The Tunnel (10 page)

It was here, at
Dulag-Luft,
that Peter wrote his first letter home; a letter that was difficult to write, as he could not say anything about how he came to be where he was, nor anything about his captors. He asked for warm underclothes and wrote down a tangle of platitudes and veiled references from which he hoped his mother would be able to unravel enough to set her mind at rest. He also wrote to Roy telling him that the crew had agreed that he should have the car.

A few days later the sergeants left for Lamsdorf. Standing in the slush of the compound, watching them march away, he felt that his last link with the world he knew was being broken. He turned back into the camp, but could not face the crowded anteroom. It was all so mean, so sordid; squabbling over who was to have the slightly larger slice of bread, bolting breakfast to rush and bag a chair; queuing early in order to get the best seat at the concert. It was infectious, he was doing it himself. It was like it had been when he first joined up; a crowd of adults thrown together, without common loyalties nor ties of any sort. Later, when they had started on the navigation course, there had been the common goal of the ‘Wings’ exam, but here they had nothing. Not even the remote aim of trying to win the war. The future was grey and endless; endless feeble chatter, endless preoccupation with rations, endless lack of privacy. He thrust his hands deep into his trouser pockets and plodded slowly round the wire, head down, shoulders hunched; a typical forlorn ‘kriegie’ attitude.

That evening he heard that the paratroop doctor had been killed while jumping off the train on his way to the hospital at Obermassfeld.

Every week a list of names of those who were to be ‘purged’ to a permanent camp was pinned to the noticeboard in the dining room. This week the purge was to
Oflag XXIB
in Poland, and Peter’s name was in the list. He was glad to see that John Clinton was going with him. There was something about the young Army officer’s quiet self-sufficiency that had captured his respect. He had shaken off the first, almost panic-stricken frenzy to get away and spent most of his time reading. It seemed a complete reversal of his earlier frame of mind, but Peter sensed that he was holding himself firmly in check, realizing that their stay in this transit camp was short, tiding over the time until he could concentrate wholly on the problem of escape.

As soon as Peter knew that at last they were really going, he began to make plans for his own escape. The dark night hours spent wrestling with the shame of capture had hardened his early misery into a cold resolve. Convinced that he had not made the most of his opportunities, refusing to accept excuses from himself, he vowed that he too would make his getaway.

He sewed special hidden pockets into the lining of his greatcoat, where he concealed the scalpels and the little food he had managed to collect. He spent hours in the library studying an encyclopædia from which the censor had omitted to remove the maps. He traced some of the maps on to toilet paper and hid them with the other things. But the doctor’s death had made him even more pessimistic about jumping trains, and he knew in his heart that this preparation was merely a front to convince himself that he was doing all he could to get away.

At last the purge party was assembled outside the huts, complete with baggage. Peter was amazed at the quantity some of them had managed to collect in so short a time. They were made to march to the station, which was several miles away, and he was glad that he had decided to travel light.

John Clinton carried his luggage in his pockets, including a book that he had taken from the prison library. He marched with an amused expression in his eyes.

‘What’s so funny?’ Peter asked.

‘These chaps with their bundles. They look like the lost tribes of Israel.’

‘Maybe they’ve got some sense. You don’t know where we might find ourselves.’ Peter shifted his small bundle from one shoulder to the other. ‘Probably just as well to have something to start life with. It may be a perfectly new camp, with nothing there at all.’

There’s no point in preparing to settle down,’ Clinton muttered. ‘If you set out with that idea you’ll never get away. Look at that chap!’ He nodded towards a broad, stocky air-gunner named Saunders, who was staggering along under the burden of an unwieldy bundle wrapped in a blanket. He had a large ‘Bomber Command’ moustache, and wore a balaclava helmet and flying boots.

‘Old Bill looking for a better ’ole,’ Peter said. ‘I wonder what he’s got in the bundle.’

‘Doesn’t matter what it is. It shows that he’s preparing to settle down.’

At the railway station they were lined up by the
Feldwebel
and then addressed by the officer in charge. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘you will be some days in the train. If you behave reasonably, you will be reasonably treated. If you attempt to escape, you will be shot. This is not an idle threat. The guards have been given instructions to shoot any prisoner who attempts to escape. There is a live round in every barrel. That is all, gentlemen.’

They were herded into carriages which were divided into compartments in the English fashion, but the seats were wooden. Peter found himself squeezed into the corner of a compartment opposite a tall fair flight lieutenant and Saunders, who had arrived triumphant with his bundle, which he put on the floor between their legs. Next to Peter sat Clinton, already reading his book.

‘Any more for Margate?’ Saunders seemed determined to make it a pleasant journey. He handed cigarettes round, and soon the air was thick and stale with smoke. Four men at the far end of the compartment began a game of cards. Peter wondered which of them had been shot down with a pack of playing cards in his pocket – or had he picked them up at
Dulag-Luft?
Saunders had evidently been laying in a stock of something or other, judging by the size of his bundle. Peter looked at him closely. A red good-humoured face with a mouth that smiled easily under his grotesque moustache, a smile that was half-suppressed like that of a schoolboy. The mass of untidy hair, tow-coloured, and a quick dogmatic way of speaking that was not aggressive. An easy chap to get along with.

The flight lieutenant was of a different breed. Fair and slim, even in his issue uniform he looked immaculate; his moustache was short and carefully tended. His name was Hugo, and he sat now as though the whole trip had been arranged as a sort of pleasure outing in which, although not entirely approving, he felt he ought to play his part.

Two hours later the train was still in the station. They had made several false starts, but had been shunted back to their original position again. At last, as though satisfied with the lesson it had taught them, the engine whistled in derision, and slowly the train pulled out.

Long hours of sitting on a wooden seat … nothing to read … falling asleep, and waking stiff … smoking, yawning, and moving restlessly … thinking of home.

Often the train stopped for no apparent reason, miles from any station. Each time it stopped, the German soldiers jumped down on to the track, and stood with tommy guns at the ready until it started again. Each time it stopped, Peter tensed himself to escape, but each time he saw that it was hopeless. There were raised sentry boxes, fitted with machine-guns, at both ends of every carriage.

… Long hours of standing still on railway stations, with the curious public peering in as though at animals … stiffness and soreness … hunger and thirst … the agony of knowing that outside the carriage window the countryside stretched golden in the winter sunshine … occasionally a placid canal or tumbling stream … knowing it, but not being able to see it because the window was steamed up … knowing that there were wide rivers, with steamers and strings of brightly-coloured barges with peasant women at their tillers … knowing it only by the hollow sound made by the train as it crossed the bridge …

… Twelve men in one compartment, and only one man allowed by the guards to stand at a time … ten minutes standing, and two hours sitting in agony on a wooden seat … wanting desperately to stand and stretch, but sitting, willing the time to pass … talk, talk, talk …

John Clinton, when he had finished with his book, which was of no use to the others as it was Latin verse, proved himself a lively and interesting travelling companion. He told them that he had been born in Malaya, that his father owned a rubber plantation where he had lived until he was sent home to school in England. He had just gone up to Oxford when the war started, and he had joined the Army. He kept them amused for hours with stories of his batman, who had watched him like a hawk to see that he changed his socks and underclothes, dosed him with laxatives that he did not need and wrote a weekly bulletin to his mother reporting on his health and spirits. At intervals his mother would get a letter beginning, ‘Madam you will be pleased to hear that we have received further promotion and are now captain …’ or, ‘Madam our shirts are becoming a little worn …’ Clinton had enjoyed his life in the Army and spoke with humour and warmth of his troop of bren gun carriers. It seemed to Peter that if he needed a partner in his escape he could go a long way and not find a better man than John Clinton.

Saunders, who together with his brother ran a greengrocer’s shop in North London, did not appear disturbed at the prospect of several years captivity. The business would go on and in time he would return to it. He took life as it came, finding it good and full of queer incidents which he invited the others to observe from his own original and slightly derisive viewpoint. Life to him, too, was something to be chuckled at, a chuckle in his case at once suppressed and followed by a quick look over his shoulder. He had started his career with a kerbside barrow off Oxford Street, and still retained that furtive, quick look round for the police.

Hugo on the other hand seemed almost devoid of humour. He was gentle, languid and charmingly self-centred. He made a perfect foil for Saunders. His main concerns at the moment were that there would be no facilities for washing in the camp – as, indeed, there were none on the train – and that he would not be given enough to eat. ‘What couldn’t I do to a steak,’ he sighed. ‘With lashings of chip potatoes and red gravy. A T-bone steak.’

‘I’d settle for a plate of fish and chips,’ Saunders said.

‘I’d settle for a tin of spam,’ Peter added.

‘All you chaps think about is food,’ John said. ‘When I was in the desert—’

‘Look out,’ Saunders said. ‘There’s that sand blowing in again!’

But for most of the time the four men were silent, trying to sleep or quiet with their thoughts. From the rest of the compartment Peter heard snatches of bored, unlistened to, repeated anecdote.

‘—stooged straight up Happy Valley. The flak was so thick that it looked like Piccadilly in peacetime.’

‘I reckon there’ll be bags of opportunity to study. Might take a degree of some sort. Law or accountancy.’

‘—turned to ETA, came down through the cloud, and there I was – smack over—’

‘I’m going to settle down. A nice little pub in Devonshire—’

‘—came down so fast that the altimeter stuck.’

‘I reckon we shall be allowed out for walks. In the last war—’

‘Take coal-mining, one of the dirtiest jobs on the face of the earth—’

‘—go out disguised as a German. All you need is a uniform and the right papers. Speaking German is an advantage, of course.’

‘—her husband was a commercial traveller—’

‘—used to fly by the seat of his pants.’

‘Yes, but that’s capitalism in a way—’

‘—best ride I ever had—’

‘But it says so in the Geneva Convention – so long as you’re in uniform—’

Recollection, explanation, rationalization, speculation …

Beyond the steamed up window miles and miles of pine forest, dark inside but with the tall trunks of the outer trees reddened by the sun; inside the compartment boredom and depression, hunger and thirst, the smell of old socks, the choky heaviness of the smoke-filled atmosphere.

Then the failure of the heating plant, the cold.

The cold.

Icicles, formed by their breath on the windowpane - breaking them off to suck because they had no water.

By the third day they had eaten their rations and Peter had given up all hope of escape from the train. He took the food that he had saved from the hidden pockets in his coat, and shared it round among the men at his end of the compartment. Following his example, John Clinton produced a hidden store of food which he too shared. ‘Might as well eat it as let the Germans have it,’ he said. They looked at the others expectantly, but apparently any plans they had made to escape did not include a stock of food.

Late in the afternoon of the fourth day the train made one of its customary halts at a small wayside station, but this time it was different. The escort came down the train, shouting,
‘ ’Raus, ’raus! Ausgehen, alle ausgehen!’

Looking out of the open door Peter saw that they had been surrounded by a cordon of soldiers, steel-helmeted and armed with tommy guns.

‘This is it,’ Saunders said. ‘Full military honours, too.’

It was growing dark as they got down from the train. A fine sleet was falling, powdering their greatcoats and restricting their view. It was colder here than it had been in Frankfurt, and as far as Peter could see there was nothing but a flat unbroken sheet of snow. ‘Looks as though we’ve come to Siberia,’ Saunders said.

There were arc lamps hanging by the side of the tracks and the prisoners were paraded there for roll call. They were counted three times before the guards could find the correct number and they were able to set out, at a shambling gait, for the camp.

The road led them straight across a plain towards a village whose few pale lights flickered wanly through the falling snow. It was little more than a track, seamed and furrowed by passing carts but improving as it neared the village, until they were marching on cobblestones which rang under the steel of their boots. The guards – there were nearly as many guards as there were prisoners – marched at their side, tommy guns at the ready, while in front and behind the column were lorries with searchlights and machine guns.

As they neared the village, some of the men at the head of the column began to sing. Slowly the song crept down the ranks until the whole company was singing. To Peter, walking in embarrassed silence, it seemed that they were singing to show the villagers that, although captured, they were not defeated; he was thankful that they had chosen, not a patriotic song, but
Bless ’Em All
as their tune.

Leaving the village behind them they climbed a long hill, stumbling and slipping on the icy road. They were tired now, and had stopped singing. Presently they saw the lights of the camp ahead, the great circle of arc lamps, and the searchlights sweeping slowly across the empty compound. As they drew near a searchlight was turned on them, blinding them and throwing long shadows from the unevenness of the snow-packed road. It lit up their pale faces, dark beginnings of beards, the odd shape of scarves tied round their heads and the bundles they carried on their backs.