Avalanche of Daisies (49 page)

‘I have been eating gruel for the last twenty-four hours. And weak tea. Today I graduate to soup and bread, so I am told. I have not eaten so well in months. It is unimaginable luxury.'

They compiled a new list of the three phrases, the Prof pronouncing them as Steve wrote them down. Then they were both sprayed with DDT, to protect them while they were working, they collected pencils and erasers and two camp stools from Captain Kennedy's headquarters, and then they walked down the camp to the hut where they were to start work. It was a relief to Steve that he would be usefully occupied and away from that terrible mass grave.

But the hut held horrors too. It was dark and airless and the bunks were simply wooden shelves ranged in three tiers along both side walls, and hideously overcrowded, each one containing three sick and starving men, feet to the wall, shaven heads to the centre of the room. There was an odd rustling sound going on, which made Steve wonder whether there were rats in the place, and the smell inside was foul in the extreme for there was obviously no sanitation. One man was crawling out to the latrines on his hands and knees as they arrived, but others had not been able to make it and lay in their own filth.

It took a few seconds for Steve's eyes to adjust to the darkness and a few more before he realised what was making those odd sounds. Some of the men were trying to clap. They peered from their bunks, touching their emaciated hands together, shush, shush, in ghostly applause.

‘They are pleased you are come,' the Prof said.

The two men worked in the stink of the hut for as long as they could endure it, patiently asking questions
and writing down the answers. At first Steve found it impossible to spell the names and had to turn to his companion for an interpretation of what was stammeringly said. But he gradually improved, the lists were gradually filled and towards noon, the orderlies arrived with weak soup and medicines, followed soon after by a medical officer.

To Steve's horror, two of the men he'd just questioned were certified dead.

‘They can't be,' he protested. ‘I was talking to them a few minutes ago.'

‘They're dying like flies,' the MO said. ‘We took more than a hundred out the last hut.'

‘They're not going to that awful pit are they?'

‘No,' the MO reassured. ‘There's another one dug. They'll be buried properly. We've got a rabbi here now.'

Even so, it was searing to see those poor empty bodies being wrapped in shrouds and carried away. And worse when he went out of the hut for a smoke and realised what was going on in the hut.

While he'd been busy taking names, he'd assumed that the MO was simply examining his patients to see which of them needed medicine; now, watching from the door of the hut, he saw that he was pinning an identification mark on some of them and spending very little time with the others. He wondered what the chosen ones were being identified for and it wasn't long before he found out. More orderlies arrived, this time with stretchers. The identified inmates were lifted from their stinking bunks and carried away.

‘Where are they going?' he asked as two of the orderlies passed him with their burden.

It was to the hospital hut. They were to be de-loused and washed and given a clean blanket to lie on and then the medics were going to take care of them.

‘What about the others? Are you taking them later?'

The answer was chilling. ‘There's no hope for the
others,' he was told. ‘These are the ones who might survive.'

‘But …'

‘Look, mate,' the orderly said roughly. ‘There's no room for all of them. These are all we can manage. The others are dying. We can't save them.'

‘But you must …'

The orderly exploded into temper. ‘Must!' he said. ‘Who are you to tell us we must? There's no must about it. We're just the poor bloody infantry, mate. Not gods. We do as we're told. It's all we bloody
can
do. Oh get out the way for Chrissake.' And he signalled to his mate to carry on.

Pity and anger stalked the camp side by side. Steve couldn't think of anything else except the state of the prisoners. Their faces wept in his dreams and filled his waking moments with an almost perpetual anguish.

Dusty seemed to be able to set them aside. He got raucously drunk, told filthy jokes, and drew another line on his calendar every evening, counting off the days, as if he were still on active service. ‘You just got to get on with it, ain'tcher,' he said. But Steve found every hour more difficult than the last.

He and Dusty were sprawled under the trees after their evening meal on the second evening, smoking and resting, when three of their new mates came bouncing up in a Jeep.

Dusty woke up at once. ‘Nice work!' he admired. ‘Where'd you get that?'

‘Commandeered it.'

‘Where are you off to?'

‘To town. We're moving on in a day or two so we thought we'd see the sights. Wanna lift?'

‘Why not?' Dusty said cheerfully. And after thinking about it for a moment, Steve agreed. Anything was better than sitting there with the smell of the camp eating into their brains and those endless awful faces rebuking and rebuking.

So they went to town, which turned out to be a small place called Celle.

It was like stepping into another world. It was such a pretty town that if it hadn't been for the horror a few miles away, they would have called it charming. There was no sign of destruction, no shattered buildings or shell-pitted roads. Here the streets were clean, the shuttered houses proper and provincial and at the centre of the town there was a green park, surrounded by prosperous houses and fine gardens, where magnolia trees were in full and magnificent bloom, their heady scent wafting into the Jeep with every turn of the evening breeze.

Many of the citizens were out taking the air after their working day, as if there were no such thing as war. They didn't seem to be the least bit abashed to be sharing the streets with their conquerors. They were all well fed to the point of plumpness, and very well dressed, the men in good suits and elegant hats, the women draped with fox furs. It was more like a spa than a town under occupation.

‘And there's the difference,' Steve said, as he and his mates parked the Jeep and joined the promenade. ‘They kill their prisoners and torture them to death, we live and let live.'

‘Maybe they don't know what's been going on,' one of his new mates suggested.

‘They couldn't be off knowing,' Steve said. And as if to prove him right, the wind suddenly changed direction, the scent of magnolia was blown away and the park was full of the ghastly stench of the camp. ‘Oh God yes. They knew. And they didn't do anything about it.'

Pity and anger again, stirring in him like something alive and struggling to be free. ‘I can't bear this,' he said. ‘Let's go back and have a drink.'

The next morning they all had sore heads but there was still work to be done and that day the reporters
started to arrive. It was almost a comfort to the army to see somebody else being shocked. They watched with satisfaction as men from the BBC prepared to film the burial of the dead, for the huge pile of corpses was only half cleared and another mass grave had been dug to accommodate the rest.

Dusty and two of the cooks came out to watch the cameras at work.

‘It don't seem fair to film them, poor buggers,' one of the cooks said, as the bodies were shovelled towards the grave. ‘Ain't they suffered enough?'

But Dusty understood the necessity. ‘They got to film them,' he said. ‘Otherwise no one'll believe it's happened. I wouldn't've done, if I hadn't seen it for mesself. Would you? No. Well then. People have got to see with their own eyes, like we're doing. There's got to be a record.'

‘I seen enough,' the cook said, turning away. ‘Come on, you lot. Let's be 'aving yer. We got people to feed.'

That morning Steve and the Prof started work in the hospital huts. ‘Start with the women's hut,' Captain Kennedy instructed. ‘Some of them haven't been interviewed. It's getting a bit complicated now the MO's shifting them about.'

For a hospital, it was pretty basic. But at least it was cleaner than the other huts had been – there was even a faint whiff of disinfectant – and at least the patients had a bunk to themselves and a blanket to lie on and were obviously being kept clean. But they were very sick and it took almost as long to coax information from them as it had done in the filth of the men's hut.

It wasn't until he'd patiently filled in seven or eight forms that Steve saw the significance of the date he'd been writing at the head of each paper.

‘I've just realised something,' he said to the Prof as they walked on to the next bunk. ‘It's my birthday. I've come of age.'

The Prof knew the right English response. ‘Many happy returns,' he said.

And as Steve was thinking how incongruous it was, another English voice suddenly spoke from the next bunk. ‘May the next one be in peacetime.'

It was one of the prisoners and this one was sitting up, with her back propped against the upright between the bunks and her knees bent to accommodate her length. She was a tall woman and, even in her present state, they could see she was young and had been pretty, with high cheekbones and large well-spaced blue eyes.

‘I am Hannah,' she said to Steve, still speaking in English and she smiled at the Professor. ‘Him you vill not need.'

‘She speaks better English than I do,' the Prof agreed, patting her hand but he spoke to her in German to ask if she was well and she answered him in the same language, coughing into a piece of rag.

Her fragility worried Steve. She seemed too gentle to survive in this gross place. But he asked her name and religion, wrote down her last address, and then ventured to discover how she had learnt English.

‘I vas teach,' she explained. And corrected herself, ‘Teacher. I am sorry. It is a long time I do not speak your language.'

There was so much he wanted to know about and he sensed that she might be willing to tell him, if he didn't tire her too much. The Prof had moved on to the next bunk, so he stayed where he was, perched on his uncomfortable stool and asked if she wouldn't mind talking to him.

No, she would not mind at all. What did he wish to talk about?

So much, he hardly knew where to begin. ‘Have you been here long?'

Again that sweet smile, lighting her blue eyes. ‘For ever, I think.'

‘It must have been dreadful.'

Sadness clouded her face. ‘Yes. It has been dreadful.'

‘Did they starve you deliberately?'

The answer was calm and all the more terrible for that. ‘Oh yes. They meant to kill us all, you see. It vas planned. There vere to be no more Jews. Did you not know?'

He was impressed by her composure and horrified by what she'd just said. ‘We heard rumours,' he told her. ‘I never imagined it could possibly be anything like this though. I mean, this is beyond belief.'

‘This is peaceful,' she corrected him. ‘Now ve are fed. Ve have medicine. Nobody beat us.'

‘Beat you?'

‘Oh yes,' she said patiently.

‘Who beat you?'

‘The SS. The girl, Irma Grese. She especially.'

The commandant's plump female, Steve remembered. ‘But she's young. I mean she's not much older than me.'

‘You think the young are not cruel,' she said, coughing again. ‘I tell you about Fraulein Grese. She kick us and hit us mit clubs. A dog she had. You have seen it,
jal
. If ve fell, she say to the dog, “Bite. Bite. Bite the dirty Jews.'”

Steve thought of the plump, pink cheeks of Fraulein Grese, the thick fair hair, the bright smile. ‘She'll pay for it,' he promised grimly.

But Hannah shrugged her thin shoulders. ‘Vhat payment could she make', she asked, ‘that vould undo one blow? Vould ve come back from the dead because she is killed?'

‘You don't forgive her, surely?'

‘I vill not play their game of hatred,' she said. ‘Hatred hurts the hater.'

‘But to be so cruel. That was evil.'

She considered for a long while, leaning back against the post. ‘She is ignorant,' she said at last. ‘A foolish girl. She is poor, probably. A poor, ignorant, foolish
girl, and to her they say, “Come mit us. Good uniform ve give you. Good food ve give you. Important ve make you. You guard the dirty Jews.” And here she comes and ve
are
dirty Jews. You see how dirty ve are. No vater to vash, rags to vear, no hair. Inhuman you are mit no hair. Dirty Jews. So naturalich, she hit us.'

It was impossible to believe that she could be so forgiving, so understanding, after all she must have seen and endured.

‘I've got to move on now,' he said, and his voice revealed how regretful he was. ‘May I come and talk to you again?'

‘That I should like,' she said.

It was an extraordinary way to spend a twenty-first birthday.

In the next few days, Steve discovered that it doesn't take long to become institutionalised. By his fourth day in the camp, he had developed a curiously lethargic patience, as if nothing mattered except the work he was doing, as if there were no world beyond the gates of the camp, as if he no longer had any will of his own. On the fifth day, the last of the 11th Armoured pulled out and he and Dusty were left behind with the military police and the medical teams, to work on and wait for orders. But the days passed and the orders didn't come and although he should have been concerned about it, it didn't worry him. From time to time he remembered his mother's hurtful letter and Barbara's glowing account of the pre-fab, and knew that when he was back with his unit again he would have to write to them and let them know what he thought, but for the moment they were no more than echoes, and trivial compared to the daily reality of what was happening in the charnel house of the camp.