Dave Dawson with the R.A.F by Robert Sydney Bowen

Author:Robert Sydney Bowen [Bowen, Robert Sydney]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Xist Publishing
Published: 2016-03-17T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN Flight From Nazi Guns

How many hours had passed since he had been pitched headlong into this storehouse of unspeakable human misery? Dave asked himself that question for the umpteenth time as he stared at daylight fading beyond the row of windows so far out of reach. In his saner moments he realized the hours couldn't total more than ten or twelve, but the high tension ordeal of living those hours seemed now to make them total a hundred at least.

Twelve hours of waiting, with every nerve and every muscle of his body on fire. Each time the door had opened, and the face of one of those big guards had appeared, his heart had turned to a chunk of ice in his chest for fear that he was to be summoned for further examination. Right after his short talk with the old man, he had wandered about the place, and when no eye was turned his way he had one by one rid himself of the emergency articles he had brought along. He had tossed them in a dark corner, or stuffed them under a bench—any place, just so that he got rid of them.

However, he had not parted with his little case of emergency rations. That he had kept strapped in place inside his shirt. The knowledge that it was there was a curse as well as a balm. If he was searched, the discovery of those emergency rations might be as bad for him as the Germans finding a couple of rifles and a machine gun stuffed down inside his pants. As a matter of fact, a hundred times he had come within an ace of definitely doing something about that ration case. Each time, though, something had stayed his fingers; something had prevented him from throwing his food supply away.

At any rate, he had hung onto it, and so each time a guard had opened the door his heart had stood still and the sweat of fear had oozed out on his forehead. By good luck, or otherwise, the visits of the guard had meant nothing of importance. Once it had been to toss rank-smelling loaves of bread at the starving throng, and to fill the huge water buckets at one end of the room. The other visits had obviously been only to see that the prisoners were still there, and were not rioting among themselves.

During those long torturing hours Dave had spoken with a few of the other imprisoned refugees. Their spirits had been no higher than that of the old man. They were there for begging, for wandering about the streets after dark, for not getting out of the way of some strutting German officer in time, and for a hundred other utterly ridiculous reasons. They were there because they were of no use and were in the way of Nazi domination and oppression. What would happen to them they did not know. And most of them did not care.

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