No Ordinary Pilot by SUZANNE CAMPBELL-JONES

Author:SUZANNE CAMPBELL-JONES
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781472828286
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

8

A prisoner in Germany

First, there was the reception procedure. All new arrivals were ordered to strip naked. Their clothes were rigorously searched by a number of guards. Personal items, wallets, wristwatches were confiscated and put in large envelopes carrying their owner’s name. They were allowed to get dressed, in their filthy old clothes. One by one they were escorted to the cells. Bob, feeling dog-tired and weak from lack of food, found himself in a small cell with high, barred windows. There was an iron bedstead covered by a thin straw mattress inside a hessian cover. A threadbare, brown, Army-type blanket and a filthy-looking striped pillow. Bob examined the bedding for bedbugs. Maybe they had been treated with some toxin for they didn’t seem to be active. For the first time since his capture he felt he could relax. He stretched out full length on his bed, drew up the blanket over his filthy uniform and closed his eyes.

The prison camp, Dulag Luft, was about 4 miles north-west of Frankfurt, 300 yards from the main Frankfurt–Bad Homburg road. The camp had been built in 1939 on the site of a government poultry farm. There was a white-stone house with a steep roof, once used to accommodate agricultural students. Now it was used as a reception and interrogation centre and for holding prisoners in solitary confinement. In 1940, several purpose-built barrack blocks had been added to provide temporary housing for prisoners in transit1 and a hospital with 50 or 60 beds for the wounded. To the north and west were woods, to the east a market garden and to the south a sports field.2 Dulag Luft is a short form for Durchgangslager der Luftwaffe – transit camp for Air Force. As he passed through the heavily guarded gates Bob regained, at least inwardly, his military resolve. From time to time they had been briefed on what to expect if they found themselves taken prisoner. Physically and mentally exhausted, degraded and filthy, he felt in no state to remember, let alone follow, instructions given months before. Training and discipline stiffened his resolve. The cardinal rule was to declare only rank, name and number. These three answers would be all he would give.

Just before he was overtaken by sleep he had looked at the marks and scratches on the wall by his bed. Some were obviously a means of keeping track of time. Others were messages. There were snatches of prayers and poems, not all of them in English. Bob was dozing when he was abruptly awakened by a guard slamming open the door and placing a can of soup and some bread on the floor of the cell. Before he could rouse himself, the elderly guard had gone, slamming and locking the door behind him. That prison sound – slam, clunk, click and echoing retreating footsteps – confirmed Bob’s plight. Hope of escape seemed remote. He ate. Feeling stronger, he stood on the bed and could just peer out of the small barred window.

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