Beyond the Call (16 page)

There was a short discussion among the civilians, and they agreed enthusiastically that they should go with the American. There was an outburst of jubilation, and Robert was shaken by the hand and embraced. Tears of joy were shed at the good providence that had brought them this opportunity to escape from this frozen hell.

Amid the joy, there was anxious muttering. Some asked, ‘What about the women?'

‘Which women?' somebody asked.

‘In the camp, of course,' said somebody else.

‘And the little ones,' someone added.

A few voices were raised in protest, arguing that if they were to make it to Kraków they needed to get going now and not waste time with trifles. Other voices spoke angrily against them.

Bewildered, and with a rising anxiety, Robert was persuaded to go with a small group of men to meet these women. Another mysterious walk ensued, across fields and woods. He could feel the situation slipping out of his control and wondered what surprises were still in store for him – an extremely unpleasant one, it turned out.

The trek brought the little party to the edge of an industrial area and a road that led to a concentration camp.
³
It looked just like the one at Birkenau, with layers of barbwire fencing surrounding rows of barracks blocks, but much smaller, just a fraction of the size. The place had been abandoned; there wasn't a soul about. The men led Robert in through the broken-down gate. He had prayed that he would never have to set foot in such a place again. With a rising sense of horror, heart thumping, he walked among the barracks, some of them burned, some demolished. Unlike his visit to Birkenau, fresh falls of snow had softened the scene a little.

Passing by an open space, Robert noticed a big ditch. The men with him averted their eyes as they passed it. Robert realized that what he had taken for a snow-covered mound of earth beside the ditch was a stack of frozen corpses, sprawled and entangled, naked limbs protruding rigidly. As at the main camp, the work of destroying the survivors and the evidence of the murders had been left half-done by the SS. Robert looked away, feeling sick, and hurried after his guides. They led him to a barracks hut in the middle of the camp, where one of them knocked on the door, called a greeting, and entered, beckoning Robert to follow.

It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the gloom inside after the glare of the sunlit snow. A long, low table ran the length of the room, and along both walls were wooden structures that looked like
shelves in a freight warehouse. The place seemed deserted, but then he noticed some faces looking out from one of the shelves. Women, together with a couple of children. More female faces appeared, peering at the stranger.

‘They come with us?' one of the men asked Robert.

At a rough count, he figured there were 25 of them. He already had 50 people to manage. It wouldn't be possible. No, he couldn't do it; it could put the whole operation in jeopardy. But how could he tell them that? He glanced around at the miserable interior of the hut, and an image of the bodies outside flashed into his head. He looked again at the faces of the women and children.

‘They come with us,' he said.

F
ISHING THE LAST
half-dozen chocolate bars and the remaining tins of cheese and luncheon meat out of his pack, Robert handed them out to his companions, who began dividing them up into tiny portions and distributing them among the people.

Since he and the men had shepherded the women and children from the camp and met up with the others, the ragged column of refugees had covered several miles across the snowbound countryside. They could only go as fast as the children and the sick could manage. It wasn't fast enough. The food was gone, and they still had a long way to go. Robert figured he could head to the nearest town and buy food, but time was pressing, and he couldn't afford to attract too much attention.

He walked around restlessly, watching the gathered people as they savored their morsels of food. His attention was caught by a small knot of people gathered near a young woman sitting on the ground with a bundle of rags lying next to her. Looking closer, Robert realized that the rags were wrapped around a baby. The woman was listless, exhausted physically and emotionally. The people with her were trying to talk to her, but there was no response. The baby appeared to be asleep; the tiny face was gaunt, with a bluish tinge.

She was a girl, somebody said in answer to Robert's query, born in the camp. Her name was Kasia. Robert picked up the bundle of thin rags. Kasia stirred and opened her eyes, then closed them again. This wasn't a healthy infant. Even to Robert it was obvious that she was on the threshold of death. Quickly he took off his thick woollen muffler. Discarding the rank blanket she was wrapped in, he wound the muffler round the little body, and placed her inside his parka, against his chest. She seemed to revive a little, opening her eyes, and this time seemed to see him. There was a ghost of a smile.

A woman explained that Kasia's mother had too little milk; she was sick and had lost the will to live.

It was time to move on. The weak were helped to their feet by the strong, and the trek resumed. Kasia's mother was helped along by some of the other women, while Robert kept the baby inside his coat. Her eyes had closed, and he prayed that she could cling on to life. Maybe they could get medical help in Kraków. Eastern Command's money would buy the best possible aid. But they had to get there first, before darkness fell.

As he walked, Robert was hard-pressed to keep his emotions in hand. Every so often he glanced down to check that Kasia was still breathing, and each time he couldn't keep the thoughts of home out of his mind. Thousands of miles away, Eleanor would be holding their baby in her arms, chuckling and playing peekaboo. And the baby, plump and rosy-cheeked, would smile back, unaware that there were such things in the world as war, and death, and camps, and starvation, and … and save for an accident of birth, this could be Carol Ann here in his coat, emaciated and close to death; this could be Eleanor trudging along listlessly, unconscious that her flesh and blood was dying beside her.

All the while, Robert felt these people's overwhelming hopelessness. He thought he'd had it bad when his father left, but he was wrong. These people still survived when there was nothing left to live for. And he wondered how they could ever feel normal again, with their families and homes all dispersed and destroyed.

There was nothing he could do but hold baby Kasia to him and keep walking with the others – and follow the plan.

An hour later, they reached the main road. There was a farm where transport had been prearranged. The farmer was known to be anti-Russian; he had been contacted by one of Robert's agents and had agreed to put his cattle truck at their disposal. He was a little surprised to see the number of people who showed up, and that they weren't just Americans. But he recovered and brought out his truck.

With some difficulty everyone was loaded aboard, and the truck pulled out onto the road to Kraków. It was a short distance, but a slow, laborious journey. Eventually, as darkness was falling, the truck reached the outskirts of town. It pulled over, and the people dismounted, stiff and exhausted. Robert thanked the farmer and offered him money as a reward, but of course it was refused.

It wouldn't be safe to go into town now. Kraków was close to the front line still, so the town garrison would be much more alert to curfew-breaking and treat it even more violently than they did in Lwów. So the men and women all found places to huddle up, away from the road, and wait for morning. They were accustomed to it. With luck, they wouldn't have to endure it anymore after tonight. Robert entrusted Kasia to one of the women. In the morning he would attempt to put them all aboard the Odessa-bound train.

A
T DAWN, THE
people roused themselves for one more walk.

Robert went alone into the city and made his way to the railroad station. His refugees had been instructed to wait awhile and then begin following him in small groups of no more than two or three at a time, setting out at intervals. That should give them the best chance of not arousing the suspicions of Russian sentries; and if some were stopped, others might still get through. Unlike Lwów, the railroad station in Kraków was right in the heart of the city, so it might be harder to reach.

Arriving at the station, Robert bought the tickets and waited anxiously. Gradually the men, women and children drifted in.
Miraculously, none had been stopped. There were Russian soldiers at the station, but they didn't seem to object; as long as the American officer was responsible, they didn't care what he did with the refugees. (Had they known that there were POWs in the party, it might have been different.) Kraków's proximity to the front line made it a more dangerous place to be at night, but it also meant that there was a constant flow of refugees – mostly Poles, Russians, and Ukrainians – passing through. And it meant that the NKVD had less of a foothold. There was a lag between the movement of the Red Army's front line and the appearance of the full apparatus of state security. As Robert would learn, in some towns it was surprisingly easy to get Russian approval for channeling liberated prisoners to the railroad – until the NKVD moved in and leaned on the town commandants.
⁴
After that the barriers would come down; there would be no more blind eyes.

For a second time, Robert went through the happy ceremony of departure, accepting the hugs and blessings and fond farewells and watching the train as it steamed out of the station, beginning the long haul to Odessa and freedom.

Over the next couple of days, he went through the ritual several more times. At least one of his contact agents was still in the area; seizing the opportunity presented by the circumstances in Kraków, the agent dispatched small groups to the edge of town, where Robert would pick them up and put them through the same routine, drifting inconspicuously through the city to the station. Most were POWs, but there were a few refugees from the death camps as well. He lost count of the numbers but figured that he must have put at least 150 souls aboard trains during those couple of days at Kraków.

But the soul he had most wanted to bring to freedom – the ticket he had most wanted to buy – was not among them. Baby Kasia had not made it through that cold night on the outskirts of the city. Robert's heart had come close to breaking as they laid her to rest, still wrapped in his scarf, on a secluded patch of ground near the roadside and raised a little cairn of stones over her. She had found a different kind of freedom from the pain of the world.

T
HE LITTLE STOCK
of rations was long gone, and his money vest was almost empty. It was time to go back to Poltava and replenish his supplies. The thousands of dollars Robert had brought had been spent in a few days; he would need to bring more next time. Altogether, the money had set almost 200 people on the road to freedom, but there must be thousands more out there.

Robert had almost completely forgotten about the bird dog who'd accompanied him from Rzeszów and was surprised to find him still at the hotel. Like his predecessor in Lwów, the man was annoyed at being abandoned, and probably worried about his neck if his superiors found out. Robert spun him a tale about following up a report on a downed bomber which had turned into a wild goose chase, and the man seemed satisfied.