Motherland (18 page)

‘Hurrah for Lady Edenfield!’ says Larry.

Then the car is driving away, down the road to Swindon, and Kitty turns to walk slowly back.

After the Dieppe raid, a number of German soldiers are found dead, shot in the head, with their hands tied behind their backs. This is believed to be the work of commandos. In reprisal, the German High Command orders that all commandos held in prisoner-of-war camps are to be shackled until further notice.

A later commando raid on the island of Sark leaves more German soldiers dead, also with their hands tied. Hitler, enraged, issues a secret order known as the
Kommandobefehl
. Only twelve copies are made. The order states:

The
Kommandobefehl
does not go unchallenged. Field Marshal
Rommel refuses to issue the order to his troops, believing it to be a breach of the code of war. In prisoner-of-war camps its implementation varies with the character of individual commanders. In Oflag VII-B near Eichstätt captured members of commando units are shackled, but they are not handed over to the
Sicherheitsdienst
, the Security Service; more because of inter-service rivalry than out of any wish to save the men from execution.

However, when news reaches the camp authorities that Lieutenant Edward Avenell of 40 RM Commando has been awarded the Victoria Cross, there is a reaction of anger.

The prisoner is woken from his bunk in Block 5 before dawn by two camp orderlies who are themselves still half asleep. They march him out, handcuffed, into the parade ground. Here they order him to stand before the stony bank that rises to the Lagerstrasse and the kitchen block.

An
Obersturmführer
arrives from the
Kommandantur
. He opens a folder and shines a small electric torch on the typed order within. The light reflects off the paper onto his face as he reads the order aloud. Ed understands nothing of the German except that this is how the order for an execution is given. When the voice falls silent, the
Obersturmführer
draws a pistol and orders him to kneel. Not a firing squad, then.

Ed feels cold. His spirit is indifferent but his body cares. Dryness in his mouth and throat, a hot loosening in his bowels. He should close his eyes but they remain open, seeing nothing. There are rooks in the trees on the hillside across the parade ground, he hears their cries. Light seeping into the sky.

He’s aware of the raw pain in his wrists from the handcuffs, and how any time now he’s going to shit his pants. He’d kill for a cigarette, or at least die for one.

There comes a loud report. The pistol shot echoes down the valley. The rooks burst up in a swarm into the light of the coming day.

The pistol is lowered once more. The
Obersturmführer
departs. The orderlies march Ed back to his quarters.

‘So what was that all about?’ say the others in his block.

Ed has no answer.

The pantomime is repeated the next day. The pre-dawn summons, the reading of the order, the shot in the air. And then again the next day. The process of repetition brings no lessening of the fear. Each time the game could turn real. Each time his body betrays him. But the failure is secret. To outside eyes he remains indifferent, magnificent.

He understands that it’s not his death they want, but his disintegration. Or perhaps it’s all just a way for bored camp officers to pass the time. There’s a rumour they’re laying bets in the guardroom, so many days before he cracks, at such-and-such odds, paid out in cigarettes. You want your life to have value and your death to have meaning, but in the end it’s all just a game.

The hero doesn’t crack. At least not so you can see from the outside.

*

In December 1943, after he’s been a prisoner for almost five hundred days, the handcuffs are removed.

*

In April 1945, after he’s been a prisoner for almost a thousand days, the war stutters to its end.

The American Army is rumoured to be across the Rhine and advancing rapidly. The commandant of the camp calls an early-morning
parade of all prisoners and announces that for their safety they will be moving east to Moosburg. The officer-prisoners are issued bulk rations and march out in good order down the road to Eichstätt. Five Thunderbolts of the US Air Force spot the marching column and mistaking them for German troops, dive-bomb the prisoners. For thirty minutes they strafe them with their cannon, oblivious to all the waving arms. Fourteen British officers are killed and forty-six are wounded. The survivors return to the camp.

Ed Avenell is among the party detailed to bury the dead.

‘Fucking typical,’ says one of his companions. ‘Talk about giving your life for your country.’

Ed says nothing. He’s been saying nothing for a long time now.

That night the column forms up again, and under cover of darkness they march south-east. At dawn they sleep in a barn. As dusk falls they resume their march. American planes can be heard high overhead day and night. A fine cold rain is falling as they march through Ernsgaden and Mainburg. The prisoners are growing weaker all the time. In the course of the next seven days and nights, four men die on the march. On the eighth day they reach Oflag V, the giant camp at Moosburg. Here over thirty thousand prisoners of all ranks and nationalities have been herded together. There are thunderstorms that evening, and rumours that Bavaria is suing for a separate peace. American guns can be heard. The Seventh Army is said to be as close as Ingolstadt. The prisoners are packed four hundred to a hut. Rations are pitifully low.

Next morning the commandant goes searching for an American officer of high enough rank to receive his surrender. By noon
the camp is liberated. The liberators are C Company, 47th Tank Battalion, 14th Armored Division, 3rd Corps, Third US Army. They raise the US flag and tell the cheering prisoners they will be evacuated in Dakotas, taking twenty-five men at a time, starting as soon as a landing strip can be prepared.

Ed smiles when he hears this, and draws deeply on the American cigarette he’s been given, and fixes his gaze on the far distance.

‘We’re not going anywhere in a hurry, boys,’ he says.

On the first day of May snow falls over the camp. A rumour spreads that Hitler is dead. The men are too tired and hungry to care. All they want now is to go home.

On May 3rd they’re transported in six-wheeler trucks to Landshut. The houses they pass on the way have white flags in their windows. At Landshut the former prisoners of war are billeted in empty flats, six to a room, and supplied with American K rations. Here the waiting begins again.

The snow turns to rain, and the winds are too strong for planes to take off. The American POWs who arrived earlier take precedence; also a batch of seven hundred Indians. Two hundred planes are promised, flying back from Prague, but only seventy arrive.

On the morning of May 7th, which is being celebrated at home as VE Day, Ed takes his turn at the aerodrome, and by mid-afternoon he is boarding. The Dakota lands at St Omer in northern France, where he is cleaned up and deloused. Next day RAF Lancasters fly the British contingent to Duxford air base near Cambridge. It is now twenty-five days since they were marched out of the camp; and two years, eight months and twenty days since Ed left England.

He sends two telegrams, one to his parents and one to his
wife. A repatriation orderly recognises his name on the manifest and tells the base commander, a young-looking squadron leader.

‘I’m told you’re a VC,’ says the squadron leader.

‘Yes,’ says Ed. ‘I’ve been told that too.’

‘Honour to have you here. Anything I can do for you?’

‘No, thank you, sir. I’m on my way first thing in the morning.’

‘Good job,’ says the squadron leader, shaking his hand. ‘Damn good job.’

*

Kitty arrives early at King’s Cross station, holding very tight to Pamela’s hand. Pamela is just over two years old, and a sturdy walker, but the giant railway station overawes her. Kitty is wearing her prettiest pre-war frock beneath a dark grey wool coat. It’s a chilly spring day.

‘Daddy,’ says Pamela, pointing to a man striding across the concourse.

‘No, that’s not Daddy,’ says Kitty. ‘I’ll tell you when it’s him.’

She’s been training Pamela ever since the telegram came. She wants her to say, ‘Hello, Daddy,’ and give him a kiss.

There are other women waiting, staring anxiously down the long platforms. One holds a bunch of flowers. Kitty thinks Ed wouldn’t want flowers, though the truth is she doesn’t know. In her letters to him she’s told him all her news, mostly about Pamela, and how pretty she is, and how forward. She’s told Ed how they’ve left her parents’ house and are now living in Edenfield Place, thanks to her friend Louisa. It’s somewhere to be until he comes home, and they can set up house on their own.

Ed’s letters from Germany have been strange. He writes about the absurdity of the life he leads, and the folly of human nature,
but never about his own state of mind. Nor does he ask after his daughter. The letters always end, ‘I love you.’ But they have not brought him closer.

‘You have to expect it,’ Louisa says in their late-night talks. ‘You had three weeks together, almost three years ago. It’ll be like starting all over again.’

‘I know you’re right,’ Kitty says. ‘But he’s the most important person in my life, apart from Pamela. The thought of him takes up almost all the space I have.’

‘My advice is, don’t get your hopes up.’

Kitty hardly knows what she feels as she waits at King’s Cross. All she wants is for it to be over. She has longed for this moment for so long that now it’s close, it frightens her.

‘Hello, Daddy,’ Pamela says to a young airman on the platform.

‘No!’ says Kitty a little too sharply. ‘I’ll tell you when it’s Daddy.’

Pamela feels the rebuke. Her sweet face sets in a look Kitty knows well, eyes unfocused, lips pouting.

‘Daddy,’ she says, pointing to an elderly man sitting on a bench.

She calls out to a porter wheeling a trolley, ‘Daddy! Daddy!’

A soldier appears, running, breathless.

‘Hello, Daddy!’ cries Pamela.

‘Stop it!’ says Kitty. ‘Stop it!’

She controls an overwhelming urge to smack the child.

‘Daddy,’ says Pamela, very quietly now. ‘Daddy, Daddy, Daddy.’

Only the arrival of the train silences her. The immense engine sighs slowly to a stop, thrilling her with its living breathing
power. The carriage doors open and the passengers come streaming down the platform. Kitty looks without seeing, afraid he isn’t on the train after all, afraid he isn’t coming home, afraid he is coming home.

She remembers standing on the quay at Newhaven after the first aborted operation against Dieppe, and all the men filing off the boats in the night, and how she looked for him and couldn’t see him. Then all at once he was there before her. Remembering that moment, her love for him bursts within her, and she wants so much, so much, to hold him in her arms again.

Pamela senses that she’s lost her mother’s attention. She tugs at the hand that holds hers, saying, ‘Go home. Go home.’

The people from the train stream by, mostly men, mostly in uniform. There are too many, their faces hazy in the steamy air, the sound of boots tramping the platform dulling the nervous hugger-mugger of reunions.

Pamela starts to cry. She feels ignored and sorry for herself. At the same time she’s intensely excited. As she maintains a steady low-level snivelling she holds tight to her mother’s hand, knowing that she’ll feel it in her mother’s body when it happens, the mysterious and wonderful moment for which they’ve come.

Kitty catches her breath. He’s there, she knows it, though she hasn’t yet seen him. She searches the faces bobbing towards her, and finds him. He hasn’t seen her yet. He looks so thin, so sad. He’s bareheaded, wearing worn battledress, a kitbag over one shoulder. He looks like his photograph, except older, more real, wiser. There’s a nobility about him she never knew he possessed.

Oh my darling, she says to herself. You’ve come back to me.

He sees her now, and a brightness lights up his face. He hurries
faster towards her, one arm half raised, half waving. She lifts a timid hand in answer.

He comes to her and at once takes her in his arms. She holds him close, letting go of Pamela’s hand to give all of herself to him. His body is so thin, she can feel all his bones. Then he kisses her, only lightly, as if he’s afraid she’s fragile, and she kisses him, nuzzling her face against his. Then he drops down onto his haunches to greet his unknown daughter.

‘Hello,’ he says.

Pamela gazes back at him in silence. Kitty strokes the top of her head.

‘Say hello to Daddy, darling.’

Pamela still says nothing.

‘Don’t you say a word,’ says Ed. ‘Why should you?’

He reaches out one hand and lightly touches her cheek. Then he stands up.

‘Let’s go,’ he says.

‘I have it all planned,’ says Kitty. ‘We’re going to take a taxi to Victoria.’

‘A taxi! We must be rich.’

‘Special occasion.’

Pamela trots along obediently by her mother’s side, from time to time peeping up at the stranger. She has no notion of him being her father, and doesn’t even know what that means. But from the very first moment she saw him take her mother in his arms, and felt her mother let go of her hand to embrace him, she surrendered to him. He has become in an instant the most powerful being in her universe. When he knelt before her, and fixed her with his grave blue eyes, she knew that all she desired in life from now on was the love and admiration of this magnificent stranger.

In the taxi Kitty stops trembling and becomes more talkative.

‘You’re so thin, my darling,’ she says. ‘I’m going to feed you and feed you.’