Two guards line us up on the platform in front of the ticket office. There’s something so utterly normal in seeing civilians buying tickets for a train and waiting on the platform alongside us that I want to hug Bill with excitement. But my eagerness dwindles as we wait one hour and then another and are finally allowed to sit down on the cold platform.
A goods train pulls in across the tracks from us, and the massive doors of the sealed wagons are pulled back to reveal hundreds of captured Russian troops crammed into the trucks. They stumble down from the train, supporting one another. They have many days’ growth of beards and look half dead with exhaustion and starvation. We look at each other in silent shock, and our mood is further depressed.
After we wait three hours, another train pulls into the station.
As Ralph predicted, we are loaded into a cattle truck, but there are only about thirty of us, so there’s room to sit on the dirty straw. The big doors are slammed shut, and I have a moment of panic that we may just be left to suffocate here, in the dark, but then my eyes adjust to the gloom, and I realize that a trickle of light is seeping through airholes. With a lurch, the train moves off, and despite the discomfort, joy rises in me again as we leave the camp behind. The train moves so slowly that it would be possible to walk faster, and after a while, I doze, lulled by the movement. In a few hours, the train stops, and we hope we’ve arrived somewhere.
“Must be in a siding,” Bill concludes, trying to look out through a small slit. “I can’t see anything,” he reports. “Just trees.”
Finally, we move again, and just as I think the journey will go on forever, or maybe we’ve all died and this is the train through purgatory, we stop and the doors are hurled open. Clean air rushes in, and we throw up our arms to cover our eyes. As we jump down from the train, someone can’t find a haversack of food, and it seems it’s been stolen by another prisoner in the dark. I am disgusted that prisoners steal from their own countrymen.
A jowly, red-faced postern calls our names, and we five separate ourselves from the other Lamsdorf prisoners. Our documents are checked, and the postern tells us to move to the other end of the platform. He gives Bill and Scotty a good poke in the back with his rifle butt and says, in German, “Don’t think you can try anything because I’m not regular army. You bastard English killed my brother.”
• • •
As we wait, Bill and I share a slice of bread and the last of the Spam. The meat is lukewarm, and I wonder if it’s safe to eat, but we wolf it down just the same. The men discuss having a brew, but decide it would be too tricky if our train suddenly arrived.
Another train pulls into the station, and this time we aren’t loaded into a cattle truck but allowed into a third-class carriage. Bill is fizzing with excitement as we load our kit bags and parcels onto the luggage racks. He and Ralph have had long conversations about train journeys.
“Add this one to the list.” He beams at Ralph.
We sit on the wooden benches and watch the countryside fly past. It’s wonderful to be able to see as far as the horizon, to see farms working just as usual, animals grazing in fields, late crops still waiting to be harvested. The guard in the corner doesn’t bother us one bit. We are having a day out, a holiday! It feels like freedom, to be out and moving. Ordinary people pass our carriage in the corridor and look in, some with sympathy, others with curiosity, but one woman spits on the glass.
Our train passes from the flat lands of Poland into the Jeseník Mountains, climbing and climbing. Now there are no more birch trees but only evergreen pines, with their broad branches spreading, ready to take the snows of winter.
Eventually our train arrives at Saubsdorf. We are in the Czech region of Silesia, where many of the people speak German, just as they did at home. Outside the station is a waiting cart drawn by two big horses.
I pat the nose of one of them as the postern hands us over to a middle-aged civilian wearing a well-cut green coat and a Bavarian hat. He is armed with a small pistol.
The civilian eyes us all as we climb into the back of the cart, and addresses us in German with a strong Czech accent. “I am Herr Rauchbach, the owner of the Saubsdorf quarry.”
I hope his first loyalty might be to Czechoslovakia, rather than the Third Reich.
Ralph translates for Bill, Max and Scotty, and replies to Herr Rauchbach in German, saying we are good workers who are eager to increase the productivity of his quarry.
As Ralph makes his little speech, Herr Rauchbach appraises us with his dark, deep-set eyes. He raises his eyebrows and nods, then clambers up beside the powerfully built younger man holding the reins of the horses. My stomach lurches as he speaks to him in my beloved Czech.
“This lot looks even worse than the last. Half-starved city types and a skinny boy.” The skinny boy must be me!
The horse driver swivels in his seat to look back at us as Herr Rauchbach continues. “Let’s just take them to the main quarry and get some stronger men from there for Supíkovice.”
His companion looks me slowly up and down and smiles a thin, humorless smile. He says, “Then it will be dark, and we’ll have to start again in the morning.” He too speaks Czech with a Silesian accent, as though his first language is German. He’s almost handsome in a square-jawed, thick-necked way, but has none of Herr Rauchbach’s intelligence in his face. Herr Rauchbach clicks his tongue with impatience. “Yes, yes, very well, Kurt. If they aren’t any good, we’ll take them to Saubsdorf in a few days. Do what you can with them. But don’t push them too hard to start.”
Kurt touches the horses lightly with the whip, and we are off, farther up into the forests and mountains, far, far away from Lamsdorf.
PART THREE
SUPÍKOVICE QUARRY, OCCUPIED CZECHOSLOVAKIA
October 1944 to January 1945
Seventeen
Bill and Izzy are thrown against each other like sacks of corn as the horses trot from the railway station to the quarry. Late-October dusk is descending fast as the cart rattles over potholes in the road. Herr Rauchbach and Kurt have their backs to the prisoners as they drive, although Kurt turns from time to time and waves his pistol. Bill has seen too many trigger-happy young men before, and this makes him nervous.
The floor of the cart is hard and filled with a white dust that coats everyone’s clothes. They try to sit on their kit bags but are constantly thrown off them, and Bill can feel bruises blooming on his bony bottom and legs. He fears it will be the same for Izzy. As daylight slowly departs, the cold mountain air begins to penetrate their clothes. With difficulty, they haul their blankets out from beneath them and wrap themselves. Izzy huddles against Bill, though he can’t imagine that any warmth comes from him.
When he glances down at her, he can see that despite the cold and discomfort she’s gazing around her with undisguised delight at the beauty of the mountains in the deepening twilight. Peaks and crags and the spiky outlines of pine trees are silhouetted in black against an indigo sky. Izzy feels Bill’s eyes on her and gives him a wide smile. He grins in return just as Kurt turns again, taking in their happiness and closeness. Kurt stares hard at Izzy in a way that makes Bill feel uneasy, and he feels her stiffen too and drop her head. In a moment Kurt has his back turned to them again, driving the horses forward and talking in a low voice to Herr Rauchbach in Czech. Bill wonders if Izzy can make out what they are saying over the clattering of the hooves and the whir of the wheels on the road.