- Rieth Lennard
ISBN: 0-473-07905-4
CONTENTS
BIOGRAPHY
FOREWORD
TOBRUK JUNE 21ST AND 22ND, 1942.
PRIGIONERO 1: "CORRALS"
CAMPO CONCENTRAMENTO DA PRIGIONERI DI GUERRA, NUMERO 65
CAMPO 53 AT MACERATA
GETTING OUT
WALKING ON
LOOKING BACK "KINSUNKINSET"
WALKING ON
LOOKING BACK "THE REASONABLE COMRADES"
WALKING ON
LOOKING BACK... "THE LOUSY BRITISH"
WALKING ON
LOOKING BACK... "SCHWEINEREI"
WALKING ON
LOOKING BACK... "THE LEFT LUGGAGE OFFICE"
WALKING ON
LOOKING BACK... "THE WORST WORK CAMP"
WALKING ON
A LAST LOOK BACK
STALAG 18A
INTERROGATION
THE LAST KOMMANDO
"ONE-SIDED BRANCHES"
MINOR ALARMS
MAP 1: LIBYA
MAP 2: ITALY
MAP 3: AUSTRIA
 |
Rieth Lennard was born at Barry, Glamorgan, South Wales on September 18th 1920. He was educated at Barry County School. He volunteered for the R.A.F at the beginning of the war and was sent to North Africa where he worked with Radar. He was taken prisoner in the desert and spent the rest of the war in captivity. At the end of the war he went to the University of Wales to read languages and graduated with first class honours in German and French. He taught in several English Grammar Schools. In 1964 he married a fellow linguist and in 1972 they emigrated to New Zealand where their three sons have grown up. Rieth died on November 24th, 2000. |
The tale is mine and fact. A few names have been changed where identification, even at this late date, might cause discomfort.
The tale has little in the way of sequence; camp to camp, yes, but events and scenes are handled simply as such and isolated in themselves. Imprisonment has no dramatic necessity, no "so therefore" to point to as a cause. In the few tragic happenings the cause came not from within. Existentialism could have been born here.
"Powkin" knew two desert compounds, two "campi concentramenti", three stalags, three working camps in Austria, discipline barracks and punishment. He spoke fluent German and French and, perhaps because of this, may have gained a deeper insight into the hearts and minds of those around him.
The tale tells of hardship and illness, but there is no complaint and no blame; there was a war in progress. It tells of escape attempts of an amateurish brand not to be compared with the expertise and organisation of those who could write, "There we were digging this tunnel". Attempts betimes ludicrous to the point of comedy. There are farce and pathos, but also some times "out of it all" and as such times of peace of mind. There is danger and a little romance.
It is a tale of a small prisoner, for all small prisoners.
Rieth Lennard.
Tobruk June 21st and 22nd, 1942.
They had spent the night on the beach, the sea black and inky before them and a barbed fence behind them bearing signs with a death's head and the word "Mines". One fellow had found a plank and was trying to put out to sea with its aid, but it would be a long paddle to Alexandria and eventually he gave up and returned to squat with the others on the beach. No one was sure Tobruk had actually fallen although the previous day's confusion and groups of various sizes and odd mixtures moving down towards the docks had boded ill to Powkin's mind as he stood near the radar station on the slight hill just outside the ruined town. Eventually, towards evening the order came from somewhere, someone merely rushed up and shouted, to destroy the station and go no one said where.
Some lemming-like spirit moved their small group down towards the water to join a few others who were waiting for another Dunkirk, a small one, just for them, please? As first light ghosted over them they stood and walked back up a wadi towards the dugout that had been used as a food store. There were still bangs and thuds on the perimeter and some opined the attack must have been beaten off and this was the lull before the next one. They'ld get another station sent up, maybe some leave in Alex! Maybe
On the ridge over the wadi appeared two men, not British, not South African. "Eyeties," said one in a whisper, "No, mate, Jerries," muttered another.
The calm was not before an attack, it was the hush of defeat, the stillness of surrender. Powkin slipped into the shelter, why he did not know. It was futile anyway, within a minute they were shouting for him to come out, and he emerged to stand still before two Afrika Korps men, one with a Luger and the other with a machine pistol, a Schmeisser. The Schmeisser waggled at him and he waggled his hands back. The rôle of a machine pistol in international communication has never been properly appreciated. Here were two men who understood each other so well. Powkin understood better, of course: Schmeissers communicate explicitly.
Less rudimentary dialogue followed when Powkin tried out his German and learned that the older Afrika Korps man had a Stuka pilot son, that there were many wounded and that, pointing with the pistol, they'd better go that way now and they walked into the town to join many others in the square. A Mark IV tank roared past and away in a cloud of dust and smoke. Then they were moved on in a long column, at a quick pace, sometimes a half trot, the guards urging them on with shouts of "Geh' ma'! Los!" and making thrusting movements with their rifles. "Keep them dogies movin'!" - the guards would have been at home on the old Chisholm trail; the same philosophy and technique, don't let 'em stop or group until they reach the old corral.
The old corral turned out to be a single wire enclosure on
a plateau with Germans spaced around it. Here they spent the night,
some, among them Powkin, suffering thirst which was not to be
relieved for a day. He had no food and none was offered. He could
not have eaten in any case: he needed water. Eventually trucks
rolled up, they were crammed into them and moved. Now they were
under Italian guards, more correctly Senussi Arabs, sitting on
top of the driver's cabin and calmly alert. A slight surprise
to Powkin who, like most, assumed that the "natives"
were always on the British side. So Powkin came to the first of
many barbed wire compounds he was to experience.
Tall posts sunk in the desert earth, formed a square on the barren stretch of ochre coloured sand and gravel, a mesh of wire completed the prison compound. Accommodation was the ground, bed was the ground, toilets likewise the ground, wherever. It was chill by night and the hobs of hell by day. Here they received some scraps of food and water, which a detail had to fetch from a water hole. Powkin helped to carry jerrycans over a ridge to the water, a large pond with a three inch thick green scum covering, deep enough to reach halfway to an average camel's knee, as was proven by the middle-sized beast of the three standing in the pool. They scooped the green scum aside and sank the cans into the murky liquid. This was the only water supply and it had its inevitable effect.
For days to follow Powkin was to be a nuisance to himself and others as the dysentery bug worked its way out, and out, and out, leaving him with a feeling of exhaustion and apathy to the point, one day, where he paid little heed to the uproar of men standing and shouting at an Italian soldier outside the wire. The latter had bartered a loaf of bread for a prisoner's watch, taken the watch but, laughing, made as if to keep the loaf. He was almost certainly joking, but the men in the compound were hardly disposed to be amused. Outside the opposite fence, stood a low platform on which two Senussi stood guard, a twin Breda machine gun mounted before them and covered with a brown cloth - bare metal in that heat would skin the hand that touched it. Powkin scarcely heeded the noise behind him, but glancing up saw the two Senussi guards grinning broadly as they whipped the cover off the twin Breda. He felt himself elected for number one in a massacre and yelled, "Sit down! Sit down!". They turned, they saw and they sat. At that moment an Afrika Korps man snatched the loaf from the Italian soldier and gave it to the men. Looking most disappointed, the Senussi replaced the cover on the Breda.
The prisoners were moved on from this compound some days later to a similar "corral" near Benghazi, where the water was clear and the ground a different colour. Someone maintained the artistic Italians liked to change their interior decorators, one or two smiled. Powkin's interesting condition was slowly improving and he was a little more civilised to be near, having been able to clean himself up somewhat. Within a few days the whole group was moved down to the docks and shipped off to Italy, zigzagging across the blue Mediterranean to Brindisi. There was no delay at the port, they were immediately disembarked and moved off.
Walking slowly nobody hurried or harried them the line of haggard men, in the bits of uniform they had been captured in, moved out of Brindisi up a slight rise and saw "normal" civilians for the first time in a year or more. The civilians lined the road, a few smiled, most remained impassive, there were no shouts, no jeers. A woman pushed sobbing through the line of onlookers, pressing fruit into the nearest men's hands. They managed a smile of thanks. Within half an hour they reached a bare field ringed with a low barbed-wire fence and here they were corralled for the night in the rain and the mud. Powkin swopped his Egyptian leather belt for a packet of Popolari cigarettes and tried the old sailor's trick of breathing the smoke into his stomach to ease the pangs of hunger. It helped a lot, although it left him dizzy. Sharing a cigarette with a tall man near him Powkin heard the high whisper of famine as his neighbour said, "No food, they say, might get some coffee in the morning", and Powkin was startled to hear his own voice squeaking a reply.
They slept in the rain and the mud. Powkin had his greatcoat,
a sidepack with a razor in it and the clothes he'd been caught
in, shoes, slacks and a shirt. On the morrow they did receive
coffee and a little food in the shape of biscuits before moving
to the railway to cram into trucks for the journey to the first
campo concentramento of the two Powkin was to know.
Campo Concentramento da Prigioneri di Guerra, Numero 65
One side of a barren hill near Altamura sloped very gently, and on this slope lines of white, barn-like buildings stood, each aligned perfectly with the ones on either side and with those lined ahead and astern. Within each were white stone walls forming large rooms, and archways in the middle of each wall gave passageway through from one entry to the other. Material inside and outside for lessons in perspective to gladden the heart of any art master. Any intimation of efficiency and order, however, stayed with the stones: the prisoners were as much a herd as in Libya, to be given a minimum of food and counted each day, the full account arrived at by tallying the sick and the occasional death with those lined up between the buildings, for an hour, sometimes two, sometimes more. One officer and his band of ragged sentinelle did the counting of the two thousand men in each sector, often with erratic results, causing delay during which men muttered to each other and watched the progress of a louse on the neck of the man in front.
Lice thrived, how they had started no one knew, in the threadbare blankets or the old mattresses issued or even in the wooden bunks, arranged in fours, two up and two down. These, however, were unlikely sources of vermin for they were new and well-made but destined to remain intact for but a little while, since there was no heating, no fuel supply and hot water for washing seldom seen. So, one by one, the slats in the beds vanished to be carefully pared and cherished and used sparingly in the "blowers" made from the cans in the Red Cross parcels.
Those wonderful parcels! They did not only bring food to save lives and avoid illness which would otherwise have been so easily contracted by starving men who received the meagre daily ration of a bread bun which vanished in a closed fist, a spoon of pasta in a small pot of hot water with a dandelion leaf or two floating on top and, now and then, a spoonful of olive oil, carefully kept for the biscuit fry which turned plain water biscuits, soaked in water and swollen to three times their original size, into a stomach filler.
As said, not only did the parcels bring food, but their empty cans became plates, knives and forks and their twine replaced the slats removed from the beds. But above all the tins became "blowers", the tube, the drive wheels, the fan and the burner of a machine which sent a forced draught to a flame that bred and boiled water in seconds with a minimum of fuel required. The arrival of parcels saw every part of the barracks transformed into cooking areas, each small group, each pair, brewing and cooking for the first good meal they might have had for weeks. Later, when a regular transport system had been established, parcels came regularly, or fairly so, and the men returned to a degree of fitness. The dour remarks became light-hearted jokes and "subject normal" reverted to sexual themes and reminiscing: until then "subject normal" had been food, food and food.
In the early stages there was much illness, as weakened men had little resistance. Powkin went down with malaria, starved it out and then, having mistakenly assumed that butter was food and jam was not and having exchanged jam for butter whenever he could, found himself turning an interesting yellow and feeling distinctly weird. There was no medical treatment for his bout of jaundice, or, indeed, for any other illness, but the British doctor managed to get him some plain boiled rice and he managed to outlast the illness. It seems it was touch and go, as his room-mates told him, "You was a goner, mate, the quack said so."
The lilting notes of the bugle announced the day's course from reveille to the last sad lights out call. Not infrequently the dancing notes telling the arrival of post would ring out and the old soldiers would sing the time-honoured refrain, "Letters from Lousy Lizzie, Letters from Lousy Lou" and the orderlies would set off to pick up the section's news from home. All who received letters would retire to their bunks and things were much quieter with only the rustle of paper heard. Powkin's people at home had been picking mushrooms; an old friend wrote from the Pacific; one of his radar station mates who had got out of Tobruk early ribbed him on his singing during their stay in Durban - "You were a wonder, boy!" - and told him a girl they had met in Durban had wept for him, or so she had written.
They told each other their news; "Aye, from my wife. You didn't know I was married? Remember when we had that fortnight in Lincoln? I met this girl, see, and we got hitched. Ah, she don't seem a bad sort." Nick, who bossed, organised and cooked for his little group in a motherly way, was looking at a photograph of a pretty girl, dark with lovely Arab eyes and a full mouth. "My wife, met her in Cyprus, don't write much now, 'spect she's gone back to the brothel." He spoke as one commenting on the weather; a regular soldier in the old army pattern, expecting little except the day's orders, the day's rations and now and then a night out with his mates. A kindly, durable survivor, come what may.
Not all letters brought a smile, and some brought heartbreak and worse. What follows was not in Powkin's bay, but what went on throughout the camp was known in detail to everyone.
"What do you think of that?" The tone was cool and casual as John handed the letter to his neighbours, but he turned his face to the wall as he spoke. The letter was perused amidst snorts and curses. She had sent John's ring back to his parents: she would never marry a man who had given in to the enemy. He had gone to fight for her, and not to turn coward in the face of danger. She ended with a full name signature deeply underlined. There were a few harsh laughs, humourless ones, and a silence for a moment. The words "given in" touched them all, but shamed them in no way. Woody, the schoolmaster, held forth in his usual way, and, for once, was listened to with some attention. "We never gave in. Giving in is something you do when you've got a choice, a chance to carry on. We were beaten and hopeless, well yes, a choice of a sort. You put your hands up or you take a bullet, and I personally had my reasons - of a private and personal nature - for preferring not to be shot." They gave a slight smile at his pomposity: John's smile, when it came, was forced and bleak. His girl had been a very personal reason for preferring prison camp to a hole in the Libyan sand. He agreed with what words of solace, advice and support they offered. He was well out of it, lucky to be shot of her, there's always another one, one for real, yes. A cigarette, a cup of tea and a slap on the shoulder, the rough warmth of good comrades brought a real smile to John's lips. They began to talk of other things.
How stricken John was, however, began to be apparent in the following days. He listened to conversation without following its drift, he walked alone in the dusk and inspected the wire very closely, to the point where a guard unslung his rifle and waved him away. He spoke little. One evening a very tough survivor of a one-sided tank engagement came quietly into the bay and lit a cigarette with trembling hands. The men in the room looked at him with raised eyebrows. Well? He spoke very quietly, almost in a whisper, "Well, John has really given in now, yes, a razor, hell of a mess..." He stood up, "That bloody bitch... I could" He walked out.
For most, contact with home, with friends and relatives meant a warm feeling and a strengthening and reassurance that they were still part of where they came from.
The parcels mentioned earlier also meant more than a major boost to the rations; they too came from home, a very practical token of remembrance, especially as they held items no longer available in Italy, at least not for the ordinary folk. Coffee and chocolate were the most barterable goods and large loaves passed through the wire in exchange for these. Prisoners also bartered among themselves, changing items they were not used to for more familiar food. Thus a group might wish to see what it could get for a jar of honey, which none of then had ever tasted and which they viewed rather like a cow staring at a new gate. If they could get a tin of Maconochie's, the old service familiar, they were quite content with the exchange. Many a man did experiment and became very discriminating in the nicer points of nutrition and, having known real hunger, developed a skill in cooking and an appreciation of food as more than "something to eat" set before him by Mum or the service cooks.
One or two were distinctly odd in the search for food they considered the apt diet for them. Such a one was the man who arrived in Powkin's bay whenever a delivery of Canadian parcels arrived and he walked from bay to bay and to other sectors until his few tins for barter had run out and he had all the tins of the one desired product he could obtain. He was a lantern-jawed gentleman and of necessity so, for his full set of dentures had evaded capture when he went into captivity. A sad loss leaving him greatly limited in what he could eat. Everyone called him "Klimmy" after the tins of powdered milk he so eagerly sought and, having them in his grasp, proceeded to turn them into enormous milk shakes; betimes he contented himself with merely rolling wads of the stuff around his gums and thus gaining nourishment. He seemed to keep fit enough and it is to be hoped he duly forwarded "unsolicited testimonials" to the firm that donated "Klim" to the Red Cross.
"Klim" featured in every Canadian parcel, parcels which concentrated on no frills type parcels for hungry men. They contained "Spam", corned beef, large, round and solid biscuits, and a big round tin of "Klim". Sugar, butter or honey and coffee filled up the corners. Many a prisoner resolved to emigrate to this land of "Klim" and honey in a feeling of gratitude for the sheer damn' commonsense of the parcels. British parcels were more a taste of home; bacon plus powdered egg, tea, marmalade and jam, some chocolate, a tuck box in fact and welcomed with some awe mixed with the gratitude when they thought of the blockaded homeland with its rationing. Still and all, Canada's parcels were the tops.
Hunger affects people not only in the obvious physical ways but also in the state of mind resulting from the uncertainty of when one might eat again, if again. Most men accepted food days and no food days as they came and went, "food days" being the times when one had parcel food and ate as opposed to hardly existing on the camp's slow starvation diet. The morrow might see a parcel delivery, perhaps a double one to make up for the ones missed. Pigs might fly. When the biscuits and butter finally graced the hammered-tin trays they had made they became aware once more of the phenomenon of hunger in a starvation camp. A full stomach in no way assuaged their craving for food, for a single biscuit would take all the space in the shrunken breadbasket and the hungry man would have to wait until he could again take "the old biscuit with the old butter and the old jam wiv the old cuppa".
For some this uncertainty and an awareness of their precarious position caused great strain. Rationing to an extreme to meet an imagined drying up of all sources to an imagined extreme led to some pairs and trios holding on to parcel goods for, to them, good and disciplined reasons. They stood guard on their food, although, to Powkin's knowledge, theft was extremely rare. This behaviour may, perhaps, have been a side effect of the prisoners' state; they felt they were doing something to meet a desperate situation. There were, however, further extremes in such ways of thinking and behaviour, one of them pitiful and yet laughable at the same time.
Powkin, as an eleven-year old, read many of Jack London's stories, relishing them all as great adventures. One tale from the related experiences, nonetheless, he found flatly incredible. This concerned a trapper isolated in the Yukon winter, not knowing when he would be able safely to emerge and suddenly in alarm and shock finding that his store of food was far from the ample one he had assumed. When a rescue party reached him they found that he had intelligently husbanded his resources but that he, himself, was spent and dead, of starvation, with food in the larder. Couldn't happen, so the opinion of an eleven-year old, but the tale spread through Campo Sixtyfive of just such a happening to just such a man.
"George" quietly and happily died of slow starvation with an untouched food parcel under his bed. He was accepted at roll call as being more or less permanently bedridden, counted and left. Then one day he was no more. His precious parcel, so the story went, survived him by two minutes, a fact scathingly remarked on by those who arrived too late to share. "Lack of respect for the dead," they said, sniffing disdainfully.
Regular parcels brought a general upsurge of vigour and morale. People organised shows, concerts and boxing matches. The bare stones and gravel between the compounds and around the buildings which had earlier been fairly deserted except for a few hardy souls, now saw groups strolling about, moving from compound to neighbouring compound and being generally sociable. The Italians seemed content to let them do much as they wished, requiring only a daily roll-call and, of course, maintaining sentries around the outer high fence.
The guards were good-humoured and pleasant, ever willing to exchange bread for parcel goodies. Prisoners soon learned one or two necessary words of Italian - "Pane, sapone, caffe" but not much more. All the guards went under the name of "Giorgio", and although they spoke no English, tolerantly listened to cockneys "making Italian" by adding "O" to every English word, - "Giorgio! Woodo for fireo!" There was no wood however, and the beds were being reduced to frames strung together by parcel string and hope.
Prisoners kept a constant eye open for any source of fuel, all the pegs went from the "no go" strip between the compounds, a strip that had long ceased to mean anything, people simply ignored it. But one item eyed covetously stood in a road between two sectors: a sentry box, manned during the day but empty at night; alas, the road was well-lit and sentries stood guard at each end. Tantalus never suffered like this. Came one night, however, when the clouds knelt on the hill and shuffled over the camp with such an intense mist and rain that a distance of a few feet was the most an eye could penetrate. Powkin, sitting and recuperating on his top bunk, heard a roar of laughter from the end bay, a joyous, merry sound repeated as its cause moved through to his bay, and in trotted six men bearing THE sentry box.
"Wotcher do wiv the sentry?", "Did 'e sell it?", "Is he still IN it?" and similar shouts resounded as the box was put down and instantly demolished. Almost as instantly, the blowers were functioning, some making sentry box tea, some sentry box coffee and others a sentry box fry. Into this miniature Dante's Inferno of smoke and flame strode Lofty, "their" tenente, and his ragged, uninterested escort of patient, bored sentinelle. There was no recognisable scrap of a sentry box throughout the whole building and this long lean man, immaculate in his light-grey uniform, stood arms akimbo, staring around and making a very bad job of suppressing a smile. Some offered him a tin mug of coffee and this allowed him to release the smile as he waved the mug away, saying "Grazie!". Then he turned and left, his troop following almost running to keep up with his long strides. A good-natured and likeable man. There were no repercussions from this event. It is hard to imagine what could have been done in the circumstances without the Italians looking very foolish and very vindictive. One sentry box written off surplus to requirements, for it was never replaced.
Life improved for Powkin. He received, wonder of wonders, a parcel of cigarettes from home and that meant as good as money in the outside world, for fags could buy bread, parcel food - many a prisoner preferred smoking to eating - and, also, like any money, could be used to make a profit. Powkin returned to a degree of fitness enough to accept the challenge of a long, lean Yorkshireman to "'Ave a goo with t'gloves on" and to administer a mild hiding before exhaustion stopped them both slapping at each other. Christmas Day came with the camp bugler blowing a reveille that turned into a jazzy, ragtime voluntary and started everyone's day off with a laugh.
By now a pattern of life was visible, varied only in minor details. The bread delivery, for example, meant for some a careful cutting up of the tiny bun into eight or a dozen thin discs, the crumbs being collected in a dish, and so many of the slices would then be allocated for the three "meals" of the day. For Powkin a bun was a bun and as soon as it landed on his bunk he ate it.
No scheme, organisation or resorting to black magic could hide the reality that they were almost all the time hungry men. In other ways the camp's "entertainment committee" gave some variety to the days with a repertoire of concerts, plays - five minute bawdy soldiers' concoctions - and competitions and brought a lift and laughter to the men's daily round. "Ere 'e is!" the compere would announce, "'E's going to give us a go on the old jimmy riddle, 'e's better than Rudi Menuhin, this boy is, it's 'is first debut, so give 'im a cheer!" And onto the stage would come some quite competent player to be rapturously received. Then a series of songs, not repeatable mainly (and those that started off as innocuous kiddy's fare suffered a change, so that it was never a blackbird that pecked off the maid's nose but some quite enormous, sexually active bird of prey). And the "variety shows" - "belly dancers", "actresses" causing some very odd reactions. Men without women was always a problem in the armed services and the prison situation did not improve matters in this respect.
It would be wrong, however, to state that prison camp meant more than a slight increase in such relations and whatever there might have been was not remarked on unless it made itself blatantly obvious. Such was the case with a passionate Cypriot, madly in love with a South African who was not at all happy with the situation and broke off whatever relationship there might have been and suffered mutilation for his "perfidy". The Cypriot then turned the knife on himself "to end eet oal", but unsuccessfully. The proverbial woman scorned must be a model of sweet resignation compared to a Cypriot lad jilted.
The course of the war caused an evacuation of the southern
camps, of which campo 65 was one of the southernmost, and on evacuation
day the prisoners were marched off to a railway station and, surprise
of surprises, found themselves loaded into comfortable passenger
coaches. They were off to Macerata near Ancona, not too long a
trip, punctuated by several stops at each of which some prisoners,
with their guards' blessing, approached the engine driver for
hot water and then returned to share "engine tea" with
their mates.
Campo 53 at Macerata was, in many ways, a great improvement on Campo 65. The British NCOs were active in camp organisation and the days were so ordered that no long gaps between events were allowed and one had the illusion of being in a society with a purpose. There was a wall newspaper that made fair comment, sparing neither race, rank nor persons. It was particularly vitriolic about the NCOs from 65, and it would seem that these had looked after themselves first and had then looked after themselves. Powkin drew cartoons for the "newspaper" and one of these, after H.E. Bateman's famous series "The Man Who..." caused an amused raising of the eyebrows from Italian officers who saw themselves depicted, not too comically, looking in awe at a "sarnt major" bawling out a shivering squaddy who, in the words of the Italian Daily Routine Orders, "falled in remarkable late".
Italy's realisation of the complete futility of its participation in the war had been growing throughout the year Powkin had spent in captivity and its capitulation came as no surprise to anybody in Campo 53. They packed whatever gear they had and waited for the wire to come down and the guards to disappear. One evening these very things came to pass and many prisoners stood at the fence while smiling guards waved a goodbye and left. Then the exodus started.
The wise left immediately, but a majority decided to wait for morning, ate and brewed and heard the BBC news: the sound of Big Ben brought cheers and laughter. Yes! It was all over and they sang, "Oh, oh Antonio! He's gone away!" A happy, carefree crowd settled down for the night. At midnight vehicles roared around the camp, bursts of machinegun fire tore and ripped through the air above them, harsh commands resounded. Antonio had indeed gone away, Fritz had arrived.
In the early light the prisoners were paraded and counted and then left to themselves. Some looked desperately around to see if there was some unguarded spot, but they were all well and truly back "in the bag". Powkin was surprised on speaking to one of the Germans, to hear him say he used to be a Pole but was now a German soldier. Clearly there were shades between the black and white of the official views.
Then came the first of Powkin's farcical attempts to escape. His garb at the time consisted of Italian pantaloons and a nondescript shirt, not too different from any Italian sentry, and as he stood by a wall a group was assembled to do work clearing a storehouse, heaven knows why. On an impulse Powkin picked up a sheet of paper and marched off behind the work proceeding towards the store near the main gate. The group turned right and Powkin walked on, and apparently disregarded by the Germans, but not, oh, no, by the plump carabiniere who stepped out, arms akimbo, and barred his way. Powkin gave him a smile, turned sharp right and did a morning's work shifting cases. He'd had no idea what he was going to do if he'd got out anyway.
The same evening all the prisoners were marched to the railway station and counted into cattle trucks, the floors of which were covered in a layer of straw. When all were installed a German officer passed along the line, saying in a most friendly tone and in fluent English, "Well, chaps, we'll leave the doors on the chain, if you try to escape you'll be shot" and so on up the line.
Farcical escape attempt number two was, however, instigated when Powkin was approached by two Scots who said they'd seen him marching towards the gate at Macerata and they thought he'd be the laddie to go with them when, showing a hacksaw blade, they had sawn through the floor? Powkin felt caught in a whirlwind, these men were Cameron Highlanders, real fighting men, a mile or three above his league and they intended to drop through the floor and lie on the sleepers while the trucks passed over. As if mesmerised, he found himself seizing the blade and commencing the first cut. The plank was cut through and raised, but it was not plumb with the centre of the truck and a girder diminished the size of the aperture. Powkin was the skinny one, but it would need a skinnier than he to get through that hole. They would have to carry on cutting?
At that moment the train halted, some men in the truck ahead
made a run for it, there were shouts of "Halt! Halt! Ha-alt!"
and then a whipping rattle of gunfire. The silence succeeding
was ended by the sound of spades and men digging. Powkin and the
two Scots looked very thoughtfully at each other for a long second
and put the plank back and covered it with straw and sat on it.
The Germans locked all the doors. "Deutschland, here I come!"
thought Powkin.
They had come through the Brenner Pass and had been ordered out of the trucks with the sharp command of "Alle Mann 'raus!", to Powkin's schoolboy knowledge of German quite ungrammatical but to his language sense absolutely right, apart from being on the receiving end of the order, a curt, unmistakable command. They marched and arrived at Stalag 7B, a "Dulag" - transit camp.
What happened here and from then on in other camps is told in a non-sequential account of events and scenes held together by a similar selection of incidents from Powkin's third and less farcical escape attempt. The story has no chronological pattern except, necessarily, the escape itself, and, again necessarily, the way it ended. The series is entitled "Walking on and looking back".
Powkin's accommodation, courtesy of the Third Reich, was to number three stalags, three work camps, discipline barrack and a touch of punishment cells on bread and water. It was in one of the work tamp camps that Powkin met Jean, adjutant by rank in the 4th Zouaves, and Charles, sergent-chef in the same famous regiment. Powkin had been transferred to this camp to interpret in times of trouble, frequent times of trouble, usually to be "Piggy in the Middle" getting the flak from all sides, for each side could not believe that the magical act of translation did not immediately convince the other side. He also did the same work as everyone else. Jean casually discussed escaping with Powkin and there was an agreement that if an attempt was made Powkin would be interested. Powkin became good friends with the two Frenchmen, his French losing rustiness with gratifying speed.
One day, late in the afternoon, Jean approached him and said, "Charlot et moi, nous sortons ce soir, tu viens?". "Getting out?" thought Powkin and facetiously asked, "Where are we going? Cinema?" Oh, no! It was for real and he was cordially invited along. He asked for a little time to consider, after all it's not every day someone gives a man an hour's notice before requiring him to go through a barbed wire fence, however simple the process might be.
His state of fright led him unerringly to the toilets where his pondering took a while. He had to go, no question, and he returned to Jean, who asked not, simply stated, "Bon! Tu viens!" Powkin felt another Englishman might be a good idea and Jean agreed with a shrug of the shoulders. But who? The commando? He wouldn't leave his mate. Jimmy, the then camp leader? Jimmy murmured something, then moved towards the toilets, seeming to hear voices. They had their fourth member, for Jimmy returned almost immediately to ask simply when and how. The deciding to go was the only difficult part of the escape and this sudden fear was a revelation to Powkin.
For most, it seemed when the matter was raised, being taken prisoner - that one frozen moment - had been accepted as a clinical incident, taken nonchalantly, force majeure and all that. Deciding to go back into that situation and the fright that went before the decision brought a realisation that the man with the Schmeisser in Tobruk had made a deeper impact than Powkin had ever dreamed. The previous two non-escapes had been pure impulse, the "pale cast of thought" had never had a chance, and no doubt it was as well they had ended in their laughable way, for Powkin had no food at those times, beggar's clothes and no idea what he might do when on the loose.
Now things were on a much better footing. The four of them were very fit and well-clothed and each had a useful store of tins from the parcels, kept as a reserve and also with the possibility of escape, forced march or other emergency in mind. Powkin was also happy to have such companions for they were men to respect in any circumstances. Jean stood square, thickset and muscular, a figure to receive respect, a cool strength of personality added to his stature and his assurance, experience and training made him a leader Powkin would unhesitatingly follow. Charles differed from Jean in figure, being tall and also fair as opposed to Jean's Catalan teint, but equally the able professional soldier. Jimmy an artillery man from the North of England, and anyone who knows the staunch folk of Northumberland need be told no more. These three would be good to go along with and the going along would be reality within the hour for Jean meant them to be through the wire as soon as the floodlights were on to bring the light of day over the camp fence and to create a contrasting black gloom sharply edged twenty feet from the said fence. They should then use the two hours before the final head count to get well away.
Powkin put on every piece of clothing he possessed it was December and the first flakes of snow were falling and then he cleared his locker of all food, watched the while by his room mates. They realised very quickly what was afoot and reacted mainly with glee and offers of food. First to bring his offering was Powkin's Welsh neighbour who dumped cans on his bunk saying, "If you're going for a long walk, boy, you had better take these!" Some called him a qualified fool, but still wished him luck. The camp was soon in a state of suppressed excitement and Powkin's room mates made ad hoc plans with the other rooms to fiddle the head count by delaying the guards long enough at each count for men to slip through loose planks to fill the vacant bunks, "Heads under blankets, snores and all!" said they. Powkin would never know if the ruse had worked or not.
He was glad the half hour's notice was all the other prisoners got of the intended escape, for these men, the very salt of the earth in so many ways, were in a mood hard to contain and even the most somnolent of guards must soon have sensed something was up. Real danger lay in the mind, if so it can be called, of one Tom, "Mad Tom" as Powkin privately labelled him, a character whom many sitting at home would see as the very essence of resistance to the enemy. No! Tom would not be ordered about by anyone, and no, Tom would move when he felt like it, and yes, Tom would take umbrage at every opportunity and on this evening yes, Tom would dance up to the nearest guard and laugh in his face saying, "Oh, you'll get a surprise in the morning! No Frenchies, no"
Here Powkin managed to stop him, and fortunately the guards had long since stopped even listening to Tom, having found that ignoring him might get him to go quietly away. As will be seen shortly, Mad Tom would still find himself a part to play, a clown's part and not a welcome one. A symbol of cockney spirit? Could be, well yes, in a way. An irrepressible joker? Oh, yes. A blasted nuisance? That for sure! And withal, the folk sitting at home might be right.
The camp was a long oblong taken up mainly by the prisoners' quarters, a long hut divided into four rooms, each with its door opening onto an open area of beaten earth bordered on the opposite side by the guards' barrack and the camp kitchen, while one shorter end of the oblong was taken up by toilet and washroom shed whose door, and this was important, could only be seen on turning the corner of the prisoners' hut and this would be assembly and departure point for the four escapees. Around the camp stood tall, sturdy posts with a a web of thick wire whose barbs outdid anything the British made in thickness of roll and length of spikes. The whole establishment sat on a small hill, a large green mound, with no houses near on the village side and an open field bordered by woodland on the other. A guard patrolled his beat after dark around the prisoners' block and inside the wire, no other watch was kept and, thank the Lord, there were no dogs. From the wash house they would watch the guard as he passed by the long side of the hut facing the wire, then they would skip through the fence in the glare of the floodlights and lie face down in the velvety blackness, a blank-eting dark enhanced by the very glare of light meant to defeat escape.
Charles worked in the blacksmith's shop and had "borrowed" pliers with which he had carefully created a "door" easily opened and closed and not perceivable from inside the camp and only to be remarked from the outside by someone actually looking for such tricks. The guards were all for an easy life and had been lulled into thinking they had got it over the months of routine in a pleasant enough way of life for them. They went one by one to the washroom without being seen by the patrol and followed the plan quietly and very quickly. Charles went through the "door" first and made sure no one got snagged before joining the other three lying face down in the gloom and as far-down the slope as possible, making it just as the guard arrived again.
At this very moment, to Powkin's horror, a sound like a suffering London moggy rang out. It was Tom "helping" by chanting a lay whose words went, "Da dee dah dee dah dah, the bawstard's comin' arahnd agin, dah dee dah" and as a tap on the shoulder bade Powkin get moving the chant informed them, as if they didn't know, that "the bawstard's gone away agin'!" They went down the slope and around onto the field, moving very rapidly to cover the open ground. A distant cockney caterwaul left no doubt in Powkin's mind that the "bawstard" was coming around again, or, quite possibly, had just gone away again. They settled to a good sustainable pace. They had, they hoped they had, a long way to go.
They were following the trails laid out through the picturesque landscape of rolling hills, sharp green outlines of pines and firs with an occasional strip of pasture sloping down to a brook. Trails that had given pleasure to many a walker in happier days and now served Powkin's group well with their clearly marked colour strips. Jean had the maps and some source of knowledge Powkin would have never suspected. Jean led them out of the wood just before dawn down a track to a single plank crossing a stream. On the other side lay a farmhouse and a large barn. Jean took them at a swifter pace through the half light into the shelter of the barn. Powkin slept for a while and awoke to see Jean crouching near the barn door, as if expecting someone and that someone turned up in the shape of a French prisoner starting his daily tasks around the farm.
Jean, standing hidden from outside gaze, spoke a few rapid words, which brought the man to a halt. He undid and then retied his boot laces. A whispered exchange and then the man walked slowly on. His face had shown no expression at any time. Much later he passed again and casually left a loaf of bread inside the barn door, stayed not for idle gossip but briskly, looking very "affairé", disappeared around the corner. "On part ce soir," Jean whispered, "we're leaving tonight," Powkin told Jimmy in an equally faint whisper. No more was said.
There was a tenseness in the air, something was not right with the place and the man they had met had communicated anxiety and no reassurance. As darkness fell Jean took them back across the plank and into the woods, moving rapidly to leave the farm as far behind as possible. Powkin knew better than to break the silence with unnecessary questions. On a previous occasion he had been obliged to ask Jean to stop and found himself seized by the collar and told in a few words of whispered fury to "Shut that!" This, coming from the pleasantest and gentlest of men taught Powkin a little discipline.
The how and why of the farm was made clear when Jean called a halt and they shared some bread. According to the strange Frenchman they had walked into a "Death Zone", "Zone de Mort", "Todeszone" - by any name a place where the S.S. had allocated to themselves the right to execute on sight any unauthorised intruders. Hence the hurry to get away. "On nous ferait passer à coups de fusil," was Jean's dry comment, they would have had a firing squad to help them on their way.
In the camps the notices were very explicit on this point, much being made of "unsoldierly and criminal commando raids" as one of the reasons for this move. There was also a poster depicting a man wearing a balaclava helmet; a knife and a blackened face featured also and the caption ran "Wer hat Angst vor dem schwarzen Mann?" "Who's afraid of the black man?" Powkin had the feeling that quite a lot of fear of the "black man" was about. Nevertheless Powkin allowed himself a few private doubts on this score. The French worker was on what the British called a "Mum and Dad". The Austrian farmhands were in the army and a prisoner ran the farm with "Mum and Dad". If there was a daughter he might well run her too. For some prisoners such an experience was a time out of war and some would return when peace had been restored to seek out "Mum and Dad" and the daughter too. For such a man, translated from war and prison camp into a humble Arcadia, it was obviously not good to have four escaped prisoners landed to spoil a small idyll and possibly with the most miserable consequences. Still, they'd got some bread out of it.
They walked on through a glorious night and a few whispered
comments revealed that they all had an eye for beauty around and
above them, a sign of good morale. Many POWs refused "on
principle" to see anything good around them; having surrendered,
they felt they owed it to some imagined deity to show no signs
of actually enjoying any part of the situation. When the circumstances
were really grim, as in the early days in Campo 65 in Italy, this
was particularly so. The camp was remote, communications were
bad and it suffered from poor organisation. Vermin abounded and
the ration of bread, some days the only food, was below a level
to maintain fitness, one could say even to maintain life. This
was not due to any deliberate callousness and there was rumour
of rackets and some corruption. Be that as it may, one evening
Powkin, looking out through the barbed wire, witnessed a most
gorgeous sunset
There were three of them who had ventured out in the chill from the stone barns that housed them. They stood each with a threadbare blanket over his shoulders looking towards the western sky through the barbed wire in the direction of home. They hardly knew each other; there were two thousand prisoners in that compound and people usually had only a few closer friends, men that pooled their food and their cigarettes and shared meals when the Red Cross parcels made their rare appearance. There was nothing to share or prepare until those vital packets turned up. In the early days at "65" many a week went by without a parcel arriving and men starved. Later things became organised and the food parcels arrived regularly, but it was during one of the hard times that Powkin found himself standing at the fence, a tall stranger on his left and, further away a smaller man who was staring dully at the ground on the other side of the wire.
As they stood the western sky began to glow and streaks of delicate rose and pink broadened and spread over the evening sky. "God, what a wonderful spectacle!" exclaimed Powkin's tall companion. "Absolutely superb," agreed Powkin. They went on to admire the show for a few moments until they were made aware of disgusted noises emanating from the small figure near them.
They turned, a little perturbed, could the fellow be ill? They
met a furious face, shoulders shaking with passion and a raised
finger pointing accusingly at them. It was beyond them, what on
earth? Then the little man swallowed, took a breath and let them
have it. "Kinell! Kineck! Kinsunset? It's kinfood we kinwant!
Not kinsunsets! You're kinmad! Kinflipped!" He ranted on
for a while in the high-pitched tone of hungry men, the fury of
his expression strangely at odds with the weakness of his voice.
Then he turned and tottered off, his "Kinnels" and "Kinmads"
dying away as he moved.
The darkness was setting in, the show was over and Powkin turned
to return to his stone barn. The tall man came with him and, as
they walked slowly over the stony ground remarked tiredly, "He's
perfectly right, of course, we do indeed need food. But..."
he paused and added with a wry smile, "it was an absolutely
marvellous kinsunkinset."
There is a paradox in the way our thoughts seek out the stars. If they cut loose and take their finite selves out to meet the infinite - but never to meet the infinite - then, in the words of the erudite Immanuel Kant, they return in a state of "mute eloquence", which does sweet damn all for polite conversation. On the other hand, should we stand fully aware of our feet planted on mother earth then "Twinkle, twinkle little star" is about as far as we get in our space explorations.
Yet the poets of all ages have known the happy middle way to achieve human contact with both sides of this dilemma. What is needed is the stillness of a clear midnight and some very small sound, the far off song of a nightingale come out to console the night, a brook whispering of the day that has been, and then the mystery of the heavens in their glory becomes a fully human experience.
For Powkin the squeak of dry snow under four pairs of army boots was the small sound that kept him aware of his physical self without being lost in the beauty of the night sky, a sky radiant against background depths of every shade of blue, the lightest greenish to a velvety dark hue.
In front of him Jean's square shape moved stolidly on along the track over the frozen hilltop leading through a plantation of young firs some careful Austrian forester had planted, none yet higher than five or six feet. Jimmy followed and Charles, Jean's great friend of the Zouaves, brought up the rear of the insignificant column. So they moved on with only the muted squeak of the dry snow and the occasional whispered word when someone other than Jean took over the lead and trod the fresh, unmarked snow.
Powkin was strangely happy and carefree. As a radar operator
he had been called on to face little in the way of danger, but
that little had always terrified him. His companions had stood
against personal attack, Jimmy under artillery fire and the two
French professionals in the very front of the battle. Nonetheless
he had escaped from the working camp and on this picture postcard
of a hill felt at ease to walk on, to wonder at the starscape
and to think no further ahead than the next hour or three until
dawn when... They stood absolutely still, Powkin with one leg
raised to take the next step, their eyes turned towards the source
of an explosive bark that had crumbled the silence. There was
the sound of a large animal running - running away. Powkin lowered
his leg as Jean, inevitably, laughed, "Un cerf!" and-walked
on. "A stag," Powkin translated for Jimmy, as they continued
along the track. A minute later Jimmy chuckled quietly, "I
thought it might be those dogs, Pow, you know?" Powkin laughed,
"At that transit camp, Seven B?" Yes he knew only too
vividly. That had been the time of "The Reasonable Comrades."
Looking Back "The Reasonable Comrades"
"Wenn die Kameraden nur vernünftig sind.." spoke the Unteroffizier - "if the comrades are reasonable then 'appel' is over in ten minutes and then-" he waved his arm in a wide gesture, "then you are free." He meant well, a nice chap somewhat put out when the prisoners kept him waiting half an hour. Powkin's excuses and explanations that "appel" in Italy had lasted one, maybe two and on occasion three hours had been accepted gravely, yes, anything can happen in Italy. But here "es geht anders zu" - things were done differently, so "Tomorrow, on the dot, half six, ten minutes and then dismiss! Freizeit!" The Unteroffizier allowed himself a smile, turned and left the compound.
The sergeant and Powkin told the "Kameraden" the good news and were advised to perform impossible sexual acts, they, the Kameraden, weren't worried by that unmentionable. No, not a bit! A mood they were still in on the morrow when only half the inmates were lined up with the sergeant and Powkin as the Unteroffizier strode into the compound. He looked coldly at Powkin, "Wo sind die anderen Kameraden?" "Nu, sie kommen gleich" "Er, they're on their way.." The unteroffizier seemed completely unmoved, "Ich hole die Hundeführer," he remarked in the most casual of tones. His mood showed, however, in the rapid semi-goosestep that took him out of the compound. The comrades still in the huts weren't worried about dogs either and offered more sexual advice. As Sarge and Powkin left the huts six outsize German shepherd dogs came running through the gates. They brought six Germans with them, a formality, perhaps a mere courtesy, perhaps the Germans needed the exercise, for the dogs knew only too well what to do. They went in and the "Kameraden", in various stages of dressing, tumbled out, even those who had been on the sick list. Till Eulenspiegel could not have done better.
The "Appel" proceeded and, true enough, was over in ten minutes. Only one incident delayed its course momentarily. As Sarge passed along the lines the biggest and blackest of the dogs snapped the seat of his pants off, a slight pause and the count continued. Not a face showed any sign of any emotion. "So Die Kameraden dürfen abtreten," the Unteroffizier remarked and Sarge dismissed the rollcall. The black dog's handler returned Sarge's pants seat to him.
Some little time later, as Sarge was sewing the seat of his pants back on and entertaining his hut mates with a vivid description of the black dog's disgusting ancestry and woeful sexual habits, Powkin heard the call he was to hear many times in the following two years... "Do-o-olmetscher!" He went to the gate where a soldier handed him a bundle. "Für den englischen Unteroffizier." Powkin took the bundle to Sarge; it contained a new pair of British battledress slacks. Sarge took them without a word and went on sewing. "Wotcher doin' that for now?" they asked. Sarge paused and then squinted up, "Dog pants," he grunted.
The following day, on the dot, half six, the comrades lined up smartly and in ten minutes they were "free". "That was reasonable," said the Unteroffizier. True enough, but Powkin wondered if he would ever again see so many reasonable people all gathered together in one place.
On the day they left the transit camp Powkin saw the dogs at
work again. In a bare compound prisoners were paraded faced by
a row of dog handlers and their hairy, four-legged assistants.
The dogs sat still apart from a slight twitch of the tail, tongues
lolling out of grinning jaws, eyes bright, engrossed in their
surveillance of the khaki ranks before them. Everybody else looked
bored stiff.
"I1 n'y a rien" sighed Jean, "there is nothing which so resembles one part of a forest as another part of the same forest." No one disagreed. Powkin was sure he had seen that same tree stump three times already and there was little doubt that the falling snow, the darkness and gloom in the wood had left them with no idea of where the right track might be. This even with Jean's uncanny sense of direction and apparent familiarity with every detail of the country they were walking through. Professional sergeant-majors in anybody's army must develop such skills. Nevertheless they were not on the right path and they were in no state to spend the next few hours before daylight tramping around looking for it.
They decided to rest and, if possible, sleep a little in the cold. Powkin was fairly insulated against the cold: two pair of battle dress slacks, and every other item of clothing he possessed plus a great coat kept him warm on the move and for a while when they rested in the open. Each sought out a place to crouch down or lie under the spreading branches of the smaller fir trees. The theory was that the tree kept the ground a bit warmer and, in truth, the ground was certainly dry under Powkin's chosen shelter. He stretched himself out and curled around the stem, dosing off for a little while until the chill of the ground penetrated through all his gear and he had to stand up and stamp about to get the circulation going again.
In this way the time until dawn was spent by all four and it
was a cold and comatose party of escapers that came onto the right
path and emerged from the wood to see a hay barn in a snow-covered
field before them. Yes, they would leave tracks but it was snowing
heavily, they were in no state to go on, and staying in the open
was no real alternative. They crossed in single file to the barn,
sank into the hay and all slept the sleep of men more tired than
they had realised. They came to all about the same time and ate
and slept again. It was cosy and clean and they were clean too,
although they had not always enjoyed such freedom from lice and
other little companions of the prisoner's life. When they had
been transported from Italy they had willy-nilly brought a fair
section of the uncounted inmates of the camps with them and Powkin
vividly recalled the amazed gasp of the Austrian corporal, "Engländer
with lice? How can that be?" It could be only too easily,
as Powkin explained, and delousing à l'Allemande had immediate
priority for these verminous guests of the Third Reich.
Looking Back... "The Lousy British"
The prisoners were marched from the huge stone barn they were housed in and led through the camp to the delousing centre with its ovens and showers. There they stripped, put their bundles of ragged uniform ready for baking the vermin and lined up for the showers. One by one they moved forward to where a sad Russian was operating clippers, expertly and swiftly doing a thoroughly good job of removing every hair from every part and in the process showing no sign of being anything but a zombie until he had to operate on the man moving forward ahead of Powkin.
This man was a hairdresser in civilian life and had been a camp barber in Italy, his magnificence of curly black hair a fitting advertisement for his trade. The sad Russian's eyes shone, he paused a moment and then he started his clipping at the base of the barber's neck and ran the clippers forward leaving a wide "parting" over the crown of the head. The hair on either side stood up as if electrified, perhaps silently testifying to the poor barber's anguish. The Russian gave a melancholy Russian smile, then, reverting to his allotted rôle he swiftly and expertly shaved the rest of the hair from the head, from the armpits, from the crutch.
Then came Powkin's turn and he moved on, feeling strangely emasculated; from another Russky he received a blob of soft soap on his bald head, was showered and emerged to sit on the wooden benches to dry and await the arrival of his deloused gear. He learned later that the last Russian contingent to pass that way had been turned out into the snow to wait. Russians, generally, were the least regarded within the hierarchy, if so it could be called, of the multiracial crowds assembled throughout the war years by the German armies. Stalin recognised only fighting Russians or dead ones and the Soviet Union was no signatory to the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners.
There was thus no safeguard for German prisoners in Russia and hence no loving care was lavished on Russian prisoners by the Germans. They were fed, housed and clothed and sent out on work kommandos as were all other prisoners under the rank of sergeant. "On Kommando" they could receive good treatment and adequate rations, but in the stalags they knew hungry days. Powkin had met his first Russkies in the transit camp, two men who were keen to teach him Russian, starting like all good orthodox teachers with the conjugations and this, with a scanty vocabulary, was as far as he got before moving on.
It was, however, enough for him to try to help one ill Russian whom the village doctor intended to return to stalag. Powkin's party had been cleaning out cellars in the village after a flash flood had swept through the streets and met the sick Russian with a friend who was trying to explain things to the doctor. Not much could be done: the doctor felt under no obligation to treat the Russian to allow him to stay in the work camp and merely agreed tersely when Powkin told him that stalag would not see any cure for the man only hunger and a worsening of the man's state of health. Finally, the doctor said he would see, but, he shrugged his shoulders, if the man stayed ill there was only one place for him stalag. At this word the haggard Russian said, with a simple dignity, that the stalag was not a good place, there was no bread there. Powkin would always remember his "khleba nyet" - "there is no bread", and the look of a man at the bottom of the treatment scale yet in no way demeaned in his humanity.
That there were others not within the war captives' ranks whose plight was dire indeed dawned on Powkin one sunny day when he and others were sitting around a small fire roasting potatoes they had dug up in the field where they had a ditch digging job. The Austrian was telling them how he could so cook potatoes that they would melt in the mouth when he stopped and looked beyond Powkin, his face chill and blank. Powkin turned to see what on earth there could be, and saw - just coming over the brow of the low hill - a strange cart with a dark cloud of flies swirling around it, a long wooden cylinder on four wheels. A bony nag shuffled slowly along with it in the charge of a gaunt, long-nosed scarecrow in black rags. "Who?" Powkin's eyes asked, but the Austrian only replied "Nobody..." and turned to the potatoes in the fire. Powkin stood and went to the man - God! The cart stank! - and greeted him. Two hollow dark eyes looked at him and a low whisper bade Powkin not to notice him, he was safer so... Why? Why could one not speak with him? "Schau!" - "Look!" came the scarcely audible reply and with his stick the man drew two triangles in the dust, one superimposed on the other, the Star of David.
They had come to a point where the track came down from the forest and would shortly meet the main road. The day was calm and dry and they halted in a brown hollow on the wooded slope to make a hot drink and to think about the next stretch where they would willy-nilly have to take the main road. To try to force a way through the forest was not really practicable and it seemed the choice was whether to walk in daylight or at night. As Jimmy fanned away the wisp of smoke that curled up from their fire they summed up the pros and cons. Walking at night they would almost certainly meet no one, but if four men in enemy uniform should cause a dog to bark then any farmer looking out idly would mean instant alarm, farmers with guns and the local gendarmerie and their pistols and dogs. By day their uniforms would not seem too unusual: prisoners and forced labourers in a variety of uniforms and semi-uniforms abounded. How to explain their packs might be awkward but explaining was what Powkin was well practised in and he would have to do the talking. They settled for a daylight march.
The walk along the road to the next junction of the forest was dreamily reassuring. They did indeed meet the local yokels chatting by the roadside, but these seemed only mildly interested at the sight of four khaki-clad men sauntering along. Powkin smiled and greeted them, everybody smiled. The locals had said "Servus!" the familiar salutation for friends, little dogs and prisoners - anyone that one says "Du" to. So the four dallied a little, "Yes, it was a fine day, better for walking than working..." Everyone agreed and laughed. "Would they perhaps accept some coffee? Perhaps they had some bread?" Nothing could seem more reasonable and the exchange was made. Then Powkin, in his best French accent - they were French workers - said regretfully, "Wir müssenne arrbeitenne." They took their leave and walked on in leisurely fashion down the road on the way to their "work place".
Shortly afterwards they came to the forest path and filed uphill. They felt very confident at this time, Jimmy especially. He was one of that hardy fighting breed of the north-east of England and, in his opinion there was every likelihood of them getting out of Austria and down to "Uncle Tito". Tito was their goal but this was something they would never admit to any German in the event of recapture. The one communist guard in the camp they had bolted from had warned Powkin very seriously to deny any thought of contacting partisans and it was excellent advice. This amiable Austrian and his rumoured "band" were held in some awe and respect by the younger guards. The older guards heeded him little and tolerated his opinions with a good grace. To them all political extremes were like a passing storm in the hills, the sooner they were gone the better.
Powkin had many a talk with the communist and received much good advice. "Hungarian SS were very bad", "If you get recaptured tell them you were trying to get to Italy and, if they mention partisans, be horrified: say you don't want your throat cut" and many more words of wisdom. Powkin felt the man was sincere but, nevertheless, had no intention of asking his help. Things might have turned out better had he done this, but when he and Jean had first discussed escaping, which had been a rather academic topic to Powkin at that time, they had agreed to trust no single soul, prisoner or guard. In the event, when the sudden moment of decision came for Powkin, his room mates knew he was getting out some thirty minutes before he and the other three went through the wire.
Speaking French and German brought Powkin a deal of information.
It also brought him a prime rôle in every confrontation
and there were numberless times when the call of "Do-o-lmetscher!"
summoned him to stand between angry German and bloodyminded Englishman.
"E called me a swine, an' I'm not havin' that from anyone!" Arms akimbo, chin stuck out, eyebrows one black line over glaring eyes, Tom pointed at the Austrian guard who had shouted for Powkin. The guard was not angry, he was perplexed and prepared to be annoyed, but not yet. "He stand there leaning on his shovel, smoking and his comrade is doing all the work. So I told him it was a dirty trick and he threw his shovel down and started bellowing!" At the word "schweinerei", "dirty trick", Tom blew up again. "There! Called me a swine agin!" Powkin was back in the familiar situation of explaining, explaining to people who were suspicious of any explanation and frequently not going to accept one at all. Tom was in the latter mood, or perhaps merely seemed to be, for Powkin felt the whole situation was giving Tom a deal of amusement. So, he explained to the guard all about "swine" and "schweinerei" and the consequent mix-up. "So-o-o! Na ja! komisch, was?.. Ha! Schweinerei..." "There! Called me a swine AGIN!" Tom stopped. Powkin, the guard and Tom's mate were looking at him with some amusement. "Aw, f- off!" Tom almost smiled, "I got work to do!"
Such incidents were frequent and usually involved the same people, the ones who enlivened their work day by provoking the guards: a process that was mild enough and very similar to cockney kids playing up "teacher". The "teachers" couldn't understand but were mostly good-natured enough to let it all pass with a smile, for these guards were a fairly equable bunch of men, happy to be guarding "Engländer" for some obscure reason and very glad not be at the front. As one said to Powkin, "At the front there's shooting, here there's no shooting." More than occasionally, however, matters verged on the serious and Powkin's ability to present reasonable "explanation" and on times tell downright lies was sorely tested.
The "Arbeitskommando", the work camp, where Tom was lodged had, as its main work, the digging away of a long, clay bank some forty feet high stretching in a yellow-grey whale back parallel to a single rail track. Up along the bank a light rail track ran right and left from a turntable and teams of two or three had the daily task of filling small tipper-trolleys with the clay they dug from the hillside. Filled skips were rolled along to the turntable and, in turn, set on the rails laid on a ramp projecting out at a slight slope. These rails ended in a chute on one side of the ramp, down which the skips' contents were tipped onto the huge mound so formed which a mechanical shovel then loaded into railway trucks. Boring but not arduous work, for the prisoners did just enough to keep warm in winter and rather less in summer.
The end of the ramp had only a plank nailed across it as a buffer. Powkin and his workmate had been fortunate one day to escape going through the barrier and hurtling on down into the clay heap. Each thought the other had the brake pole and the trolley was on its way and gathering speed when they realised the pole was on the ground. A shout, a throw and a deft catch brought the trolley to rest touching the plank. The "Toms" of the camp found this situation irresistible and, at very long intervals, a laden trolley would crack through the plank and sail on down to bury its nose in the clay heap. Its crew, left hanging on the side railings, had sense enough to look horrified. The laughs came later. But for Powkin it was "Do-o-olmetscher!" and he had to counter charges of sabotage with charges of danger work which POWs were not to perform and pointing at the ramp would exclaim, "Wet clay! Slippery! Too steep a slope! Could cause serious injury!" Similarly, when the rails split apart under the shunting engine, "The POWs weren't trained railway workers and anyway it was dangerous, could have fallen on someone!" And so on, many times. Only Tom, mad Tom, openly cocked a snook at the guards and the Austrian foremen, sooner or later he was bound for trouble and would get it.
In all the confrontations, when the mutual screaming and accusing
were over, the atmosphere reverted to a friendly tolerance and
often to a degree of mutual respect. The Austrians, both guards
and workmen, were reasonable men and inclined to kindliness, and
their understanding and sympathy were remarkable on times. On
one evening a group of prisoners stood looking out through the
fence of their compound towards the evening sky, in complete silence,
their faces expressionless. On the other side paced a sentry,
patently concerned. Powkin met his eye. "Tell them,"
the man spoke quietly, "tell your Kameraden that I am a prisoner,
too, we all are." "Bring the bugger inside!" said
the Kameraden.
They had walked, daytime mainly, but also at night when they had found no haystore, none of the little huts in the forest which served as miniature barns for the farmers, and without such shelter it was too cold to rest. They came out of the track onto a clear space and there stood a small house. It seemed deserted. No lights, no sound as they cautiously approached. They found they could open the door and they went in. This could be shelter for a little while, but other thoughts were concerning Jean. Their food was almost at an end and Jimmy's limping over the last two days had not gone unnoticed. Charles, who normally brought up the rear of the column behind Jimmy had, in a casual conversational tone, passed on his observations of Jimmy's difficulties. They had said nothing to him. In the little house, however, they struck matches and examined Jimmy's feet. They were red and very cold. They massaged them and put dry socks on them and then sat to think. There seemed little they could do, sitting in the chilly "Häusl" above Aspang with no food and little hope. "Si on ne trouve pas à manger on est foutu!" said Jean, "No food, we've had it!" He and Powkin took empty knapsacks and went down the hill and into the darkened town.
They walked through the streets, Jean swearing at every passer-by until one such stopped and gave him an earful of the same foul talk. Jean darted over to him, "T'es français?" He indubitably and obscenely was, a forced labourer, yes, there was a group of them in their own quarters, yes, of course, just follow. They followed some distance behind and into a large room with a glowing stove and bunks on three sides. A large table and some rough chairs completed the furniture. They were accepted with no hesitation. The French gave them food and drink, allotted bed space and sent one of their people to fetch Charles and Jimmy. What they were doing was very dangerous for them. If they were discovered the four escapees would be taken back to a stalag, do their time in cells and then they would most probably be sent out on another arbeitskommando. The civilian French faced very different circumstances and could easily find death, if not by shooting then rather more evilly in one of the Todt organisation's hells.
However, as said, they did not hesitate. Charles and Jimmy arrived from the häusl on the hill, Jimmy with a big grin on his face and Charles with the polite expression of any Frenchman paying a social call. The man who seemed to be the leader among the civilian workers had them change into civilian clothes and gave them identity cards. They were now to be "French workers" - an easy transformation for Jean, Charles and for Powkin. Jimmy, however, spoke no word of French and just a few bits and pieces of German. So, they taught him to speak his bits of Deutsch with a French accent and his lilting Tyneside accent gave the words an authentic ring: "Warumme arrbeitenne? Schlafenne bessaire!" No doubt fortunately, he was not called on to test his new ability.
The four spent two days in the French zivilbarracke and then,
in the half light of the third day they moved on, clad in British
uniform again and following, at a great distance, one of their
hosts who was on his way back to his "Mum and Dad" and
would put them on their track. They were now south of Aspang and
it was way up in the hills towards the border with Hungary that
Powkin had been sent out from the stalag to "the very worst
work camp we have" - so spake not Zarathustra but the Leutnant
in charge of their sector of the stalag.
Looking Back... "The Left Luggage Office"
"What have you done? What have you done?" yelled the office clerk as he burst into what had been the tack room which he and two others shared with Powkin. One of these also worked in the office and the other was able to speak German and so interpret. "What has happened? I've just been told to put you down for the worst camp they've got and" He stopped as the door opened and "their" corporal entered with a somewhat embarrassed expression on his face, and clearly not too happy about what he had to say. So he did not mince matters. "Powkin, du gehst auf Kommando, kannste da nit bleiben, gehst mit den anderen Kameraden. So, komm'!" and Powkin picked up his few belongings and followed into the huge main room of what must have been some nobleman's stables.
He had two images of it in his mind, one that it was an enormous potter's kiln for some gargantuan potter and the other that he was standing in an equally gigantic left luggage office, for the only space where a man could stand was some six feet wide before the double entrance doors and here one could look up into the depths of the roof in its shadows. Behind that, starting from ground level itself, tiers of staging filled the room. Each gave headroom of about four to five feet except at the very top where a mere four feet measured plank floor to stone ceiling. Ladders gave access to each "floor" and the prisoners lay on sacks woven of paper string and stuffed with copies of the "Völkischer Beobachter" and similar heartening works of literature. The "left luggage" racks permitted the "left luggage" a six inch passage to crawl between the rows of pallets. Powkin found himself on the top floor. It was warm and it was clean and the paper bags were not at all bad as mattresses. He'd known a whole lot worse.
As he lay looking up at the grey ceiling just above his nose he remembered a few words he'd had from the Leutnant on the latter's return from a leave trip to friends in Berlin. His words to Powkin had been short and sharp - "Powkin! You are a soldier of the britische Luftwaffe, ja? So-o-o!" Like most servicemen on leave, the Leutnant had been looking forward to a night to remember, and the RAF had duly obliged.
It was while Powkin was in the "left luggage store" that he caught his second glimpse of the self-styled "Russian Doctor", the first sight of whom had entranced the prisoners on their arrival in the stalag. Beautiful women were not, definitely and regrettably not, part of the stalag scene, and here was Marlene Dietrich's very double, complete with high cheek bones and flaxen hair down to the shoulders. Only, "she" was a "he" and what had seemed beautiful gloomed into disinterest. But not for everyone, and Powkin's second sighting of the Russian "doctor" was when he appeared one evening in the doorway calling out, "Chochie! Chochie!" and down the ladder behind Powkin came clattering a huge man, grinning all over his face and crying, "Coming, my darling, coming, my beauty! Your Georgie'll have yer!" The two disappeared into the darkness, "Chochie" marching purposefully and the Russian hopping by his side. The grip "Chochie" had on him left him no choice but to hop. He seemed not to mind at all.
Near the door two friends brewing tea on a "blower" glanced up. "Dirty bastards!" said one, "Where's the tea?" Powkin recalled at that moment Andy, who had been on the next bunk to him in Campo 65 and had, one evening, remarked, in a matter of fact tone and à propos of nothing in particular, "You know, I'll do anything...". Powkin registered nothing and Andy said no more. A short time later they were all moved north to Campo 53 at Macerata, a vast improvement on 65, and, as was usual in service and prisoner life, Powkin found himself with new people. Some of these had a waxy-faced friend who came visiting once or twice a week and invariably took his leave with the words, "Well, got to get back to my queen." On one day when a group of them had started a game of rugger Powkin saw Andy again. The "game" consisted of tackling whomsoever held the ball and lasted ten minutes before they were all exhausted from slipping and sliding in the mud, and it was as Powkin was leaving the mud, his eyelids seeming to be festooned with turf, that he saw Andy.
Andy was being led around the dry outside edge, his face bright
red: he walked with mincing steps, his guide holding his arm.
Waxy was taking his queen walkies. Quite suddenly Powkin realised
what Andy's "doing anything" had meant. He was obviously
now doing everything.
The four were walking along an almost level track through the forest and fairly high on a slope. On one side a clear snowfield dipped down to the valley floor some distance below and as they turned a corner Powkin was startled to see a man on skis leave the trees before them and gracefully, like a stooping eagle, skim down the slope. In the next moment they found themselves approaching an inn. Powkin was in a quandary, how could they go on? How could they NOT go on?
Jean resolved all his doubts "On mange!", "We'll eat, I've got meal tickets." And he had. They entered the inn, Powkin said, "Mahlzeit!" and the raised eyebrows sank back as nods acknowledged the politeness. The "Wirtin" brought them soup and bread, for which they had tickets, and also a cigarette each, for which they had not tickets. She was very stern and frowned, "I' sag' nix, I' frag' nix, aber nit zu longe bleiben!" she said in a low voice. Perhaps best translated as, "Ah'm saying nowt, ah'm asking nowt, just don't stay too long!" Then, looking very severe, she turned and went back to her counter.
They did not stay too long. As they continued their path the
valley reminded Powkin of his arrival at the "worst work
camp" about a year before. Near Christmas time, and a Christmas
card scene of snowy valley fringed with firs and white hills framing
the whole.
Looking Back... "The Worst Work Camp"
Just a small group was to go up into the hills to "the worst work camp". Before going, the group was kitted out with whatever item of clothing each member lacked. The list was ticked off, item by item, and footwear, greatcoat, socks, headgear - all was handed over. The result was a fashion show of military uniform, no part a complete picture of any army's idea of how the well-dressed soldier should appear. Conquering armies bring home loot and German armies were very good at this, to the last detail. Art treasures for the high and mighty and, at the dump end, bales of army supplies, French, Serb, Belgian, Polish and where else they may have been. So, Powkin found himself standing in boots of leather with a wooden sole, a pair of tip-nosed, barge-shaped sabots in reserve. He had a choice of socks or French foot cloths, his Italian pantaloons still clung modestly to his bottom half and above he flaunted a fine Belgian jacket with a letter "O" painted in red on the back to show that he came from Poland or Russia, the "Ost", East. Literally to cap it all a Serb hat, pale-grey and stylish.
Similarly equipped a very motley crew assembled to journey to the hills. Most, including Powkin, had a British army greatcoat. Powkin's RAF greatcoat had been begged of him to make a pair of "civilian" trousers to help a fighter pilot escape. He had willingly made the exchange once Jock, the pilot, explained the reason. Unfortunately nothing came of the planned escape and the last Powkin saw of his RAF greatcoat it was standing at the wire on the last evening of Campo 53 clothing a sturdy pair of Scots legs and, so metamorphosed, strode off at last to freedom. Only one member of Powkin's group lacked a greatcoat and he received a very natty one, "bleu horizon" with brass buttons. A strange piece of French theory, that a man outlined black against the sky would somehow fade if he was wearing light blue. That he would stand out clearly against any other background was certain sure. Still, no doubt it looked good on parade.
They were on their way, sitting on the polished wooden seats, watching the valley drop below them as the little "Lok" puffed away uphill. They reached a tiny wayside halt and left the train. Their "Posten", rifle slung over his shoulder, led them up and over snowy hills and along paths and, eventually, after some miles, came to a small and silent valley where the watermill that was the "camp" stood by its frozen stream. Two Austrian soldiers awaited them and introduced them to the large first storey room that was to be "home" for them, so they said. Powkin looked out of the small window set in the thick wall. Outside, snow, trees and an immense silence, much to his liking. They claimed a place each on the broad platform with its jumbo size strawbag that was the only bed for them. Cosy enough. Then they examined the stove, sat around the table, looked at each other and laughed. Someone appointed himself cook, they had rations and they had a good meal.
As they ate, one of the Austrians came in and spoke. They were very young men. He said he and his mate would be their guards for a while but expected to be returned to their regiment quite soon and on this evening they wanted to meet their friends in their local inn and, so, if the comrades would give their parole not to go away, they, the guards, would leave the door open and would be happy to see them in the morning. The comrades gladly gave their parole and, when the guards had gone off for the night, they walked about the mill, explored the valley and then returned to the warmth of "home". They agreed on the senior man being camp "leader". This was usual and could be changed in camps where there was no senior rank. "Camp Leader" was never a job Powkin wanted. He would, in fact, always be the go-between and there would never be a row he would not be in. Frequently the "camp leader" was left out of the whole thing in the "railway camp" because there was no senior man, except Jean and Charles, and they, in deference perhaps to national feeling, stood aside from such authority. The ever-changing incumbents of the office were good fellows, but very limited and held little authority with their fellow-prisoners.
The mentality behind assessing what was a "good" camp and what was a "bad" camp was intriguing. It seemed remoteness, rough living and heavy work were what made "bad" camps, while in a camp like the railway one, where Powkin was to be sent later, conditions would be reckoned to be three or four star and had there been advertisement for attracting the best prisoners to the best "kommandos" then the railway camp would undoubtedly have been featured as most desirable. After all, it had metal bunks with sheets changed every week, the prisoners played football every Sunday, a great attraction to the villagers; and on one occasion the first camp commandant, an odd mixture of irascible authority and paternalism towards "his" prisoners, marched the whole scamp to the railway station and took them to visit an ancient castle on the border with Hungary. The watermill would not have featured as a desirable billet.
Yet for Powkin, at least, there was a quality of space and freedom that he would not find in the other camps. They were classed as heavy workers and had heavy workers' rations, which, with their parcels, meant they were probably as well fed as anyone in Austria. The work they had to do had the imposing title of "Wildbach-und-Lawinenverbauung", and was almost a work of Christian charity.
On the morning after their arrival the squad was taken further up the valley to where it widened out to form a flat and quite large meadow, now covered in a foot of snow, and with a stream rippling down one side of the level expanse. Tucked into the hill was Branders' "hof", the little farm they had come to help and they found themselves in mediaeval times where Branders cut his corn with a scythe and flailed it with a flail, where his cart was almost entirely of wooden construction, sporting sledge runners at this time of year and easily lifted onto wheels in the dry summer. The farmhouse consisted of one large room with an upstairs section at one end, reached by a ladder, and with a kitchen at the other. This building formed one side of a large square with barns on another, stables on a third and sheds for carts and tackle on the fourth. In the middle was a large dungheap with many chickens clucking importantly around. Herr and Frau Branders, an Austrian foreman and a surveyor were awaiting them near the house. Branders, man and wife, were no longer even middle-aged and they were alone in their "hof", for their many sons were all in Hitler's army, sons who had formed an orchestra with their parents in happier times.
Now the prisoners were to be instructed in the skills and art of "Wildbach-und-Lawinenverbauung", a title capable of several translations with the one applying to the actual work to be done perhaps the best - "Mountain Stream Control and Counter-Erosion Work". Clumsy, but describes the job and will do.
Branders' meadow flooded with every Spring thaw and he lost days of valuable pasture growth, while the steep hills behind his house needed to have every rut filled to form a step for some small tree to sink its roots into. This was the work for the kommando, to grade the winding stream, construct steps in its bed to gain a smooth flow past Branders' precious meadow and they also had to keep an eye on the hillside.
This work went on without any hitches, the young Austrians left and were replaced by a rather short German who did not change anything after a few arguments about parcel food, which he wanted to be doled out piece by piece under his supervision and intended also to stab each tin of meat with his bayonet. This would have dealt a blow to any plans of saving food for escaping and Powkin quoted the Geneva Convention, which he had never read, and managed to restore things to the old system where the parcels were distributed as they arrived. Powkin was to be there for a few months only until the "Railway Camp" yelled for an interpreter and he was picked out by the Stalag to be that interpreter.
He would always remember the watermill camp as a small time out, a period of sanity and good work, and would retain scenes in his mind like those in a photo album. A dozen men laughing on Christmas Day. They'd been given a small keg of beer and a large piece of pork. The beer was probably about one percent in strength but for men who had touched no alcohol for two, three years it had its effect and they had a woozy, merry day.
A sudden alarm on the work site as a moving white wall appeared at the end of the valley. The foreman shouted, "Feierabend! Los!" "Work over! Run for it!" and they all ran to beat the blizzard, arriving red-faced and laughing.
The village on the hill was where the doctor cum dentist lived and they reached it by way of a steep path like a gorge in the snow, for the heavy wedge-prowed snow plough had forced the snow into packed, glistening walls towering on either side. The foreman told them the village had withstood a Turkish onslaught in the days when the Ottoman invasion spread into Eastern Europe and that they would see the dents and gouges made by the gunfire. This they duly did after panting and slipping their way up the hill.
Powkin had a strong feeling of expectation, why he could not say, but at the church he turned to look quite deliberately for a house with a window at the gable end framing o a girl looking out and there it was and there she was. Then he was startled to hear himself saying, in German, "But it's not the same girl." The Austrian laughed at his words and asked him when he'd been there before, or? Ridiculous! He was in enemy country and captive, guarded night and day, yet Powkin had no feeling of being in a strange place, as had been the case in Italy, so much was familiar. Even words he had never consciously known came to mind easily, sometimes no doubt a swift inference from the context, no doubt part of the many books he had read, words and phrases glossed as he read absorbed in the interest of the narrative. No doubt.
That Engländer were not regarded as aliens complete and unredeemable by the Austrians was part of the other side of this odd relationship between enemies, as was illustrated when a Pole came to have his watch mended. One of the group had a way with watches and clocks and mended them for a small fee - cigarettes, usually. The news of his skill had spread and the large Polish worker's watch needed attention. He never got as far as the mill to talk to the watchmaker, for the Austrian foreman pounced on him, found out his intentions and sent him off with the words, "He only mends watches for Austrians and Engländer, NOT for foreigners!".
In the dusk, with a slight silver mist in the silvered valley old Branders, paused as he met Powkin, both on the way back for the night, and suddenly he stiffened and pointed to the hill side. There, on the silver hill stood a stag, to Powkin's mind some apparition from a magic ballet but not to Branders. Aiming an imaginary rifle he said, "Viel Fleisch!" Lots of meat. A very practical man.
A sombre memory. Along the banks of the stream came a darkish man in ragged clothing and he stopped to admire the work and make a few comical remarks to Branders who smiled tolerantly and said some commonplaces in reply. The dark man went on his way down the valley, Brander's eyes following him with the look one reserves for the dying. "Zigeuner," he said in a low voice, "die Nazis bringen sie um..." A gypsy, and the nazis killed them.
Two of the prisoners found themselves on top of a ridge while looking for dead trees and decided to go for a walk into the next village, where they were promptly locked up and the new sentry, the small German who had taken over from the young Austrians, was sent for to fetch them back. He was in one fine old rage and mortally offended and returned shrieking his anger as he marched the two back along the valley, past the work site and on to the mill. The Doppler effect was quite remarkable.
He and Powkin had a shouting match over the punishment imposed and Powkin's shouting was superior enough to get the punishment of two hours sawing wood reduced to one hour. Yet this stroppy little man had done things the Austrians had neglected. The prisoner with the toothache did go to the dentist and the ones with ailments did get to the doctor.
Final scene from the watermill period was of old Branders looking down sadly and Frau Branders weeping and pressing bits of bacon and a few eggs into Powkin's hands, exclaiming, "Dolmetsch geht? Oh, dos is' nit guat!" "Dolmetsch going? Oh, that's nae guid!" A kindly, pious and gentle pair.
These qualities were fairly typical of most of the Austrians that Powkin met and this probably explains why Mad Tom's outrageous acting up was tolerated for so long. But the time came when Tom was to be put in solitary for a few days to teach him manners, they said, and a bit of sense perhaps. The only problem was that they had no place for him to sit in solitary state except down in the village, recently the object of a visitation by the S.A... "Ja, die hob'n olle Angst," whispered Powkin's communist guard, "They're all scared," and he added grimly, "A paar sand f'schwunden" "A few have disappeared."
Powkin had wondered why normally friendly people would no longer pass the time of day, and now he knew. So down to the village went Tom to be pushed into his dark room where he promptly collapsed. The unteroffizier dashed in and dragged him out and they brought Tom back to camp in some distress and the unteroffizier not a little affected as well. A hurriedly summoned doctor treated them both, remarking, unaware that Powkin understood, "Eine leichte Vergiftung" "A slight poisoning". The unteroffizier hastily reassured Powkin that there was no danger, "The room had been used by the S.A. to test gas masks". Yes, "A few had disappeared".
On another occasion a squad was called for to go down to the
village and - on an impulse - Powkin joined it. The guard who
went with them as they marched in the dark down the hill to the
station bore the nickname of "Moore Marriot", a wrinkled,
decrepit character in the old "Will Hay" films and he
was most aptly so dubbed. Yet he had humour and an easy-going
independence and was not to be put out by any strange experience.
At the station stood two Luftwaffe men looking helplessly at an
enormous searchlight and other bits and oddments of anti-aircraft
equipment. They turned as the squad arrived, "So, los!"
they cried, gesturing and urging the men to load all into the
waiting wagons. Nobody moved, and Powkin, inevitably, had to step
forward and say, evenly, "Das ist Kriegs-material, machen
wir nicht." War material and they wouldn't touch it. Furious,
one of the Luftwaffe men turned to "Moore Marriot" shrieking,
"Wa-a-as! Dürfen sie das?" - "Wh-a-at! Can
they DO that?" Moore Marriot looked down at him and, completely
unmoved, spoke in proud and pastoral tones, "Na, ja! Das
sand ENGLÄNDER". The soldiers turned to each other,
"Moore Marriot" turned around, the squad about faced
and they marched back to camp. Being cursed with a vivid imagination
and apprehensive by nature, Powkin felt a slight unease at the
back of the squad, but nothing happened and nothing was ever said.
They did not know it, but they would not be walking much further. The path through the pine trees sloped gently downwards and they walked with an easy swinging stride through the dappling light that filtered down through the forest on this fine frosty day. Powkin felt almost like singing, physical fitness and the rhythm of the march gave such a sense of well-being. The path bent and dipped and their swift march took them around a corner to meet a bridge across a gorge, and on the bridge stood two old men who showed no intention whatever of having a cosy chat with them but rather seemed somewhat alarmed and very suspicious, an ominous change from previous meetings with civilians.
Perhaps seeing four enemy soldiers emerging from the forest could have been some cause for them to stand open-mouthed as the four men passed them, smiling and making fatuous pleasantries. The two old men replied not one word, their eyes followed the quartet as they passed on over the bridge, for there was no turning back although the bridge led straight into the town of Friedberg. High farce followed. Four ruffianly-looking men in British uniform walked peacefully up the main street, greeting passers-by, none of whom replied. Faces stared out of windows, people came to shop doors as the four strolled on and, in a short space of time, came out of the town onto a stretch of open land where small houses stood half-constructed. There were no builders to be seen and no one had followed them. Jean stopped them as they turned the corner of one house. "We'll stay here until dark," he said.
They entered and sat in the bare front room and relaxed, ate a little and waited. As dusk fell Jean started to put his pack on and at the same time steps were heard outside. Powkin slipped silently to the door aperture and cautiously stepped out to find himself facing a grimly determined but very nervous little Wehrmacht man. For a second, the two of them stood amused eye to hostile glare and then Jean's voice, speaking his few words of German, boomed out, "Wir sind gefangenairre!" at the same time stepping between Powkin and the shaky rifle barrel. Prisoners! The soldier was transformed immediately into cool efficiency, "Die Placke her!" he tersely ordered, and the four began to get their dogtags out. From the gloom emerged a tall gendarme, luger pistol in hand and a large smile on his lips. Powkin had the impression that, like the "bold gendarmes" of the song, he'd kept well away from the possibly dangerous part of the action.
The soldier and the lanky gendarme marched the four escapees back into Friedberg and into the gendarmerie. An older gendarme sat by the stove and greeted them only with a raised eyebrow and a query as to where they had been found. "Im ersten Häusl," answered the lanky gendarme. The other said no more for a while and then asked why they had walked straight through the town. It was a silly thing to do, ja? Ja, it was. "Never mind," he went on, "the war will soon be over, we're advancing!" and he showed Powkin the headlines in .his paper. The German attack in the Ardennes had begun. Powkin told the others, and, to the chagrin of the old gendarme, they laughed.
The next move was to the town gaol where an aged gaoler and his wife protested at having four such guests, the danger, the food, "how to exercise them?" It was only for a few days they were told, a soothing answer which still left them uneasy and they took no chances with these dreadful wild men, locking them in a cell and later giving them food through a double hatch of which the cell side opened only when the corridor side was closed. They should have kept a menagerie.
Strangely enough, they showed no trepidation when a further prisoner joined the four. He, it seemed, was an old acquaintance, a huge Australian sergeant who walked in like a breath of freedom, dropped his pack on the floor and shook hands all round. "Watchya do?" he asked, and they told him. His story? "Aw, my farmer and me were drinking a brew we'd made and the Bürgermeister was sitting with us. Then the bastard said it was too good a drink for the likes of me, so I floored him. Last time I got six weeks, dunno what I'll get this time. Here, spread this around". He emptied cans of bully, spam and other goodies onto the floor. They protested they did not want to take his food but there was no way he was to be moved, he simply insisted. "The old gal looks after me, I've got coffee for her and some chocolate, I'll be right, mates!"
So they enjoyed good food while they could: the "old gal"
had not pampered them - it was most unlikely she could in any
case and boiled turnip stew with black bread palls after
a while. The Aussie told them the stalag they were most likely
destined for had been bombed by an American formation, huts destroyed
and prisoners killed. It was one of those mistakes, an error of
identification, a fact of war. Powkin could see in his mind's
eye those silver formations that so often attacked Wiener Neustadt
and vividly recalled the survivors from one of the four-engined
aircraft that fell to the murderous barrage seeking to halt the
equally murderous onslaught from the air.
They came in vees, one behind the other in a shining parade, droning majestically on towards a purple, black cloud rent with flashes and noise awful to watch and hear even from the distance of the railway camp. The attackers aimed to blast a corridor from one side of Wiener Neustadt to the other, destroying their factory target in the process, and this system demanded one long line of vees passing unswervingly through the very hell raised before them. They never shrank, the Light Brigade had nothing on these fellows. But, and it hardly needs to be said, they paid. From each attack some aircraft would never return. Came the day when Powkin's informants told him of wounded Amerikaner in the village hospital and he immediately sought permission to visit them. The unteroffizier was torn between fears of what might be said of "his" prisoners visiting Terrorflieger and a soldier's sympathy with a desire to visit wounded kameraden. The soldier won and Powkin, along with "Lofty" - the camp leader of the moment - went down to the village hospital.
There were four men in the ward, three not badly hurt but the fourth, the little pilot of the Liberator, had a badly wounded leg, and he apologised for its smell. They talked for a little while, the airmen were grateful for the cigarettes and the chocolate donated by the prisoners and, just before Powkin and Lofty left, one said, "Hey, these nurses, we've been blowing hell out of that town, yet they've still given us the best of care. Can you thank them properly? We can't get across"
Powkin gave the thanks and appreciation to the three nurses, who nodded and said nothing until one looked up and said simply, "Jeder Wund tut weh" ... "Every wound hurts." They left in silence.
Soon the three lightly wounded were taken from the hospital to a stalag, but things were bad for the little pilot with the badly shattered leg and he would need an amputation. For this a blood donor was needed and one was found in Powkin's camp. There were no hitches and the rotting limb was removed at the knee. The next visit saw the pilot in good heart, his blood donor in the bed next to him. The American looked up as Powkin and Lofty entered and brightly announced, "Hey, have to visit you guys! After all, I've got British blood now, I'm one of you!"
Powkin said he would try. Pete, the blood donor returned to camp, off work for the day and Powkin set about getting the American up to see them all, and it worked so that one evening a guard accompanied the pilot, now on crutches, to the camp gate and when he swung into the compound he was straightway picked up by Lofty who sat him on his shoulders and paraded him around the cheering prisoners. Nobody could have restrained this rejoicing, not for his flying but for his recovery.
Nonetheless it must have caused affront and offence, for within the hour a tall Stabsfeldwebel, a "Large Animal" whispered Powkin's communist friend, marched in and bawled them out; it must never happen again, the pilot must go back to the hospital. Powkin spoke his piece, they were happy because the airman had survived an amputation, they would like to see him again in the hospital before he was taken away, he had been through a lot. The "Large Animal" glared, was silent, and then said, "You shouldn't! You shouldn't, but one has to be human." Then, in a firm tone of command to them and the unteroffizier, "Aber nur ein paar von euch! Nicht die ganze Bande!" - "Only a few of you, not the whole mob!"
The little man was taken back to the hospital. Lofty stretched
himself out on his top bunk, head against the wall and feet sticking
out over the bottom of the bunk. "Powkin," he sighed,
"if that German bastard wants me just tell him I'm I'm indispensable".
He fell asleep. They never saw the American again. Hopefully,
probably, he would go to a hospital camp, a "heillag",
and then be invalided home.
As the Aussie sergeant had believed, it was indeed Stalag 18A that was to welcome them back into the fold and late in the afternoon of the last of their few days in Friedberg's gaol their sheep dog in the guise of a very tough-looking, well-armed railway policeman marched them down to the railway station and onto a waiting train. This guard turfed an old gentleman out of "their" compartment into the corridor. The word "gentleman" is used advisedly for the old un's remonstrations were couched in well-chosen words and spoken with dignity. The guard asked him with some asperity "was he a German?", to which the old boy replied that he was most certainly of that opinion, and the guard bade him enter the compartment and sit with them.
It was not warm in the compartment but the corridor with its broken windows was the home of an icy blast. "Yes, four Engländer, from up near Wiener Neustadt," so the guard told the story, "fourteen days on the way." Here the old gent queried the term "Engländer", he heard them speaking French and the situation was made clear to him, two Engländer and two Franzosen.
The journey to Graz, where they had to change, was short, and the stay, though equally short, was oppressive and seemed to last a long while. As the train pulled in at the station a mob of soldiery at the end of the platform let out a shrill baying chant, warning everybody not to enter the last carriage. This they repeated whenever a train appeared, why and to what purpose Powkin never knew, but the hyena scream in the grey gloom, the smoke ghosts wafting along the platform and into the waiting room, these, with the strange machine noises had an eerie and depressing effect.
Worse and sadder was the scene in the waiting room. People huddled in obscure groups in the shifting, smoky blue light, a murmur of subdued talk emanating from the depths of each patch of gloom and oddly untoward, and, in the middle of the place sat two poor remnants of war, each no longer sane. One docilely sat counting his fingers, his lips moving but his eyes expressionless and dull, he seemed unable to get past six and would start again, "Eins..zwei". The other wept and raged, not understanding why he could not get his hands out of his strait-jacket. The guard with the two patted him on the shoulder, asked him in a gentle tone to be calm, he was ill and must be calm. "Not ill! Not ill!" screamed the poor wretch and then collapsed into hopeless sobbing. His docile companion stopped his fingers moving for a moment and looked dully at the weeping slumped figure next to him, his look held no sign of anything human. Then he returned to counting his fingers, "Eins, zwei .....sechs?"
Powkin felt it lacked only the odd warlock, perhaps a witch or two, to complete the scene, the moving shades, madness, murmuring, the animal screams in Catholic Austria, under Adolf Hitler.
The short journey on to Wolfsberg gave Powkin, and perhaps the others as well, for nobody spoke, a brief period of introspection, possibly triggered off by the dismal scene in Graz. Had they merely caused a deal of trouble and a bad time for the men they had left in the camp? Powkin, knowing them, thought they'd more likely relish the rows and the shouting and dismissed out of hand any thought that they had let anyone down. Still and all, was their escape anything but a gesture? Sixty, perhaps seventy miles in a dozen days, not at the best time of year for a ramble and deliberately chosen for that purpose, and, oh dear! here they were in a train speeding them along the very way they would have walked. The old ludicrous touch that seemed to follow Powkin and in the gloom of the compartment Powkin allowed himself a shamefaced smile. A smile which signalled the end of the downs, never really part of his nature. So, was it, after all worth it? Oh, Lordy yes! Even if just for the sheer hell of it, immensely well worth it.
No reception at Stalag 18A, just a single, quite amiable guard whose gesture wafted them into their spacious room for the night. They would not hurt themselves bumping into anything, the room was bare but well blacked-out, the "Verdunkelung" tastefully stretched across the barred windows. The four looked at each other, shrugged shoulders and smiled before squatting on the floor to see what they might have left in the way of food. Not a great deal, but there would doubtless be enough in the camp.
They were not to be left alone, for within a wee space of time the door opened to admit a somewhat ill-matched couple. One was a tall, surprisingly lightly clad Frenchman and the other shorter figure was the best-dressed Russky Powkin had ever seen. His uniform was immaculate and, for some reason, he felt it necessary to display his skill at hiding objects on his person. Firstly he unstitched his képi flaps and produced razor blades, then, from the lining of his trim jacket, he slid out some maps. He put it all in his pocket. The Frenchman was very interested in their escape: they told him they had intended rejoining Allied troops in Italy, a long way, yes, but where else? Yugoslavia? What! and get your throat cut? Oh, no! This opinion the tall Frenchman passed on to the Russian, speaking fluent Russian, which seemed to surprise the Russian not at all. He agreed vehemently that getting one's throat cut was not a good idea. His "Nyet! Nyet!" had barely died away when the odd pair was taken out, "Hither hurried whence? Whither hurried hence?" A mystery.
No mystery about the next visitors; two expressionless guards, each armed with a long torch. They searched the four most thoroughly, even to the extent of shining the torch's beam up their bottoms. The task over the two left as expressionless as they had entered, stolid, a job done, routine, they had long ago realised that no matter how many times they plumbed the depths with their torches they would never find the plans to the fortress.
Jean, Jimmy, Charles and Powkin curled up on the floor like
four large dogs and went to sleep.
The four were standing side by side, Jean on Powkin's right and then Charles with Jimmy as right marker. They stood "at ease" looking at the three officers behind the table before them. The man in the middle spoke to them in excellent, easy English, fluent and with an impeccable, very "county", accent. He wanted to know how they had got out of the working camp, was there a gate? They answered that there had been a gate, but although it was wired over it was not too hard to get through. This was near enough to the truth and flattered the man in his assumption that he had immediately pinpointed their escape route.
The officer spoke on for a while, he was in excellent spirits on this Christmas morn, he did not want to know how they had survived in the open for nearly a fortnight, which could have been awkward. So, they were off to Italy, eh? Ha! They would never get there! And where did they expect to meet the partisans? Powkin registered horror and translated for Jean, who also looked startled and spoke his piece about not wishing to have his throat cut by bandits, drawing his forefinger across his throat as he spoke. No, they were trying to get back to their own troops, it was their duty. The officer smiled and consigned them to the discipline hut saying, "First-timers, eh? Ah, well, better luck next time, chaps!"
If not a home from home, the Disziplinbarracke was certainly a gaol within a gaol. A private, custom-built little stalag nicely wired off within and from the main camp to provide housing for a select crew, some of whom had revelled in assaulting each other and, on occasion, floored a guard or an Austrian civilian. Others had evinced a deep and scornful aversion to work, one or two had been far too involved with machinery and equipment that mysteriously never did work properly, some simply got drunk from their own distilled hell brew made from prunes from parcels, and others, such as Powkin and friends, had "gone walkabout", an Australian term in this spot inhabited largely by Australians and New Zealanders.
The rooms in the square building were crowded, bunks in fours separated from each other by a gap of a few inches only, so that most folk of normal girth got on their bunks via the foot end. Powkin, Jean, Jimmy and Charles had one section of four bunks allotted to them. Food from parcels arrived from anonymous sources and they ate and relaxed amidst this cheery, matey crew who, even in these confines within confines exuded an air of complete freedom. The untamed, the untameable men of Australasia mingled with those eternal individuals from Britain and France.
The discipline hut was not in itself intended as a punishment, but was merely a holding pen for a while until there should be room in the cell block for the "disziplinäre" to do their fourteen days on a mainly bread and water régime. The Germans knew where they had them and when they wanted them they would not have to play "hunt the disziplinär" through every hut in the stalag.
Due to the bombing, many of the inmates of the discipline hut who had done their bread and water stint were back in the old home as the only accommodation available. Of these, one or two hard cases were destined for return to a most unpleasant working camp in the grounds of a frequently bombed ammunition factory, where they dug slit trenches and did other pick and shovel work supervised by guards who were themselves in the camp as a punishment. This was explained to Powkin when he wondered at the swelling ankle of a neighbour who had laid a wet rag over the joint and was rapping it rhythmically with a large spoon. He was due to see the doctor to be cleared for work and meant to have the swollen ankle to end all swollen ankles when he hobbled in to be inspected.
Another had slashed a cut across his palm and rubbed lysol into it, raising an ugly, sore weal. "Can't hold a shovel with that hand, eh, mate?" He was laughing as he spoke.
Powkin was the first of his four to go to the cell block. Picking up his few oddments he raised a hand in a cheery farewell, and Jean, Charles and Jimmy returned the gesture and Powkin left them. He would ever see them again.
With five others Powkin was conducted to the guard room of
the cell block. Here they were searched for food, but the guard
searching Powkin looked to see the corporal occupied and left
Powkin's one tin in his pocket. Their cell was ready and waiting.
Normally intended for two, it was now going to accommodate six
and the only beds, if such they could be termed, were in the shape
of two narrow planks one above the other, a small "four poster"
painted a pleasant green. The legs at one end had been cut short,
so that the planks sloped at a twenty degree angle, no doubt intended
to make getting up simpler.
Staying put was not so simple, but somehow they managed it, three up and three down. One advantage of this was that they kept warm in the night, for there was no heating and January in Austria is a cold, cold month. Food was bread and water for two days and then, on each third day, "normal" stewed vegetables, mainly turnip, and bread. So it would continue until their "bunker" stint was over.
The bread ration was doubled on the bread and water days, the heavy, black rye bread with a layer of potato sunk down to the bottom, gave them enough to eat along with the tins they had smuggled in when the guards failed so miserably in their search. Further tins came their way during the hour of exercise each day when they stamped about in the snow within the cell block's very own barbed wire compound.
As they moved about, prisoners outside the wire would wait until the guard was distracted and then throw tins over the fence. The guard was very easily distracted and, on times, if no one distracted him he would do the job himself. Back in the cell it was de rigeur to hide one tin in the hole under a floor board, the "official hiding place", where the daily inspection guards could find it and bear it off in triumph, searching no further. At this time, due no doubt to the "Christmas rush", space in the cells was very much in demand and this led to Powkin's group of six doing only twelve and a half days of "bunker" time before being released back to the discipline hut in order that fresh "Disziplinäre" might take over the cell.
Jean, Charles and Jimmy were gone from the hut, probably doing their cell time. Within a short time Powkin was marched before the doctor, who hardly glanced up before pronouncing him "KV", "fit for war", A1 in fact. On the very next day Powkin, with escort, was on his day to another Arbeitskommando.
Further irony in view of Powkin's trek towards Italy lay in the site of his new work camp, some dozen miles from Tarwes/Tarvisio on the Italian border. The camp was unexceptional, one square building in a square compound. The main room where the prisoners lived, ate and slept had a central stove of original design. It was a large cylinder with a removable domed top and once lit could not be replenished with fuel for its fuel was sawdust crammed down around a vertical log, which was then removed and paper lit under the sawdust plug. The lid went back pronto and lo! soon the dome gained a red-hot glow, very effective heating but hopeless for culinary attempts. There were, however, cooking facilities.
To continue the real estate patter, the camp lay in the middle of a flat plain, the result of glacial action eons before and at this time of year still glacial indeed. To the north wooded hills on the other side of the Drau, where the prisoners were constructing a new camp, and southwards a view of the Karawanken range austere in its mantle of snow.
A similar camp, housing a Hungarian army unit, lay further to the east down the valley, as conspicuous from the air as the arbeitskommando. In this situation a somewhat troubling factor in the prisoners' life was what the Austrians called the "Eisenbahn-polizei" - Railway Police - but not at all like the person who had introduced them to stalag 18A.
They were much, much more formidable, winged and armed with cannon and rockets and bearing the names "Thunderbolt" and "Lightning". They patrolled the railway daily and nothing moved during daylight, for any Lok that dared puff about was soon reduced to a perforated wreck. That there was some unease among the prisoners and their guards need hardly be said. During the day most of the camp's residents were in the wooded hills and the first snarl of diving plane and thud of explosions saw each scooting uphill and hugging his favourite boulder. Some prisoners, on a rota system, had to stay in the camp to do fatigues and this was not a popular spot when the planes flew over.
They seemed, however, to be only concerned with traffic and had not as yet attacked buildings. The sense of alarm rose therefore to the heights when the noise of rocketing and cannon, the roar of the dive and the snarling rise out of the smoke was heard quite near one day and the report in the evening stated baldly that the Hungarian camp had been devastated, with many casualties. The prisoners' camp bore no sign or other indication of its purpose and there had only just been a start on a slit trench, which was at this point a mere rut in the ground, a few feet deep and a few feet long. A rat could have found shelter in it, but nothing larger. Just outside the camp gate the guards had a small hole with a stone slab over it, equally futile, again fit cover only for small beasties.
It was as trapped rats that Powkin and two others found themselves
when one aircraft ominously circled the camp on their fatigue
day. The guards fled to their hole, locking the gate as they went,
and the three prisoners dashed to kneel in the slit trench, their
bodies above ground from the hips up. Powkin saw the aircraft
turn and yaw, dive towards them and he stood up, hands on hips,
in sheer disgust and a shuddering fear to look at what was coming
to kill them. He saw the head-on outline and a flicker of gunfire
but in that instant the machine veered away and vented its fury
on a concrete pillbox by the bridge over the Drau. Perhaps Powkin
standing was too much for a pilot to murder in cold blood, perhaps
the pillbox was the intended target anyway. An act of courage?
fear? No matter, a trapped rat would do as much, although the
hands on hips part might come a bit hard.
On the way to work next day they saw the hunks of concrete punched out of the pillbox. Two police standing there had been in the box during the attack. "Gut Schiessen!" laughed the camp's Australian, but the police merely looked at him darkly. No sense of humour.
So they had survived and would soon move to the camp in the woods, which was almost completed bar a barbed fence to keep strangers out. A feeling of assurance and awareness of the end of the war being nigh gained the upper hand over the long habit of not looking beyond the day. The early Spring warmth helped and, although they were far from complacent, they now hoped. Even now, though, at this late stage, there would be some who would never see home, the "Willies" of the prison camps all over the Third Reich.
Why "Willy"? "Willy" was the name in a popular chant in canteens and pubs wherever servicemen drank. Most of its verses are too crude to print but the final verse ran
"Cold as the tip of a polar bear's tool,
Cold as the ice on a frozen pool,
Cold as charity and THAT's damn chilly,
...then in a whisper...
But not so cold as our poor Willy ...
...a pause, then a joyous, bellowing roar...
'E's DEAD, pore bawstard!"
Laughs, cheers, great fun! Fill 'em up! Sing it agin!
Powkin's camp had its "Willy".
You might say Willy's bladder killed him, for no matter what he drank before the day's work began, tea or coffee from his parcel, perhaps the third brewing of that same tea or coffee, perhaps acorn ersatz, perhaps just a cup of water, it made no difference to his routine. Within half an hour of arriving at the work site Willy's shout of "Posten!" would ring out and the nearest guard, with a smile, would wave towards the nearest bushes and say, "Ja, ja, geh' nur!" and Willy would wander off to relieve himself.
On this day the prisoners were felling trees and had just begun when Willy wandered off. The first tree was starting its fall as Willy dreamily emerged from the bushes and began to amble back to rejoin his friends. The tall stem with its feathery top twisted as it fell and began its quickening descent, gracefully, like the swish of those horse-tail fly swats the Egyptians used, so elegant, so apparently harmless, yet they left a smear of dead fly behind.
In like manner the slender column fell twisting to one side and caught Willy with its feathery top, could not really hurt, it seemed, but then the ground shook, they knew what had swatted Willy and everybody ran. He was hardly marked when they got him out, but his breathing was not right and the foreman, twisting his chin, spoke to one of his men, who set off back to the camp.
The prisoners made a rough stretcher for Willy and brought him into the camp where they laid him on a trestle table and then stood not knowing what they could do, the German word "ratlos", without counsel, would best describe their state. As they stood, a square brown man in brown uniform walked in. He was the Hungarian doctor from the camp nearby, a camp so recently shattered by air strike. He examined Willy, gently and thoroughly, and then looking at Powkin said in a voice that had long abandoned sentiment but retained a lasting compassion, "Tell them their comrade must soon die". The slight shrug of the shoulders and the hands miming relinquishment made any translation unnecessary. Willy's mates looked down and then one said in a flat voice, "We'll see to him."
Some time later the camp manager sent for Powkin and the foreman and they stepped into the shade of his office with their usual barely concealed feelings of revulsion and truculence. The camp manager was a skin and bone robot, a function, an unlovely being. So they were startled to see him raise his skull-like face marked with every sign of deep concern. He spread his hands out on either side of the paper before him. "This is dreadful, shocking, and what can I do?" His eyes appealed to the rafters. Powkin almost felt a warm sympathy but any such sentiment was banned by the manager's next words, "You see, it is my pride and perhaps my strength in office, that I fill in every section of every form most satisfactorily. My superiors have often remarked on it, but here.." he stabbed his forefinger on the grey paper.. "here it states, 'factors contributing to the accident' and"... his eyes under his wrinkled brow spoke sheer misery "I know of none!"
Powkin and the foreman looked at each other. "Na ja, the tree's branches were all on one side and it twisted as it fell." The skull before them almost glowed, "Wunderbar! Einseitige Aste! So.." The German sibilants lent themselves to his delighted hiss. He started to raise his pen and waved them away. As they turned the manager bade them wait, "Moment!" he said, and they stood watching him write "One-sided branches" on his form, a smile splitting his face. Then he looked up, placed fingertip to fingertip in a composed and prayerful manner and spoke, "Tell the prisoners I am sorry for their comrade." Then he motioned them away. As Powkin and the Austrian reached the camp the Austrian spoke one short German word, and said it all.
In the hut Willy's mates had done him proud. He lay in state, immaculately garbed, boots shone, trousers pressed, cap badge bright, his hands folded on his chest. Powkin paused, looking at that calm, young face, so serene in death and then he shivered although it was far from cold on that Spring day in 1945. Willy had a chill not of this world. "None so cold, none so cold" so the words of the chant went. But it's chorus soft this time, mates, soft, and low. Because he is dead. Poor, poor bastard.
For the rest their time of captivity was almost over, they
walked freely and their remaining worries loomed large in the
background but remained in that background never, praise the Lord,
to eventuate, and featuring only as...
Captivity in the sense of being guarded and prevented from moving out of the camp had ceased to be a fact for days before the end of April. The camp was now the EX-prisoners' domain and the joking remark about the fence keeping out strangers had become fair comment. Their "Posten" remained in their own quarters and mingled in the camp with the ex-POWs. Discipline and order could have been a problem, but the camp had a real camp leader in the shape of one "Jumper" Collins from the name Powkin assumed him to be a Royal Navy man and "Jumper" had always been in charge, handled Germans, British and Australasians equally deftly and stood no nonsense.
"Jumper" also spoke good German and Powkin no longer had to answer the call of "Do-o-olmetscher!", for which thanks be given. No, "Jumper" was boss, and a fine one. The "minor alarms", were caused by the chaotic situation where people took arms for their own safety, remnants of the beaten armies wandered still armed and potentially dangerous through the region on their way from Italy into Austria. One or two found their way to the camp, were fed and seen well on their way.
One most villainous looking specimen, swarthy yellow in complexion and slant-eyed, walked into the small farm house where Anna and Maria lived when Powkin and two Austrians were there. He stood, a small Genghis Khan, thumped his rifle on the floor boards and demanded food stating he was "Volksdeutscher" - had some remote German ancestry. They sent him on his way quickly.
The "threat looming large" was Hitler's rumoured
last command to all troops to slaughter all prisoners and retreat
into the hills for a Wagnerian last stand. The Austrian guards
had told them they could receive such a command but would never
obey it, and they were sincere. An SS detachment in the area,
however, was a different kettle of fish, but here their guards
again stated firmly that they would have warning and see no prisoners
were left at the mercy of the SS. Anna told Powkin she'ld hide
him in the barn, the very first place to look for refugees, but
she meant well!
Powkin had been seeing Anna for some little while for his main employment in the last days had been to go down the lane with one of the Austrians to visit Anna and Maria, talk, peel potatoes and help with odd jobs. Anna, snub-nosed, blue eyed and blonde was the first pretty girl Powkin had spoken to for literally years and he held her in some awe, much to her amusement. One day there were no potatoes to be peeled, for it was all done when Powkin arrived and Anna was just finishing the ironing. She loaded him up with a pile of folded sheets and bade him take them upstairs where she unloaded her pack mule. As she put the last folded item in its place she turned, cupped his face in her hands and kissed him gently, a long kiss and Powkin held her, a trembling, shaken Powkin.
Anna, wide eyed, said in wonderment, "War's denn so lange her? Warst Du so ganz allein?" They parted a little later, Anna stating, "Du kommst morgen wieder!" Yes, he would be back and yes, it had been a long time and, oddly, she had intuitively known that he had been "so quite alone". Strange paradox, but in the crowded prisons, in the "Left Luggage Office" where men were stacked on shelves they were yet each alone. Alone like every individual in the press at the pithead when the shaft has caved in, mind and heart held in limbo between damnation and hope.
"Morgen wieder!" she had said, but on the morrow the 8th Army came through, the police wanted an interpreter and, half pushed forward half volunteering, Powkin went with them to serve a little longer and then to return home at last to find that four years can change many things. He wrote to Anna and received a delighted reply, but the letter arrived many weeks later with the post as it was in those days, and by then events and situations had Powkin held firmly fast.
The start of a period in his life in which he meant much to
others in many different ways, knew adventure of sorts, was loved,
worked and played but the whole time through was but a part in
the lives of others, a welcome guest, a catalyst in strained circumstances,
never his own man. On occasion he would be beyond calls on his
time, in a sailplane over the Downs, at night pausing on a Cotswold
hill on his way from one call to another, and once in a while,
with some amusement, he would see a free man in the shape of a
small, quite unimportant person walking over a frozen hilltop
in Austria, at Christmas time. At which point a chorus of "Jingle
Bells" should fittingly end this tale.
