Tom
Germany, July 1943
When Kapo Mintz warned them that the quarantine hut was a gentle introduction to the main camp, Tom assumed it was an empty threat. After all, what could possibly be worse than the brutal treatment they experienced throughout that week?
But as soon as they were transferred to the main camp, he realised Mintz hadn’t been exaggerating. It was a Sunday, and to add to the degrading experience of having to parade naked in front of the doctor who made them expose every part of their bodies for his perverted inspection, the fence surrounding the yard was crowded with locals gawking at the spectacle inside the prison, almost salivating with enjoyment as if they were watching circus freaks.
Tom noticed that the self-satisfied matrons and the giggling teenage girls were in their Sunday best, and it was obvious that they had just come from church. The humiliation and hatred he felt was so intense he could feel it hardening his eyes and turning his face into stone.
He wanted to shout that he wasn’t subhuman, he was just like them, but then it struck him that he wasn’t anything like them. They had no human feeling and only deserved contempt. They were the ones who should be ashamed, not him.
The following day he was assigned to the coal-working group. He was told that the job of the KohlenKommando was to push the cart to the railway station, load it up with two tons of coal briquettes, haul it back to the camp, unload it, and then repeat the process three times each day.
Tom couldn’t believe his ears. Having walked from the station to the camp when he arrived, he figured it was five miles away. How could they expect them to trudge thirty miles a day along a rough road, hauling a cart loaded with coal?
The wooden farm cart, which the French prisoners with their irrepressible wit had already christened The Chariot, had a long shaft to which horses would normally have been harnessed, but there were no horses in sight.
As they lined up beside the cart, Tom was horrified to see that the kapo in charge of their group was the brutal French Legionnaire Bruneau.
With his dark hair combed to one side and his toothbrush moustache, he reminded Tom of Hitler.
As soon as Bruneau saw Harry, his eyes lit up with a malicious gleam, and he hissed, ‘Just wait. I’ll teach you a lesson. I’ll pay you filthy English swine back for destroying our fleet.’
Neither Tom nor Harry had any idea what he was ranting about, but there wasn’t any point trying to explain that neither of them was personally responsible for attacking French ships.
The reason they hadn’t seen any horses soon became apparent. Two of the prisoners were to become beasts of burden while a bored-looking middle-aged SS man sat on a small metal seat in the front, controlling the brake. The rest of the group were ordered to push the cart from the side and the back.
From the moment they set off, Bruneau yelled at them to pick up their pace. The route to the station was steep, and running on the gravel road made it hard to keep their clogs on.
To add to their gruelling task, the SS man decided to have some fun by letting go of the brake on downhill slopes, which forced them to run faster.
Within a few minutes, one of Harry’s clogs flew off. Letting go of the cart, he ran back to retrieve it but before he could rejoin the group, Bruneau started bashing him with his cudgel, screaming, ‘I’m going to kill you!’
When Tom looked around, he saw his friend lying curled on the road, trying to protect himself from the blows. Hearing his cries and Bruneau’s screams, the SS man, probably grateful for the distraction, stopped the cart and got out, curious to see what was going on.
‘He was trying to escape,’ Bruneau said, still raining blows on Harry’s back and shoulders. The SS man was already reaching for the Glock revolver in his holster when Tom rushed up to him and shouted, ‘Don’t shoot! He wasn’t trying to escape at all! He lost his clog and was running to pick it up.’
He said it in German. In his desperation, he forgot that he’d claimed he couldn’t speak German but at that moment nothing mattered except saving Harry’s life. ‘If you don’t believe me, ask the others,’ Tom insisted. ‘They’ll back me up.’
The SS man glared at Tom. He scratched his head and looked from Tom to Bruneau and back again, trying to decide who was telling the truth.
Then with a shrug he put away his revolver and told Bruneau to get going and stop wasting time.
When they moved on again, Bruneau snarled at Harry, ‘I haven’t finished with you yet. I’ll make you wish you’d never been born.’ Then, turning to Tom he added, ‘I’ll get you too, you English troublemaker.’
Tom looked at Harry staggering behind the cart, and he boiled with rage. ‘I’ll get you first, you bastard,’ he hissed in French to Bruneau. ‘As soon as the war is over, your countrymen will find you and have you guillotined.’
Tom was shocked by his own defiance, but his words must have shocked Bruneau too, because without another word the kapo stomped away and took his malice out on other prisoners.
After loading up the cart with the briquettes, they were ready for the return trip. This time, Bruneau strode up to Tom and Harry, and, with an evil glint in his eyes, he ordered them to pull the cart on the way back.
Terrified of losing his clogs again, Harry took them off and ran barefoot. Tom could see that he was hobbling and in obvious pain. By the time they reached the camp, Harry’s feet were torn and bleeding, and he could hardly walk.
One of the French prisoners gave him a piece of rope to strap on his clogs, but Bruneau kept bashing him for slacking.
When they reached the station for the last time that day, Harry could no longer walk. He crumpled up and slid onto the ground, half-conscious, and Tom persuaded the SS man on the brake to let him lie in the cart on top of the coal on the way back to the camp.
The journey back seemed interminable. Tom kept glancing anxiously at his friend’s white face, which was contorted with pain while Bruneau kept swearing at them both. As soon as they were back at the camp, the other prisoners propped Harry against one of the cart wheels.
‘Don’t worry, you’ll be fine,’ Tom kept repeating because he didn’t know what else to say.
While he was wiping the blood off Harry’s face, a stinging blow to the back of his neck made him see stars. He wheeled around to see Kapo Mintz, who yelled, ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’
After Tom explained what had happened, Mintz turned to Bruneau. ‘What’s going on?’ he asked.
‘He’s lying as usual,’ Bruneau spat. ‘He’s covering for the slacker who was trying to escape.’
‘The boy is telling the truth,’ the SS man cut in. ‘This one here –’ he pointed at Bruneau, ‘didn’t stop bashing his friend all day for no reason that I could see.’
Without another word, Mintz dismissed Bruneau, who glared at Tom and muttered threats under his breath.
Turning to Tom and a couple of the French prisoners, Mintz told them to take Harry to the medical centre.
When Tom saw Harry’s naked body, he gasped. His friend looked as if a building had fallen on top of him. He was covered in huge black and blue bruises, bleeding gashes and deep welts.
The German doctor waved his plump hand in a dismissive gesture when he heard what had happened to Harry.
‘He’s just a bloody malingerer,’ he scoffed, and to prove his point, he punched Harry in the face, and kicked him in the ribs.
Once Tom would have taken comfort in the certainty that such cruelty could not go unpunished, but he no longer believed that. What was the point of trying to do the right thing and adhere to your principles, when the thugs of this world got away with such evil?
‘You’re supposed to help people, not beat them,’ he shouted at the doctor who stared at him. Then with a shrug he beckoned to his French colleague.
‘Clean up this English filth,’ he said and strode away.
The French doctor gave Harry two days off work, while Tom continued toiling on the KohlenKommando, and wondered how long he’d last.
As soon as he returned from the afternoon shift the following day, his entire body aching and his legs almost giving way, he heard his number being called on the loudspeaker. On the way to the office, his heart was pounding. Now he was in for it. Bruneau must have reported him for threatening him the previous day.
Inside the office, Kapo Mintz was standing by the table, the club lying within reach. Tom thought the bulbous eyes in his red face looked more menacing than ever, and he held his breath and tried to steel himself for the blow he expected to come crashing down on his shoulders at any moment.
But leaving the cudgel where it was, Mintz walked towards the door and said curtly, ‘Come with me.’
Still apprehensive, Tom followed the stocky camp director across the appellplatz until they reached the store and went inside. Mintz went straight to the shelf where boots were displayed, and after examining several pairs, he handed Tom a pair of brand-new leather boots.
‘For your friend,’ he said. At that moment, it seemed to Tom that the world had flipped on its axis and he had landed upside down.
After they left the store, Mintz turned to him. ‘I want you to know that I’m not a bad person,’ he said. ‘Before the war, I was a carpenter. But I ran into a spot of trouble with the law, and they offered me this job instead of doing time. So I’m earning my way out of prison by working here and I have to follow their orders. Do you understand?’
Tom didn’t think he did, but he nodded, too astonished to reply. He had just seen a side of Mintz that the terrifying kapo had concealed from everyone else. And for some reason, Mintz had glimpsed something in him that prompted him to show himself in a better light. It was flattering and confusing at the same time, and Tom didn’t know what to make of this surprising new development.
When Tom gave Harry the boots that evening, his friend gave him a searching look and said, ‘I hope you didn’t do anything dishonest to get them.’ The other prisoners were incredulous at this reaction, but knowing Harry, Tom wasn’t surprised. It was only after he assured him that he’d obtained the boots honestly that Harry proceeded to try them on.
That night, lying on his bunk, Tom marvelled at his friend’s strength of character. Despite everything he had suffered, his moral sense had remained intact. At school, his English teacher, Mr Ward, had tried to drum into them that a person’s worth depended not on their skill on the football field or their speed in the swimming pool, but on their inner fortitude.
At the time, that didn’t mean much to Tom, but he realised that Harry personified what Mr Ward had meant. The boots were a treasure, but Tom knew that if they had been stolen, Harry would have continued hobbling and staggering on his blistered, shredded feet rather than accept them.
That night, despite his exhaustion, Tom lay awake grappling with this issue. Surely survival was all that mattered here. When your life was at stake, surely it was permissible to bend your principles.
Then he mulled over Mintz’s strange confession and wondered if he was an evil man with a spark of conscience, or a good person who had made a pact with the devil in order to survive. But when he glanced at Harry’s serene expression, he knew that for his friend there would never be a compromise with evil. About himself, he wasn’t so sure.
To his immense relief, at the end of the week the KohlenKommando came to an end and Tom was assigned to work with a group in the forest to clear land for a road.
Tom’s spirits rose at the prospect of working in the forest. He looked forward to filling his lungs with fresh air and breathing in the scent of the towering pines. But the tree roots he had to dig up were so deep, they seemed to reach into very centre of the earth. The labour, which was physically exhausting, was punctuated by blows from the kapos and the SS guards.
The day resounded with the noise of axes, hammers and the screams of those prisoners unlucky enough to attract the attention of the guards, who were itching to lash out.
There were civilian contractors working in the forest as well, and Tom noticed that they also enjoyed kicking the defenceless prisoners, and never offered to share the sandwiches whose mouth-watering smell tormented them.
Famished and exhausted, they couldn’t wait to return to camp, but before they could have their midday bowl of watery soup, they had to run the gauntlet of SS guards, who attacked them with clubs on the way to the mess hall. Half an hour later they returned to the forest for more backbreaking work.
It took four men to lift one of the gigantic stumps onto a cart and pile it on top of the others. When the stumps were loaded up, they dragged the heavy carts over rough paths back to the camp. Tom hated being in the front, as the SS man, who was supposed to control the brake, persisted in playing his dangerous games and releasing the brake whenever the road sloped down.
Late one afternoon, as the cart was careering downhill, Emile, one of the French prisoners, tripped and fell. Before he could get up, the cart rolled over him and he was crushed under its weight.
They frantically tried to lift the cart off him, but by the time they managed to free him, he was dead. For days, Tom couldn’t get Emile’s screams out of his head.
Each evening, by the time the last shift finished and the savagery was over for the day, Tom couldn’t wait for ten o’clock so he could finally collapse on his bunk, to sleep until the new day began at four-thirty next morning. His last waking thought was that he had managed to survive one more day.
He no longer thought about freedom or victory. These days his entire attention was focussed on trying to avoid being bashed. Sometimes as he lay on his bunk, knowing that in the twinkling of an eye another day of brutality and hunger would dawn, he wondered why he was trying so hard to survive. At those times, he remembered his promise that he would stay alive so he could tell Harry’s parents what had happened. As he recalled that moment, he tried to shake off the unease he felt. Harry would return to tell his own story, he’d make sure of that.
He thought about the reason they were both in this predicament, and his mind hardened. It was all very well for Pierre to lecture him about the weakness of revenge, but that was all he had to keep him going. That and looking out for Harry.
From time to time, new prisoners arrived from France or Luxembourg, and they brought news of the war. It was going well for the Allies, they said. The Germans were being defeated and their cities were being bombed, but Tom drew little comfort from their optimism.
He felt as if he’d been at the camp forever and he had no idea how long he and Harry would be held there, or whether they’d be put on trial.
At bedtime, he listened to the stories of the Resistance men. It seemed that two things kept their spirits up. The hope of seeing their country freed from les Boches, and their determination to return home so they could deal with those who had betrayed them. The prospect of retribution motivated most of them as well, Tom realised.
He admired their spirit and their courage. Despite being tortured, none of them had revealed the names of their colleagues. One day Luc deliberately steered one of the coal carts into a ditch, sending the briquettes flying and shattering some of them. He received a savage beating for this act of sabotage but when he emerged staggering from his solitary cell, his face a mess and his teeth broken, he managed to give them a wry smile. ‘It was worth it, mes amis,’ he said.
Listening to Luc and his companions, it struck Tom that this war wasn’t just a matter of military battles. The Nazis wanted to taint their souls and break their spirits, which was all they had left.
The weeks dragged into months. The seasons turned through a bitter winter into spring and the heat of summer. Tom calculated that it must be getting close to a year they had spent at Camp Reinsfeld. It felt like a lifetime.
Harry shuffled like an old man, and fear clawed at Tom’s heart to see his friend’s sunken eyes and shrunken frame. They were all emaciated and worn out, and he wondered if any of them would survive this inhuman treatment.
When he heard they were to be transported out of the camp the following day, his hopes rose. No-one knew where they were going, but Tom reckoned that any place would be better than this, even hell itself.
Before they climbed into the green police vans that had come to collect them, the Kommandant addressed them. ‘I hope you appreciate the German training that you have received here, and that your attitude to Germany has changed.’
‘It sure has,’ Luc muttered when they climbed into the waiting trucks. ‘I hate the bastards more than ever.’
The policemen escorting them were the same ones who had brought them there. Noticing their shocked expressions, Tom realised that they must look like walking skeletons, just like the prisoners they had encountered at the railway station on the day they arrived.
As the truck made its way up the hill, past the pine forest, Tom was relieved to see the gates of the camp receding. He nudged Harry.
‘That’s the last we’ll see of that hellhole,’ he whispered. His heart was beating with new hope and for the first time in months, he felt his mouth stretching into a grin. ‘I reckon if we survived that, we can survive anything!’
Harry nodded. He started to say something when he was seized by a paroxysm of coughing that left him doubled over, struggling to catch his breath.
Tom looked at him and froze. The rag Harry held against his mouth was spotted with blood.