Moonless Night by B A 'Jimmy' James

Author:B A 'Jimmy' James [James, B A 'Jimmy']
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Military, World War II
ISBN: 9781848845084
Google: a0ZDDQAAQBAJ
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2008-09-22T00:27:38+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

Sachsenhausen

Peter Churchill and Johnny Dodge roomed together in the first barrack hut I had passed on my arrival. Wings and I joined them for meals and formed the British Officers’ Mess, Sonderlager A. We were looked after by two splendid Italian soldiers who had been orderlies to the Italian Naval, Military and Air Attachés who had been removed from the compound following the Italian surrender; Bartoli, formerly a pastry cook in Rome, performed daily miracles with German rations and the limited Red Cross parcels, with Amici, a cousin of the Hollywood actor Don Amici.

Like all old prisoners we had become indifferent to surroundings or personal comfort and, in a new milieu, were mainly interested in those with whom we should have to continue our indeterminate and apparently endless incarceration. Listening to one another’s accounts of his journey to this point in time we felt, for a space, timeless, and forgot our narrow confines – the high sullen walls restricting our vision to the tops of the pine trees, and the lowering faces of the SS guards patrolling, dog at heel, between the wall and the electrified fence.

Wings’ renegade officer plan with Tobolski as German escort had gone awry. Their Berlin contact had failed and they had travelled on to Stettin by train. They had the address of a brothel which had been used as a stopping point on an escape route, but they found it dark and empty; they could not know that all brothels had been closed in 1943 and prostitution made illegal. Tobolski had a sister in Stettin married to a German, but she had begged him to try to get help elsewhere when he approached her. They had, therefore, tried prostitutes before family, but now they went to the tool shed at the bottom of the garden behind the sister’s house, which she said could be used as a one night shelter if they insisted. They found eggs, bread and milk left out for them. The next day they managed to infiltrate themselves into a dockside barrack housing a working party of French prisoners of war who agreed to help them board a neutral ship for Sweden. However, they were betrayed by an informer and arrested by the German police the next morning.

‘I’d like to wring his bloody neck,’ Wings had told the police officer who was interrogating him.

‘Don’t worry,’ the policeman replied. ‘Of course this little lot will be worth about a thousand Reichsmarks to him, but when he is of no further use to us we shall see that his activities are made known to his comrades. Then, no doubt, his body will be found floating in the harbour.’

Wings was separated from Tobolski at Gestapo Headquarters in Berlin. He was told by General Nebe1, Head of the Kripo, that he had become a serious nuisance and was to be sent to a place from which there was no escape. Tobolski was shot.

All things are relative. To Captain Peter Churchill, after eight months in Fresnes Prison in Paris under threat of torture and death, the Sonderlager seemed like a reprieve.

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