Do the Birds Still Sing in Hell? (8 page)

The French prisoners had had time to prepare for their incarceration and had stocked up on the bare necessities of life. They ate baguettes filled with meat and cheese; one man chewed on a bar of chocolate.

‘Think they’ll share it out, Ernie?’

‘Not a fucking hope in hell. They’re huddled around like a pack of wolves.’

A plan formulated in Horace’s mind. For the first time in his life he was going to become a thief. He placed a hand on his pal’s shoulder.

‘Ernie, my friend, we are about to partake in a little breakfast.’

‘What?’

‘I’m going shoplifting. Your job, Mr Mountain, is to stop
any froggies coming after me. I’ll disappear into the crowd with my ill-gotten gains and catch up with you later.’

‘No, you crazy cunt! You’ll be shot.’

Horace pointed over to the field kitchen.

‘They’re all having breakfast, mate. I’ve made my mind up. Now get ready, I need some bloody food.’

Before Ernie could protest, Horace had sauntered through the mass of bodies in front of him and stood on top of the embankment less than two yards from the Frenchmen. He didn’t have to wait long, and what a result! Half a baguette was being handed across the circle. Without thinking, Horace covered the short distance as quick as lightning and grabbed the prize from the startled Frenchman’s hand. He was down the embankment like a whippet as the Frenchman scrambled after him. Horace dropped his shoulders, picked out the unmistakeable bulk of Ernie and ran for him. As he passed Ernie the Frenchman seemed to be gaining on him. The rest of his friends had risen to their feet and were shouting, attracting the attention of a few guards.

‘
Voleur
!’ they cried. Thief!

Ernie gritted his teeth and aimed for the bridge of the Frenchman’s nose. He didn’t even swing a punch, just a stiff outstretched arm and a huge balled fist. The runner’s momentum did the rest. There was a sickening crunch as bone met bone and the pursuer’s legs kept going as his head remained motionless. At one point his body wavered vertically for a fraction of a second as he crumpled unconscious to the floor. Ernie about turned, looking innocently skywards as two German guards forced their way into the mêlée with their rifle butts.

The Frenchman’s friends were picking up their unconscious, bloodied friend from the ground. ‘
Au voleur
!
Voleur
!’ they cried, pointing through the crowd. Ernie cursed
them under his breath and prayed that Horace hadn’t been caught. Thankfully the German guards didn’t appear to be interested in justice among prisoners. It didn’t exist, and they cuffed a few of the French for the hell of it before returning to their breakfast. Horace found his friend and took great pride in tearing the baguette in half.

The two soldiers smiled as they bit into the delicious bread and savoured the taste. Ernie spoke between chews.

‘You dozy cunt. You’ve pinched a fucking sandwich with fuck all sandwich in it!’

Horace opened up the bread and sure enough it was empty. It didn’t matter; their stomachs appreciated it none the less.

Two hours later they began marching eastwards out of the village. The prisoner grapevine that would yield so much information in the coming years said they were embarking on a two or three-day march to the train station at Brussels in German-occupied Belgium. The grapevine got it dramatically wrong. The march would last for what would feel like an eternity and take Horace to hell and back.

CHAPTER
FOUR

T
he prisoners were a nuisance. They were nobodies and life was cheap. Horace sensed this almost as soon as the column of prisoners left Cambrai. For the first four or five miles the Allied prisoners marched along the main road out of the town, the line stretching as far as the eye could see. At one point the road dipped and straightened and Horace could see the front of the march shimmering in the rising heat of the day. Horace gasped at the sheer numbers; the line of sorry souls stretched at least three miles.

German trucks and convoys passed every few minutes and the hordes of prisoners were herded with rifle butts into the ditches by the side of the road to allow them to pass. The convoys of German troops, tank operators and drivers jeered and goaded and spat at the poor helpless unfortunates. A shaven-headed German thug hung from the roll bar of a truck with one hand. His trousers were at his ankles, his other hand on his penis as he sprayed urine onto the prisoners below. His friends on the back of the truck bent double with laughter, pointing and gesticulating. Horace thought back to his time on the farm and wondered how his fellow being could stoop so low. An animal
wouldn’t behave like that. Horace was beginning to build up a hatred he’d never felt before.

Later that day the line of tired, hungry and dejected men was made to march across the fields because they were causing congestion on the roads, slowing up the masses of the Third Reich heading west. As night approached, the blue sky faded into a darker hue. A light wind brought a chill to the evening air and Horace felt a desperate hunger. Surely the Germans had made provision to feed the march?

An hour later several large trucks rumbled into the field where they’d halted. Horace breathed a sigh of relief as the trucks turned and he spotted boxes of food and water containers and a huge pile of French loaves in the rear of one lorry. As expected the German guards took turns and lined up patiently as the starving and thirsty throng looked on. Hope turned to anxiety and then to disappointment and despair as the trucks were made secure and one by one, left under the cover of darkness. Horace settled down for the long night ahead.

The march left again at daybreak but not before they had watched yet another torturing German feast. The steam rose from the cups of coffee the guards held as they chewed on boiled eggs and bread baguettes.

For three days and three nights there followed the same routine. The men alongside Horace were now desperate. What were the Germans playing at? They’d been told in the town square in Cambrai they were being sent to work in camps and factories, but what sort of condition would they be in when they got there?

The men ate anything they could along the way, their eyes continuously scouring the ground for long-forgotten potatoes or turnips left to rot from last year’s winter harvest. They stole the berries from the hedgerows and chewed on the shoots of
any plant they could find, including recently planted root vegetables. It was dog eat dog; arguments broke out between two men over an ear of discarded corn or even a field beetle unlucky enough to cross the path of the march.

On the fourth day they passed through the small village of Cousoire. A signpost in the middle told the marchers they were 20 kilometres from Belgium.

A few villagers, mostly elderly ladies, lined the street, their eyes unable to take in yard after yard of stumbling, weary, desperately hungry men. As Horace passed a group of three old women his eyes caught the swift movement of a hand. The youngest of the group, around the same age as his own mother, held out an apple and her eyes made contact with his as she smiled. An apple. A sweet-tasting apple. Horace raised a half-hearted smile and reached out to take the offering. He’d made his mind up to divide it into three for the days ahead. Before it even touched his hand he could taste the sweet juice inside; he could feel the taste exploding in his mouth and the texture of the fruit as he chewed voraciously.

Horace never got to savour the experience. A young German soldier had spotted the incident and dragged the old woman into the middle of the road by her collar. His rifle butt had smashed the gift from Horace’s hand and it rolled deep into the crowd. A dozen hands clawed for the prize, pulling and punching at each other as three German guards waded into the mêlée with their rifles flailing and feet kicking at any head they could connect with. Horace lay helpless, clutching at his wrist as the woman squealed and screeched like a pig being led to the slaughter.

‘
Bâtard allemand
!’ she screamed as the soldier took her by the hair. ‘
Bâtard allemand
!’ she shouted again, and a few of the prisoners laughed at the spectacle unfolding in front of them, impressed by the lady’s defiance and colourful language.
Horace’s knowledge of French was basic to say the least but he knew exactly what the old lady meant.

The German threw her to the floor and pointed his rifle at her face. A threat, thought Horace, why? She had given him an apple, for Christ’s sake. What had she done to offend the man, to upset the German nation? And then the unimaginable happened. The old lady seemed to freeze, a look of horror on her face as she made eye contact with her aggressor. The action slowed down as if in a bizarre slow motion as the soldier pulled the trigger.

The old lady lay motionless on the ground as a pool of blood spread like a crimson lake around her head. A young prisoner ran at the soldier, his eyes filled with hatred as two of his mates rugby-tackled him to the floor.

‘You fucking bastard!’ he screamed as a life-saving hand clamped his mouth shut. A tear ran down Horace’s cheek as he lay motionless, unable to understand the cowardly act he’d just witnessed. It was simply incomprehensible. He wanted to kill the soldier, to tear out his eyes with his bare hands. He recalled how he’d likened the Germans to animals a few nights before. They weren’t like animals; he’d insulted the good name of an animal. These men were worse.

The condition of the men deteriorated over the next few days but thankfully the Germans seemed to turn a blind eye to villagers handing out whatever scraps they could spare. Horace was positioned towards the back of the queue and managed to get very little. He ate the skin of an orange one day and a cup full of milk, crumbs of bread and some grain. The march swept into the villages like a swarm of starving locusts.

Nothing survived, anything that could be eaten was. Hens, dogs, cats… anything. They were eaten raw, the warm blood of the freshly killed animal savoured by those lucky enough to catch it. There were regular altercations between prisoners
fighting over a piece of stale bread or a fat insect, even stagnant water. The Germans looked on as full fist-fights developed. It was a little light entertainment for them on the long monotonous journey.

When allowed their one rest each day, a dinner time break without the dinner, the men would sit around in groups and speak of their families back home. It kept them going, and some would talk full of hope that it would all be over soon and they’d be back with their families within weeks or months. Horace worried more that England would be overrun by the Germans and his family’s lives would be as wretched as his had become.

Then the dysentery started with a vengeance. Every few minutes somebody left the line and walked a few feet to a ditch by the side of the road, squatted, and without a shred of human dignity left, emptied the watery contents of his insides in full view of everyone. Some had time to grab at a handful of grass and clean themselves best they could. Others didn’t bother; they were past caring and simply pulled up their shit-covered trousers.

The stench was permanent, the flies constant. Some men collapsed, too weak to go on. They were left by the side of the road and executed by the section of Germans following up the rear. The executions were regular and could be heard by the chain of human misery. They followed a pattern. Horace could see the signs – men staggering, stumbling as if in a drunken stupor, then buckling at the knees. Occasionally a rifle butt in the back, an order to continue. The men would be helped by their friends and comrades and urged to press on, and some would do that, glad of the support. But some would just shrug off the assistance, resigned to the fact that wherever it was they were being taken, they would never get there. They would be left where
they fell, prepared to meet their maker. And a long two, three minutes later… that awful sound.

The days turned to weeks. How many Horace didn’t know, but the men grew weaker and the executions increased. Horace held a bizarre secret that he only divulged to a few of his companions. As a child, his mother had scattered the family’s summer salads with dandelion leaves. They were full of moisture and nutrition and tasted strangely sweet. Every opportunity he had he picked the tiny leaves at the side of the road and chewed at the succulent gift of life every few hours. His mouth was constantly refreshed, stopping him from drinking the rainwater at the side of the road, the same water that had been polluted earlier by the dysentery-ridden souls at the front of the march. He’d wait… he’d survive, praying for a water fountain or a recently filled rain butt in the next village when he’d drink till his belly was full to bursting.

Horace passed weaker soldiers almost every hour in an attempt to survive by getting to the front of the line, figuring that those at the front got the first option on any food that happened to be available. He hadn’t seen his old mucker Ernie Mountain for at least two weeks now and thought about him constantly. He thought about Sergeant Major Aberfield too, the bastard of a coward that had surrendered the entire section without as much as one bullet being fired. Horace took a bizarre comfort in the fact that he’d never surrendered. He would take that comfort right through the war.

‘I never surrendered,’ he’d tell anyone who’d listen. ‘I didn’t get the choice; some bastard took the choice from me. I was surrendered by a coward.’

Night after night he’d wonder what might have happened if he could turn the clock back. He’d lie on his back looking up at the clear night sky as the stars from a distant galaxy
twinkled through the haze. He took a strange comfort in watching them for hours on end.

But before long the man who had sealed his fate would creep back into his head and he would tremble with rage. He’d rerun the events again and again. He’d been in no doubt that Aberfield would pull the trigger. Aberfield had tried to explain he’d saved their lives. Horace didn’t buy that. There had been more fit men in the section of 2nd/5th Leicesters than the Germans who’d captured them. They’d had a chance, a very good chance: an opportunity to take out the patrol and regroup. Nobody knew how many Germans were behind that initial patrol but Horace didn’t care. They’d had a chance to fight, to survive, a chance to escape and run to fight another day. Aberfield had made the decision for each and every one of them and he didn’t have that right.