Our old Lamsdorf guards are standing back, and new men from the town of Görlitz, are assigned to accompany us. I look along their faces; they are furious at the unpunished taunting, and the old fear floods through me. Maybe one of these new guards will spot the secret I’ve kept hidden for so long.
The order comes to “About-turn,” and the great gates of the prison camp are swung back for us to leave, as once again we march out onto the open road.
Twenty-six
Bill senses the mood of the march darkening further as they leave Görlitz, still pulling their sledge behind them. It’s even more than a grim fight for survival; it’s like being at war all over again. Their shorter column of three hundred or so prisoners may be easier to bed down for the night, but Bill fears that Izzy might be harder to hide. Their guards are posterns and volkssturm rather than regular army: either adolescent thugs, indoctrinated by the Hitler Youth from the time they could walk, or old soldiers in their sixties who lived through the First World War and the terrible conditions of the armistice. The young are the worst because they’re arrogant, aggressive and self-important, completely certain, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that the Nazis are still winning the war. They are distrustful, trigger-happy, mean. They haven’t been through what the Lamsdorf guards suffered with the prisoners on the first leg of the march. They haven’t known any individual prisoners long enough to see them as human beings. The new guards loathe the allies for the slaughter of civilians at Dresden.
Bill’s constantly worried that Izzy will be discovered as a woman by these new guards, who seem eager to show their superiority in every way. He knows they wouldn’t hesitate to have their sport with her in front of him, before killing both of them. He watches Izzy doggedly putting one foot in front of the other through the snow and can’t believe everything she’s faced, just to be with him.
Very soon after leaving Görlitz, they cross from Poland into the old prewar Germany, and Bill feels there’s a difference in the guards now that they are in their homeland. He knows they’ll fight to defend it just as Izzy was prepared to do for Czechoslovakia. They seem to take the ice on their eyebrows and noses and lapels as badges of honor. They call to the prisoners constantly to move faster up the long, murderous hills, as if they weren’t going as fast as their bodies could move. Despite their days resting at Görlitz, Bill knows they are in a very poor condition, hundreds of starving men, edging forward through the snow.
But just as something has hardened in the guards, it has lightened in the prisoners around him, who are marching west toward their own people. This time they are kitted out against the cold better than on the first march. They have had more time to prepare, and everyone knew they weren’t going on a short hike. Two friends have raided the sports cupboard in the camp: one is wearing wicketkeeper gloves, and his mate has cut open a leather football to make a hat. One man shows Bill his gloves and says they’re made of dogskin, the warmest thing he’s ever felt.
“Look, look there,” says Bill to Izzy, pointing as they trudge. “Posterns digging in with machine guns. They know the allies are coming very soon.”
Jeering and insults are thrown at the posterns and singing starts up and down the line. Bill joins in, roaring out the words of “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary,” “Keep the Home Fires Burning,” and “Take Me Back to Dear Old Blighty.”
Rumors keep starting that there will be Red Cross parcels in the next village or the one after that.
Hauling their sledge up these long gradual hills, Bill, Izzy and Max can take in their shorter column, two or three abreast, stretching ahead along the snowy, potholed country tracks they’re traveling. Although they’re now in Germany, Bill notices that the number of civilian refugees seems even more than before. Nobody wants to be left for the Red Army, he thinks. If Russian soldiers showed no mercy to Czech women, his blood freezes at the thought of the revenge they’ll mete out to German women. And now he’s pleased that Izzy didn’t stay with Berta. Perhaps her mother and Marek are on the road by now too.
They trudge through endless pine forests, with snow fallen from the branches of the trees, but still lying deep beneath them where the sun doesn’t reach. The farms are bigger than in Poland, with bigger barns. The villages have red roofs that ought to look cheerful.
At the first night’s rest stop, the posterns treat the prisoners like animals, kicking out of the way men who’ve collapsed with exhaustion.
Bill says, “Who’d have thought we’d miss the guards from Lamsdorf?”
A man near him says, “There were some bastards there too, but that one with eczema asked me why I went round all day with an empty pipe in my mouth, and I told him it was because I hadn’t got any tobacco. And every day after that, he brought me a pinch of tobacco for my pipe.”
There’s a moment’s silence; then Max says, “Well, none of them showed me a moment’s kindness. And we should get the names of all these bastards so they can be made to pay.”
The guards push and shove them into a huge barn, bigger than Bill’s ever seen and alive with rats. Some prisoners try to catch them for food. Bill thinks again of Tucker and wonders if it was Izzy who laced his food with rat poison. Could she have done it? Would she?
The mood is different in the villages too. Bill remembers the Polish women who came out with hot drinks for them, but now many of the Germans throw stones at them and spit on them. “This is for Dresden,” they shout. “Murdering swine.”
News comes down the line that the posterns are having to guard the RAF prisoners from the locals as they pass.
On their second day Bill hears the line ahead go deadly quiet as they begin to come alongside men and women who’ve been made to stand back from the track for them to pass. There must be two thousand of them wearing thin, striped pajamas and bloodied wooden clogs. Their heads are shaved and uncovered. They have no coats, no underwear, no hats, no fuss-lag. They shiver uncontrollably; some are holding one another up. They stare ahead or down, but aren’t focusing on the prisoners, not expecting anything from them. They line both sides of the road, like a terrible warning that however cold and hungry the British POWs may be, even worse is possible. Max tries to press a crust of bread into the hand of a young person who might be a man or a woman, and one of their guards crashes a rifle butt down on his hand. The morsel of bread falls into the snow. Bill thinks they can only offer them respectful silence, prayers perhaps from those who still believe.
For a long time after they’ve passed, Bill can still see the blankness in their eyes.
Max whispers, “Jews. I think they were Jews. If my grandfather hadn’t gone to America, I could be there with them.” Izzy links her arm into his, and they tramp on.
The new guards are harsh with anyone who drops out of line to answer a call of nature, so they try to wait until the rest stops. With so little food they only have to defecate every five or six days, and because the new posterns rarely let them stop for water, their urine has turned dark yellow. Izzy is very careful now only to crouch down when the posterns’ backs are turned, with Bill and Max to shield her.
In addition to the gnawing hunger, Bill is thirsty all the time, a terrible thirst he’s never experienced before. He cracks ice off a puddle and hands out chunks of it to the others. They break it into their tin mugs, waiting for it to melt. One man says it’s his birthday, and the guard gives him a half cup of water. Bill sees many men scooping up handfuls of the yellow snow from beside the road, and he remembers Ralph telling them only to eat clean snow, only to drink boiled water, not to use the same hand to eat as to clean themselves. Bill wishes Ralph and Scotty were still with them. It’s so hard only having Max to help him watch over Izzy. He is exhausted with having to be vigilant every minute.