Rudi Fischer didn’t think of himself as a coward, but maybe he was.
Otherwise, why would he still be sitting there in the mess hall, weighing up
the options? Surely there was only one option? Speak up. Try and prevent a
massacre. Even if that meant telling the camp guards what he knew: that the
fanatical SS prisoners were planning a mutiny.
It was the right thing to do, wasn’t it? Moral, ethical, principled. The
things his father had taught him to believe in. The action of a brave man,
certainly. Because if the guards didn’t believe him or couldn’t protect him
from the wrath of the Waffen-SS prisoners, then Rudi knew what his fate
would be: he would end up dead. Maybe they’d make it look like a suicide.
They sometimes did that. And this time there was no way out. No one
escaped from this camp. That was why the British had built it in such an
inaccessible place and with such water-tight security.
He shouldn’t even be there. Not in Compound B, the place where they
dumped German SS prisoners, the hardened fanatics. He wasn’t one of
them. He was an airman, a member of the Luftwaffe, not one of Hitler’s
Waffen-SS thugs. But the fact that he’d already escaped from a camp in
Cornwall had sealed his fate.
All four main compounds in this high-security camp looked exactly the
same, even though they were separated by soaring barbed-wire fences and
guard towers. Barracks, mess hall, showers, latrines – all the usual things
that were necessary to keep so many men securely penned in one place.
Interaction between the different compounds wasn’t allowed. Some had
tried. It hadn’t been anything sinister. Just one German soldier spotting a
friend on the other side of the wire. Waving. Shouting across.
Rudi had heard them. Seen them both walk towards the barbed wire.
One man with a smile on his face. It seemed like a harmless and innocent
meeting of old friends. But one of the guards hadn’t thought so, and Rudi
had watched in horror as a perimeter guard fired his rifle at one of the men.
The young man fell to the ground, the smile of welcome wiped from his
face.
Rudi had watched the man writhe in the dirt. Had seen the Polish guard
casually sling the rifle back on his shoulder and bare his teeth in a smile.
He’d shot only one man. A warning to the other prisoners. An example of
what to expect if they tried to fraternise with POWs from another
compound.
That had been months ago now. But it had been an important lesson for
Rudi Fischer. That’s when he knew for sure that Camp 21 was a dangerous,
lawless place, a sort of Wild West of POW camps. The danger came from
many places: British guards, Polish guards and even your fellow
countrymen – fanatical Nazis who expected you to feel the same as they
did.
He took out his last cigarette, lit it and inhaled the acrid smoke. God
knows what was in the thing. Not real tobacco. But pulling the smoke down
into his lungs had a calming effect.
He made his decision. There had only ever been one real choice. And
he’d known that all along. Only one option existed if he was to stay true to
himself. Keep his self-respect and that of the father he loved. Time to make
out that last will and testament. Burial or cremation, which should he
choose? He smiled to himself. Always good to drag out the odd bit of
gallows humour – it helped you to keep perspective.
It was a rebellion with little hope of success. Rudi had known that from the
moment he’d first been dragged into the plan, been told to play his part in
the takeover of the compound. ‘You are in or out,’ he’d been told. ‘Make up
your mind.’ And so that there could be no misunderstanding about what
exactly out meant, two POWs had held him down, put a homemade shiv to
his neck. The drops of blood it drew were real. The knife was real,
fashioned from a razor blade stuck into the end of a toothbrush. There were
other weapons, too, all equally as lethal: shards of glass with crude wooden
handles attached, toothbrushes from Red Cross parcels had been hoarded,
their innocent handles honed to sharp points. Up-close weapons, meant to
threaten the guards.
A ‘takeover’, they’d explained. A ‘bloodless coup d’état’. But Rudi
wasn’t stupid: nothing about this enterprise would end up bloodless, for
these were hardliners, prepared to put their lives on the line for their Führer.
It was all about the Führer. Otherwise why would that particular date
have been chosen? Tomorrow – 19 August. The anniversary of the date that
Hitler, their ‘glorious leader’, had first been given the absolute power to
rule a broken Germany. The right to call himself Führer.
Tomorrow. The day when things would change in the camp. For better
or worse. And Rudi had been selected as part of the spearhead. Right up
there at the sharp end. They’d chosen him because his English was good
and because sometimes he’d been asked to work as a translator in the
warden’s office, the man who ran Compound B. But Rudi Fischer was
under no illusions. He’d been chosen for another reason as well: if it went
wrong, he was expendable.
There were fellow prisoners who doubted Rudi’s allegiance to the cause
of the Third Reich, saw his translation work for the British as a betrayal. So,
this was a test of his loyalty. His task was to walk into the office, overpower
the officer in charge, disable the phone and wait for reinforcements. All
with the use of a flimsy, homemade knife. A crazy far-fetched plan that
even an experienced and gifted commando would have had trouble pulling
off. Rudi put his own chances at zero. Not that he had ever considered
seeing the thing through.
He left the mess hall in a fatalistic frame of mind. The choice had been
made. It had been a difficult one, because he was still a German after all,
didn’t want to be a traitor to his homeland. But neither did he want to align
himself with these SS thugs whose idea of Heimat was so different from his
own. But he would keep his honour. Give up no names. Just a warning to
the British that tomorrow, the prisoners would take action.
Rudi strolled past the rows of Nissen huts, tried to look casual, like the
last thing on his mind was betrayal. He stuffed his hands deep into his
pockets and stopped to watch a game of Schlagball. He remembered
laughing with his friend Hans Meyer and joking that the British were a
bunch of sissies with their cricket, for their bats were flat and wide – much
easier to smack a ball with one of those than with a bat in Schlagball, a
similar game but more complex and regimented.
Something we Germans are good at, he thought and smiled. Precision.
They were probably watching him right now. These men who wanted a
Germany where Aryan blood ran pure. A master race with no room for the
sick, or the weak; where difference was weeded out and ‘learning’ a thing
to be shunned. A nation of automatons who flung their arms high in a Nazi
salute and followed like sheep.
And what would be left, Rudi wondered, if these robots who burned
books and despised free thought, succeeded? A land ruled by fear, with no
place left for tolerance or kindness or sentimentality.
The more he thought about it, the more frightened Rudi Fischer became
for his homeland. The place he loved. If Hitler had his way, it would be a
terrifying, brutal place, lacking any kind of morality.
He took a final look around. No one, it seemed, had any particular
interest in him. So, maybe they believed him to be loyal, weren’t keeping a
close watch on him. Either way, it didn’t matter. This time tomorrow he
would probably be dead. Just another dead Kraut that the British wouldn’t
waste too many tears over.
Rudi walked slowly towards the administration building. It was a
strong-looking concrete structure, and some part of his reasoning brain tried
to analyse the chances of their insane coup succeeding tomorrow. How
could a ragged bunch of prisoners possibly take this building and hold it?
Fanatics, admittedly, but armed only with flimsy knives. Knives against
guns.
He was only a few metres away now. Despite the coldness of the day,
sweat ran down the back of Rudi’s neck, seeking a channel beneath the
collar of his uniform. What would he say to the British to persuade them
that he didn’t agree with these Waffen-SS fanatics? And how would he have
any credibility if he wasn’t prepared to hand over names?
But in the next few moments, these questions became theoretical,
academic: simply wasted brain power on Rudi’s part.
He heard the footsteps behind him, but by then it was too late. A heavy
boot caught him behind the knee, and he folded over like grass in the wind,
hands still in his pockets, unable to save himself. His face hit the hard earth,
its smell dusty in his nostrils, its sour taste invading his mouth, making him
gag.
He cursed himself that he hadn’t been prepared, had allowed himself to
be taken. He tried to speak, but no sound came from his dirt-encrusted lips.
Hands grabbed him roughly by the hair and forced his head back so fiercely
that he feared his neck would snap. He felt something being pulled over his
head: a heavy cloth hood. It blocked out the daylight and made him feel
claustrophobic. They pulled him to his feet and dragged him along the
ground. One on either side of him.
No one spoke. But they didn’t need to. Rudi Fischer knew the score,
what would happen next. He’d been careless, had somehow signalled his
treachery. Everything else was just details that wouldn’t make a difference
to his future.
He didn’t need a crystal ball to predict what was in store for him. A
kangaroo court. A beating in the showers. And the final ignominy – being
stripped naked and left to hang from one of the pipes. It took a while to die
that way. Or so he’d heard. Because he wouldn’t be the first one that it had
happened to.
The black cloth hood moulded itself to Rudi’s face as he tried to suck in
air. He clamped his eyes shut tightly, as if to ward off any fearful images
that might make their way from his imagination to his eyes. But one image
made it through. A surprising one. And not in the least terrifying.
A picture of Maddie Brady impinged itself upon him, her eyes smiling,
her lips inviting. How on earth had he conjured her up? He hadn’t thought
of her for so long now. The woman he had loved for a time. The woman
who betrayed him.
