Do the Birds Still Sing in Hell? (21 page)

The men seemed happy as they chatted in the early afternoon sunshine. Flapper tried once again to strike up a conversation with Horace, his speech impaired by the overloaded portions of bread hanging from his mouth.

‘Come on, Jim. Aren’t you eating?’

‘I’m not hungry,’ Horace replied. ‘A touch of travel sickness,’ he explained limply.

Flapper spoke again as flecks of bread exploded from his mouth.

‘I don’t understand you. The cunts have starved us for two years, then they lay on a fucking feast and you’re not fucking hungry. I swear, Jim,’ the big man said, ‘there is something seriously wrong with you.’

I wish I could tell you, mate, Horace thought to himself. I wish I could tell you.

Rauchbach had been right about the new camp, at Freiwaldau in Czechoslovakia. It was altogether different, with more food, better sanitation and washing facilities, and a new shower block with ten shower roses in a row. And for the first time… warm water.

There were no sentries in watchtowers and not much barbed wire – another indication that the Germans knew escape was pointless. The main camp compound was roughly the size of two large football pitches with outbuildings containing guard rooms, staff rooms, a main office, a shower room and a small concert hall. The walls of these buildings formed the walls of the camp and on the edge between the huts and the forest, a huge vegetable plot. In another huge L-shaped position were the barrack rooms where the prisoners slept and ate and a huge toilet block where 40 men could sit and shit at any given time. Still no privacy, but nevertheless a little cleaner than the last camp.

The buildings formed a huge square and at the top end of the camp was the main entrance, watched over 24 hours a day by at least half a dozen guards. The gaps between the buildings were protected and secured with impregnable barbed wire.

Horace met another prisoner, Billy Strain from Falkirk in Scotland, who would become a great friend. Like most prisoners from Scotland he would become affectionately renamed Jock. His cooking skills had been discovered by the Germans and he worked the prisoner kitchen, sharing the staff quarters with Horace and a number of other key workers.

Later that week, for the first time in over two and a half years, Horace would receive a letter from home. It was written by his mother. The letter was as expected: it had been vetted by the English bureaucrats in the UK and the German authorities in the camp. Everyone was well, his mother wrote, though no
mention of any names. Horace wondered about Harold. Where was he? Was he alive? Mother hoped the war would soon be over, but again no mention of any news on how it was going or who was winning the fight. The letter was more or less chapter and verse the same as the dozens of other letters that had been sent to the other prisoners, as if the writer had been told what to write by the official at the war office. Still, the delivery of the letter pleased Horace, and he breathed a mighty sigh of relief that his family knew he was still alive.

But nothing could shake off the depression he was feeling at the loss of Rose. She was in his waking thoughts and was the last thing he thought of each evening. He tormented himself over her safety and although she had expressed her undying love that final time they lay together naked in the forest at the quarry camp, he wondered how long it would be before she found another lover to replace him. She was a young attractive girl in the prime of her life. He had introduced her to the pleasures of the flesh and she had responded eagerly with an unbridled passion. She had been a willing lover, eager to please and keen to experiment and after that oh, so special first orgasm she had wanted more and more. Of course she would find a new lover. Horace just prayed he would not be German.

It was late September 1942, and the first chills of the oncoming winter had begun to be felt on the early morning parades. On the Russian front the German troops had reached the suburbs of Stalingrad. Horace tried desperately to shake off his depression, but it was not easy. Gradually he thought of Rose less and less, but still she was with him every day.

One morning, for the first time, the men were issued with Red Cross parcels. They contained chocolate and cigarettes, matches, candles, tins of bully beef and powdered Nestlé milk. The camp was comfortable, and again Horace’s guilt rose to
the surface. He was well fed, slept well on an individual bunk with a mattress of sorts, and the working day was a manageable eight hours. Again Horace was the camp barber. He worked hard on the conversations with the prisoners whose hair he was cutting. In camp three there was no need to shave the heads to the bare scalp: body lice were an exception rather than the rule. The familiar skill of cutting hair, as opposed to simply shaving it all off, returned quickly. Maintaining the conversations was hard work. They had been in Leicester and in Torquay and in the previous two camps, but a good conversation was a distraction and squeezed out all thoughts of the lover he had left behind.

Most of the men he talked with were working on the log piles in the camp grounds. The logs were cut into manageable piles that were loaded onto flatbed lorries and taken to a factory on the perimeter of the camp. It was here that the wood would be cut into fine shavings and used as ‘wood wool’ for bedding and upholstery for the German war effort. Other men worked in the huge pine forests that surrounded the camps, felling the trees, stripping them of their branches before bringing them back to the camp. It was one of these men returning from his duty one day who would give Horace the fright of his life.

Dave Crump sat down in the barber’s chair with a huge grin on his face.

‘What are you so happy about, Dave?’ Horace asked.

The man could contain his good news no longer.

‘I saw Rose today,’ he grinned. ‘At least that’s what she said her name was.’

Horace’s scissors took on an involuntary life of their own as he lopped a big chunk from the prisoner’s head.

‘Whoa, Jim, you’ll have my bloody eye out. Just put the bloody scissors down for a minute, please.’

Horace did as he was told but was unsure if his so-called friend was playing a sick joke. No, he couldn’t be. If he’d said Rosa, perhaps – but no, he’d said Rose, he’d definitely said Rose.

‘What do you mean, you saw Rose? We were on that bloody truck for three hours. You’ve been working less than a mile away from the camp. How… what…?’

‘If you shut your face, Jim, I’ll tell you.’ The man paused, took a deep breath. ‘Rose told me she’s been looking for you for months. She came up to this camp sometime last week. It takes about an hour by train from the village she lives in. She said she recognised some of the men on the outside party. She plucked up courage to speak to me, asked if there was a barber in my camp called Jim.’

Horace couldn’t believe the man sitting in front of him. It did not seem possible. Dave reached into his pocket. He pulled out a letter.

‘It’s for you, Jim. She’s written it for you.’

He handed the letter to Horace who sank onto the floor as his legs buckled and gave way. Dave excused himself and said he would return later to have his hair finished. He didn’t fancy a date with the scissors in Horace’s current state.

Horace’s hands were shaking uncontrollably as he broke the seal of the envelope. The letter was not signed, nor was it addressed to him personally. Rose had been clever, all too aware that the letter might fall into German hands. Horace brought the paper to his nose and breathed in hard. He detected the faintest aroma, the musky, slightly perfumed smell of Rosa Rauchbach. Her written English was faultless.

Dearest

My Father would not tell me where it was you had been sent, only that the conditions were much better and the food would be good. I hope you are keeping well. I miss you. I miss our times together and wonder if there is any way I can see you.

You are not on one of the outside working parties. I have checked them all. I have been searching the camps for many months now, almost given up hope of seeing you ever again. I have taken the train to many places and walked through the forests to Lamsdorf, Sagan, Teschen, Silberberg and Sternberg. I have seen many sad men but no one that I recognised until I walked to Freiwaldau just over a week ago. It was six kilometres to the forest where the men work and gradually I began to recognise some men from the quarry. I looked and looked but could not see you. I returned back home each evening and as soon as the train starts moving I cry. Goodness knows what the other passengers must think. Eventually I found the courage and spoke with your friend and he tells me you are confined to camp cutting the men’s hair. I had so hoped you would be working in the forest and we could have seen each other.

Perhaps it is not a good idea to try and meet up, it is too dangerous. But I want you to know that I think of you always and as soon as this damn war is over we can be together again. I will be waiting forever. I shall return one last time next week just to see if you received this letter. If you can, please write back and tell me that you are well.

I love you.

xxxx

The letter fell to the floor and Horace wiped at the tear that fell onto his cheek. He couldn’t comprehend what he’d just
read. She was right: it was too dangerous. How could he possibly see her? No way would the Germans give him permission to abandon his barbershop in favour of forest work. His lover, his English Rose… so near and yet so far.

Horace lay on his bunk in the small staff room containing the 12 beds of the camp chef and his assistant, a cobbler, two sergeants, a smattering of other work prisoners including Flapper Garwood, who had been appointed head gardener. Horace was studying the window two feet from the bottom of his bed. Then he began dismantling the architrave that surrounded the glass pane, housing six half-inch iron bars that ran from top to bottom of the window.

‘What are you doing?’ Flapper asked as he looked up from the letter he’d received earlier that week.

‘A little bit of joinery,’ replied Horace. ‘Get back to your letter, you’ve only read it 27 times.’

It was true. Flapper had read the print off the letter since it had arrived. It was from his wife Cissie and told of the progress of young Shirley, Flapper’s little girl, three years old when he left for the war. She missed her Daddy, looked forward to her next birthday and prayed every night that Daddy would be home to celebrate it with her. Every POW devoured every word from home over and over again. It was a link with their family, their loved ones, wives and girlfriends, brothers and sisters. Words… and yet words that tore his heart from his chest. He placed the letter carefully under his mattress and walked over to where Horace was studying the bars.

‘Speak to me, country boy. What’s going through that turnip-filled head of yours?’

Horace pointed to the bottom of the bars. They ran to the length of the floor but were split in two and each one held together with a cotter pin.

‘See here, Flapper?’ he pointed at one of the pins. ‘I reckon if we could get these pins out, the bars would separate and we could get out through the window.’

‘And then what?’ Flapper asked as he shrugged his shoulders. ‘Then where do we go? Straight into the arms of the Bosch, that’s where.’ Flapper relayed the all too familiar statistics. ‘Hun after fucking Hun as far as the eye can see. No one has ever escaped from this camp and made it back home. The longest escape was three days and even then they shot the poor bastard there and then in the forest because he’d dared to wear civvy clothes.’

‘I know, Flapper, I know. I’ve heard it all before.’

‘Three days, Jim. We reckon it would take at least six weeks of activity to get out of German-occupied land, then you’ve got to cross the Bering Sea or travel up as far as Norway and pray that your ship isn’t sunk on the way over to England.’

Horace whistled as he began to loosen the cotter pins. He leaned forward, spat directly at the pin securing the third bar and the moisture lubricated the pin just enough to remove it from its housing. He worked on another bar and figured that a man of his build could squeeze through quite easily. He turned around and faced his good friend with his arms outstretched.

‘Hey presto, Sir Flapper! That’s magic.’

Flapper shook his head.

‘You’re not listening to a fucking word I’m saying, are you, country boy?’

Horace grinned. ‘Not really, Flapper. When did I ever listen to anyone? I’m my own man. The last time I took notice of anything anybody said, my own sergeant major surrendered me to the fucking Germans.’

Flapper sighed. ‘Same old tune, Jim.’ He had heard the story a hundred times. He had been there on the death march when his good friend had caught up with Sergeant Major
Aberfield and laid him out like a kit inspection. ‘Listen to me, Jim. You can’t…’

‘I am listening to you, Flapper. I hear what you are saying, but who said anything about making it back to England? I know it’s stupid and now that the Americans are in the war it shouldn’t be too long before it’s over. I’m sitting here tight like the rest of you, I ain’t going anywhere. But who’s to say we can’t have a few nights of excitement while we sit here waiting?’

Flapper Garwood let out a sigh and looked at Horace incredulously. He did not want to believe what he was hearing. Horace had loosened off the bars in the window and created a perfectly acceptable gap through which he could escape. The window was 50 yards from the forest and although the German guards routinely patrolled the perimeter of the camp, Flapper admitted escape was not difficult. The difficulty lay in what was beyond and as the two men faced each other, one with a stupid grin on his face, the other with a look of dismay, Garwood knew, just knew, that his friend could not have been more serious in what he was implying.

Horace replaced the bars and cotter pins and pushed the architrave back into place. He turned round and walked towards Flapper. As he drew alongside him he slapped him playfully on the cheek twice.