My Place (47 page)

They kept travelling north, afraid to enter any town after that. Eventually, they were worn out, desperate. They watched another small town for a few days, it seemed all right. They entered and, once again, hung around the well. When a woman came for water, Bill asked her if she could take them to the head man, it turned out it was her husband.

This time they were lucky, these Italians hated the war and the Germans. They took Bill and Abercrombe to a safe farm run by Guiseppe and Maria Bosso and their fourteen-year-old daughter, Edmea. Bill said they were wonderful people, full of guts. They treated him like a son. He learnt to speak Italian fluently and, because he looked like a northern Italian, he sometimes passed himself off as one, drinking
vino
and singing songs with the Germans in the tavern, just like other Italians did They tried to
keep friendly with the Germans; that way, the villagers hoped that when they made their periodical trips through, they would not check too carefully.

During the day, Bill worked in the fields with the other labourers. When they heard that the farms nearby were being searched for escaped POWs, Bill and Abercrombe would hide out down near a small creek. Sometimes, it was days before it was safe; during this time, they lived on frogs, green snakes and berries, it was far too dangerous for even the Italians to sneak food to them.

Eventually, they'd get word that the coast was clear and the whole village would have a big dance in one of the barns to celebrate the fact that they'd outwitted the Germans again. They'd all laugh and dance and drink too much
vino
.

It was too cold to hide down the creek in winter, so Guiseppe built a big haystack with a room inside. The Germans always stuck their bayonets into every haystack and, if they hit a post, or if there was blood on the end of the bayonet, they'd set fire to the haystack and burn whoever was inside.

One morning, the Bosso family were very upset because they'd had word that the SS had burnt and slaughtered a whole village for sheltering POWs. The town had a meeting to decide what they were going to do. They all decided to continue hiding Allied prisoners, even if it meant losing the whole village. Bill said he told Guiseppe it was a risk he wouldn't let them take. All the POWs in the village agreed. They all decided to take their chances and move on.

Guiseppe got in touch with the Underground, who said it was no use them trying to join up with the Yanks, it would be better if they headed for Switzerland. They sent two members of the Resistance to guide Bill and Abercrombe over the Swiss Alps. Bill had his twenty-first birthday in the mountains. When they reached the border, the Swiss guards gave them hot chocolate and some warm food. They told them if they crossed into Switzerland, they'd be there for the duration of the war, which could be years,
but if they went back and joined up with the Yanks, it might only be a few months, because the Americans were making rapid progress at that stage.

Bill didn't fancy sitting in Switzerland, he had too much spirit for that, so he asked the guides with them to take him and Abercrombe back to Italy. So they took them back over the mountains and then pointed them in the direction where the Yanks were supposed to be advancing. Bill and Abercrombe headed off.

That night, they came to a road and were about to cross, when Bill said, ‘Don't, there's something wrong.' There was nothing in sight, but Bill had a premonition it was dangerous. He hid down in the ditch and told Abercrombe to do the same.

Abercrombe was fed up by this stage, so he said, ‘Listen ya stupid bastard, there's nothing there, I'm going.' He ran onto the road, but halfway across, a searchlight spotted him and he was gunned down by a machine-gun. Bill said he was so shocked he just froze. He knew that he had to move, but he couldn't.

Finally, he forced himself to get going. He walked all night until he came to a large river. He sat down amongst the reeds and pulled out a butt left over from the fags the Swiss guards had given him. He lay down and was half asleep when he heard the sound of barking dogs coming closer and closer. Germans, he thought. He started to run, a bullet whizzed past his head, missing him by only a few inches. He stopped and turned with his hands in the air.

To his relief, it was only the Italian police. He spoke swiftly and told them he was a labourer on his way to work at a nearby farm. They said, ‘You're no labourer, you're a rapist and a murderer. You're wanted in Rome for killing many women.' They showed him a poster with the rapist's picture. Bill said he couldn't believe it, it was his double. He was forced, then, to tell them who he really was, he showed them his dog tags.

‘You shouldn't have run,' they said, ‘we would have let you go. We can't now, because we have to account to the Germans for
every bullet we use. If we let you go, they'll know. We have to think of our families, we're sorry.'

Bill was taken and handed over to the SS. They questioned and tortured him for days on end, asking where he had been, who had helped him, where had he hidden. Bill said he would rather have died than tell them a bloody thing. He was like that. He was a very proud man and very stubborn.

Every day he heard the firing squad in operation, and every day he wondered if he would be next. They always walked past his cell with their victims, if they turned left past his cell, he knew it was an execution, right and they were transferring the prisoner to somewhere else.

One morning, they came for him. He thought, this is it, I'm going to die. They'd been really brutal to him the day before and got nothing out of him, so he thought they must have decided to give up and shoot him instead.

At the end of the corridor, the guard said, ‘You know which way.' Bill turned left and the guard butted him in the back with his rifle, knocking him to the floor. When Bill went to get up, he kicked him hard in the ribs with army boots. Bill rose and felt the guard's rifle hard in his back. ‘Turn right! You are being transferred to Germany.'

He was taken to the office, where he was handed over to another guard.

On the way to the train, the guard said, ‘Don't try to escape and we'll get along fine.' Bill was surprised that this chap spoke in English. He had boarded the train in the company of this guard and two SS officers.

The German guard gave him a cigarette and said quietly, ‘Speak in English, the SS can't understand.' He confided to Bill that he had been educated in England and had fought in the First World War as well. He said he hated the SS, he called them animals. He warned Bill to watch out for the youngest officer. ‘Don't try and escape,' he said, ‘he'll use any excuse to shoot you.'

This guard was the one who accompanied Bill to the POW
camp. Before he handed him over, he gave Bill a heavy overcoat and some good boots.

‘Never barter these,' he said, ‘you won't survive without them.' Bill said he was sorry they hadn't met under different circumstances, he was a really nice bloke.

Bill was taken to Stalag 7A in Moosburg, but was only there a few weeks when they transferred him to Stalag 8C in Sagan. I'm not sure which of the camps he was in was near a Jewish concentration camp, one of them, anyway, because Bill ended up being in several camps on and off. He said it was terrible, being near the Jewish camp, because of the smell and sounds that could be heard day and night. He knew they were people, but they sounded like tortured animals. It was really eerie. He said even though conditions were bad in the POW camps, he hated to think what they were doing to the Jews.

Bill palled up with another bloke who was half Jewish. The Germans treated him badly, they whipped him all the time. Bill tried to stick up for him and they said, ‘You want to stick up for a Jew, we'll treat you like a Jew.' It was really bad for him after that.

In the Sagan camp he was in, he had to work in the local coalmines. It was long hours and damp, dangerous work. He developed a bad chest infection, so they said he could do easier work, they sent him to dig potatoes out of the frozen fields. Bill said it was easier down the mines. The only advantage to working in the fields was if you could pinch a potato and use it in camp for bargaining. Bill said they were fed on vegetable soup which was just water. Once a month, the soup had meat in it, a horse's head. The big thing was to get the eyes, otherwise you ended up with a bowl full of wet hair.

Some of the guards at Sagan were really brutal. They loved to burst in in the middle of the night, tell the men to strip and then stand them at attention in the snow. The worse the war went, the meaner they became.

One day, they assembled the men and told them they were going to hand out Red Cross packages. They tipped out Nestles
milk, jam, tea, cigarettes all into a pile and then mashed it up together. ‘Now,' they said, ‘you can't complain you didn't get your Red Cross parcels!' After that, they told the prisoners they had to eat it, it was a big joke to the guards.

One day, towards the end of the war in Europe, they informed the prisoners that they were going to march to another camp. There had been rumours in the camp that the Russians were advancing, so that was probably why they were moving them. They were marched fifty miles to Spremberg, where they thought they would stop, but, instead, they were forced to march another three hundred miles to Duderstadt. It was very cold and they had to sleep out in the open snow. There was no food, they had to find what they could by the side of the road. Bill said even the German people were starving by then. They stopped near one village and an old German peasant woman ran up to him and shoved a stale piece of black bread into his hand, a guard shot her in the back. Bill said that guard was a real bastard. He was always belting someone and would use any excuse to use his rifle.

On that march a lot of prisoners died of cold and were just left by the side of the road. I think Bill was really glad that he hadn't traded his heavy overcoat, because he really needed it, then.

When they reached Duderstadt, the conditions were terrible. The camp was infested with lice and there was excrement everywhere. There was only one rough latrine for over a thousand men. Prisoners were dying like flies from dysentery and pneumonia. There was nowhere to put the dead, so they just piled them on top of one another near the gate.

After he'd been there another few days, there was another rumour that the Yanks were close. That scared the Germans and they cut down the torture a bit.

Early one morning, a tank broke down the gates of the camp and a sandy-headed Yank popped up and said, ‘Any of you guys want some ginger cake and ice-cream?!'

Bill said the men that had any energy left just cried and cried. The Yanks gave out food, but some of the prisoners had been
without for so long that it made them violently ill and they died.

The Yank in charge couldn't believe the state they were all in. He said, ‘Is there any one of these German bastards you'd like to kill?' An English soldier lying on a mat raised his hand. He was so weak he couldn't stand, so two of the Yanks supported him, they held the gun in his hand and helped him point it at the German guard who'd given him a really bad time. ‘Help me,' the Englishman whispered, and the Yanks pulled the trigger for him. Later that day, the Englishman died. Bill said there was no one there he'd kill, but if he ever met up with a certain SS officer, he would have shot him.

They were all taken by trucks to American transport planes and airlifted to France, where they were given medical treatment before being transferred to England. Bill spent six months in hospital in England before he was fit to sail home.

I thought about everything Bill told me after I had returned to live with my mother. I knew that was just the tip of the iceberg, he hadn't told me the real story.

By the time I'd been with Mum three weeks, he'd sobered himself up and come around to beg me to come back to him. I knew then that if I did, it was for ever, I couldn't leave him again. I had to go back. He had no one. I still loved him. I thought maybe I could help make up for what he'd been through.

It turned out I was wrong. I couldn't heal his mind, it was too damaged, they hadn't broken his spirit or his will to live, but they'd broken his mind. He had a sensitive side to him, they'd destroyed that, degraded him. He couldn't get away from what was inside of him. He couldn't escape from his own memories.

***

In no time at all, I was pregnant with my second child. They put me into hospital to bring her on, because they said she was going to be too big. I had to sit in hot baths up to my neck and drink
schooners of castor oil and cascara. That didn't work, so they fed me some pills and gave me over thirty injections; a week later, I still hadn't had her. Finally, the doctor strapped me up, ruptured the membrane and left me with the nurses.

By the time labour started, I was exhausted. I didn't know how I'd have the strength to give birth. I went into some kind of trance and began speaking in an unknown language, nobody could understand what I was saying. They called the doctor in, and when Jilly was finally born she shot out and covered him in a gallon of green water.

They took me to the ward, I was really low. I found myself floating in the air, looking down at my body lying on the bed. I could see the matron and doctor working on me, trying to revive me. Suddenly, I was back inside my body and the matron said, ‘Thank God, we thought we'd lost you!' I was advised not to have any more children, or at least to wait three years before another one.

Bill was trying hard to hold himself together, but there were still times when he'd go off on a binge and I wouldn't see him for a few days. On these occasions, Mum would come and stay just to keep me company.

She was doing housework now, and could work when she pleased. I was glad, because it was easier for her. She was always buying clothes for the kids and dropping in groceries, she knew I had no money.

Bill had a nervous breakdown and they put him in Hollywood Hospital. He couldn't cope with any pressure or responsibility. I used to feel awful when I visited him, it was like all the men in there belonged to a club. Instead of being pleased to see me, he'd make me wait while he finished a game of cards with his mates. I felt like an intruder, they all seemed to be living in some kind of dream world. Bill was sent home, eventually, with a couple of bottles of drugs that were supposed to keep him calm.