A Kiss for the Enemy (55 page)

The third week in April arrived. The German camp staff appeared to have fewer illusions even than the prisoners.

‘We could walk out of this place at any time,' said Matheson, shaking his head. ‘But I'm not sure exactly where we'd go.'

Curiously, Red Cross parcels had started again to appear and the prisoners' health and spirits quickly recovered in consequence. But deprived for many years of responsibility, the prisoners needed orders to be given and decisions to be taken by others. Deep in their hearts, while all longed for liberty, some feared it a little too. Every day, now, they could hear the roll of artillery in the east, continuous, ever louder, ever nearer.

It was on 18th April that Lise was summoned to Ward Reception to find the Ward Superintendent, Sister Brigitta, at the centre of a peculiar scene. They had for some days heard unceasing gun fire to the east and the atmosphere throughout the hospital was tense. Sister Brigitta was facing a small man in Party uniform with a wizened face and pince nez. They were looking at each other with unflinching hostility. In the corridor, audience of what appeared a confrontation, were four dirty, ragged bundles, just identifiable as human beings. Two elderly folk, almost certainly male and female, were standing, wrapped in coats and scarves, faces barely emergent. There was something in their posture that was supplicant and fearful. On the floor were two different bundles, recognizable, Lise thought, as young women. Presumably, gaining entry by subterfuge or determination, the elders had carried the younger pair into the hospital: although a civil establishment, the hospital had
been ordered for several weeks to admit only military casualties. The four bundles were covered with dust.

‘I suppose they've come in a farm cart,' thought Lise. She saw the eyes of one of the girls fixed on her. They looked mad.

The wizened Party official was speaking. He had a thin, precise voice.

‘I am empowered to remind you that all places at this hospital are reserved for the military and that no treatment is to be given to civilians, whatever their condition. That is an order throughout this district, which has for several weeks been designated a war zone.'

Sister Brigitta said,

‘We have treated very large numbers of wounded soldiers here. We have also, by our Director's order, continued to treat others who have nowhere else to go, especially –'

‘Your Director's order is improper. I hereby declare it superceded.'

‘– Especially where the injuries are attributable to the actions of the enemy. As in this case, I believe, Herr Schlitter.'

‘The Gau authority, which I represent,' said Schlitter, ‘has been charged with enforcing regulations. In this case the regulation is being disobeyed. On a routine visit to this hospital I observed these people entering. They have no claim to be treated here.'

Sister Brigitta eyed him. ‘In default of an order from my own Director, Herr Schlitter, I have both a moral and a professional duty to these people and I intend to discharge it. I–'

At this point one of the elderly bundles, certainly male because standing cap in hand, coughed apologetically and spoke.

‘It's our granddaughters you see, we –'

‘Shut up!' said Schlitter, his thin voice rising. The old man flinched and bowed. Sister Brigitta raised her hand with immense authority.

‘On the contrary, I know this man's explanation will resolve matters. Continue!'

Caught, unenviably, between two such persons, and avoiding Schlitter's eye, the old man continued,

‘It's our granddaughters. We were in the farm when an Ivan
patrol arrived. Then a few hours later they left and some of our boys turned up. The farm's where the fighting is now. We stayed in the cellar, we didn't know where to go or what to do. Last night we hitched the horse to the cart and moved here. But when the Ivans came they caught the girls, you see.'

One of the girls started to speak. Her grandmother tried to hush her.

‘Sh, sh!'

The girl jabbered incomprehensibly, her voice rising to a screech like a parrot. Her eyes were transfixed with terror. Schlitter started to talk, but Sister Brigitta gestured to the old man to continue. Schlitter looked baleful.

‘It's not only – you know – it's their breasts as well, you see,' said the old man deferentially. ‘They would just go on at them, they bit the nipples off, you see, as well as everything else they did to them. And we couldn't stop the bleeding though it's better than it was. There and, you know –'

‘We'll do what we can,' said Sister Brigitta briskly. ‘Fraülein Arzfeld,' she snapped some orders to Lise. To Schlitter she said, ‘These girls have been injured by the enemy, as much as any soldier and worse than many.'

‘They are not military personnel. I shall make an immediate report!'

Sister Brigitta took no further notice of him and he withdrew, announcing that he intended immediately to see the Hospital Director. The old couple stood huddled in the corridor, itself an overflow ward, until Sister Brigitta hustled them away. Lise wondered fleetingly where they had left the cart and whether Schlitter would arrest them, out of sheer malevolence, when they left the hospital – if, indeed, he could effectively do so since there seemed to have been no police in the village for some time. She took gentle charge of the two girls and established that each, with suitable encouragement, was able to walk.

That night the gunfire in the east sounded louder and more menacing. Lise told Marcia of the peasants' arrival and of the encounter between Schlitter and the Ward Superintendent.

‘We've had some like that,' said Marcia, shaken. ‘But I didn't deal with them myself. Lise, I suppose that's what's
coming, is it? Of course, we've been told all the time, but now it's only a few miles away!'

‘Perhaps they'll respect a hospital.'

But they had both heard stories. There had been the tale of a hospital run by an Abbey, somewhere in Silesia. One of their own nurses claimed that a sister of hers had been on the nursing staff there, had hidden and ultimately escaped. The Abbey had been occupied by the Russians, it was said. Red Army soldiers had murdered every human being, doctors, monks, patients, and, of course, nurses. Their colleague's sister had allegedly witnessed the Russians' arrival.

‘They were like mad, wicked children. They smashed everything, furniture, glasses, medical equipment. The surgical spirit they drank. They played games with everything, threw it about, took it to pieces, the way a spoilt, destructive youngster treats a toy. The people they treated like insects to be squashed. They threw the patients out of the upper windows, roaring with laughter all the time!'

‘Was anybody spared?' Lise asked. ‘No,' the nurse had answered, ‘nobody. Nobody at all.'

Three days later the Hospital Director assembled all the staff and spoke briefly and without evasion.

‘We have to make difficult choices. It is not possible to obtain directions which are practicable to obey. I have certain responsibilities and I must now make decisions.

‘You all know the stories of what can be expected from the Russian Army, even in a hospital. Unfortunately, I believe these stories to be true. I do not expect they are true of everywhere, all the time, but I fear they are sufficiently true to mean you are all at grave risk. The front is now under ten miles from here.' He spoke against a rumble of gunfire. It was not German gunfire. German detachments had been drifting back through the village for the last two days. The wards, of course, were as full as ever and the nurses were worked off their feet.

‘I have asked for military transport to evacuate the hospital. I have received none. I have, however, spoken to the local Wehrmacht Commander. He has agreed to requisition a certain number of farm carts. In them we must try to load as many as possible of our patients who cannot walk. Every person who
can walk, even slowly, must walk. There are no riding horses left in the neighbourhood. There are no motor cars, and if there were there is no fuel for them. Five columns will leave, starting tonight.' He gave details.

‘I wish to say one more thing. In ordinary circumstances it would be the first duty of all of us, at whatever personal risk, to remain with our patients, to care for them to the end. Circumstances today are not ordinary. I hereby declare,' the Director said, standing ramrod-straight, and frowning, ‘that I regard it as consistent with the sense of duty of every female member of the hospital, of every nurse, to move independently at any time, if thereby she sees a better chance to escape. And, of course, return to her duty in more favourable circumstances. I cannot protect you as I should. You must do your best to protect yourselves. Your capture,' said the Director carefully, ‘will not help your patients. Thank you.'

His last words were accompanied by a number of explosions, sounding nearer than before. It was being whispered that somewhere, both north and south of them, Russian armies had already penetrated west of where they were; and that in the north a mighty Soviet push was being mounted towards Berlin itself.

That night five pathetic little columns, carts, bicycles, limping men and bravely marching nurses started the painful move westward. In spite of the Director's pessimism three motor vans had been produced from somewhere, burning wooden fuel in remarkable contraptions fitted to the roofs, but somehow gaining from it sufficient power to move. Lise and Marcia moved with Sister Brigitta: two ancient ward orderlies, two dozen patients on foot and seven more loaded on carts which they all took turns to drag. They were under the nominal control of one of the doctors. Doctor Winckelmann was plump and elderly. Marcia thought that the journey was going to be as hard on him as on any of them.

They moved in darkness. The April nights were still cold. They had their route. Doctor Winckelmann spoke with a little assumed authority at their first halt, soon after dawn.

‘We are behind German lines. We should now have six hours' rest. The patients require it.'

But it was to Sister Brigitta that the party looked for discipline and guidance. Untiring, driven by an iron sense of duty supported by an equally iron constitution, this remarkable woman steered the little party westward. Progress had been very slow. Now she spoke.

‘Herr Winckelmann, I do not believe that we are, strictly speaking, behind German lines. It does not seem to me that there is anything which can precisely be called a German line.'

It was true that the roads had been cluttered with columns of mixed character, a few motor vehicles, exhausted horses and even more exhausted men: and every enquiry about the enemy had been received with shrugs. They were, they uneasily felt, not moving covered by the Wehrmacht so much as fleeing with it.

‘I believe,' said Sister Brigitta flatly, ‘that we should try to get back as soon as possible not to where the Director told us he hopes to re-open our hospital, south of Brandenburg, but west of the Elbe. That is over seventy miles.'

‘Sister Brigitta, we have no authority –'

‘The Director did not know the circumstances we would find on the roads. It has been obvious throughout these last hours. We must keep moving westward. We must move at least to the west of the Elbe. We cannot stop except when absolutely necessary. If we are overrun we know what will happen. We cannot defend ourselves. There will be no mercy.'

She spoke dispassionately. All knew that she had little fear for herself. The wounded men, limbs aching, nodded. Fear lends strength. They muttered among themselves. The Elbe, as Sister Brigitta had said, was probably seventy miles away but east of it they could all scent the imminence of death, at best.

And so the little column became not a party ‘redeploying to a new location' as Doctor Winckelmann importantly expressed it to various military police encountered on the way, but a group of refugees seeking personal safety and bent on escaping not only the enemy but the harsh measures of their own side taken against all, even at this last, terrible hour, who were less than absolutely obedient to authority. They moved as best they
could and rested only when they could go no further. The sounds of battle, heavy gunfire, now rumbled on every horizon. And by night, every horizon was red with fire.

On the sixth day, Sister Brigitta said,

‘One more good march and a night's sleep and we'll see the Elbe!'

‘What happens the far side? How do we get across? There'll be check points on every bridge, if it's not blown. Where are the Americans?'

Nobody chose to discuss these questions, muttered without great concern. To keep going westward was to them the road to salvation and it was best to think no further. They knew that if they could reach territory which the Anglo-Americans would no doubt soon overrun they might – they just might – survive. Marcia's heart beat faster at the thought.

‘We must cross the Elbe,' said Sister Brigitta, ‘somehow.' It had been a shorter journey than they had first calculated, agonizing though they had found it.

But late on the afternoon of the sixth day, as they moved along a small road running northwestward, they encountered a disturbing sight. A gaggle of country people, wagons piled high with possessions, fear rising from them like gases from a manure cart, met them coming the other way; moving not west but southeastward. A few words showed why. These refugees were trying to escape from the menace nearest to them, and Russian troops were already approaching their village from the south-west, while to the north more were, at that moment, moving rapidly toward the Elbe itself with nothing in their path. So the refugees said, desperate, incoherent, as they crowded round the little hospital column, each with new tales of horror spread like singed paper caught on the wind, tales of terror, burning villages, raped farmsteads, everywhere corpses, corpses. The eyes of the children were bright with fear and fatigue.

East of the great river, it now seemed that there were few pockets of territory to which the Red Army had not penetrated.