Do the Birds Still Sing in Hell? (24 page)

But Horace still couldn’t control the urge to escape for good. Making his way back into the camp and through the window to rejoin his fellow prisoners grew ever harder. He took another sip from the bottle of wine, swirled it round his mouth and spoke.

‘I must get out of there, Rose, I must escape.’

Rose remained silent.

‘I need maps, compass and money, papers and civilian clothes.’

Tears were forming in her eyes, as they did every time Horace
broached the subject. As he continued Rose began shaking her head, broke the eye contact. They’d had the discussion a hundred times and each time Rose would tell him how impossible it was. She’d get a map and some money and quite possibly some stolen Polish paperwork and a compass. But the only way to cover the 420 miles of German occupied land was by train. Roadblocks and patrols were set up every ten miles and making the journey through the dense pine forests of Silesia and Poland was simply impossible. Rose explained that even on the short, hour-long journey from her village to the camp, German guards would sweep through the train two or three times, inspecting each passenger’s paperwork.

‘You can’t speak Polish, Jim,’ she’d plead with him. ‘The first time you are questioned you’ll be caught. Can’t you see how stupid it is?’

And she’d sit in front of him with those big, sad, doleful eyes and beg him to sit the war out in the camp. She had her own selfish reasons. He was safe, free from the guns and the bombs and the artillery the rest of his countrymen were facing. They met regularly and made love and she gave him extra food, and each night like the one they were sharing made the war bearable. And of course she couldn’t wait to tell him of the Allied successes and of how the end of the war was in sight.

‘Please, Jim,’ she begged, ‘stay here with me. I couldn’t live if …’

Her voice tapered off in a whisper as she kissed him. They parted and she pressed her cheek into his. He felt the wetness of her tears as they came, each one tugging at his heart strings, each one pleading with him to stay.

As always, he promised he would stay. But it was no good; the feelings were too strong. He simply had to break free for good.

On 12 December, in an operation called Winter Storm, the Germans attempted to break through to the troops trapped in Stalingrad. It failed abysmally, the only real winner being the winter weather. As the year came to an end things looked brighter for the Allies. Rommel was trapped in Tunisia and the German army was still stranded at Stalingrad. On the other side of the world the Japanese appeared ready to abandon Guadalcanal.

January 1943 was remembered in the wood wool camp at Freiwaldau for an escape attempt. A big, tall, gangly young lad from Newcastle upon Tyne had totally disobeyed the command of the prisoners’ escape committee and fled under cover of darkness. Young Bruce Harwood was a compulsive escaper with ‘form’ from two previous camps. No one knew how he escaped and he never ever told anyone, despite being put under enormous pressure by his fellow prisoners. Horace wondered whether he’d discovered the secret of the cotter pins. He’d managed to last four days – a new record – and had walked a grand total of 60 kilometres before being picked up by a German patrol. He’d been beaten to within an inch of his life and returned the same day to the camp he’d come from.

By way of punishment Bruce Harwood spent the next ten days in ‘the hole’. This was an underground, freezing cold coffin, six feet by six feet with a ceiling no more than five feet in height, restricting the prisoner from even being able to stand. The only food came from the other prisoners via a small barred trapdoor in the roof. There was no toilet and no running water. On the eighth day Horace drew one of the short straws and gave up part of his ration, a chocolate bar from his Red Cross parcel. Young Harwood barely had the strength to realise Horace was there when he dropped the chocolate through the trap door and prayed the quivering, shivering wreck would see out the next two days.

On the tenth day the Germans gave permission to the prisoners to open up the hole. Bruce Harwood had survived… barely. He couldn’t speak, had frostbite in both hands and lay in his own stinking excrement. The Germans allowed the prisoner a few extra days in the sick bay and young Bruce made a recovery of sorts, losing four fingers to frostbite. Several days after he was able to walk again, he queued up for his ration of soup. Horace watched him closely. Harwood was twitchy and nervous, scanning the forest beyond through a three-metre-deep roll of barbed wire the Germans had placed in the gap between the two barrack room buildings. There was no escape, no way through, especially with six German guards looking on in broad daylight. Young Harwood didn’t give it a thought. As the prisoners and the guards talked around the huge bubbling soup cauldron, he seized the moment. No one was looking; everyone was focused on the sweet-smelling pot. He sidled casually over to the impregnable barrier and somewhere deep in the recesses of his brain a signal told him there was a way through.

It was impossible. He was caught like a rabbit in a snare. Each turn, each movement of a limb or twist of his scrawny body tightened the razor-sharp wire. It cut into his body without mercy until he lay still, breathing hard, unable to move, resigned to the fact that his latest escape attempt had failed.

Freddie Rodgers was the first to spot him trussed up like a piece of meat. He ran over to help, calling out to a few of the prisoners who also ran over. Harwood was crying now; blood covered his face and body. The prisoners’ task was a grim one as they too fell victim to the razor wire. The German guards looked on. After ten minutes they’d managed to separate and prise enough of the wire apart so that Horace and Jock could take a leg each and drag him free. Harwood lay on the
ground, exhausted. Without warning a German guard stepped forward, cocked his rifle and fired a solitary round into the centre of his back. The prisoners were outraged and for a minute or two the mood turned ugly. The German camp commandant backed his man up, saying the POW had had chance after chance. He could not simply keep escaping. Perhaps the taste of a bullet would make him think again. Harwood was still conscious and groaned as his fellow prisoners lifted him onto a makeshift stretcher – an old door that had lain in the rubbish heap of the camp for some time. As Harwood reached the entrance of the sick bay he fell into unconsciousness. He never recovered and died 24 hours later.

The incident affected Horace deeply. He lay awake on his bunk night after night, thinking about escape and the men and their mental state, and how he too might crack the longer he stayed incarcerated, caged like a wild animal in a zoo. Nevertheless he intended on keeping his date with Rose a few days later. At their last meeting she had promised she’d bring a map.

By now the snow was lying thick on the ground outside the window. The sight unnerved him. The vegetable garden, although covered with snow, was a well-trodden area and footprints from the German guards as well as POWs littered the uneven ground. Horace felt sure he could disguise his tracks with a cane stick that had supported runner beans in late autumn and had been left there for the spring crop.

‘Don’t run off too quickly this time, Jim,’ Flapper said. ‘Take an extra 30 seconds to work those prints in.’

‘I will, Flapper, I will.’

With a movement now familiar to them all, the men heaved and he shot from the window, tucking his head under his body and springing to his feet after the roll. He took a few seconds to compose himself, then looked up and started his run to the
forest. He’d gone no more than ten yards when he saw the headlights in the distance. He hadn’t heard the car, hadn’t noticed it from the window, but he was in no doubt where it was heading. The one road that led to the camp was relatively straight and ran along the side of the forest. However, when it got directly in front of the camp, a sharp 90-degree turn brought it directly facing the gatehouse. The headlights were on full beam and Horace judged that within two or three seconds the car would hit the bend, straighten up, and light up the escaping prisoner like an actor on a stage.

It was too late to turn back and there was not enough time to get anywhere near the forest. His blood ran cold as he spied the fluttering illuminated swastika on the bonnet of the car and in a split second he instinctively flung himself into a four-foot snowdrift to his left. He gasped as the freezing snow found the gap between his neck and collar, and cursed as it came into contact with his hands and face as he attempted to conceal himself. He’d been just in time, as the car headlights cast a beam of light over the drift. It levelled up, slowed down and came to a halt outside the gatehouse, no more than 20 feet away. Horace was aware of car doors opening and closing and voices, then footsteps crunching thorough the snow. More voices – and then, to his dismay, the footsteps stopped. He’d picked up enough German to understand the conversation between the guards and the SS men. It was a routine call; they’d called by on the off chance. Five, ten minutes passed. The guards offered them a coffee but they politely declined.

Go for a fucking coffee, Horace wanted to call out, already beginning to shiver as the wet snow penetrated his clothing. But he dared not move. If he could have controlled his breathing he would have, acutely aware that one slight movement would mean death. The SS men didn’t sit on the fence when it came to escapees. He remembered their brutality
on the march to Holland then Luxembourg. They shot the prisoners dead for the slightest reason – exhaustion, answering back. On one occasion they had even shot a young fusilier for taking too long to empty his dysentery-ridden bowels at the side of the road. And he remembered with a pain that shot right through his heart the moment they shot the poor old French woman for daring to offer a bit of food to a starving man. They were bastards, utter bastards.

Still they talked… on and on. They talked about the war and the weather and the production of the camp, then they moved onto their wives and girlfriends and even what they’d had for supper.

Horace lay still in the snowdrift for nearly 30 minutes. He couldn’t remember cold like it, not even at the first camp in the depths of winter. This was a different kind of cold, a wet, frostbiting, bone-penetrating type of cold, and he couldn’t bear it any longer.

At last the car doors slammed shut and the engine started up. But still he had to lie for another agonising five minutes as the guards shared a cigarette before resuming their patrol. He pushed down on the snow with his numb hands and raised himself to his knees. A thousand white-hot needles tugged and ripped at every muscle, every sinew of his body as his freezing bones refused to operate. He forced one foot in front of the other, made back for the window then wondered how on earth he would climb through. No way could he climb through in his frozen condition and no way could he give a little shout and ask his mates to lend a hand. Time was running out; he had to make a decision – the guards would reappear any minute.

Rose would be waiting, panicking; she would be desperate. He wondered if she’d been watching the incident from the boundary of the forest. No, he remembered now. They’d agreed to meet at the church. He had to go.

The half-mile walk took him nearly 20 minutes but each step was less painful than the one before. He looked up at the dark sky through the gaps in the trees. It looked heavy, like a huge sack of potatoes waiting to burst, and he wondered if daylight would ever penetrate through.

By the time he crashed through the door of the church he was almost thawed out. Rose ran to him, immediately wrapping him in the rug that had been laid out before the altar. A small pewter flask of brandy she’d taken from her father’s drinks cabinet helped the revival process. As she draped herself around him, the heat from her body warmed him better than he could have possibly imagined. He explained the story about the SS as she stroked his brow, occasionally kissing him on the lips or slipping his cold fingers deep into her mouth, sucking on them, warming them in an instant.

Horace looked into her eyes and smiled. ‘I don’t think I’m in any fit state to please you, Rose.’

Rose’s expression never flickered. ‘Whatever condition you are in, Jim Greasley, you will always please me.’

‘Maybe so, Rose, but I swear the old fellow won’t be making an appearance tonight.’

Rose grinned. ‘Are you sure about that?’ She slipped a hand between his legs and squeezed. ‘He seems OK to me.’

Horace didn’t have the energy to resist. He repositioned the rug and lay back with his hands behind his head. ‘I swear, Rose, I don’t think I’m up for the job. It’s the cold and the diet. We need more meat in the winter to fight the cold. The food may be better than the previous camp, but in winter we need more.’ He smiled. ‘That’s my excuse, Rose, and I’m sticking to it.’

Rose stood up and began loosening her coat. She played with the buttons, stretching the moment out. ‘I won’t accept excuses, prisoner,’ she teased. ‘I have spent three hours
travelling here today and you will make love to me. It will do you good, warm you up a little more.’

She cast her coat over the pew and slowly and seductively she unbuttoned her thick woollen trousers and lowered them to the floor. Horace sat and marvelled at the private impromptu strip show unfolding before his eyes. She hooked her hands into her delicate white knickers and lowered them to the floor. As if commanded by an invisible force Horace repositioned himself on his knees as Rose stepped from her knickers and inched ever nearer.

He’d heard all the stories from the older men but had never had the inclination or desire to explore the female form further than he already had. Tonight was different; tonight Rose had the urge to push the boundaries that little bit further too. It was a mutual decision, one they hadn’t ever discussed, but one that just happened there and then in the tiny chapel deep in the Silesian forest. Her tiny pubic triangle was only inches from his face and his hands instinctively found her buttocks. She parted her legs, leaned back ever so slightly and he pulled her towards him as his tongue located the dewy folds of her moist vagina. They made love again with an urgency they couldn’t control and lay in each other’s arms, wanting the moment to last forever.