heard the next statement.
‘You should get a hot meal on the third or fourth day.’
‘That’s a long time to wait,’ I thought. ‘I haven’t got any choice.’ I was willing to bet though, that it would be soup.
‘You can have some of these,’ he said, and picked up some paperback books from the bottom shelf and handed them to me.
I would rather have my biscuits, I thought, but kept my mouth shut and slipped them into one of the inner pockets in my greatcoat.
The doctor looked me up and down one last time and patted me on the shoulder. I thought he was about to say, ‘Chin up, young man, it’ll be fine,’ but all he did was open the door, put his head out and called for the guard.
A guard came in and gestured to me with his rifle. I picked up my coat and bundle and followed him, pausing for a moment before going out of the room. I looked at the doctor and the closed cupboard door where my biscuits were.
We walked along corridors and then passageways which got darker and colder and smellier. You wouldn’t have known it was summer outside. We went down some steps and passed door after door. Then by the miserable light of a single bulb hanging down on a frayed cord, I could see one door ajar at the end. It had a tiny pane of frosted glass high up with barbed wire tacked outside. The guard kicked the door open, pushed me in and then slammed the door shut behind me.
It was almost completely dark inside so I couldn’t make out a thing. I felt my way around until my foot hit something and I tripped and fell. It was some sort of board fixed to the wall. Ah, that was my bed. I patted my way along it till I felt a rough blanket. What a stink! Better off without it. I wasn’t going to sleep under that so I pulled it off, dropped it on the floor and kicked it to the side. Well, it didn’t have far to go. I suppose the cell was about 8ft by 8ft. I was to pace it out a few times A day over the next ten days.
What about a toilet? Now I wasn’t used to anything fancy. Camp latrines are nothing to write home about and squatting down in a field is OK as long as you avoid nettles and thistles but what was I meant to do here? Were they going to let me out to go somewhere? A few seconds later I got my answer. Ting. I kicked something metallic in the corner, not a bucket but an empty jam tin, as it turned out. Germans like their jam and this tin was catering size and was empty at the start of my stay, thank goodness but very full by the end.
How long it was before I had any human contact I can’t say. It was difficult keeping track of time in the dark like that and a watch wouldn’t have helped much even if I’d had one. Sid was the only one with a watch, one which he had taken off a German soldier, I believe. I’m not sure under what circumstances but I wish he had thought of lending it to me anyway. I knew from what some of the chaps back at camp had said about the sentence that it wasn’t just about being on your own but also having to survive on next to nothing to eat. We never had enough food as it was, so I knew I’d be having even less but the good thing was I wouldn’t be out slaving away all day on the farm, coming back, worn out and starving. OK, ten days, yes, I can do that, I thought. Got to do it and put up with it. I kept thinking that this was nothing compared with what others had gone through or were even now experiencing.
I remembered what I had witnessed, what I had seen the Germans inflict on innocent people. My young army mates shot to bits in cross fire; the wounded soldiers on the makeshift operating tables; those poor Jews packed into cattle trucks, like us, but going to certain death; and that mother shot and her baby kicked like garbage down the railway track. There were prisoners dying of hunger and disease or sheer exhaustion all over the country. There were chaps who committed suicide because they couldn’t take any more and just gave up. People on their own, with no pals like me. That was no way to be. Yes, I was lucky. I settled down, squatting on the board and sat there, waiting for the days to pass.
It was afternoon, I imagine, when I heard footsteps and the sound of boots kicking the doors along the corridor. This I learned was the signal for food or exercise or roll call. It was meal time. I found my bowl and got ready for the door to open. I knew it was going to be half rations but I was still surprised when I saw – or should I say felt, the tiny piece of bread, cube of butter and slice of liver sausage which had been chucked in the bowl by a rough and dirty hand. I had a glimpse of the face as well of the soldier in the half light of the doorway. I leaned later that it was Serb POWs doing a lot of the prison jobs.
So there I was, sitting alone in the dark in my overcoat, trying to make a meal out of my meagre rations. You always break your bread up into smaller pieces to make it go further. Use your spoon to smear the butter on each piece to give it a bit of taste. As for the
All of a sudden I heard a little bit of scuffling by the door. Oh God, not a rat! Is there nowhere safe from those horrible wretched creatures? We had them in the house and used to hear them gnawing through the floorboards at night. Like the sound of distant machine guns. Terrible! So we used to stamp on the floor to make them go away. But they always returned. At least I was off ground level there in an upper bunk. I thought I was meant to be doing solitary.
I was looking down at the bottom of the door where there was ? inch gap of light just about. It was a mouse. I saw its tail, a thin stringy affair not some great rope-like thing of a rat. It went back and forth a couple of times before disappearing. Then there was silence and all you could hear was me munching on my bit of bread.
A bit later the mouse came out again and it obviously knew there was food, probably smelt the liver sausage because it came out every night. Of course, it may have been a different mouse each time but I like to think that it was the same one keeping me company. So I broke off a tiny piece of bread, more a crumb really, and threw it towards the door. I waited and listened for the scurrying and then the movement of its tail in the pencil of pale light under the door. I’m sure I heard him nibbling away. My mouse, my Mickey Mouse.
On the fourth day, as I had been told, I was served my first hot meal – you’ve guessed it, soup. And this was about the worst I had ever had, worse than the soup that got me there in the first place. Yes, it was warm but it was made of sugar beet leaves and bits of rotten potatoes and smelt to high heaven. I doubt if even Mickey would have touched it if I had put it down for him. But I did drink it. Every last stinking drop.
And it was a day or two later, when I had counted out the days I had been in, I realised it must be about 23 July, Lily’s birthday. So I thought I would have a little celebration, a party. Lily might not be here but she was still with me in my heart and as I couldn’t celebrate with anybody else, I would share my meal with Mickey. When I got my food that evening, I broke off a tiny piece of bread again and this time, using the end of my spoon, cut off a tiny piece of the liver sausage to add as an extra treat. I put it down on the floor by the crack under the door. Then I sat on my bit of hard board and waited for Mickey to come out.
So there I was eating my meal while Mickey nibbled away on his. Happy Birthday, Lily, my sweetheart, so far away. Would I ever see you again? If I did would you still want to marry me? Perhaps, she had met someone else. Somebody who could dance. I was a different person now, especially the way I looked. I was never any great shakes in the looks department before the war but now, I thought, my mother wouldn’t even recognise me and Lily would probably run a mile if she saw me. We were both twenty-two years old and I would have to wait another three years before I saw her again.
When Mickey had gone I was alone sitting in the dark, with just my thoughts for company. What was everybody else doing? I listened for signs of life beyond my cell. Nothing except the odd scuffling sound and noise of distant banging. What about my pals in the camp? Singing, laughing and playing cards. What about the ordinary people who were caught up in this dreadful war, trying to carry on as normal. The families, what was left of them, going about their business on the farms and in the surrounding villages while I sat there feeling sorry for myself. Cows were being milked, butter being made and washing hung out to dry.
It was sad that we weren’t able to have any real contact with people outside the camp, perhaps to see a bit of their home life. We worked alongside the locals and shared a cigarette or two and accepted loaves of bread, but it was not enough to form a bond between us, like you would with a friend you see every day. What did they think of it all? There were Russian women prisoners who worked alongside us in the beet fields, backs bent, heads down. We never got the chance to exchange even a few words with them, only a smile or gesture maybe.
I remember once we were working near a lake towards the north of the region. There was a small community of people known as Kashubians living there. We were walking through their village and were close enough to hear them talking as we walked by – not German or Polish but a strange language. We tried to signal to
