Do the Birds Still Sing in Hell? (11 page)

Talbot looked back at the mass of prisoners and then back to the SS man.

‘I am an undertaker, sir.’

A huge cheer rang out from the ranks of astonished and laughing men. After the beating that followed, Frank Talbot spent two weeks in the sick bay with a fractured skull and a
broken tibia. He would tell the men afterwards that the pain he suffered was worth it.

The men were ordered to reveal their civilian roles. Incredible though it seemed, a gentleman’s barber would be spared the normal duties. By this time every man in the camp had lice and keeping prisoners’ heads shaved was the only way to control the spread.

Horace was shown into a small room adjacent to the offices of the camp and a queue of POWs made to line up outside. It was there that Horace shaved the lice-ridden heads from dawn until dusk with no running water or electricity. As the day went on his feet swelled inside his battered boots until they cried out for mercy, but by sitting the prisoners on an old shoebox and distributing his weight from one leg to the other every few minutes, he managed to give each foot a break. And he thanked his lucky stars that he could manage cutting hair, for nothing could be worse than the work the outside parties were being made to undertake.

The first workers returned after day one looking more pale and gaunt then their starving malnourished comrades inside the camp. Flapper had been one of those assigned to the work party. He said that at first that the men were glad of the change of scenery, happy about the fresh air and a little exercise as they’d been marched the short distance just outside the village of Mankowice.

They had been carrying shovels, picks and spades and some assumed they were about to start work on a building project, perhaps digging the foundations for a new factory or maybe another camp. They had stopped outside a graveyard and one by one were ushered through the gates of the elegant, well-kept cemetery.

At first Flapper believed they were simply there to tidy things up, a gardener’s working party. Then he noticed the
names on the gravestones. Isaac and Goldberg, Abraham and Spielberg. And the Star of David carved or painted into each stone. A Jewish cemetery. Given the rumours that flew around the camp there was no way the Germans would want to trim the bushes and control the weeds. Instead the prisoners were instructed to dig a hole six feet deep.

‘This grave is for anyone who disobeys my orders,’ an English-speaking sergeant explained.

The full horror of their task became clear as he rambled on. They were to exhume the dead bodies of the Jews and rob them of everything they had taken with them in death. Gold rings, watches… even the gold fillings from their rotting teeth were pulled out with pliers. The SS stood watch as the crumbling skeletons were abused, robbed of everything. Afterwards the remains of the bodies were taken to a huge pit dug by a previous party and thrown in without ceremony. Garwood cried as he relayed the details to his friend: the bodies of small children and women dressed up in what were once their finest clothes – mere rags now, soiled rags – and how the prisoners had been made to strip the skeletons bare, just to make sure nothing was missed.

‘Is nothing sacred to these bastards, Jim?’ he asked between tears.

It had been a bad day, possibly the worst so far. As each day, week and indeed month passed since he had been captured, Horace had drifted off to sleep at night thinking things couldn’t get any worse. But they did.

As unpleasant as conditions were, Horace could not complain about the task he had been allocated inside Fort Eight at Posen. The men were glad of the respite and a pleasant conversation as they sat in the makeshift barber’s chair. It was as if an air of normality had returned to their wretched lives
in the few short minutes it took to take off their hair with a cut-throat razor, cold dirty water and a lather stick.

Both barber and client transported themselves back several years and a kind of make-believe act took place for a few precious moments before reality kicked in again and the men were back to face the brutality of the SS soldiers and the ruthless conditions outside of the room.

‘Off to the dance on Saturday night, sir?’

‘Why yes, Jim… and you?’

‘Wouldn’t miss it for the world, sir. Got myself a pretty little thing to take along too, her name’s Eva.’

‘Fantastic, Jim, you’re a lucky man. I noticed her too, figure like an hour glass and well built up top.’

‘I’ll say, sir.’

Another filthy creature crawled down the gleaming blade of the razor. Horace squashed it as it settled on the nail of his thumb, leaving a bloody imprint as the blood sucked out of its host exploded from its miniscule body.

‘Managed to get your hands on them yet, Jim?’

Horace smiled, pursed his lips and smiled at his client.

‘I’ll say, sir… Finest pair of tits this side of Leicester, nipples like bloody organ stops,’ he laughed.

And so it went on, and at times Horace felt he was actually back in his old employer’s shop in Leicester. That was all he could do, play with his mind: imagine and play tricks on it. He would get through the war; he had to.

A few weeks into the operation two German SS officers walked in to the shop. Three prisoners waited patiently on shoeboxes by the door. They were told to leave, their place in the queue had been taken, and one of the SS soldiers sat down. The other walked over to where Horace was shaving a prisoner and cuffed the man across the back of his head. Horace recognised the guard instantly. He was a towering man of six
foot three with a noticeable stoop and a craving for unnecessary violence against the prisoners. The men had nicknamed him Big Stoop and he was to be avoided at all costs. There were strong though unsubstantiated claims that he had beaten to death more than half a dozen prisoners in his previous camps.

‘
Hinaus, dies ist jetzt mein Platz.
’ ‘Out, it’s my seat now.’

The prisoner scuttled across the floor, his head half shaved. As he got to the doorway the other guard kicked him in the seat of the pants.

‘
Hinaus
!’ he screamed.

Horace was stunned and a little wary that he was now alone with two German SS men. As he stood there with a cut-throat razor in his hand the hatred inside him welled up. The German lowered himself onto the shoebox and pointed to his face.

‘Shave good,’ he instructed.

No, he wanted to say. I don’t want to shave you. But he knew what the consequences would be if he refused.

Horace made a point of washing his razor as best he could and as he lathered up his customer his hands trembled gently. As Horace prepared to begin, the German made a point of unbuckling his holster belt with his heavy Luger 9mm pistol encased inside. He placed it on his knee and said something Horace did not understand. He pointed to his throat and traced a finger down his neck then took the Luger from the holster and pointed it at Horace. All of a sudden Horace knew exactly what he meant as the German replaced the gun in the holster.

Horace looked the German straight in the eye and smiled reassuringly.

‘Listen here you ugly bastard, if I do spill any of your blood you can rest assured you’ll be in no fucking state to pull the trigger of a gun.’

The German’s colleague by the door jumped up and
shouted something to the man in the seat. He kicked the shoebox away and shouted at Horace. Horace groaned as he realised the waiting German spoke perfect English and had relayed the remark to his friend.

The brutal assault lasted a full five minutes.

The German used nothing but his holster. He battered Horace to the floor around the head and face and continued relentlessly with the assault as Horace lay in a pool of blood, desperately attempting to cover his head with his hands. Blow after blow was landed with the heavy leather holster and the steel grip of the gun. The attacker was breathing heavily now and seemed to take a break from his exertions. He studied the bloody mess of the prisoner before him. Horace was unrecognisable and on the brink of unconsciousness. The SS officer seemed happy with the mess he had made of Horace’s head and face. Then he started on his body. The back first, then around the kidneys and the shoulders. Horace winced as the Luger connected with his collarbone and he felt a crack.

The German finished off with his legs, battering Horace’s thighs, hips and shins and eventually after the prolonged assault, too tired to go on, he relented and it was over. Before he left he bent over and spat in Horace’s face, stood up and aimed a final kick to his stomach.

Horace lay breathless on the floor, too sore to move. His whole body ached; his eye socket, his nose, collarbone and four fingers were broken, several of his teeth lay on the floor swimming in his blood. But inwardly he smiled… he had won. The German would not be getting his shave. Despite his injuries he could not have been happier as he lay in his own blood, his body a broken mess. Eventually he drifted off into a strange, satisfied unconsciousness.

After five minutes the door opened. Horace had not moved; he was unable to move.

‘Jesus fucking Christ – the cunts have killed him.’

It was Flapper Garwood. He, John Knight and Daniel Staines tended their badly injured comrade as he lay still on the floor.

‘I can’t feel a pulse,’ Staines said, ‘he’s pretty fucked up.’

Horace was breathing – barely – and at the third attempt Dan Staines managed to find a faint trace of a pulse. They decided against moving him and instead treated his injuries on the floor of the makeshift barber’s shop. They bathed his wounds with cold water and managed to splint his broken fingers with bits of wood pulled from the doors of the hut.

Flapper was nearly in tears. ‘I’ll get that big cunt back, mark my words.’

John Knight looked up. ‘You and whose army, Flapper? Remember where you are, no weapons, no guns. Nice thought mate, but it ain’t ever going to happen.’

Flapper looked over to Horace’s cut-throat razor lying open on the floor and started to think.

After two days Horace regained consciousness and the men gave up a little of their own rations in order to build up his strength. In a bizarre way it was the best thing that could have happened to him. He lay in what was labelled the sick bay: a room no more than six feet by six with a bed made from discarded ammunition boxes. But it had a mattress of sorts and Horace’s wounds had been washed and disinfected and treated with paper bandages. But best of all, his boots had been removed when he had been too weak to argue. His blackened flesh had been pulled away like the skin of a peach with the lining of the boot but the medic had bathed them and disinfected them and the oxygen did the rest as he lay for many days, his feet bare and exposed to the cool, moist air.

Horace grew stronger by the day, but the medic argued with the camp commandant that he was not to be moved and
reminded him of the terms of the Geneva Convention. He had complained vociferously about the attack but the commandant had merely shrugged his shoulders and said what did he expect – he had threatened to cut a guard’s throat.

Horace lay there for a further six days, thinking about life and his family and atheism and girlfriends and poor Tom Fenwick, but above all how against all odds, no matter how small the victory, how he could make a difference. He thought about the shit he had thrown from the train and about the great friends he had around him and about the working party in the Jewish cemetery – about Flapper Garwood and how the toughest man he had ever met broke down and cried like a baby as he relayed the horrors of what was to become his normal daily routine.

To the consternation of the medic, Horace insisted on resuming his duties only hours after he had been granted another 48-hour spell in the sick bay. His old boots had been discarded and he now stood in wooden clogs, his feet wrapped in flannelette, protecting him against the cold and the hard wood of his new shoes. He would not see another pair of socks for over four years. The clogs felt strangely comfortable, the MOD telling him they would keep out the wet weather and at the same time allow his battered feet to breathe.

The POWs stood and applauded him as he made the short journey to his workstation early that morning and the German guards looked on uncomfortably as he shuffled into the room. Big Stoop, who had inflicted the beating, would not return to the barber shop. Horace knew he would not, nor any German in a Nazi uniform.

Horace had his victory. Horace Greasley, on his own against Big Stoop and the might of Third Reich, had won. He had turned a corner. He had his pride back again.

CHAPTER
SIX

C
ome winter, Mother Nature showed no sympathy to those interned in an unheated German prison camp. Horace thought he had experienced some harsh winters back in Ibstock but nothing had prepared him for the mind-numbing temperatures he faced that in first winter of 1940/41.

He remembered a BBC radio presenter announcing temperatures of ten below when he was about 14, as Horace, Mum and Dad, Sybil, Daisy and Harold had sat huddled around a roaring fire just a few days before Christmas. He remembered being sent out into the frozen back yard for another scuttle of coal as the falling snow found its way down the back of his neck, and how the cold metal of the scuttle had drawn the heat from his fingers. That winter in Poland, the temperatures would touch nearly 40 below.

The former cavalry barracks had been designed to be camouflaged from the air. Two thirds of the living quarters were underground and the roof of the huge complex was turfed with rough grass. It was like an enormous fridge.

The horses had been stabled on the lowest floor, now the sleeping quarters of the Allied POWs. The next level up, still
underground, had been the sleeping quarters and the offices of the cavalry, and now housed the German guards. They had their home comforts: decent bunks, a kitchen and an area to relax with a huge open fire constantly burning from September onwards, and even a library and snooker table. The level above ground was a series of individual outbuildings, offices and private dormitories for the officers. Again, each room appeared to have a log-burning stove or fire grate constantly burning. The logs were well stockpiled under cover near the entrance to the fort. The camp was surrounded by forest so firewood was not a problem, and the guards ensured the prisoners kept up a constant supply as the winter grew harsher.