Chapter 22
I lay on my bunk with my hands behind my head, safe from sudden death, no more battles to worry about for now. Our main subject of conversation was how to plan our escape. It bonded us. Planning gave a person a future to work towards.
‘It should be easy enough,’ Steffan said.
‘Shhh!’
His voice hadn’t broken yet so we were always telling him to keep quiet. The guards were likely to search the hut, thinking we’d smuggled a woman in.
‘They’ve got no watchtowers and no searchlights. If you ask me, the easiest way to escape is to pole vault out of here.’
I laughed. ‘Have you got a vaulting pole you haven’t told us about?’
‘It would be easy enough to fashion one.’
‘Really? Would it? And then what?’
‘Then we vault over the barbed wire, obviously.’
‘I mean, what happens beyond the barbed wire?’ Otto asked. ‘We’ll be caught and shot.’
‘No, we won’t. Look.’ Steffan reached into his pocket and unfolded a creased sheet of red paper on which was printed, in German and English:
SAFE CONDUCT
The German soldier who carries this safe conduct is using it as a sign of his genuine wish to give himself up. He is to be disarmed, to be well looked after, to receive food and medical attention as required, and to be removed from the danger zone as soon as possible.
Dwight Eisenhower
SUPREME COMMANDER,
Allied Expeditionary Force.
I laughed at his naivety. ‘It’s worthless, trust me. I lit my cigarette with mine. The British will stop you politely at gunpoint, read it, and then shoot you. But you’ll die a hero,’ I added, ‘which will be a consolation to your parents.’
Otto was sitting with his hands dangling between his knees. He looked up at Steffan and said, ‘No pole-vaulting, son. We will work together and dig a tunnel. A tunnel is the only way to organise a mass escape.’
‘Who cares about a mass escape? As long as we four get out we’ll be happy.’
Otto let out a laugh. ‘You think four of us can dig a tunnel by ourselves?’ He stamped his boot on the solid floor. ‘Getting through this will be a challenge in itself. But luckily for us, we’re well positioned. It’s not far from here to that field beyond the wire.’
I jumped down from my bunk and went over to the window and looked out. It was getting dark and the mist was settling gently, erasing the fields beyond the camp. ‘It’s about forty metres or so.’
‘Exactly. This is not a job for three men. Twenty might do it, on a rota system, and even then it will take a few months.’
‘A few months?’ Steffan repeated shrilly. ‘A pole vault would be quicker.’
‘What’s the hurry? What else do we have to do with our time? Do you have plans or something? Somewhere you need to be? There is a lot to organise. We will need identity papers, compasses, maps, civilian clothing and enough food to last us for the journey.’
Steffan sighed. ‘If you’re absolutely confident then we’ll try it your way first. Where do we start the hole and what do we use to dig it with?’
‘Obviously we start it under the bunks where it will be hidden from view, it’s only common sense.’
‘What makes you an authority on tunnels?’ I asked him curiously.
Otto smiled. ‘My occupation. Before the war I worked for Organisation Todt. I’m a civil engineer,’ he said.
Every day was the same as all days: cold, full of routine and nothing else. No mail for me again in the Red Cross delivery, no response to my postcard, and the disappointment gave me an ache in my guts. I wondered fearfully what had happened to my family. I had a burning need to hear from them.
Those lucky ones who received letters lay on their bunks to read them, lost for now in the world as it used to be, and they were silent afterwards.
I put my head over the side of the cot to look down at Otto, who was folding his letter away with a frown.
‘Any news?’
‘Yes.’ Otto smoothed his brown moustache thoughtfully.
‘I am happy to report that the mighty Germany Army continues to pulverise London off the face of the earth with waves of V2 rockets and in addition, the Russian Red Army is wisely surrendering. That is, according to my wife.’ There was something ironic in the way he said it, and he grinned.
‘Hitler will be pleased,’ I replied seriously, in case it was a trap.
A twitch of the eyebrows, that’s all. Otto the engineer was not a soldier and he was not in the best of health today. His eyelids were rimmed in red, as if he had coloured them.
‘In the event that the German Army doesn’t liberate us, I think we should start work as soon possible,’ he said conversationally. ‘We will need somewhere to dispose of the clay, and tools to dig. How about signing up for gardening duty, Frank?’
‘Why? The ground is frozen and it’s cold out there.’
Otto continued to look at me patiently.
‘Ah. Yes.’ Suddenly, I understood.
I volunteered to tend the vegetable patch near the perimeter.
There were no other takers. It was a cold winter and the ground was hard, but it used up my energy, kept me warm, I had access to tools, and digging the dirt from the tunnel back into the earth was as good a way as any of disposing of it.
But I was happy with my new job for another reason, too.
I had watched the yellow-faced girl pass the camp with two yellow-faced friends on their way home from work.
One of the girls had straight, orange hair, and the other girl had frizzy hair that was a vivid yellow: Budgies, the guards called them, not only because of their colouring, but also, I thought, because their laughter sounded like little birds.
When local people walked past they ignored us, but the girl who had smiled at me glanced my way, looking at me with her wide, clear eyes and then looking away quickly as if to spare my feelings.
That’s what it seemed like. That’s what I told myself, because I hoped she understood how humiliating it was for me to be trapped here, being guarded by the enemy instead of fighting them.
I wondered a lot about the coloured hair, whether it was something to do with the orange sticky clay or if it was a national characteristic. I would like to ask.
As inmates of Hut 9 we had little in common, but we were united in wanting to escape.
The shared enterprise made it easier to live together in cramped conditions.
During our first discussion, it was agreed that Luftwaffe and U-boat personnel had the best chance of making it back to Germany because they could steal a boat or an aircraft, not for their own sakes but because Germany needed them.
I was neither a sailor nor an airman and therefore not included in the escape party.
I was a Landser, an old-fashioned word that was a throwback to the Great War.
But I was as keen as anyone to go home and find my family.
I had almost had a ticket out of there in the form of the railway map which I had lost, and I cursed my bad luck every day.
It was early afternoon and already getting dark. The wind was sharp and the frosty grass crunched under my worn soles.
The singing started again in one of the huts nearby and I hummed along. A pale mist was layering the fields, and above the black and distant hills the sky was sprinkled with stars.
I looked at them with longing and I had the awful sense of time passing, and it frightened me to feel my life slipping away from me as though there was something I needed to do urgently before it was too late.
I picked up my spade and tried furiously to penetrate the hard cold earth, at the same time digging over old ground in my thoughts, determined to use up enough energy to sleep dreamlessly, undisturbed by snores and Steffan’s sobbing.
The handle of the spade was icy in my palms. I could only think about escape.
The power of the will could get a person so far, and patience was the one thing I had learned from the war – maybe the only thing I’d learnt. How bloody easy it was to be constantly waiting to be told what to do, when to eat, what to think.
I tucked my frozen hands under my armpits, looking out at the fields and the hills fading to grey as night fell.
Through the tangled curls of barbed wire I saw two women moving along the path, their coats catching the breeze. The girl with the yellow face and green hair. I only needed a glimpse of her to make a day worth living.
As I watched, there she was, coming up to the wire. In the twilight her skin was grey and her hair was grey and her coat was black and her hat was black but I knew it was her. My spirits rose.
‘The girl was you, I think,’ Elisavet said to Cora, closing the notebook.
‘Yes,’ Cora said, nodding, her eyes filling with tears. ‘It was me.’