Dresden (3 page)

I found them and duly reported to our leader who I had named General with the emphasis on the guttural ‘G'. I thought he was going to give me a big slap on the back but he didn't, he just said “Gut Tommy”, and I joined the rest of the gang in to the heart-rending job of opening up the cellars. We had to try and drag what was left of people into the open where they were examined for identifying marks and then piled up in huge squares. The final destination for these bodies would be one of the big water containers that had been built in various parts of the city. There they were burnt using gallons of petrol and oil. This was the only method of dealing with the huge numbers of bodies strewn across the rubble of what had been one of the most beautiful cities of Western Europe.

We were split into teams of four who would burrow into the mountains of bricks and mortar, find a cellar door and prise it with pickaxes and crowbars. Inside we found the victims, in most cases the bodies were shriveled up to half their normal size or worse. Children under the age of three or four were impossible to identify at all, these tender human beings just melted in the heat of the oven they were sitting in. In the majority of cases the victims looked as though they had died peacefully through lack of oxygen, just losing conscious and falling asleep in the process. After which the terrible heat took over and shriveled them up. This was on the outskirts of the Altstade, the old city, and it turned out to be the easy bit. Even the hardest of us was going to flinch as we got near to where the centre of the firestorm had been and where fierce fires were still raging.

The approach of darkness made the work impossible so The General called his gang to order and what remained of our forty strong group trudged back to our position by the Railway embankment. This night we were treated much better. The General has been in contact with the main big boss of the area and now came over to us to tell us that we would be sleeping in a couple of wagons for the duration of the exercise and that even some blankets were to be supplied. Talk about organisation, we had food, drink and somewhere to kip. We still had no water for washing and if you had to answer the call of nature then it was just a question of making a hole in the rubble. We must have stunk like polecats, but so what, we were alive. So the second day ended.

The third day turned out to be a repeat of the day before. This was because we were still working in the same designated area, the main difference was there were more of us. Gangs had been bought in from far and wide, some on lorries and buses, others came along the only working railway line. Our sleeping wagons had been lifted off of the tracks, out of the way, by a giant crane. Everywhere I looked I could see men working in small gangs of up to a dozen men, usually escorted by a couple of armed guards.

I think the reason that our ‘General' and those of us in his crew were left to our own devices was because we were doing the real dirty work of entering the shelters. As far as I could make out there were only about six or seven gangs employed on this task. Once a shelter was located we had the job of clearing the rubble from the doorway, this could take a couple of hours before we could uncover an entrance. Then came the horrendous task of forcing our way in, carefully managing the stairs that led to the basement below, and there we met the sight that so many of the men were unable to stand, the bodies of the unfortunates, sometimes seemingly untouched and in a kind of peaceful repose, but more often than not burnt to a crisp and smouldering shell. These experiences were to get much worse the nearer we got to the centre of the city.

Once we found the bodies, the General ordered the men who had not taken part in clearing access to the shelter to go down and try to bring the bodies that could be moved to the surface. Some of the corpses were so brittle that any attempt to move them resulted in a cloud of ash and dried flesh, and yet so methodical were these Germans that, where it was impossible to manhandle the bodies, they were ordered to stuff any part of the corpse that help identify the victim into a sack. It was all so gruesome that to describe what was going on with any degree of clarity is something that I, for one, can't do. I later heard that gangs of SS were used to gather these remains, I only heard about this through the chit chat in the evening so whether it's true or not I don't know. What I did know was that in spite of the fact that we were working day and night, our progress could only be measured in terms of yards per day. Even so, by the end of the third day we were so much nearer the fires that were still raging unabated, that nobody was looking forward to tomorrow's tasks.

There was a surprise in store for our gang when that evening we returned to the wagons, a shower wagon had arrived upon the scene and yet again I got special treatment. The General saw to it that I got first crack at washing and he also arranged for a medical orderly to bathe my bare skin where the blisters were breaking open. Why these blisters didn't fester up I don't know, perhaps it was the ointment that the German doctor had rubbed into my back. After we had our showers we had to put back on our filthy clothing, but it did feel good. I had a lot to thank our General for and I let him know that I was grateful even if we were unable to talk in anything but the most basic German words.

Up again with the first rays of light breaking through the dust and dirt. This morning instead of the usual men in charge of the field kitchen we were served by women which resulted in a lot of good natured cheering and calling out. Everyone formed up into a queue and the ladies doled out what appeared to be some form of stew, although I never came across anyone who had found even the smallest morsel of meat. To bulk it up there were these huge thick slices of black bread so much loved by the Krauts.

The second surprise was that we had a new leader this morning, in fact two of them, along with a young boy dressed up in a SS uniform and carrying a schmeiser machine pistol. By the look of the lad he had never fired the thing, but experience told me that this might make him all the more dangerous if something untoward happened. This didn't seem to worry our two new masters who told the crew that we were to tackle a new sector of the city where it was thought there was a chance of finding survivors still alive. This news brought a kind of fresh life to the gang. We set off to a part of the city where there was a small square where what had been grass was now a bed of ash at least four inches thick. The houses surrounding this square were less damaged than those we had experienced up to now. As usual the roads were piled with masonry and other rubbish and we still had to find the shelter openings. So without any instructions from our new masters the whole gang set to with a will that I am sure surprised the uniformed pair who were supposed to be instructing us. The General had trained us well to work together and it showed.

The first three shelters we uncovered were empty, but further examination of the third one revealed a tunnel leading to another shelter, but we couldn't get through because the roof had collapsed. We returned to the surface and one of our new leaders decided to have a look for himself. We could all tell that the man didn't want to venture underground, probably because of the damage it would do to his nicely creased jet-black uniform. But his mate, who was obviously his senior, ordered him down. The result was that we were to try to clear the tunnel. Then came the job of scouting around for timber to shore up the tunnel.

Later that afternoon three of our gang broke through and found these four women and two small girls huddled up together and still alive. Even the guards cheered themselves hoarse. It took an hour to get them to the surface but we all felt like heroes, there were no enemies, no hatred, just this sense of utter fulfillment that the rescue of these people had been down to us, that's how I felt and I am certain that every one of us had the same reaction. Sadly this was a one-off event, in spite of all the backbreaking toil this was the only time our group found people alive. We returned to the wagons that evening to be greeted by the General who had heard about the rescue.

After we had eaten the General came up to me with another short stocky German in an army uniform. This lad could speak really good English and, interpreting for the general, told me that tomorrow I was supposed to join a batch of British POWs, but if I wished I could stay with the group for another day. My first reaction was ‘Good, can't wait to get back to my own mob'. Then I began to think about the ‘what ifs'. What if they found out about me and Harry and that sentence that still had to be carried out. I told them I would like it better to stay with the group for another day. The General gave me a look but said nothing.

After much thought I decided that come feeding time tomorrow I would try to stuff as much of the black bread as I could in the pockets of the German greatcoat I was wearing and await the chance to lose myself. Beyond that I had no plan.

Day five and we were back under the command of our General. There was no sign of the other two men and the boy. Today there were special orders: we were to try to gain entry into one of the main communal shelters on the edge of the Altstade. The General didn't think it was possible because of the heat which was still very intense. However he had his orders to see if some progress could be made, and see he would.

With the General leading the way, off we set in the direction of streets where sheets of flame were still shooting a hundred feet or so up into the sky. This time we were accompanied by a water truck with bags of wet rags and towels. The nearer we got, the hotter it got until the General called a halt and pointed to a still smouldering twenty foot high heap of rubble. The water-cart was still being manhandled over the piles of broken buildings, the path that had been cleared wasn't wide enough and indeed the cart never did reach our position. The general ordered half of us back into the cooler air whilst the remainder set about the task of trying to clear a way through to the entrance door. He kept us working like this in twenty minute shifts and in this manner progress was made until we all retired some hundred yards back for a mid-day break.

While were sitting and lounging about, another gang of around fifty men turned up and after a short conflab the General gets them into clearing the way to where it is thought the entrance to the shelter might be. The rest of us went on enjoying the break, but it came to an end when the General called over three of his German associates and signals to me, ‘Come Tommy', then makes a sign for me to discard the shovel I'm carrying and hands over a long crowbar, about five feet of inch and a half thick metal with a claw at on end. The other gang had uncovered the entrance and marched off, leaving us, who were now considered as specialists. The General says to me, ‘In here very bad Tommy, very hot'.

The door was a massive affair, it had been bolted from the outside which was the general practice to prevent overcrowding. This was OK in theory but if there's nobody left on the outside to unbolt the door the people inside are in trouble.

It took the whole of the afternoon wielding sledgehammers trying to prise an opening. It was so hot that, this time, the General changed us around at fifteen minute intervals. So finally there are two of us on the end of the crowbar when with a creak it moved. The door opened the first inch or so, there was a large hissing sound and the surrounding dust was sucked into the opening. As the gap widened, so a terrible smell hit us. Everyone moved back and the general gave us time to recover our wits. Then he signaled to his four chosen men, which included me, and we continued the job of opening the heavy metal door. Slowly the horror inside became visible. There were no real complete bodies, only bones and scorched articles of clothing matted together on the floor and stuck together by a sort of jelly substance. There was no flesh visible, what had once been a congregation of people sheltering from the horror above them was now a glutinous mass of solidified fat and bones swimming around, inches thick, on the floor. The General signaled us to get out and got the rest of the gang to close the door as best they could.

Now we all understood what the cellars right in the centre of the city would reveal as there turn came to be opened. Although even on the fifth day we knew it was far to hot to venture into the area that we knew had been the central aiming point for the first two raids.

Gone were the high spirits that we had experienced the day before when we had released the woman and girls from their living grave. Darkness began to fall and we marched back to the railway line. It was a very subdued and sombre lot that queued up for the nightly ration of soup, bread and the interminable coffee.

Before we turned in for the night the General came over to me, ‘Tommy, morgan sie gefangenerlager.' He was telling me that in the morning I would go back to the prison camp. I told him in my pidgeon German that I understood. After a moment I held out my hand to the man, it was not that I had fallen in love with him but I respected him. We shook hands and he said quite quietly ‘Gut Tommy', and marched off. That was the last I saw of him, I never discovered his real name but I had the feeling that it amused him when I addressed him as ‘General'.

Now I had another problem to think about, how to disengage myself from this party of men and make my way over the Bridge and try to walk eastwards. I had given up the idea of walking to the west, it was too far, whilst eastwards, during the silence of the night, you could hear the rattle of machine guns quite clearly, they couldn't have been more than twenty or thirty miles away. So that was the way to go, I had no alternative unless I took the chance that the Germans would not discover that I had been condemned to death for sabotage, and that was a chance I didn't feel happy about taking.

I was out of the Railway yard before light the next morning and making my way towards what I thought must be the north side of the City. I made my way unchallenged through the flow of people moving westwards, pushing small handcarts, prams, anything on wheels into which they had crammed their most treasured belongings. They were trying to put as much distance between themselves and the vengeful and menacing soldiers of the Red Army as possible. It was this trail that I followed except that instead of travelling westwards with them I was moving against the tide. I was still in luck when I got to the bridge. I had expected to find it guarded by the police or the army, but no, just this never ending trail of people.