War Girls Complete Collection Chapter 215

Chapter 29: Peter

T

he bleak march progressed and on the day of the spring equinox Peter collapsed onto a bunk at the prisoner camp in Sandbostel, less than seventy miles away from Fallingbostel where he’d started his murderous trip two and a half months ago.

The long winter march had taken everything out of him and he had no idea how he’d managed to survive when so many had died. Throughout the past two weeks the weather had warmed. Bright green leaves budded on the trees and flowers poked their heads through the ground, announcing the arrival of spring. Normally, the renewal of spring would bring a smile to Peter’s face, but sick, hungry and tired as he was, he cared for nothing but sleep and food.

The deep gnawing pain of hunger torturing him every minute of every day had become his constant companion, squeezing the smallest joy out of life. He’d never known that hunger – real, raw, unabated hunger – could be worse than any other pain.

A kind soul had distributed one slice of bread to each of the newcomers as they staggered into the camp, in rows of five, holding each other up because none of them could walk on their own.

Peter closed his eyes, the ferocious pain in his stomach appeased for a while with the slice of bread, reveling in the softness of the bed. For the first time in two months he didn’t sleep on concrete or ice. To him, the wooden bunk with a worn-out blanket as mattress felt like the canopy bed of a princess. His tortured bones protruding against the skin welcomed the unfamiliar softness and he fell asleep the moment his head hit the blanket.

During the murderous march his emotions had started out with fear, then turned to renewed hatred for the Nazis when they’d executed Bartosz in cold blood. But soon the hatred had given way to remorse for not having snatched the chance at freedom when Anna had offered it. Remorse was followed by guilt – guilt to be alive when so many others weren’t.

But now, collapsed onto the comparative comfort of a bunk under a roof, he didn’t have any emotions left, but apathy. He couldn’t care less about what would happen next. He didn’t care whether he died today or tomorrow or not at all. What difference did it make in the grand scheme of such awful, cruel suffering?

He just…was. Dangling from the hands of his cruel puppeteers, dancing to their tune on strings of listlessness. The Nazis had finally reached their goal and reduced him to a non-human. An animal that merely existed with no thoughts of its own.

Peter woke from his own coughs and pressed his hands against his ribs to ease the pangs of pain caused by his coughing. Even half asleep his feet set into motion with a mind of their own, thinking they were still on the endless march. But something felt different. Softer. He groaned as he rolled across his raw spine, opening his eyes into small slits.

Memories of the day before rushed back to assault him. Just when he thought he couldn’t walk another step, they’d been shoved past the barbwire fence that surrounded his new home. He would never have believed he’d reach the point where he considered being held in an overcrowded, disease-infested prison camp a good thing. But he couldn’t have been happier to see a prison camp from the inside.

No more walking.

“Get up! Roll call!” a voice bellowed and Peter hurried to get his meager bones off the bunk and into the assembly yard. Orders were given, prisoners assigned to work parties, corpses hauled away.

He settled into camp life, miserable but predictable. Definitely an improvement over marching through ice and snow. The weather warmed by the day, finally returning the warmth to his bones that had been absent for so many months. Even the mud that caked shoes and clothes was finally drying up, and with the sunshine, his cough began to improve.

After a few days Peter began to believe he might survive this war after all. Allied aircraft roamed the sky like they owned it, which was probably true, because he rarely ever saw the Luftwaffe defending their airspace.

Germany was truly on her knees, one last feeble attempt to rear up against the overwhelming strength of her enemies, before the inevitable happened and the awful six-year-long war would finally be over.

The prisoners were starved for news, as the guards had become increasingly tight-lipped about the progress at the front line. That probably was a good sign, although Peter and his comrades itched to know just how good. How near were the Allies? How soon would they be liberated? How much longer did they have to hang on to the thin thread of their lives?

Only three weeks later, as Peter’s sore and injured feet had just healed, all the officers were set on the march again. Peter envied the majority who were allowed to stay, even with a typhus epidemic holding the camp in its deathly grip.

Anything but walking again.

So he walked.

Northeast.

One hundred miles. More or less retracing his tortured steps from whence he’d come.

Again.

The area seemed familiar. They passed around Hamburg in the North and Peter rubbed his eyes as he observed the previously proud and beautiful city reduced to a picture of apocalyptic devastation. His heart grew weary thinking of Anna and Jan. Were they still alive?

At least the weather had changed and he now longer had to brave wind and ice. But the sunshine brought out the bugs, the lice and the mosquitoes, feasting on the blood of the prisoners who were too weak to fend them off.

After two days marching from sunrise to sunset in the spring sun, his eyes were sore and weeping from the burn, his head about to explode from the exposure to the sun, and his face blistered with sunburn.

He kept walking. He dreamt about walking to the end of the world and tumbling down. His legs moved even when he lay on the ground trying to sleep. He thought he’d never stop walking again.

Evil truly knew no bounds and conditions were never so bad that they couldn’t get worse..

A week later they arrived at their destination – Lübeck – and Peter wondered how many more times he’d be forced to crisscross Germany on foot, fleeing from the Russians in the East or the Western Allies in the West.

At the Oflag X-C they were crammed into already crowded barracks. As exhaustion overtook him, Peter made his way to a corner and crumpled to the ground. One of the existing prisoners shoved a stale piece of bread into his hands, and Peter simply looked at it.

He knew he needed to eat, but the effort required to raise his arm was too much to bear. The other prisoner seemed to notice, removed the bread from his hand again and broke off a small piece, forcing it into Peter’s mouth.

Peter chewed automatically, far beyond feeling embarrassed for having to be fed like a baby. The other man held a cup of water to his lips and Peter greedily drank before coughing wracked his thin frame. Then he closed his eyes, his head leaning against the wall as sleep overtook him.

Despite the kindness of the other man, who’d probably saved his life, Peter couldn’t find a sliver of hope in this place.

Only bleakness.

One week passed and Peter slowly returned from the nearly-dead. His apathy slipped away and with every rumor rampaging through the camp he got up his hopes and his determination to live just a little more.

A second week passed and on May 2

nd

the miracle happened.

“British soldiers!” someone yelled at the top of his lungs.