War Girls Complete Collection Chapter 210

Chapter 24: Peter

S

everal days after Christmas, other prisoners brought the news that all female Home Army members who’d been held in a separate area of the camp were going to be transferred to the camp in Oberlangen, near the border with the Netherlands.

“Why on earth would the Nazis do this?” Peter asked. The German resources were stretched thin already so why start moving prisoners around?

“Not sure,” the other man said, “but I’ve heard that Fallingbostel will be closed down.”

Peter gasped at the impact of this information. Thousands upon thousands of debilitated prisoners in bad physical shape would be on the move to God only knew where.

“Apparently the Nazis expect the final battle to take place right here in the middle of the North German Plain, so they need us out of the way. Afraid we might take up the fight and reinforce the Allied troops should push come to shove.”

But as always, the flurry of rumors slowed down and senseless activities came to a halt. A week after the women soldiers left, everyone else remained, toiling as usual. Just when Peter forgot about the alleged plan to close down the camp, five hundred Home Army officers were called up during roll call. They stood for hours in the biting cold January frost, fearing the worst.

“Everyone on the trains,” the guards yelled. “

Schnell! Schnell!

”

“Where are we going?” Peter asked, but instead of an answer, the butt of a rifle pushed him forward. Would his worst nightmares come true and they’d be shipped to one of the extermination camps?

Peter stumbled behind the others to the nearby ramp, where they were shoved into boxcars, fifty men each. The five-day journey was one of the worst experiences of his entire life, and he was amazed to still be alive when the doors finally opened and a rough voice shouted, “

Raus! Schnell!”

He followed the orders, climbing across the corpses of fellows who’d succumbed to thirst, hunger or frailty during the journey. He never thought he’d one day wish himself back at Stalag XIB in Fallingbostel. But exactly this was his first thought when he was marched into the new camp.

It was severely overcrowded, even before accommodating the influx of new prisoners. Typhus, dysentery and every other imaginable sickness ran rampant amongst the prisoners and the guards didn’t show a modicum of compassion, unlike some of the guards in Fallingbostel. The smallest sliver of hope flickered when he found Bartosz, who’d survived the hellish trip in another boxcar.

He sank to the ground, greedily shoving snow into his mouth to quench the insupportable thirst that had plagued him since he got onto the cattle wagon five days earlier.

“Where are we?” Peter asked one of the resident inmates.

“In hell,” the man said, not even bothering to look up. The sunken cheeks and empty gaze betrayed his state of mind.

“Gross Born, Pomerania, but hell describes it better. Make yourself comfortable,” the man next to him said with a grand gesture encompassing the camp.

Peter swallowed hard. Gross Born was deep in the East near the border with Poland.

So near to home and yet so far

. But the approaching Red Army and what they might do to Home Army members worried him even more. Based on previous experiences, nothing nice could be expected.

“Why on earth did they send us here when they’ve been moving lots of prisoners West?” Peter whispered to Bartosz.

“Who knows?” Bartosz shrugged. “Grasping what goes on in the mind of a Nazi is beyond me.”

Peter sneered. His friend was right. Logic and reason didn’t mesh well with Nazi ideology. All he could do was settle into conditions even worse than before and hope to live another day.

Winter had come with full force, and everyone agreed it was the coldest since time immemorial. Peter was thankful for the warm felt boots and the greatcoat he’d snatched from a dead comrade before the corpse had been discarded in the morning.

Man-high snow covered the country and at night the temperatures fell to minus twenty-five degrees centigrade outside, and it wasn’t much warmer in the unheated barracks either. Two years ago someone had constructed a radio from smuggled parts, which had since proven a valuable source of information.

The Vistula Lagoon and the Gdansk Bay in the Baltic Sea were frozen over and despite an official prohibition against fleeing and showing cowardice before the enemy, every day hundreds of Germans from East Prussia, Silesia and Pomerania left everything behind and started their long trek westward into Germany.

“Serves them right,” one man said.

“If they hadn’t committed all those cruel crimes, they wouldn’t have to fear anything,” another one chimed in.

“I’ll squash any bloody German I encounter between my thumbs like an ant.”

“Not all Germans are bad,” Peter objected.

“What do you know? Are you a fucking collaborator?” several men accused him, ready to lynch him.

“He’s not. He fought in the Warsaw Uprising, but if it weren’t for the kindness of a German nurse, his brother would be long dead,” Bartosz came to his aid.

Peter quieted, but guilt and doubt seeped into his bones. Was he a traitor to his nation for loving a German woman?

Day after day news about the approaching Red Army trickled in; it was only a matter of time until they’d be liberated. Even Peter started to yearn for the hated Russians to show up at the gates of the camp. He thought his life couldn’t possibly get any worse.

It could.