• • •
We stay in Görlitz for ten days. After three nights another bunk comes free in our hut, and Max moves to that. Bill and I share the one up near the ceiling, “topping and tailing” as two men might do. We are fully clothed of course, but under the blankets we can at least hold hands.
The normal rules are much relaxed, but we are still confined to barracks at night. There’s a change in the way the guards look at us all, as though they know that the tide of war has turned and one day soon they might be held to account for their actions. Although broadcasts in English from the Nazi propagandist Lord Haw-Haw are still regularly played through the camp’s loudspeakers, telling us of Germany’s successful battles against the allies, we no longer believe anything we hear, and men openly shout insults in return.
Max and I take turns bathing Ralph’s feet every two hours during daylight hours, and he tries to do it himself once it’s dark and we’re confined to barracks. I’m careful not to have the water too hot, but he grips the seat of his chair in pain, as if I’ve immersed them in boiling fat, as the skin begins to warm through. I know he dreads each treatment session, but I’ll go on doing it as long as he can stand it, and as long as we’re here. After a couple of days, he looks down and says, “Do you think there’s less pus?” I agree, but he has to look away. “Ugh! Revolting!” I wipe away the offending discharge.
We learn from the other patients that we were “lucky” to be in the second wave of evacuees from Lamsdorf. The first was led by Hauptmann Schultz, who forced the men to march farther and faster than us every day, sometimes with no shelter for the night and with less to eat. Nobody could guess the number of prisoners who died on the route. Some of the men in the sick bay were forced to abandon friends who’d come through five years of battle and imprisonment with them. The man in the bed next to Ralph says, “Remember Schultz’s name lad.…Tell the authorities when you get home.”
Bill spends most of his days scrounging around for food. We get the usual daily ration of bread and soup, but the Red Cross convoys can no longer break through the lines of battle with parcels, and we’re hungry all the time. Although we’re able to rest, there isn’t enough food to regain the weight we lost on the march, and all of us look like scarecrows. We cut the string that secured our parcels to the sledge into shorter lengths and use them to hold up our trousers. Bill, Max, Ralph and I have finished the last parcel we carried from Lamsdorf, though Ralph gets “invalid rations” in the sick bay. He tries to share these with me and Max, and sometimes I don’t refuse, just to please him. We don’t dare leave any food on our bunks, but carry the meager bread ration with us all day in our kit bags. Every day I see a fight break out over food. Bill has located the tall guard, Hans, and he manages to exchange our last cigarettes for a sausage. We allow ourselves an inch of it each a day.
Our principal occupation is trying to rid our clothes of lice, and we are able to wash our long underwear for the first time in a month, though I can’t imagine how I can wash my corset, which must be harboring whole legions of lice.
The sounds of the war are close to us all the time: the rumble of heavy artillery and the constant drone of planes overhead. On two nights running, the number of huge bombers flying over makes the windows rattle all over the camp, and the sky to the west is lit with red light. The guards tell us it’s Dresden burning. They are bitter and angry that one of their most beautiful cities should be destroyed by firebombs, when the war must be so close to ending. I imagine women running with babies in their arms, children with nowhere to hide from the bombs, the awful screams of people being burned to death, or perishing by suffocation under the weight of a fallen building.
After Dresden, the mood in the camp darkens. Even Hans and the other guards from Lamsdorf are cold with us, but there’s also a new attitude among the prisoners.
I see a guard strike a prisoner with the back of his hand. The prisoner slowly takes a cigarette paper and a stub of pencil from his pocket. “What’s your name and serial number?” he asks the guard.
We are frozen with horror. Surely this will result in days in the cooler, or a more determined beating. But the guard just looks at him for a long time and then turns and walks away.
On the eighteenth of February, we’re informed we’ll be leaving in the morning, on foot again. This means we’ll be forced to leave Ralph behind. The sick are told they’ll be taken on by truck or train. Most of them hope they’ll simply be abandoned to be liberated by the Russians.
The men have been moved around in the sick bay, and there’s a stranger in Ralph’s bed. For a horrible moment I think he’s died in the night, but other men who’ve seen me there before tell me where to find him. As I leave, they call out, “Good luck, lad,” and “Say hello to Piccadilly for me.”
I scan the faces of the patients until I find Ralph. After I’ve washed and dried his feet for the last time, I take my notebook and write in shorthand, with my hand shaking, and my eyes prickling, I never forget everything you have done for me.
He says aloud, “And you for me. Come and find me when you get back to Blighty.” He writes his parents’ address. “Or if I don’t make it back”—I shake my head fervently, but he wants to know that he’s said it—“go to see my mum and dad. Tell them…” I nod. Of course I know what he wants to tell them, and he doesn’t have to finish.
He looks over my shoulder and scratches his head as he continues. “And please, would you look after Max for me? He means…”
I wait, nodding solemnly. He swallows and tries again. “Max isn’t as resilient as he looks. He could give up. And you’re the strongest of all of us. Promise me.”
He wipes his face roughly with the back of his sleeve. I lay my hand on his and nod again.
I write again in his notebook, seven little shorthand squiggles: I promise. I won’t let him give up. Of course I’ll look after Max. He and Bill are all the family I’ve got left.
One of the medics stops and looks closely at me. “Out on the march I want you to keep telling yourself that the human body is the toughest device ever invented. You can make it if you believe you will. Don’t forget that, will you?”
I nod, full of dread at what we may be facing.
Ralph and I both have tears in our eyes as I stand by his bed and formally shake him by the hand. I leave with my head bowed and a strong feeling I’ll never see him again, that only one of us or perhaps neither will make it to England.
As I cross the compound back to our hut, though Cousins holds back my tears, I feel hollowed out, a husk of the person I was.
• • •
Just after dawn on the nineteenth of February, we’re called out onto the parade ground. We’re wearing all the clothes we possibly can and have our kit bags and blankets lashed to the sledge again. This time there are only three kit bags and no food parcels, but we still need our blankets, and it’s easier to pull a sledge than to carry anything in our weakened state. We’re all counted, in the old, familiar way, but this time the derision and mockery from the prisoners’ ranks are loud, and mostly ignored by the guards. The old taunts that have been called for so long are now louder: “Der tag”—our day will come; “Sie sind schon gewesen”—you’ve had it. We’re told that this time we’ll be sent out in groups of two or three hundred at a time, following slightly different routes to make it easier to find billets for the night.