Random Acts of Heroic Love by Danny Scheinmann

Author:Danny Scheinmann [Danny Scheinmann]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Transworld
Published: 2007-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

17

I WAS STRANGELY EXCITED TO HAVE BEEN CAPTURED; MY LETTERS to Lotte at the time were full of hope. It may seem odd, Fischel, but capture actually improved my chances of survival no end. For the first time since the war had begun I felt confident that I might come home alive. There were rules governing prisoners of war. We had to be fed, housed and treated humanely. I wanted Lotte to know that I would be safer behind enemy lines than at the front, so all we had to do now was wait until the war ended and we would be wed.

Thank goodness I spoke Russian so well, because it bought me respect and I was often used as a translator. A Russian officer told me to keep hold of my letters until I arrived at my final destination. From there normal POW mailing procedures would apply.

Those early feelings of jubilation were soon dashed. The Russians were overwhelmed by our numbers. They simply couldn’t provide for us in the combat zone nor could they transport us quickly to the rear. We were clogging up their supply roads and using up precious resources, so they hastily frog-marched us back through Galicia and gave us a miserly twenty-five kopeks a day to buy our own food from the villagers we passed on the way. It was barely enough to survive on.

It took twelve days to get to Lemberg and I was followed every step of the way by Király. We were no longer obliged by company rules to march together and yet he shadowed me like a stray dog. At first I found his presence irritating, but the daily tedium wore down my resistance to him and we began to talk. Király was a man who needed a wall to kick against, he needed to hear himself shout and complain to know that he was alive. Put Király on a beach with a beer and a cigarette and he would still moan. This was his way; he was happiest when most provocative. He would push and push until he got you riled, and then he would laugh in pleasure at his victory. I learnt to humour him and even enjoy his offensive outbursts. If I reasoned with him he would weary of me, but if I insulted him he would rub his hands together and show me his crooked teeth in a twisted smile. I disliked everything he stood for, and he despised me for what he called my ‘pathetic romantic inclinations’. So a friendship grew, borne of mutual hatred.

In Lemberg there was a rail connection to Kiev and we were shifted by the trainload to a huge POW holding station on the outskirts of the city where the Czechs, Slovaks and Southern Slavs were separated and transported to nearby camps. The rest of us were herded into freight wagons and sent further east. These teplushka, as they were known, had been fitted with a few wooden bunks, a stove and a solitary latrine bucket.

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