Come into my Parlour (49 page)

They had scarcely reached open country when another machine-gun opened on them. The bullets went wide, but they were coming from the front so he felt fairly confident that they must be German. As he could not get off the road the only thing to do was to halt, otherwise the Germans would take the noise of his engine for that of a tank or armoured car and, imagining that the Russians were launching a night attack, turn their artillery on to him. At the top of his voice he began to shout:

“Hi, there! Help! I am lost in this blasted snowstorm!”

The machine-gun fired two more short bursts and its bullets spattered down on to the road about fifty feet ahead of the Black Maria. Between the bursts Gregory kept on shouting with all the power of his lungs; then he took a big chance, switched on his headlights and, jumping down, ran to the side of the road. Even there, another burst aimed at the lights with a traversing gun might have caught him, but the firing ceased and he recommenced his yelling.

After about three minutes a group of dim figures appeared through the snow. He put his hands above his head and waited, a prey to terrible anxiety. If they were Germans he had good hopes that things
would be alright, but if they proved, after all, to be Russians, the game was up.

To his immense relief one of the figures stepped forward and, covering him with a sub-machine gun, asked him in German who he was and what the hell he was doing there.

“
Gottseidank!
” he exclaimed. “I lost my way in the storm, and for the last half-hour I've been terrified that I'd be captured by the Russians.” He then went on to explain that he was driving a captured Black Maria with an important prisoner in it, had taken a wrong turning further west, gone down the other fork road into the valley, and finding that the wood was being shelled had realised, to his horror, that he was in No-Man's-land.

In such conditions of darkness and snow the story was perfectly plausible, as the
Unteroffizier
who was questioning him knew that in such weather pickets kept under cover as much as possible, and that if the van had gone down the road further west the outposts there might quite well have taken the noise of its engine for that of an armoured car going forward to reconnoitre.

Having growled that Gregory was darned lucky not to have been captured or shot, he told him that he could proceed, and ordered one of his men to get in the driver's cab as a guide up to company headquarters.

They drove off up the hill, on the brow of which they were challenged by another picket, but the soldier on the box gave the password for the night and, half a mile further on, they pulled up at a burnt-out farmhouse.

Against one of its walls a row of rough lean-tos had been erected. From one of them came a few chinks of light and the soldier led Gregory into it. A young officer was sitting dozing there beside a small table that had a field telephone on it.

Gregory thanked his stars that the place was not a house or heated hutment, in which he would have been expected to remove his furs, as his main danger now was that he was not wearing a German uniform, so his furs were his only protection against discovery. When he had told his story again the officer seemed fairly satisfied but demanded to see the prisoner.

Taking him outside, Gregory undid the van, pretended to unlock the cell and exposed Kuporovitch to view. He, too, was wearing his furs, but at the sight of his visitors he stood up and let them fall open, sufficient for it to be seen that underneath he had on a foreign uniform.

In halting Russian the officer asked him where he had been captured, and he replied, “At Kingisepp on the Luga.”

The officer then asked Gregory where he was taking his prisoner to, and he replied: “To the Gestapo headquarters in Novgorod. This man is a native of Kalinin and it is hoped that we may be able to get information out of him which will prove useful on our Moscow front—at least that is what my officer told me.”

There seemed no more to be said, so Kuporovitch was again locked in his cell, the officer gave Gregory careful directions as to the road he should take, and, with an immensely lighter heart, he drove off.

The journey from Oranienbaum and the crossing of the front had taken only a little over two hours, so it was not yet half past nine and they still had the best part of the long Russian night before them. As they penetrated further behind the German lines they now and again met a convoy bringing up supplies and passed occasional cars or solitary lorries, but no one bothered any longer to challenge them, taking it for granted that any vehicle in that area must be German.

Gradually the sound of the guns grew fainter until they could no longer be heard. Soon after midnight the snow ceased falling. Every few miles they passed through a village or small township but all of them consisted of the blackened shells of buildings, having been burnt out in accordance with the scorched earth policy. At a quarter past two in the morning, on passing through a long street of scattered buildings, many of which still had their roofs on, Gregory felt sure that he was entering the north-eastern suburbs of the ancient city of Novgorod, once the capital of all northern Russia. They had accomplished the first hundred miles of their journey in seven hours, and seeing the state of the roads, he was well satisfied.

His main fear now was that he might run into a Gestapo man who would be intrigued by the sight of a Russian Black Maria and pull it up to ask awkward questions. Fortunately, it was still the middle of the night, and the only people about were a few belated soldiers but, feeling certain there would be a police post in the centre of the city, having driven a little way into it, he took a turning to the left and continued on by a succession of by-ways, until he had worked his way round to its south-western suburbs. He lost half an hour in this manoeuvre, but eventually found his way back on the main road to Kresti, Kalinin and Moscow.

Since the snow had ceased he had been making much better going, and two hours after leaving Novgorod he reached the outskirts of the little town of Kresti. Here he followed the same manœuvre as in Novgorod, but the place being much smaller, did not lose so much time in skirting it, and was clear of the town by five o'clock.

He was very tired now after seven and a half hours' continuous driving, but he knew that if he could cover another twenty miles or so
he should reach the Valdai Hills, where there would be woods, and good cover in which to lie up during the daytime. By six o'clock he was leaving the flat plain behind and entering an undulating area of broken forest land. At twenty past six he found a turning to the right which would bring him deeper into the hilly area. Two miles down it he found a by-road leading east, so he drove some way along it until he was deep in the forest, then finding a track took the van in among the snow-covered trees and pulled up. Dawn was only just breaking and during the long night they had successfully negotiated some hundred and eighty miles.

When he entered Kuporovitch's cell, Gregory found the old campaigner curled up in his furs, sound asleep on the floor. On being wakened he declared that he had had a very good night, and that from about an hour after the German officer had come in to look at him he had only one prolonged period of wakefulness.

As they breakfasted off some of their iron rations they congratulated themselves on their good fortune to date, and discussed the future. They agreed that had it not been for the snowstorm they would probably have had much difficulty in getting through the battle zone that now lay a hundred and fifty miles behind them, and that they could not count upon a repetition of such luck when they made their bid to cross the other, which lay forty to sixty miles further on along the road to Moscow.

However, as Gregory pointed out, the two fronts differed considerably. The one about Leningrad had formed into a solid ring, whereas the main line of conflict was so immensely long that it was occupied in strength by either army only in certain strategic areas. He likened the situation to two forks with a great number of irregular prongs pointed at one another, and constantly being jabbed together so that some of the points met with a clash while others went a little way into the empty spaces between the opposing prongs.

Kuporovitch nodded. “Yes. That must be so; otherwise nothing like so many prisoners would be taken or spearheads cut off. And if only we can find a space between two German prongs, with luck we'll get through unmolested.”

“Exactly! So our best plan is to keep well away from strategic areas like Kalinin, through which the main Leningrad-Moscow railway runs, or Staritza and Rahev, further south.”

“Staritza is the best part of fifty miles south of the railway and there is nothing worth capturing in between; so we should stand a good chance of slipping through there. You'll be driving again until we know that we're in Russian-held territory, I suppose?”

“Yes. But it shouldn't take us long to cover fifty miles, so we
won't start till dusk. It's too risky since I've had no chance to get a German uniform off a stiff, as I had planned.”

“Perhaps that's just as well,” Kuporovitch said thoughtfully. “I'm inclined to think that on the route we mean to take you will be in more danger from the Partisans than from the Germans.”

“We must chance that. Anyhow, it's a good thing that I drove most of last night as I can get a sleep now while you keep watch; then if a band of them is lurking in these woods, and some of them come to investigate, you can explain matters to them in their own lingo.”

With a tired sigh Gregory got into the Black Maria, curled himself up, and was almost immediately asleep.

When he awoke it was well on in the afternoon. To his considerable interest Kuporovitch reported that a little band of ragged Partisans had appeared on the scene shortly before midday, but they had been perfectly satisfied on his telling them that he was a Russian officer trying to get through to Moscow and that he had stolen the Black Maria from a park of vehicles captured by the Germans. They had said that he could drive on for twenty-five miles at least, without fear, as not a single German had been seen in the whole district for days.

They had another meal and, in view of the information of the Partisans, decided to set off immediately dusk began to fall, so by five o'clock they were on their way. A little under an hour later Gregory turned off the main road and began to run through by-ways in a generally south-easterly direction.

A few miles further on, just as it was getting dark, a group of men and women ran out of a roadside coppice and, brandishing an odd assortment of weapons, yelled at him to halt. Instead of doing so he increased his speed. As a result a spatter of duck-shot rattled against the van. Momentarily, he was alarmed by the thought that some of the pellets might have punctured a tyre, but the old Black Maria continued to run on steadily and after another mile or so he knew that his fears had been groundless.

Soon after nine o'clock he found himself on a straight road leading directly towards a town which, it appeared, there was no way of avoiding. In consequence, just before reaching the first houses, he pulled up and went round to the back of the van to consult with Kuporovitch.

They were now in something of a quandary as, according to their calculations, they should by this time be out of the German zone; but not far back Gregory had passed a string of lorries that, even in the semi-darkness, he felt fairly certain had been German and it might prove that in the past week the enemy had made a considerable advance on this sector.

As it was of paramount importance to find out which army held the
town it was decided that Kuporovitch should go forward on foot to reconnoitre. He returned half an hour later having questioned some of the inhabitants, to say that the town was Torshok, and that it had recently been captured by the Germans. The front was now fifteen miles beyond it.

The question now was whether to go back and try another way or risk being pulled up at a German police post. Their success so far had, perhaps, inclined them to rashness and they decided to go on. As they entered the small square of the half ruined town they were called on to halt and, in a wave of fresh apprehension, cursed their temerity.

Gregory told the usual story to two military policemen, but they asked him for his area pass and as he could not produce one, they at once became suspicious.

In his cell Kuporovitch could not hear what was being said outside, but from the longish halt he sensed that Gregory was in trouble, so he began to shout and bang violently on the side of the van.

On hearing the noise the two policemen made Gregory get down from his seat and take them round to his prisoner. While doing so he protested vehemently that he had had a pass, but somehow mislaid it. As he opened Kuporovitch's cell door the Russian, seeing the two Germans behind Gregory, struck him in the chest and, still shouting, attempted to force his way out.

With the assistance of the policemen, Gregory forced him back into the cell and relocked it. But Kuporovitch's demonstration had convinced the two Germans of Gregory's
bona fides
, as it seemed to them that none but a genuine prisoner would behave with such violence, and that Gregory's obvious business as a driver of a Black Maria was to take him from one safe place to another.

One of them asked what the prisoner was shouting about, and Gregory replied in a surly tone that he did not speak the fellow's filthy language, but perhaps it was because he had not been given any food all day, and added that he did not believe in wasting food on dirty Russians.

This sentiment so warmed the German hearts of his listeners that they not only agreed to his proceeding, but the senior even wrote out for him a temporary area pass on a perforated sheet of his field pocket-book.

Mutually cursing the country, the weather, the Russians and particularly such Russians as the violent prisoner in the van, they parted, and Gregory breathed again as he drove out of the town.