weariness seemed to reach deep down into his boots. ‘Watch your back.’
Both of them could see the camp clearly now on their right flank. From a distance, it looked innocent enough; just a few dozen huts, drowsing in the snow, with no sign of life apart from the cloudy smudge of newly lit fires. As they drew nearer, the men could see watchtowers on every corner and a formidable wire fence topped by lights which were already shining brightly.
In this last twitch of daylight, it looked like the end of the world. No one would escape from here, unless they wanted to die of hypothermia. Black woods and mountains were their only company. High over their heads, squabbling rooks were heading back to roost. Even the birds appeared desperate to leave.
At the gate, they were processed quickly. Apart from Bultmann, no one had vanished in transit, and the guards worked smoothly, checking ranks and names before ushering them through a sequence of huts for new prison uniforms, sleeping bags, blankets and a cursory medical inspection.
One by one, they emerged to stand – freshly deloused – under the camp’s sodium lights, wearing clean clothes beneath their filthy coats. A light fall of snow was settling on their shoulders. Ahead of them, in the half-dark, lay their new home.
As the prisoners awaited instructions, Hartmann was doing a hurried calculation. There appeared to be four identical compounds, separated by ferocious double fencing, with twelve huts in each. If they were full, that amounted to some four thousand prisoners.
Four thousand.
His mind spun; the numbers were extraordinary. A vast nationwide infrastructure had been willed into existence almost overnight, simply to keep men speaking German apart from men who didn’t.
Shaking his head clear, he peered forward.
‘Hello. Listen. Everyone. Please. To make this quicker, I’ve been asked to interpret, so here’s what they want me to say.’
Rosterg was standing next to a British officer, scrutinising sheets of information through his golden spectacles.
Alarm fluttered in Hartmann’s gut but there was nothing he could do.
‘I’m going to read out names, followed by your compound – A, B, C or D – and then a hut number. You’ll then be taken to your quarters. I’m afraid there’s no food tonight. The next meal will be breakfast at eight a.m. after roll call.’
Everyone was too tired to care where they slept. There seemed no logic behind the selections, and Hartmann wasn’t surprised to be heading for Compound B with so many familiar faces. Somewhere back on the road, their destinies had become synchronised. Even Rosterg had joined them, skidding along icy concrete pathways towards the curved metal shelter of Hut 4.
‘You didn’t waste any time,’ said Hartmann. ‘Are you sure that was wise?’
‘It wasn’t intended, Max. I’d been hoping to keep my head down. Unfortunately, that isn’t going to be possible.’
‘Because?’
‘Because as of yesterday, most of the guards here are Polish.’
Inside the hut there were twenty wooden bunks down each side, positioned at right angles to the walls. Along the apex of the rippled iron roof, bare bulbs hung from uneven lengths of flex. One of the bulbs was dead.
Around three pot-bellied stoves, the established occupants were hunched in tight contemplative circles. Excited by the sudden influx, there was an explosion of chatter, a hungry thirsting after gossip. Strangers were embracing, names and stories were pouring out, and every bed but one soon had a body.
Hartmann’s was on the top right, four bunks down from the door. Rosterg’s was underneath.
‘Polish guards. What will that mean?’
‘Our compatriots have been torching their country for five years. I dare say we represent an opportunity to level the score.’
Hartmann busied himself with his bedding. There were eighty people in there – a sea of blond-capped faces – and the braying made it sound like an abattoir. Everyone was celebrating the news from Belgium. He didn’t doubt it was being twisted beyond recognition.
Along each side of the hut he’d noticed two wooden ledges for the men’s personal possessions. From one end to the other there was nothing on either.
‘Why did you have to get involved, Rosterg? You’re mad.’
‘I speak the language. No one else can. You never know. I might be able to stop another war.’
‘Back on the train – before they questioned Bultmann – your name got mentioned.’
Rosterg had placed his glasses on the ledge and lain back, hidden in the shadow cast by Hartmann’s bunk.
‘I’m very many things, Max. Very few of them are particularly noteworthy. But I’m not an informer.’
Hartmann flopped back, too. Since London, he’d not slept, and he had no appetite for an SS party, especially one without cigarettes or schnapps. Soon enough, the coal would run out and after that they’d all be fleeing to bed in their coats.
As he drifted, the last sound he remembered was the rustle of a poker
stirring the embers in a grate.
After that, nothing.
40
The one empty bed was filled around dawn.
Hartmann watched the door open on the hard silhouette of a man. Around it, the frozen air seemed to be swimming like smoke. As he stepped in, the figure tousled his hair sleepily and waited for his eyes to adjust. It had been a long, cold week in the cell block, and the hut had been less than half full when he last slept there. Now the place was packed, but at least his bed by the door was still free.
With his left foot, he pushed the door shut and stepped towards the first stove, hoping to find some heat. There was none. Down the length of the hut, bodies were turning. Reveille had already been blown, and the newcomer would have to wait for his rest. It didn’t matter. He’d got something else on his mind. Once the light was stronger, as he had done every day for six weeks, he’d be searching among the newcomers for a face.
But Hartmann had seen his first.
‘I knew you’d be here, you bastard!’
Still wrapped in his sleeping bag, he slithered down on to the concrete floor and opened his arms for an embrace. When Koenig didn’t move, he hopped clumsily forward and the two men hugged tightly, feeling the rasp of each other’s stubble and the deep, warm breath of relief.
‘Talk later? There’s no time now. You look knackered.’ Koenig had pushed his friend back and was examining the lines on his face.
‘That’s fine. As soon as we can.’
Until breakfast, there would be no chance of a conversation. In the glacial latrines, no one lingered once they’d squatted and splashed. Anyone who took too long brought down the fury of those standing waiting in the cold.
During roll call – when the men stamped impatiently between the huts – everyone’s eyes were on the kitchen. Overnight, the temperature had nose-dived. Spears of ice hung from every window ledge and a ribbon of snow lay balanced on the electric wires which criss-crossed the camp.
Once their names had been checked, they were free to move; a motley stampede of grey coats thundered in through the red wooden door of the canteen, grabbing chairs and mugs of dark tea, followed by oatmeal and bottomless piles of bread and marmalade. During the dreary namecheck, Hartmann had stood behind Koenig, studying his outline. Everyone looked the same in a greatcoat but Koenig seemed horribly thin, and his hair had grown over his collar again in thick, greasy curls.