A Kiss for the Enemy (58 page)

‘My God, soldiers!'

‘What sort?' hissed Lise.

‘Well, not Russians, anyway!'

The bang on the door was peremptory and the farm woman answered it. A figure stood in the doorway, blocking the light. He was wearing a steel helmet and a short khaki jacket, ending at the waist. Several others appeared behind him. In the lane by the farm gate were two armoured cars. The figure in the doorway began shouting.

‘Hey, any men here? German soldiers?
Deutsche Soldaten
, huh?
Verstehen?
' His manner was rough and suspicious but he did not induce fear. The farm woman looked nervous and resigned but there was no panic in the air, no stench of terror. She shook her head.

‘Best have a look around, Lieutenant,' said the soldier standing immediately behind him. He had seen Marcia and Lise and liked what he saw.

‘That's right. Sergeant Fox, get the vehicles turned round. We'll have a good look round. There's Heinie soldiers dressed as farm boys in every barn from here to the Rhine. Out of the way, mother!'

Marcia had wrapped the blanket round her as securely as she could. Her hair was still damp. There was colour again in her cheeks. She got up from the kitchen chair and marched up to the lieutenant.

‘Are you an American officer?'

He looked at her with surprise, and a good deal of appreciation.

‘That's right, sister. Out of the way, now.'

‘Could you please help me,' said Marcia. ‘I am British. I am a refugee and I urgently need to make contact with the British authorities. Please tell me how I can do so. This girl with me is a brave, anti-Nazi German who has saved my life. We need help.'

Anthony spent 19th May in London. He had been flown to England two days after the German capitulation. The liberation of Oflag VI had been an extraordinary episode. First there had been the arrival of the Russians. The prisoners had for several days found themselves free to come and go as they wished. The guards simply disappeared. They did not remain to meet their own end at Russian hands. They were not, as in some
places, overpowered by their prisoners and incarcerated in their turn. They disappeared. They were no longer there.

‘Strictly speaking,' observed Anthony to his messmates, ‘they've deserted.' Bressler kept to his own quarters.

The prisoners made up parties to investigate what was happening in the neighbourhood. The war seemed to be pretty well over. The wireless was listened to now without hindrance and news bulletins were posted by the prisoners themselves. Visits were paid to several villages already over-run by the Red Army. The visitors returned much shaken. ‘Not that I've got much sympathy for them,' someone would say, ‘but Fritz was certainly right. The stories weren't exaggerated. Not good when you actually see it. Not good at all.'

Then, on the second day of this extraordinary period of suspense, a vehicle had arrived with a British officer – a British officer who knew about them and who had instructions. There was, they learned with joy, to be no delay in their repatriation. Agreement had been reached with the Russians. Some of the camps over-run in Poland and East Prussia would take longer to clear: the Russians, it was said, were ‘being a bit difficult'. But in their case Anthony and his fellow captives were within a short distance of American lines. Transfer points had been agreed, transport was made lavishly available and hurriedly converted bomber aircraft flew them to England. On 10th May Anthony, for the first time since October, 1942, was in his mother's arms.

Spring came warm and early that year in England. John and Hilda had slightly extended their living quarters: they were using the inner hall again. The heart of the house was beating. Anthony found that he could sleep, and for days did nothing else.

It was just ten days later that John Marvell said, ‘I suppose they'll give you quite a decent stretch of leave? Any idea what the future's likely to be after that?'

Although it was a warm day the inner hall needed life restoring to it and Hilda had lit a fire, which smoked atrociously. The smell was delicious: there had never been a shortage of firewood at Bargate. Anthony gazed at the fire.

‘Yes, a decent stretch of leave, I hope,' said his father again.

Anthony said abruptly –

‘I'm going back to Germany next week. I'm going to report to the Battalion.'

Anthony's old battalion from North Africa had invaded Sicily and then been withdrawn from the Mediterranean to take part in the campaign in North West Europe. They were now somewhere in central Germany, part of the ‘British Liberation Army': exactly where, Anthony knew not.

‘Good Heavens, old boy, do they want you back that quickly?'

‘I've talked to the Depot. It's all fixed up.' He had telephoned from London on the previous day. By good fortune the Depot Commander was a friend.

‘Yes, Anthony, some replacements are going, other chaps coming home. Yes, I
could
fix it, they want Captains. I'll have to send a personal signal to Colonel Harry – you know Harry White's commanding?'

Another friend.

‘Yes. Please do, Oliver.'

‘But, Anthony, my dear old boy, why? You're due for a month's leave.'

‘Please do this for me, Oliver. I'll explain some other time.'

‘The problem is
moving
you! You can imagine the queues – both ways!'

Anthony had walked down Pall Mall. To his delight a familiar, tall, languid figure lowered itself down the steps of a club.

‘Charles!'

Charles Oliphant said, ‘Well, well! I'm glad you're alive. There was a rumour the serious Anderson got away and you were knocked on the head.'

They chatted happily. Oliphant had, he said, been free for three months.

‘Charles, how on earth –'

‘Well, you see, I got away.'

‘
You
got away! You never seemed even mildly interested in anything so energetic!'

‘Quite. The Germans thought so too, I fancy. I got to Sweden. Out of camp in a laundry basket, that
very
old trick, and absolutely beastly I may tell you. Then to Lubeck where I struck lucky.'

Oliphant still conveyed the impression of having lifted no finger. Anthony gazed at him and admired.

‘I'm back in Germany now. I've taken on the job of looking after a
very
senior General. He's not as bad as he looks and I go around explaining him away to people. He's touchingly grateful. It gets me a lot of travel and he's got unlimited use of an aeroplane. We're flying back there next week, 24th.'

Anthony looked at him.

‘Charles, is there a spare seat? Could your General take me over?'

‘My dear boy, nothing easier. He's most obliging. He even flew my young brother, Robin, home last week for twenty-four hours in London, on some spurious excuse – my baby brother is a troop leader in my Regiment over there. Of course he'll make no difficulties over you. But, my dear fellow, why on earth do you want to go back to the bloody place? You must be owed ages of leave. And, as you know, the authorities are sure we're all psychiatric cases, we old prisoners, so why not exploit the fact and have a holiday?' But it was not Oliphant's way to intrude with personal questions. He guessed Anthony had reasons of his own. The flight was arranged.

And so, that evening at Bargate, Anthony said, ‘I'm going back next week.' He went on as naturally as he could, ‘There's bound to be news of Marcia any day now. Over there I might be able to help. I'm sure there'll be pretty regular leave so I'll be home again soon. And I want to see the Regiment again.'

‘Old boy, you'll only have been home a fortnight.' But they said no more. John had spoken very recently to an old friend in the Foreign Office and they had been promised information about Marcia immediately it was to hand. The case of Miss Marvell was well-known. People were kind but it was made clear that the office had other concerns as well.

That night when they had gone to bed Hilda said,

‘They're mad to let him return to any sort of duty. Behind that quietness his nerves are jangling, he's in a terrible state. I can't get near him.'

Anthony had talked briefly and uninformatively of his escape experiences. The Marvells had asked little, wanting nothing
but to give him peace, decent food, normality, affection. Anthony had said,

‘I was lucky. I was sheltered for a while in the house of a brave, anti-Nazi family. Then, when I was recaptured after trying to get west from there, I was beaten up by some Gestapo thug. It didn't go on long.'

They guessed – they knew – that there was far more to tell, and that he would tell it, if ever, when he chose. But they longed for time.

If even half the statements about Tissendorf camp were true, Robert Anderson reflected, they still composed a dreadful indictment. From a handful of the survivors, carefully nursed back to something like health, he had now spent a good many hours extracting a dossier of evidence. These were the fit ones, the lucky ones, those quick to recuperate. Evidence had started to be taken as soon as possible; it was still only 19th May. Many others would take weeks or months: or more. But from these lucky ones, their memories fresh, their hatred raw, he had composed a record in some detail of the lives of the inmates of Tissendorf. To each witness he had explained that the authorities had no wish to put additional strain on those who had already suffered much –

‘But you will understand, it is necessary to bring the guilty to justice. For that we need evidence, while recollections are still fresh.'

They were eager to provide it. Some of the recollections he recorded were not so much fresh as foul. He wrote page after page not only about human cruelty and human suffering but about human degradation. He wrote about murder. He wrote about sickness and famine until he could smell the stench of bodies as he wrote. He wrote about cannibalism. It was, several prisoners explained without emotion, important to prevent some of the harder cases killing for food.

‘They had become beasts, you see,' one witness said to him quietly. ‘It's not very deep, the veneer which separates us from brutes. Civilization. Religion. Break it down and we become creatures without souls, capable of anything. Anything.'

He looked very old and wise, pallid skeleton though he was.

‘What is your age?' asked Robert, writing.

‘Twenty-six.'

He took down similar stories, similar sentiments from many.

They had become beasts, you see.'

‘Did the guards know of this? Was it realised? Did they feel responsible for the depths to which their treatment had pushed their prisoners?'

The witnesses were curiously indifferent about their guards, although some particularly vindictive warders or wardresses were described, with their habits, in fearful detail. But the horrors of the place, in the later stages, had principally derived from famine.

‘They didn't feed us. They let us die, scavenge, become like beasts. Like I've told you.'

Then, as many attested, came the unbelievable moment when the guards disappeared. The word went round that the British Army was near, that the prisoners could make the camp their own, that the kitchens and food stores could be stormed.

‘We couldn't get out. The gates were still barred. But we could go anywhere within the camp. Everyone knew where the food store was. Thousands rushed at it – of course many were trampled and didn't get up, it was inevitable. There was no order. It was anarchy. But the storeroom doors were broken down.'

‘What happened then?'

A pause, always. The next part of the story was repeated so often it had to be true.

‘
They
came back.'

‘They?'

‘SS. They meant to defend the camp, you see. The Commandant, the guards, had been ready to hand it over, ask the Allies to send in food supplies. But then
they
came back. And of course they found a mob, they found chaos. It was just when the food store was being looted. Some people bolted, some went mad and tried to go for the SS themselves, a whole mob went for them with their bare hands, imagine! Screaming like wildcats!'

‘And then?'

‘The SS opened fire. It went on and on. You never heard such noise. Screeching, shouting. Most of us got behind huts and lay on the ground. There was blood everywhere. And smoke. You saw some people staggering about, then collapsing, still holding loaves of bread they'd looted and with a leg or arm hanging by a skin, ripped off by bullets. I'd been in that hell over a year but we'd seen nothing like that afternoon.'

Robert wrote it down. The identity of the SS Unit and its commander had been established.

‘Did any of the prisoners try to establish contact with the SS? Try to co-operate in getting some sort of order?'

‘Co-operate,
Herr Hauptmann?
I don't understand. It wasn't possible. They were shooting, you see.'

But one woman, thin like the rest, a scarecrow, but eyes shining fiercely from a gaunt, lined face said in her evidence,

‘Yes, of course it should have been done. The SS were frightened. The prisoners were a mob, out of their minds. It should have been possible for somebody to talk to the SS, get the prisoners moving into another part of camp, give an undertaking they could keep the food they had, calm things down. What happened was the worst thing of all. Chaos, followed by mass murder. You see, the prisoners were in a huddle, they couldn't get away.'

Robert wrote busily. He checked her name.

‘Frau Meier, was there any –'

‘Fraülein Meier.'

‘Fraülein Meier, was there any attempt of the kind you've described?'

‘Yes, one. One brave woman walked towards the SS, absolutely calm. She was calling out, calming the prisoners near her. She had such presence, it was having some effect. She had no fear. And amid all that, that –'