War Girls Complete Collection Chapter 183

Chapter 38

G

erman soldiers closed the door of the train wagon and Peter found a place against the wall to stretch out his legs. The journey dragged on and he wasn’t sure that Lotte’s attempt to help him had actually been all that helpful.

The wagon was cramped with injured men moaning and whining, and a putrid stink settled over everything. It only became worse with time. The man next to him suddenly rose, his eyes glazing over as he yelled, “Grenades! Take cover!”

“Where are we going?” Peter asked one of the nurses. Doctors and nurses wore the armband identifying them as Home Army members. The doctors hadn’t been given a choice, but every woman had been allowed to decide whether she wanted to be treated as civilian or be taken prisoner. He admired the brave nurses who’d decided to stay with the wounded soldiers.

“Bergen-Belsen, that’s all I know,” she said and gave him a strange look. “You seem to be quite alright. Normally they send men like you to forced labor.”

“I have a gunshot wound in my leg,” he responded, not wanting to compromise Lotte with a confession.

While he didn’t exactly look forward to setting foot in a camp, he did want this hellish journey to end. Several of the wounded had succumbed to their injuries, and being trapped between corpses wasn’t exactly a pleasure. Peter reclined his head against the wall, praying for all of this to end. Of course, they’d known there would be dead and wounded. But not this tremendous bloodletting. Close to twenty thousand Home Army soldiers and ten times as many civilians had died.

Had it been worth it? Would it have been worth it, had they won?

These questions tormented Peter. When the train finally arrived in Fallingbostel, a subsidiary camp of Bergen-Belsen, he almost screamed with relief. During his time working for Professor Scherer he’d seen many of the camps from the inside, and he prepared himself for the worst. The minute he set foot into the camp, a wave of gratitude for Lotte’s intervention washed over him.

It was ugly, but compared to other camps the Polish barracks were a gem. The treatment when they were unloaded and processed was by far the best he’d ever seen in a camp. Peter was assigned a bunk in one of the huts reserved for the injured and settled into what would become his home for God only knew how long.