Tom
France, July 1943
Tom had his first glimpse of the Eiffel Tower from the back of a prison vehicle – not the ideal way to appreciate the beauty of Paris or its famous landmark, he reflected bitterly. He was being driven handcuffed to Gestapo headquarters. The destination made him feel so queasy that every time the car swerved he thought he would vomit his breakfast of black bread.
From the back of the black Citroën, the city looked drab and worn out, not at all what he had expected, and the Nazi flag flying triumphantly from the iconic tower made him clench his fists. Like the swastika planted on top of Fort Regent, it was further proof that the bloody Krauts were taking over the world.
Dropping his eyes from the hateful flag, he turned his attention to the street. German soldiers were wandering around, talking and laughing as if they owned the place. But despite their obvious presence, and the grimy miasma hanging over the city, Parisians were sitting at small round tables outside pavement cafés, the women in pert little hats and jackets with padded shoulders, drinking coffee and reading newspapers as if nothing had changed. Perhaps they were trying to blot out their ignominious fate while smoking their Gauloises, whose smoke greyed the air above their heads. He remembered the biting smell of those cigarettes. They were the ones his mother used to sell on the black market in St Helier.
He fixed his eyes on the scenes outside the car, hoping that the soldier escorting him wouldn’t see him blinking away the tears that suddenly made everything blur. Scenes of his life at home, which he had left behind, perhaps forever, unspooled in his mind. Those wonderfully carefree days he had shared with Frank and Harry, cycling around Jersey, joking, and racing down to the Slip to buy ice creams from the Italian kiosk. It all seemed a thousand years ago, on another planet. Even running errands for his mother to deliver her black-market goods, which had once seemed so shameful, was now cloaked in the nostalgic glow of lost freedom.
As the car crossed the bridges of the Seine, not even the sight of the two square towers of Notre Dame cathedral boosted his spirits. It was just an ancient stone building. Something the prison guard had told him while getting him ready for his transfer that morning was still on his mind.
Ever since his arrest five or six weeks ago – he had lost count – he had racked his brains over the lack of contact with home. Neither he nor Harry had received any visitors while they were held in St Helier, and they hadn’t received any mail in Fresnes. He knew that all prisoners were entitled to letters, so why weren’t they receiving any? In the past, whenever he’d asked, the usual reply was a savage punch followed by a bellowed order to shut up, but that morning the guard had answered: ‘You are under special investigation and not entitled to have letters, visits, food parcels or exercise.’
The guard’s expression was almost sympathetic, and he’d even patted Tom’s shoulder. Emboldened by the only sign of human feeling he had experienced since being arrested, Tom had pushed his luck to ask why, but with a shrug the guard had muttered, ‘There are no whys in here,’ and walked out of the cell, leaving Tom more despondent and frustrated than before. For some reason, he and Harry were being treated like lepers.
The Citroën pulled up on the Rue des Saussaies in front of a forbidding brick building with the hideous Nazi banner fluttering from the flagpole. Tom’s heart pounded with dread.
He was pushed up several flights of stairs into a large room where two Gestapo agents, one in a beige trenchcoat and the other in a black leather jacket, sat behind a large table. The one in the trenchcoat had a face that reminded Tom of a weasel, while the other had the powerful build of a boxer. Leather coat sat forward.
‘Who helped you to escape?’ he yelled, spraying saliva across the table. ‘Their names. Quick.’
Tom almost felt relieved. So these interrogators were just going to ask the same questions as the other lot.
Keeping his voice steady and polite, he said, ‘I’ve already told the others who questioned me. Nobody helped us. We did it by ourselves.’
The weasel had a threatening expression in his colourless eyes as he stared at Tom.
‘So who prepared this?’ He held up Captain Beaumont’s chart.
Tom swallowed hard. ‘I don’t know. Maybe it was Frank.’ In his haste to clear himself, the shameful words were out before he had time to realise what he had said, but after all, he rationalised, nothing he said could hurt poor Frank.
‘English schweinehund, you are lying again.’ Leather Coat banged his beefy hand on the table, almost knocking the lamp over. ‘You’d better start telling the truth because you are charged with espionage and you know how we deal with spies!’
The terror Tom felt was now replaced by indignation. He was sick of being bullied and accused of lying and spying. His father had always instilled into him that bullies were basically cowards who would back down when confronted.
‘I’m not a spy,’ he blurted, all attempt at calmness gone. ‘But if I really am guilty of espionage, then show me the proof.’
‘So, you want to see proof?’ Leather Coat hissed. ‘I’ll show you proof.’ With surprising agility, he sprang out of his chair, and before Tom knew what was happening he was being dragged into an adjoining room that was empty except for a freestanding bath full of water. The two agents yanked his arms behind him, tied them with a thick cord and thrust his head underwater. Being a strong swimmer, Tom was able to hold his breath for some time, but when they didn’t relax their hold, his lungs were bursting.
He thrashed around trying to free himself, but the more he struggled, the harder they pushed, until he couldn’t hold his breath any longer.
If only he’d drowned at Green Island and saved himself all this suffering. Was this divine retribution for letting Frank drown? He couldn’t hold on any longer. At the very last moment, they released their grip. Gasping and spluttering, he raised his head out of the water and thought his heart was going to explode as he desperately tried to suck air into his lungs.
‘Had enough? Are you going to tell us the truth now?’ the weasel demanded.
While submerged, Tom had been ready to tell them anything they wanted to hear, but suddenly he knew he wasn’t going to give in. With a rough gesture, Leather Coat pushed his head underwater again. Panic-stricken, Tom knew that this time there would be no last-minute reprieve, that any second he would drown, but again at the very last moment they pulled him out, coughing and choking, unable to catch his breath.
They hauled him back into the interrogation room, and threw him into the chair, gasping, shivering and soaked to the skin. Leather Coat held out a typewritten sheet in German. ‘Sign your statement,’ he ordered.
‘I didn’t give you a statement, so I’m not going to sign it,’ Tom said, amazed at his own defiance.
At this, the thin agent sprang up and, with a look of fury on his face, grabbed him by the throat and yelled a stream of abuse in German while he kept squeezing, harder and harder, blocking Tom’s windpipe. ‘Ah, so, not going to sign, ja?’ he shouted.
The more Tom tried to pry the agent’s hands away, the tighter his grip became. Tom felt light-headed and knew he was losing consciousness. There was no point struggling anymore. Then he heard the other one bark, ‘Enough!’, and the murderous hands slid off his throat.
Tom’s chest was still heaving when Leather Coat slid the paper towards him and translated it. It was an accurate account of the interrogation.
‘We’ve been very lenient with you, but if you know what is good for you, stop trying our patience, and sign this,’ he said.
Still gasping for air and rubbing his bruised neck, Tom picked up the pen and signed the statement.
Back in the prison in Fresnes, he felt relieved to be back in his cell where no-one was trying to drown or choke him, but he didn’t delude himself that his ordeal was over. Night after night, the prison resounded with terrifying screams that reverberated through the corridors and made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Most terrible of all were the screams of the women that made it impossible to sleep or entertain any hope for the future.
He knew that many of his fellow prisoners were members of the French Resistance who were being tortured to reveal the names of their colleagues. Bloodied and broken, they were dragged out to the courtyard, often shouting ‘Vive La France’ or singing the Marseillaise, before a sickening volley of shots echoed throughout the prison.
Left in his cell for the next few days, Tom reflected on the French. They were so brave, yet their country had let them down, surrendering so fast. Then he thought about the way his own island had been occupied without even one shot being fired in its defence, and he gave up trying to understand the decisions of leaders and the character of nations. Perhaps the only thing that mattered was the calibre of individuals.
He felt ashamed of having tried to blame Frank, of letting himself down during his interrogation. Harry would never have done that. He wondered whether his friend had been interrogated, and how long they’d be kept in this prison.
The answer came several days later when a guard escorted him from his cell to the main hall where a large group of prisoners had already gathered.
Harry was among them, and Tom couldn’t wait to talk to him, but before they could communicate, a roll call was conducted and they were counted and recounted. It seemed that counting prisoners was a favourite German pastime.
When the guards were finally satisfied that the numbers tallied, they were all herded into an armoured cell-truck where a row of armed German soldiers pointed their rifles at them. If anyone had told Tom that in such a situation it was possible to feel a surge of happiness, he wouldn’t have believed it, but now, sitting beside Harry, he felt calmer than he had felt since his capture. Wherever they were going, at least they’d be together.
He noticed that his friend’s face was bruised. In a low voice, Harry explained that, like Tom, he had also been interrogated, beaten and almost drowned at Rue des Saussaies, but he said that he had stuck to the story that they had only been fishing, signed a piece of paper they’d pushed in front of him, and had been sent back to the jail.
‘We must never forget we’re British,’ he whispered to Tom. ‘We mustn’t give in.’
At the sound of their voices, and the mention of the word ‘British’, some of their French fellow prisoners glared at them.
‘They think they’re superior, but they’ve forgotten that they surrendered after only a few weeks,’ Tom whispered. Harry nodded. At least Britain would go on fighting. The British would never surrender. That’s what Mr Churchill had said, and they believed him.
The truck lurched and bumped for about an hour until it pulled up outside a busy railway station, where they were ordered out and counted once again. Tom looked around. They had arrived at the Gare de l’Est. That meant that they would be travelling east, but where?
All around them, French travellers with tense faces were rushing towards platforms or hurrying out of the station, keeping their heads down and quickening their steps whenever they passed prisoners being counted by harsh German voices. Tom wished someone would stop to ask who they were, or where they were from, or at least offer a word of commiseration, but they hurried past, averting their faces.
Defying the order to be silent, Tom leaned towards one of the French prisoners.
‘Do you know where they’re taking us?’
‘Allemagne.’
Germany! Tom felt as if he’d been punched. He was being deported to a foreign country that was even further from home than France was, to the dreaded Nazi homeland, a place beyond just laws and humane treatment, where their captors would be able to do whatever they liked and no-one would be able to protect him or intercede for him. He would be completely at their mercy. They could shoot him, torture him or imprison him forever, and no-one would ever know his fate because, as the guard had told him, no-one knew where he was, and no-one would never find out because he wasn’t entitled to any contact.
Harry was clearly entertaining similar thoughts. As soon as they had climbed into the tiny armoured compartment of their train, he said, ‘Tom, promise you’ll stay alive and get back to Jersey, so you can tell my parents what happened to me.’
Tom stared at his friend, wondering what had prompted that pessimistic comment. Why did he think he wouldn’t make it?
‘Don’t talk tommyrot, Harry. Of course I’ll get back. So will you.’
‘But promise me,’ Harry insisted.
Tom nodded. ‘Okay, I promise. But you’ll be able to tell them yourself.’
As the train continued its endless journey, cramped in their tiny compartment, they peered through the small grille, hoping to see a place name they recognised, but they were all unfamiliar.
‘I should have paid more attention in geography classes,’ Tom said in an attempt to lighten their mood, but his comment didn’t bring a smile to Harry’s face, and, looking at his friend, Tom felt uneasy.
Listening to the conversations of their French fellow prisoners, Tom’s apprehension increased. Some described brutal scenes in French towns where innocent hostages were rounded up and shot in the market square in reprisal for sabotage by the Maquis, the Resistance fighters.
They rounded up teenagers as well, and one of prisoners said that his young brother had been herded into a village church that was set alight with over a hundred men, women and children inside.
Some of the Resistance men spoke bitterly about their countrymen who had betrayed them, and swore revenge when the war was over. They promised they’d deal with the sluts who consorted with Germans while they were risking their lives to free their country.
Tom thought about Milly and her German boyfriend, and his mother who had betrayed him. Like his French companions, he longed for revenge, but how could life return to normal if vengeance prevailed? He recalled something his history teacher had once said: An eye for an eye makes everyone blind. But what was the alternative? How could they return and live among those who had helped the enemy? Noble sentiments were all very well, but surely his mother had to pay for her betrayal.
As he listened to these accounts of German atrocities, he realised that they had been living in a fool’s paradise in Jersey, where the Germans had managed to conceal their iron fists in velvet gloves. Many of the locals, his parents included, praised the occupiers for their good manners and adherence to the laws, but Tom suddenly remembered the skeletal slave labourers the Germans were forcing to build their wretched tunnels and bunkers.
Most people chose to put the inhuman treatment of the slaves out of their minds because it was easier to avert your eyes than confront an uncomfortable situation and do something about it. He’d heard rumours that some locals were hiding escaped slave labourers, but most of the residents, himself included, had ignored their plight because it had nothing to do with them. They didn’t know, and didn’t really want to know, who these spectral creatures were, or why they had been deported to Jersey. Perhaps they’d committed a crime. In any case, it didn’t affect him. He wasn’t one of them. He had ignored people who were victimised, and now that he was in a similar situation, why was he surprised that passers-by at the Gare de l’Est walked past without showing any interest or compassion?
The train ground to a shuddering halt, interrupting his brooding thoughts. Tom heard dogs barking and guttural voices yelling. According to the large sign on the platform, they were in a town called Trier. They had crossed the border and arrived in Germany. The doors of the compartments clanged open, and as usual the guards started screaming at them to get out on the double. ‘Raus!’ they yelled. ‘Los! Schneller!’
Blinded by the powerful beams of searchlights, they were surrounded by uniformed local policemen in full regalia, their large silver shakos embossed with silver eagles that gleamed in the light. Some carried submachine guns.
After being counted and recounted, they were marched out of the station. It was a foggy night, and apart from church spires, Tom couldn’t identify any buildings along the way. Walking on a cobbled road lined with tall poplars, they reached a large gate and were led through an archway into what was obviously a prison.
After a sleepless and anxious night spent in an overcrowded, stinking cell where the sole toilet overflowed, they were given watery soup and marched outside for the usual counting ritual.
Roll call over, escorted by the police once again, they were marched back to the railway station and pushed onto the waiting train. From his compartment, Tom gazed longingly at pine forests, vineyards and flower-decked villages where women in kerchiefs bent over the fields.
Despite the anxiety that gnawed at him, he was surprised how quickly the beauty of the countryside boosted his spirits. Wherever they were going, perhaps things wouldn’t be too bad. Perhaps he and Harry would be sent to work in the vineyards or in the forests.
After a brief journey, the train stopped at a small station and out of the window Tom saw prisoners loading farm carts with coal and wood. He stared. They were all as emaciated as the slave labourers in Jersey.
As soon as they lined up on the platform, one of the prisoners sidled up to Tom and whispered in French, ‘If you brought any food with you, eat it now because they’ll confiscate it as soon as you get to the camp.’
Tom had already wolfed down the black bread and chunk of sausage he’d received that morning, but Harry reached into his pocket and held out a piece of bread to the prisoner, whose eyes lit up. But before he could take it, a guard rushed up, snatched the bread away, knocked the man down and kicked him, and yelled at Harry to mind his own business.
It wasn’t an auspicious beginning, but as they marched towards the camp along a country road lined with fir trees, the clean air and fresh scent of the pines filled Tom with optimism. That optimism evaporated as soon as he saw the barbed wire surrounding the camp. According to the wooden sign, they were entering SS Sonderlager Reinsfeld. He knew that this meant it was a special camp, and for a brief moment he entertained the hope that it was special because the inmates would be allowed to work outdoors. He didn’t know the significance of the letters SS other than that they stood for Schutzstaffel, which had something to do with security.
They were lined up in a courtyard and counted again, but this time the tension around them was palpable, like the frightening stillness that preceded a hurricane. No-one moved or spoke, but the SS officers occasionally turned in the direction of a building that looked like the administration block.
They were obviously waiting for someone important to emerge, and for some reason Tom was trembling so hard he couldn’t stop. Then a door opened and a nuggetty man with powerful shoulders strode towards them holding a large club. Like a coiled spring, he exuded dangerous energy and the air around him vibrated with malice. When he reached their group, he stopped, raised the club, and smashed it into the head of one of the French prisoners, who reeled and collapsed on the ground.
‘That’s how I deal with people who don’t look straight ahead at roll call!’ he shouted.
Tom stopped fantasising about picking grapes or sawing trees. He knew then that Sonderlager Reinsfeld was another name for hell, and he had just come face to face with the devil.