Twenty Days in the Reich (8 page)
The road lay as I had forecast, right up the side of the mountain. From where we were, just outside Heinsberg, we could see the main highway proceeding in a series of four or five zig-zags,
until it disappeared into some woods nearly at the top. Adolf, with his usual ingenuity, found a footpath that went straight up the mountain side, avoiding all turns, and he indicated that we should follow this.
As was more or less to be expected, when he came in sight round a bend in the road, Karl kept straight on, instead of turning on to the footpath. Although we shouted to him, we could not make him hear and he was soon out of sight, taking in a loop that would obviously leave him a long way behind, unless we waited. Adolf, blissfully unaware that he was flirting with his own life, was determined that he was not going to wait.
A
dolf’s short cut, to use an expressive but somewhat inapt simile, was ‘like the side of a house’. The path found its way to the distant summit in a direct, uncompromising fashion.
The climb was sufficient to test the endurance of the fittest among us. In fact, before we got halfway up, it was obvious to me that I should not reach the top without a rest, whatever the condition of the others. Almost immediately, Arthur confirmed my opinion with a muttered oath, ‘I’m b–d!’ ‘Me too,’ I grinned, ‘I’ll lie down if you will.’ In a few minutes, however, Adolf settled our problem by calling for a halt for ‘
essen
’ by the side of a little stream. How thankfully we all flopped, and with a fair measure of relish, pulled out our all too familiar rations. By a unanimous vote, we decided that this was a special occasion and called for a departure from custom, in the form of an issue of both cheese and margarine for the meal. We felt
that without taking into account what was yet to come, we had today used up more energy than on all the previous days put together!
We finished our sumptuous repast and washed it down with water from a stream. Adolf seemed to have acquired a water bottle at one of our halts during the morning – at any rate I had never noticed its presence before – and he now filled it for further use. We were all to be glad of a drink from that bottle in the next two or three days. Although, I can hardly think of anything, except possibly not being able to clean my teeth, which I detested more among our minor discomforts, than having to drink out of a bottle after dirty, filthy Adolf had used it.
Lunch over, we fell to discussing our plan. It was amazing how freely we talked about any subject under the sun, in front of Adolf. We even called him names to his face! We had fairly ample proof that his knowledge of English was even less than was ours of German. There he lay, ugly and sprawling on the grass, his tunic off, and his belt and revolver five yards away, discarded apparently with no thought of his responsibilities.
‘Seems to me,’ I said, ‘that his nibs here would be damn glad if we made a bolt for it whilst his back was turned – he’d get to Frankfurt a whole lot quicker on his own.’
‘Well, we could bump him off and dump him in the woods without a soul being any the wiser,’ said Jack.
‘We’re not Germans,’ I pointed out, ‘and I am afraid it would take an awful lot of doing in cold blood.’ Arthur and Diffy nodded their agreement with this.
‘What we might do is to overpower him and cart him off into the woods until dusk, and then tie him up and hope he would not be able to make himself heard until daybreak. It’s long odds we should get clean away because old Karl, whether he be fore or aft [I pointed expressively up and down the mountain], is going to be in no end of a stew when he fails to pick up with us again. He won’t like putting in a report in any great hurry for fear of making a fool of himself.’
‘What do you think of the idea of taking him along with us towards the Rhine?’ said Jack.
‘You mean threaten to shoot him if he tried to give us away,’ I replied. ‘The trouble would be that we would never be sure we could trust the blighter. If he once opened his mouth to a fellow Jerry, we’d never know, until it was too late, what he’d said!’
‘No,’ put in Arthur, ‘and we’d never be able to get over to him what was required. I doubt if even our sign language would cope.’
During this interesting debate on his immediate future, our unsuspecting victim got up and strolled over to have a chat with the occupants of a cottage, a little way down the hill. As soon as he had left us, a Russian detached himself from a group we had observed, sitting round a fire about
a hundred yards away He sat down by our sides. We knew these fellows were Russians, because we had made former acquaintance with each other when we had met over the mutual task of gathering water from the stream. We wondered, however, what they were doing up here, all alone, and to all intents and purposes, their own masters.
This man did not speak any English, but he soon conveyed beyond any measure of doubt, the nature of his errand, which was to suggest that we slit the throat of Adolf without any further delay! If we did not fancy the job, he and his friends would do it for us free of all charge!
Poor Adolf! Wherever he may be now – and I doubt very much whether he ever saw a great deal of his wife in Frankfurt – he little knows how near his end was. The Russian went away and as Adolf wandered back, and began to collect his belongings, we made our decision to have a go. Only Diffy demurred, on the grounds that it was hardly worthwhile, as the war might only last another few weeks, and if we were caught again we should probably be shot.
I commented:
Well boys, I reckon with a wife and three kids, I have the most to lose if we don’t make it, but it looks to me like an opportunity sent from Heaven. I suggest that as soon as we get clear of that cottage and the Russians, we trundle old Adolf off into the woods, lay up until tonight
and then see how far away we can get before dawn comes, and with it, the possibility, but by no means certainty, that we shall be missed.
Diffy raised no more objections, and by now we were on our way round a slight corner in the path and out of sight of the cottage. The first sign of a hitch in the plan was the fact, obvious to us all, that the wood was becoming rapidly sparser. There was no stretch that would suit our purpose anything like as well as the one we had just left.
‘Better be quick,’ I said, not too brightly. Not only was the wood thinner, but it had receded further from the path, thus our deed had longer in which to be observed. ‘Stop,’ urged Diffy, ‘there’s a man up there.’
There was, too, about three hundred yards up the hill, and we blessed Diffy’s sharp eyes. When we got up to the fellow and found he was only a Russian, we were not so sure! By that time, we could see the road coming into view away up on the right, and there was no telling what traffic might be on it, or who might have a grandstand seat for any performance enacted in the woods below. The circumstances had so changed since we conceived our great idea, that we one and all agreed with great reluctance to call it off. We may be thought to have been chicken-hearted, but we could see little future in being chased over Germany by a horde of hostile peasants. Lonely though the country was, I don’t doubt that a
surprising muster would soon have been in evidence had our deed been observed by but one person.
Considerably chastened, we at last reached the top of the hill and once more crossed the road. We looked up and down the road in vain for some sign of the errant Karl, who we remembered would have had no dinner, as Adolf was carrying both their rations. There was not the slightest hint as to whether he might be in front or behind us, but Adolf seemed quite unconcerned. He led us off down the other side at a cracking pace.
After about a couple of miles, we found that this side of the mountain was not as precipitous as the other. It soon opened out into a narrow valley, along which both our footpath and the main road followed parallel courses on opposite sides of a stream. The scenery, which all day had been of a high order, was now truly magnificent. I have always been a lover of nature, and it did me a lot of good to realise that here amongst my enemies, there were still things that were God’s and were good. I counted myself lucky that in spite of all the circumstances, I still had the power in me to enjoy them. My pleasure was not, I fear, shared by those with whom I travelled. I was not about to ask Adolf, but the others showed little interest if I enthused over a particular scene or view, so after a while I gave up.
At long last, at about 3.30 p.m., we sighted Karl way ahead on the main road. Adolf let out an
enormous shout, which made the old man turn round. Then we hastened down and across the stream, and on to the road to catch him up. He looked a comic and yet pitiable sight, reduced as he was, to walking in his slippers, because his feet were so bad. One hand clutched a stick, and over his other arm were slung his boots and his overcoat. He was hobbling along like a sick beast of burden and looking like anything other than a member of his beloved
Feührer
’s police force.
We sat down for a rest by the roadside and there ensued the expected altercation between the two guards, who were naturally each trying to place the blame on the other, for the fact that they had been apart so long. Our interest at this stage was only academic, but we felt that had we been able, we ought to have put a word in on Karl’s side, as the fault lay so plainly with the impatient Adolf.
Eventually, we pushed on again ever downwards towards, apparently, the town of Erndtebreück. The name of Siegen had not appeared on any further signposts since the one early this morning at Kirchundem, and we had found that this was not uncommon with German signposts. Maybe instead of taking them down altogether as the unenterprising English had done, the wily Hun thought it far better to keep them up, and make sure that the place on the signpost was never at the end of the road leading to it!
A mile or two further on, we stopped for Karl to have his lunch, and coffee was brought from a farm
house for the whole party. It was during this break that our friends the Lightnings came again. We had hurriedly to take cover whilst they strafed a target that was very near at hand, but the location of which puzzled us afterwards for quite a time. It seemed to be just down the road and round the corner from where we sat, at most no more than half a mile away. However, although we had plodded on for fully two miles, we spotted no damage, until we learnt from Karl, who picked up the information from some civilians, that a train had been left with one truck sticking out of the end of a tunnel. The Lightnings had strafed the truck and rails and then placed a well aimed bomb right on the tunnel. Such was the job those gallant boys were doing during practically every minute of every day, whilst the first immense push over the Rhine was on.
It was just about this time, too, that we noticed the strange attitude of civilians towards the information volunteered by our guards that we were bound for Frankfurt. A typical conversation (translated by us with no knowledge of the language) would seem to go like this:
Civilian: ‘Where have you come from?’
Adolf (who nearly always did the talking): ‘Werl.’
Civilian: ‘And where are you going to?’
Adolf: ‘Frankfurt.’
Civilian: ‘Frankfurt am Main?’
Adolf: ‘Frankfurt am Main.’
The last would be the signal for all the civilians nearby to burst into hearty guffaws of laughter, in which it was noticed that Adolf did not join, although Karl smiled faintly We, for our part, would have loved to have joined in the joke, but nobody seemed to want to let us in on it! We tried asking Karl, but for once the old man pretended he did not understand. How could we have guessed, that General Patton’s Third Army had made such rapid progress in the period of just over a week since we had left home, that his spearheads were even now thrusting their way to the south to cut off this once fine city on the river Main.
Karl had his lunch, we all had coffee but did not have our third meal, and the Lightnings had their fun. Then in the cool of the evening, with today’s trudge twelve hours old, we approached at last the town of Erndtebreück, covering the last 2 miles on the railway track. The track had come over the same mountain as we had, but by a slightly shorter route and making use of a now ‘kaput’ tunnel to get it clear of the last 500 feet or so. The pace had been so slow over the last 4 miles, due to the state of Karl’s feet, that it was about 8 p.m. when we eventually picked our way over sets of obviously newly relaid metals and pulled up outside a patently
‘kaput’ bahnhof
.
We never thought for one moment that the pair had any idea of making us go any further without rest or sleep of some sort. We harangued old Karl
about it in no uncertain terms, whilst Adolf made himself as busy as ever, enquiring about trains. The old man himself had obviously little relish for pushing on without rest, but he appeared to have little further authority. Very soon, Adolf was back announcing that there would be a train at 10 p.m.
The night was already growing bitterly cold; we were tired, hungry and, above all, very sleepy. By and large, we were in a state of advanced ‘fedupness’. In all our minds was the question ‘What next?’
T
he answer was to be ‘The mixture as before, only worse!’ The only one thing that was certain was that there was not going to be any real rest. For a long time we wandered disconsolately in and out of the very much battered
bahnhof
, trying to discover if there was any part of it that was fit for human habitation. At last, a faint glimmer of light coming from the booking office told us that inside, there might at least be somewhere to sit, and it might not be as bitterly cold as it was outside. It was, I suppose, cheeky of us as prisoners to attempt to dictate where we should go. However, we knew that old Karl was quite soft-hearted, and would not see us suffer any more than was necessary, so we begged of him to enquire if we could park our weary bones inside the ticket office.
He agreed, and was successful. We filed in, however, the man and girl working in the office took very little notice. There was no fire, even in here, but it was a little warmer, and illumination was furnished by means of a single oil-burning
lamp standing on a table in the middle of the room. We spotted a railway map hanging on a wall, and as nobody seemed to raise the slightest objection (I still think they would have been glad to see the back of us had we walked out there and then), we fell to studying it, both for possible further use, and with the immediate object of finding out exactly where we were. As I had anticipated, we were still not above halfway on our journey to Frankfurt, and we seemed to be about as near as we had ever been to that vital spot on the Rhine at Remagen, which was the only place within our knowledge where our Forces had made a crossing. What a thousand pities it was that we were not issued with a copy of the
Daily Mail
every morning!
We got our rations out. We were, I suppose, lucky to have anything to eat at all. However, the sight of that now very stale bread, the piece of cheese practically on its last legs, and the dirty slimy-looking mess that used to be margarine, could scarcely be considered as an appetiser for four men who had done a really hard day’s footslogging. It was that or starve, though, and we knew that thousands had survived on far worse fare. We therefore made the best we could of it, washing the food down with a swig from Adolf’s bottle, which he kindly handed round, as this poor derelict station seemed to be without water, in addition to its other shortcomings.
Our meal over, we tried to snatch a little sleep, but the room was steadily getting colder. Whilst Jack was soon snoring merrily with a heap of old sacks for a pillow, most of us found it very difficult to get sufficiently comfortable to doze off for more than a few minutes at a time. Diffy and I stood round the little lamp for quite a while, gathering what little bit of warmth we could from it, and talking about our situation. His wounds were showing some signs of healing, but he had a quite natural fear that the lack of nourishment in the food might cause them to turn septic, if they did not receive some proper treatment soon. The poor chap had been remarkably stoic, and seldom if ever complained, although he must have been in pain the whole of the time. He still adhered to his opinion that we should have been very unwise to have carried out our plot against Adolf during the afternoon, and I am not sure that, taking everything into account, he was probably correct.
The night dragged on, and it was probably about 1 a.m. before that wretched train came. By this time, as on the previous night, we were so cold as to be almost past caring, although we knew that in a few moments, when the usual corridor-type, windowless train got under steam, we should be a jolly sight colder. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that particular train journey – it just seemed like frozen eternity, combined with the agony with wanting to go to sleep. The desire was so desperate, that every few moments my head
would fall forward, and I would collapse off the seat and into the lap of somebody sitting opposite me. We were packed so tightly that it was impossible for any save those sitting in the corners to rest their heads anywhere, and I’m not sure whether or not it was my own ineptitude, but I never mastered the art of going to sleep unless my head had definite support. It was sheer torture. I don’t know what my opposite number thought; nothing was ever said, and every time I lunged forward I just got pushed back again. I don’t know, either, what happened to the rest of our crowd, for I never set eyes on one of them from the moment we got in until, some three hours later, we climbed out again out at a tiny wayside station.
I was too dazed and stupified even to notice where that station was, but I imagine it would be one of those on the branch line north of Marburg, for we were not long in passing through that town in our subsequent travels. We set off on foot once more, cold, stiff and indescribably weary. There were many others going the same way, quite a few going the opposite way, and a fair amount of motor traffic. It was astonishing to see quite a minor country lane so busy at 4 a.m. on what was now Saturday morning, but I think by this time we were beyond being surprised at anything that these poor unhappy members of the Herrenvolk chose to do in what was presumably in aid of their beloved Fatherland’s defence.
We walked on very slowly, far too slowly for all but Karl, whose feet were the factor that governed our pace. A horse-drawn cart passed us at a speed so little faster than ours that we were able to take a quick glance at its load, and craftily purloin a carrot apiece as a valuable addition to our rations! I was amazed at the feeling of elation that we experienced at thus having done a little something off our own bats to further our own ends. We noticed that two important crossroads that we passed were well guarded, and I remember wondering whether or not it would be easy to avoid such death traps if we were making our own way along in the dark in an attempted escape. In any case, it seemed but another pointer to the fact that the war was expected to come along this way pretty soon.
After about an hour we came to a small town. As was his wont, Adolf’s first enquiry was for the
bahnhof. ‘Bahnhof kaput’
, was the all too familiar answer, but nevertheless Adolf insisted on finding the station, so as to make sure for himself that this information was correct. He was soon out again, cursing fairly freely, and it was obvious that we should ride on no more trains tonight, for which we were more or less thankful, although we were as anxious as anybody to get this long journey over. We walked back along the road the way we had come, binding away at poor old Karl, who only smiled sadly and shook his head. Adolf,
beyond a doubt, was supreme Commander-in-Chief, now!
We got back to the last crossroads about a mile out of the town, and Adolf set about putting in motion the machinery for a lift. It was 5 a.m., yet there was some traffic about, and in a very short time we were bundled aboard an open truck, which to our immense surprise Karl told us was going nearly all the way to Frankfurt. We were overjoyed – the cold seemed to be forgotten in the realisation that at last we looked like being able to get a move on. This truck seemed to be a modern speedy affair, and for a good three hours we ought to be free from the danger of interference by enemy aircraft. We all had seats of a sort, some on the floor, others on the sacks of wood that were used as fuel for nearly all the vehicles of this type.
We had an opportunity of studying the method of propulsion of our wagon a little more closely, when after a hard bitter non-stop drive, which lasted over two hours and must have knocked off a good 40 miles from our journey, we at last pulled up, and we were ordered to unload the sacks of wood. We hopped down into the road, glad of the chance to stretch our limbs. We watched the driver feed lumps of neatly chopped wood into a big cylinder, which stood up like a broad chimney at the rear of the driving cab on the right-hand side of the wagon. According to Jack, who used to be a bit of a chemist in his boyhood, the wood was burnt to charcoal, giving off an inflammable
vapour known as producer-gas. It was this that was used as a substitute for petrol, to drive the motor. It all seemed very simple and very interesting, especially when we found that it was quite nice and warm standing in the road by the side of the bottom of the cylinder. We were not all displeased on discovering that it seemed to be necessary to wait for several minutes after filling up with wood. We made very good use of the time, in getting back into our ill-treated bodies a little of the heat that had been so freely expended during the night.
It was broad daylight by now, and the sun came up in a red fiery ball, giving the promise of yet another fine day, as we climbed back into our places, and the ride was resumed. We had passed through Marburg whilst it was barely light, and now almost immediately we came to Giessen (not to be confused with Siegen, which we never did get to), which is, or was, a railway town. Giessen had suffered at the hands of Allied bombers to an extent that had to be seen to be believed. It is a commonplace, and sometimes much over-exaggerated, description to say that there was not a building still standing. However, in the case of Giessen, I really believe it to be absolutely true, for the whole town was just one desolate mass of ruins. How any group of people could live through the many nights of death and destruction that this wholesale devastation must have required is a mystery to me. In fact, we all spent
quite a bit of our time wondering why the German people as a whole did not take matters into their own hands and call a halt to this degradation of their country.
So that was Giessen, and our conveyance pressed on, sweeping at a good speed along a fairly clear road. We entered open country with the absence of the valleys and mountains of which we had seen so much that we had begun to think that all Germany was constructed to a single pattern. There was nothing further of note to catch our eye until we crossed one of the famous
Autobahn
a few miles north of Bad Nauheim. We had heard a great deal about Hitler’s marvellous motorways, and had often noticed them from the air. But this was the first time we had seen one at close quarters, and we naturally found it quite interesting, though very little different from some of the big trunk highways at home, except for the novelty of the ‘flyover’ crossings.
A little while later, we came into Bad Nauheim itself. A woman in the truck who said she had a sister in America, and therefore spoke a little English, told us that it was a famous watering place. We came across the rather peculiar prefix ‘
Bad
’ quite often afterwards and assumed it to be the equivalent of our English ‘spa’. This town had an air of quiet peace about it, and with its many buildings with a Red Cross on them, it appeared to have suffered very little from bomb damage. In a few more minutes, it would then be about 9.30
a.m., we arrived at Friedberg (pronounced exactly the same as our earlier Fredeberg), and were glad to be told that it was time for us to disembark.
Once more, Adolf was making a beeline at his best pace for the
bahnhof
. Whilst we glanced round rather anxiously at Karl, who was making no attempt to catch up, Adolf showed no concern at all. In fact, he was severely impatient with us for making any show at slowing the pace down so that Karl would be able to cope. When we thought that twelve hours ago we were still only halfway to Frankfurt, and now we showed signs of finishing the job off this morning, we could not but admire Adolf and his hustle. But we thought that it was very hard on poor Karl to be treated with such scant sympathy. We were a trifle annoyed ourselves that a bit more vim could not have been put into the earlier part of the trip, so that our efforts could have been more spread out and not all concentrated into this one last mad rush.
Still, ours was not to reason why. Adolf reached the
bahnhof
– there were no trains today. In a brief space of time, we had picked Karl up again and had started off down the road towards a place call Bad Homburg. Karl told us that the
Stalag
to which we were being taken was actually at Oberursel, some 10 miles on this side of Frankfurt. A few minutes later, we quite unexpectedly said ‘Goodbye’ to him, as it appeared to have been arranged between the guards that with Karl’s feet
in the condition they were, he could not possibly tackle what would devolve into another full day’s march if we did not get a lift. There was still, it seemed, another 20 miles to go.
Our party reduced to five, we were incredibly fortunate in getting a lift almost as soon as Karl left us, for the road seemed have little traffic. It was a covered truck, and the only other passengers appeared to be two land girls. They spent the whole journey with their heads stuck through the canvas, keeping their eyes open for enemy activity in the skies. Fortunately, there was no adverse incident. By about 10.30 a.m., we had passed through Bad Homburg, and our conveyance had set us down in the very pleasant little town of Oberursel. There was no sign at all of any damage by bombs, and we recalled clearly how, when we ourselves had been briefed to attack Frankfurt one night, we had been given very strict instructions to be careful of the POW camp, which lay about 10 miles to the north of the city. Well, by the look of it, all the crews had carried out their order very conscientiously.
We started to remind Adolf again about
essen
. We had tried to attract his attention back at Friedberg, but he would have none of it then. Now he indicated that we must push on a little bit towards the
Stalag
, which by this time seemed as though it ought to be pretty near at hand, thanks to the enormous hustle of the last few hours. We accordingly asked for the loan of his knife, and
proceeded to peel and eat our carrots, which tasted very good as a change from bread and cheese. In a few more minutes, Adolf indicated a grassy patch by the side of a tram track, and we were able to have our first meal for well over twelve hours. A civilian woman brought us a few small and very over-ripe apples, which tasted quite good. What with these, and the carrots, and the fact that we felt justified in clearing up the whole of the cheese in what just about amounted to a double ration all round, we felt that we were indulging in a feast almost fit for a king – almost!