War Girls Complete Collection Chapter 233

Chapter 11

R

ichard let out a pained groan as he turned in his sleep. Jolted awake from the stabbing pain in his ribcage, he glanced around. It was deep into the night and only the half-moon cast the field in an eerie light.

Most of the prisoners had fallen into an exhausted sleep and nobody moved about. But the groans of pain mixed with snoring and soft weeping wouldn’t let silence settle over the camp.

He’d spent many a night out in the open during his time on the Eastern front, but never, not even cowering in the trenches, had he felt the icy hand of death as oppressively as tonight. Dozens of prisoners wouldn’t see the light of the morning as they tragically succumbed to the wounds inflicted by the ravaging Poles.

Even more would perish the next day at the hands of their torturers. He wondered what fate had in store for him. Would he be shot in the head? Tortured first? Or would he be sent to a forced labor camp to slave away his life in one of Poland’s mines?

From what he’d heard, the Poles had taken a page from the Nazi book and continued to run the atrocious concentration camps – only switching the liberated inmates with new ones. If anything, they were even crueler than the former oppressor, as their goal wasn’t simply to kill, but to inflict suffering first.

He dozed off again and woke at the sound of a bell at dawn.

“Wake up! Lazy sleazeballs!” a harsh voice shouted over a megaphone. “Everyone line up!”

Richard muttered a curse as he heaved up his aching bones and stepped in line with thousands of other prisoners, separated into males and females. He stood there, breathing shallowly so as not to hurt his ribs any more than he already had, and waited.

Left and right, men fell to the ground, unable to keep upright. The first time he witnessed it, Richard bent down to help the unfortunate soul up again. A rifle butt landed on his back and he let out a scream.

“Stand! Asshole!” a Polish guard commanded and Richard hurried to follow the orders. If he wanted to survive, he had to obey every order to the letter.

The minutes trickled away, and the sun crawled up the horizon, indicating another hot day. At night, he’d licked drops of dew from the fence, but even now in the early morning the maddening thirst raised its ugly head.

He must have been standing motionless for an hour or two, or maybe three, when a group of official-looking men entered the camp and started to ask every prisoner for name, birthdate and birthplace.

A ray of hope entered his anguished mind. Could he lie his way out of this camp? Pretend to be a Pole? He fingered the papers in his chest pocket. They were still there. Life insurance, or death sentence?

One of the officials seemed to be some kind of bureaucrat, while two of the others wore police uniforms and one a soldier’s uniform. Richard had to look twice: the man in a soldier’s uniform was missing one arm.

During the Russian campaign, he’d seen many of his comrades wounded and many with limbs torn from them. They were whisked away to the field hospitals and – if they survived the ordeal – discharged from the Wehrmacht and returned home.

Guilt seeped down his spine. He’d completely forgotten about those less fortunate than him and erased their fates from his memory. He’d spent the last year of the war quite comfortable on Mrs. Jaworski’s farm, tilling the fields. Until today, he’d never given a thought about what awaited the injured after their return to civilian life. But of course, they must live on something and work at some kind of job.

The bureaucrat apparently was the boss and asked the questions, while the two policemen generously doled out knocks and slams with their rifle butts, if a prisoner didn’t answer fast enough. The one-armed soldier, though, stood by and watched, his eye twitching whenever they would order a prisoner to step out of the line.

Then, one of two things happened: either the man was shot at point-blank range, sending a jolt of terror through every other captive in the camp, or he’d be shoved to a small area, to stand and wait.

Wait for what?

Richard mused, although he’d gleaned from the whispers around him that waiting might be as bad or worse than being shot dead. Usually the people who’d had a quarrel with the policemen in the past were the ones destined for

special treatment

.

Richard shrivelled to half his size when the group of men stopped in front of him.

“Name?”

“Ryszard Blach.”

The leader raised an eyebrow. “Born?”

Berlin

, he wanted to say, but caught himself and hesitated for a split-second, before he carefully pronounced the name of the town on his forged papers. “Chojnice.”

“Chojnice, eh?” one of the policemen said with a sneer. “What does a German pig do up there?”

“I’m a Pole,” Richard answered, hoping the men would believe him.

“A Pole?” The bureaucrat scrutinized him with small eyes. “I’m sure you have papers to prove this fact?”

Richard nodded and slowly raised his hands. One of the rifles twitched nervously in his direction and Richard waged an internal argument with himself whether he should explain and risk being found out by his accent, or stay silent and risk being shot on the spot.

He stopped moving his hands and said, “Papers are in my chest pocket.”

“Don’t move. We take them,” the leader said and pointed to the soldier to get the papers.

Richard stared into the muzzles of two rifles trained at him, while the soldier stepped forward. He held his breath in an effort to stand absolutely still. The thin and unkempt man gave Richard a perfunctory search, before he reached for the papers in his chest pocket and handed them to his superior.

His breath smelled of alcohol and Richard recognized the bloodshot eyes of a habitual drinker. For a short moment he felt pity for this man, a former soldier like him, who’d lost a limb, his youth and his illusions and now resorted to the merciful befuddlement the alcohol provided. In another life, he surely had been a good, morally upright man.

It was a shame how this godawful war had crippled an entire generation of young men, mentally, physically and psychologically. Richard himself had seen enough to last for several lifetimes, but thanks to his ability to retreat into the world of the books he so loved, he’d managed to stay more or less sane.

“Ah, let’s see,” the superior said and gave a low whistle as he scrutinized the papers. “Ryszard Blach, born in Chojnice in April 1925. Now tell me, what are you doing in Wroclaw?”

There was no escape, and Richard knew it. The hard glint in the eyes of the interrogator reflected a hidden malice. A complacent smugness as if he had laid a trap and was now waiting for Richard to gnaw off his own leg trying to get out of it.

“Sir, my house was bombed and I came here to live with a cousin.” The slight tremble in Richard’s voice reverberated through his bones and he saw the lips of his opponent twitch.

“Visiting your cousin? You sure you’re not a damn lying German pig?” The bureaucrat’s hand shot out to hit Richard square in the face and he swayed from the impact. For a desk jockey this man had an amazing uppercut.

“I’m a Pole,” Richard insisted.

“Well then, you won’t have any difficulty speaking after me:

W Szczebrzeszynie chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie, i Szczebrzeszyn z tego słynie, że chrząszcz brzmi tam w Szczebrzeszynie

.”

Richard’s blood turned to ice. The maniacal man’s words were a popular Polish tongue-twister and Katrina had always giggled at his hapless butchering of the language.

“

W Szczebrzesz…nie…brzi…”

Damn! Not even in the face of death could he force his tongue to pronounce the difficult words.

The man opposite him broke out in laughter. “So much for being a Pole. My two-year-old grandson can recite better than you.” Then he held the papers high up and shredded them with a malicious smile, letting the small pieces of paper fall to the ground. “It’s a shame, actually. One of the best sets of forged papers I’ve seen in a while. But still fake.”

One of the policemen shoved the butt of his gun in Richard’s stomach. He doubled over in pain and covered his head with his arms as more kicks rained down on his backside. He wondered if he’d improve his chances at survival by telling them that he was a Wehrmacht deserter and asking to be handed over to the Russians, or if he should keep quiet and pretend to be a civilian. Either way, his life had just entered a new sort of hell.

“Take him over there,” the leader of the group yelled and seconds later, one big hand grabbed him and heaved him up, not too roughly, and pulled him to the separated

waiting area

.

Richard’s heart sank as the man whom he recognized as the soldier dropped him onto the ground. He caught a glimpse of the soldier’s eyes and believed he saw a trace of embarrassment in them. Again, Richard felt pity for him. This man wasn’t cruel and sadistic like the two policemen, but he probably felt there was no choice for him but to do the ugly bidding tasked upon him.

Unable to move, with every excruciating breath, Richard lay still on the ground, fearing an unknown and terrifying future. Meanwhile, the roll call in the camp continued and every now and then another man stumbled into the waiting area, collapsing to the ground, as soon as the guards let go of him.

Bedazzled with pain, Richard retreated into his mind, finding a modicum of relief in the story of The Ingenious Nobleman Sir Don Quixote of La Mancha. It kept him alive, breathing, and his heart beating, disconnected from harsh reality.

A loud thud and a dull pain in his leg jolted him out of his fantasy and he raised his head. A man in priest’s garb had fallen atop him. Richard sat up to shake the man off of him, but when he turned him around, his stomach turned. The man’s face was hardly recognizable as a human being’s.

He moved him as softly as he could and took off his jacket to put it under the man’s head. Then he moved to sit behind him, to shield his face from the scorching sun that travelled across the horizon.

The priest seemed to be unconscious, murmuring unintelligible words and groaning in pain every now and then. Richard bit on his lip to keep the outrage and anger at bay, hopelessness seeping into his bones.

When the guards arrived again with a new prisoner, Richard asked one of them, “Could I get some water for this priest, please?”

But the guard only laughed at him and left again.

“Son,” the priest whispered, interrupted by coughs. “You should not worry for me, as I’ll soon be with God. Pray for our captors, who have sinned.”

Richard didn’t think the vile Polish guards deserved his prayers, but he nodded so as not to upset the dying man.

“I can tell by your expression that you don’t agree with me, but we need to bring love and forgiveness into this world riddled with hate and revenge. Remember, Jesus sacrificed himself to save humanity.”

“You are right,” Richard said, still not fully accepting the priest’s gracious words. But he would bring some love into this world and stay with this man during his last hours on earth. So he moved over and held the priest’s hand. After a while he started to talk. About his love for books, about life on the farm with Katrina and his fear of never seeing her again. He talked for hours and the priest smiled every now and then, but never uttered a word. Not until he suddenly became restless and tried to get up.

“Shush, easy,” Richard said.

“No, no. My time has come, I have to…” The priest somehow managed to sit and removed a necklace with a golden cross from around his neck. “This is for you. May it help you through difficult times.”

Richard was moved to tears and could only murmur a soft “Thank you” as he took the valuable article and slipped it over his head.

“I have no regrets,” the priest said and stopped breathing.

Richard had seen many people die. Enemy soldiers, comrades at the front, civilians shot in cold blood, his best friend Karl captured by the partisans, Mrs. Jaworski... it was an endless line. But the priest, now lying dead by his side, moved him to tears and he silently wept for everything that was cruel and awful and full of hate in this world.

He took back his jacket and sat silently waiting. But nothing happened. Seemingly the guards had forgotten about the men waiting to be taken for torture, and the night began to settle over the land.