The Man From Talalaivka by Olga Chaplin

Author:Olga Chaplin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Green Olive Press

Chapter 30

Like primeval creatures trapped by their hunters, the camp sirens shrieked out their death-warnings to the inmates. Peter, disoriented for a few moments, jumped from his bunk; his senses, body, numbed by fitful sleep, the torturous duties still impacting on him since the previous air raid only hours earlier.

“Dyna!” he called out, his mind foggy but sharpening in the urgency. He peered down the dim mid-afternoon light shaft of his barracks block as men, dragging heavy jackets, hurled themselves towards the far open door. With only seconds remaining before the revved-up fire trucks would charge to their destination, he pulled back the board covering the glassless emergency-exit window, forced himself through its narrow opening and ran to the women’s block.

“Dyna! The truck’s leaving early! This could be your only chance! Leave everything—the women,” he nodded to her traumatised inmates, “will take care of the children!”

He helped Evdokia to move as best she could. Though panicked, she had waited for such a moment. None of the women in this makeshift camp, treacherously close to Wilhelmshaven, had experience of delivering a child. She gasped for air in her severely uncomfortable state, paused again to catch her breath, then followed Peter’s running outline to the fire truck.

It was imperative she go, this time. The fire truck was permitted only one deviation from the Wilhelmstrasse route to the smaller hospital on the fringe of the city. The shrewd camp commandant, calculating the risks—the disruption to the camp and the men should this woman Evdokia have an unfortunate birth—had made his decision. The hospital authorities would do what they could in these extreme circumstances.

“Schnell! Schnell!” Hermann, their crew leader shouted at them, his commands drowned out by the siren’s shrill warning. Seeing Evdokia’s condition, he ordered his men to help her onto the truck, raised his arm for the driver to go. In the choking fumes of their over-revved exhausts, the trucks crawled stealthily from their forest camouflage, waited while yet another squadron of Allied bombers passed over them, then charged out from the natural bunker of heavily-foliaged trees.

Peter breathed in deeply, rubbed his eyes, prepared for the coming debacle. He held in his emotions as he looked at Evdokia, held her shoulder firmly as the fire truck rumbled along pitted roadways towards the bomb-blasted city. “You’ll be safe in this hospital, Dyna,” he whispered reassuringly, smiling at her determined stoicism. “Don’t worry, everything will work out well here.”

He would not allow himself to think that this may be the last time he would see his wife, or his children. Such all-too-realistic thoughts would only undermine the duty which lay ahead of him, could even inadvertently affect his split-second judgment in the impending danger. He squeezed her shoulder, his taut muscled arms feeling the vulnerable compliance of her over-stretched body, and grinned confidently, his smoke-dusted face eliciting a smile from his anxious wife. He would remember that smile, he told himself, to come back to, to the safety of their prison camp. His eyes

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