Last Man to Die (2 page)
Authors: Michael Dobbs
He stopped outside the shop for no better reason than that it appeared to be the only place open. It loosely described itself as an antique shop but the goods were more second-hand than aged. As he opened the door, a bell jangled overhead producing not a bright song of welcome but a choking sound, a stiff rattle of discontent as if complaining at being disturbed. Cazolet guessed it had been that way for a long, long time. The shop was cramped and narrow, like a railway carriage, with a thin corridor down the middle between bric-à-brac and dusty oddments which were piled with little apparent logic or order along the shelves and on top of the collection of dark tables and bureaux that had been pushed against the walls. The best of what there was seemed to be in the front window, a large blue-and-white Nanking temple vase which was a modern reproduction, he guessed, and a nineteenth-century mahogany upright clock with an intricate brass face but no back panel. It had been disembowelled and the movement lay on the floor beside it. Both vase and clock bore a substantial layer of dust, as did the owner, who appeared from behind a curtain at the back of the shop wiping his hands on a tea towel. He had a stomach which his grimy undervest and leather belt had difficulty in containing, and from his scowl and the grease that had dribbled on to his chin it appeared as though he had been disturbed in the middle of eating. He was somewhere in his mid-sixties, Cazolet estimated.
As always when he met a German of his own age, Cazolet wondered what the other had done during the war and what secrets and torments hid behind the watery, suspicious eyes. He would have been about fifteen by the end of the fighting. In Berlin that was old enough to have been conscripted, to have been sent out with nothing more than a couple of grenades and a busted rifle to face the Soviet tanks and the peasant-conscripts who swarmed behind, to have fought for Berlin street by street and sewer by bloody sewer, to have killed and been killed. Many much younger had known that. In those days, death in Berlin had recognized no distinction between the innocence of childhood and culpability for having been born a German, yet this German had survived to become old and fat, and that alone was enough to ensure he should never be taken for granted.
The shopkeeper said nothing, standing silently in the back of the premises smacking his greasy lips and staring, as if he reckoned Cazolet might be on the point of running off with his precious stock. Cazolet refused to be intimidated. He liked this place, its jumble of artifacts, its mustiness, its uselessness. He moved stiffly through the shop, pulling out drawers, inspecting battered brassware, smudging the dust off prints before settling into an oak dining chair, testing it for comfort, easing his aching limbs. Had it been one of six the chair might have fetched a reasonable price but on its own it was simply old – a survivor, Cazolet reflected, which made it something special in Berlin. He was astonished to discover himself feeling a sharp twinge of envy. Of a chair. Bloody fool! he scolded himself, once again rehearsing the arguments as to why he
had nothing to fear about tomorrow, whatever it might bring.
It was as he was sitting in reflection that he saw the photo frame. It was blackened with age and dirt, and from behind the smeared glass stared the image of a young German military recruit from the last war, his brave smile and crisp Wehrmacht uniform typical of countless thousands of photographs that had adorned mantelpieces and bedside tables in bygone days. The photo itself held no fascination for Cazolet; it was the battered frame that grabbed his attention. He reached out unsteadily and took it between both hands, his thumbs rubbing at the tarnished metal, trying to reveal the gleam of silver which he guessed lay beneath the oxide. Up the sides and along the bottom of the frame he found small decorative filigree executed in a different metal which beneath the dirt and soot looked like dull brass; directly in the centre at the top of the frame was a small, slightly jagged hole, as if some further piece of decoration had been pulled away none too carefully. It was staring at the hole that brought it back. A memory, vague with distance and time but which battled through to flood his fingers with tension and anticipation. Surely it couldn’t be … With a thumbnail he scratched gently at the filigree, but already he knew what he would find. Not worthless brass, instead the yellow lustre of gold. Now he knew for certain what was missing. He turned the frame over and with some difficulty began releasing the clips that secured the photograph inside the frame. His hands were trembling, and not solely with age.
The shopkeeper had come over to inspect what he was doing. ‘Careful!’ he growled.
‘This is not the original photograph,’ Cazolet snapped. ‘This is a wartime piece, without doubt, but the frame was made for something else …’
The shopkeeper began to take a keen interest; perhaps he could do business over this piece of junk after all.
‘You see the hole?’ continued Cazolet as the back came off and his frail fingers searched for the edge of the photograph. ‘I think there used to be a little gold swastika, just here. You know, these frames were specially produced and given away …’ He sucked in his breath as the old photograph came away to reveal the original still lurking behind.
‘Bollocks,’ muttered the German.
‘… by Adolf Hitler himself.’
They could both see the face, magisterially staring left to right into a distance he imagined to be filled with endless victories.
‘This is quite rare. It’s even signed!’ Cazolet was rubbing furiously at the grime on the glass with a spotless white handkerchief.
‘Five hundred marks,’ the shopkeeper barked, rapidly recovering his composure.
‘Oh, I don’t want to buy it. I have no need …’ But Cazolet could go no further. His words died as his vigorous cleaning of the glass revealed not just Hitler’s spidery signature but also a dedication. His breathing was laboured as the excitement and the exertions began taking their toll. The frame trembled in his hands as he held it up to his frail eyes. He blinked rapidly, giving the glass another polish with the now-stained handkerchief and holding it up once more for inspection. The metal seemed to be burning into his hands, as if grown white hot with a mystical energy all its own. The
Englishman was one of life’s professional sceptics and even as he had contemplated his own death he had found it hard to believe in Fate or any form of divine intervention, but every day for the few months that remained to him thereafter Cazolet would look at his hands expecting to find stigmata burned deep into his palms.
‘Oh, sweet Jesus,’ he gasped as at last he deciphered the scrawled dedication. ‘Can it be? After all these years ….’
‘What? What is it?’ the shopkeeper cried in exasperation.
The old man seemed not to notice. He was back in another time, face consumed by anguish, his eyes tightly closed, shaking his head as though trying to fend off the understanding which confronted him. Then, very softly, almost exhaustedly, the words came. ‘He made it.
He actually bloody made it!’
The old man’s hands gave another savage shake and the silver frame slipped from his fingers, glancing off his knee before falling to the floor. There was a loud crack as the glass shattered.
‘That’s it,’ snapped the German. ‘You’ll have to buy it now.’
March 1945
It wasn’t much of a prison camp, just a double row of barbed wire fencing strung around a football pitch with guards occasionally patrolling along the slough-like path that ran between the rows. In the middle were twenty or so dark green army bell tents serving as the sole source of shelter for the 247 German prisoners. There were no watch towers; there hadn’t been time to build any as the Allied armies swept up after the Battle of the Bulge and pressed onward through Europe. It was one of scores of transit camps thrown up, with little thought of security, anywhere with space enough to provide primitive shelter for prisoners on their way from the war zone to more permanent accommodation. No one appeared keen to escape. They had survived; for most that was enough, and more than they had expected.
The great tide of captured Germans washing up against British shores had all but overwhelmed the authorities’ ability to cope. After all, with the Allies racing for the Rhine, there were other priorities. So guarding the camps was a job not for crack troops but for new recruits, with little experience and often less discipline. That was the trouble with Transit Camp 174B, that and the complete absence of plumbing.
The camp, on the edge of the windswept Yorkshire moors, was run by young Canadians, freshly recruited, ill-trained and with a youthful intolerance which divided the world into black and white, friend and foe. They weren’t going to win any campaign medals on this rain-sodden battleground, and perhaps it was frustration and a feeling of inadequacy that tempted them to take out their aggression on the prisoners. In most camps the commanding officer would douse any unruly fires amongst the hotheads, but in Camp 174B the CO’s name was Pilsudski, who came of Polish parents out of Winnipeg, and after reports began filtering through of what the Russians had found as they raced through the ruins of Poland, he didn’t give a damn.
The trouble had begun two days previously when the camp’s leading black marketeer had come to grief. He had never been popular, but had his uses. ‘I’ll do a deal on anything,’ he used to brag. He could obtain a surprising variety of necessities from the guards and would get a reasonable price for anything that the prisoners had to sell – watches, wedding rings, wallets, even their medals. It made the difference between surviving and simply sinking in despair into the mud. He was also a bum-boy and sold himself, and the rest of the inmates were willing to put up even with that – until one of them discovered he was also the camp ‘stooly’ and was selling information to the Canadians about his fellow prisoners. The guards found him late one night, crawling through the mud and screaming in agony, with every last penny of the substantial sum of money he had scraped together shoved up his ass.
Perhaps the incident would have passed without further consequences, for the stool pigeon was no more popular amongst the guards, most of whom thought he had it coming. But it was not to be. Pilsudski received a report of the previous night’s incident moments after hearing on the radio of what the Germans had done before their retreat from Warsaw, and how little they had left standing or alive. Before the war he’d had an aunt and aged grandmother who lived in an apartment on the leafy intersection of Aleja Jerozolimska and Bracka streets; now, apparently, there was nothing left, no apartment, no intersection, no street, no trace of the women. It was the excuse he had been looking for, the opportunity to revenge in some small way the horrors and frustrations that preyed on his mind.
There were nine tables set up in line on the small parade ground. Before eight of them the camp’s entire complement of prisoners was standing to attention in the incessant drizzle; behind the ninth, raised on a dais, sat the stocky form of Pilsudski as he surveyed the scene. The senior prisoner, a tall, scrawny man who was a commander in the German Navy, leaned heavily on a stick and had just finished remonstrating with him.
‘So, Commander, you want to know what this is all about, do you?’ Pilsudski was saying, staring down at the German officer, his thick Slavic features making the other man seem frail and vulnerable. ‘Well, I’m going to tell you. Last night someone broke into the office here.’ He waved towards the primitive wooden construction which, before the sports area was commandeered, had served as changing rooms and a small grandstand. ‘And I want to know which of your men did it. Damn me but you
Germans don’t seem to be able to control yourselves,’ he added, the morning’s news still much on his mind. ‘Some property’s missing, so we’re going to look for it.’
Already the commander could hear the noise of wrecking as guards went through the tents overturning beds, tearing palliasses, emptying kitbags and the other hold-alls in which the prisoners kept their meagre possessions, ripping everything apart. He knew that anything of value would be gone by the time the prisoners were able to begin picking up the pieces.
‘But it cannot be. The offices are outside the wire; my men could not possibly have …’
Pilsudski began to chuckle, a harsh, false sound which revealed no humour, only crooked teeth. The German could feel the implacable bitterness behind the red eyes; he shivered, and not solely from the growing cold. The captor, still chuckling, began shaking his head slowly. ‘You’re surely not trying to tell me it was a Canadian soldier? No, not my boys. They know how to behave themselves. So, you see, it must have been one of yours.’
‘Impossible …’
‘Not only is it possible,’ Pilsudski interrupted, ‘but to my mind inevitable wherever you find a German. You’ve thieved and pillaged and raped just about everywhere you’ve been in Europe, so why should you make an exception here?’ The grin didn’t falter, the teeth still showing, but the eyes had narrowed. The German did not see the danger signs; he was propped unsteadily on his stick, clearly a sick man and in some considerable pain after standing for nearly an hour in the drizzle.
‘This is utterly unjust,’ he protested, but was
cut short as Pilsudski’s swagger stick sliced high through the air to come crashing down across the table.
‘Don’t talk to me about justice, you Nazi bastard. If I make you eat shit, at least that’s more than most of your prisoners got over the last six years.’
With considerable effort the German pulled himself up off his cane and stood erect, looking at Pilsudski, his defiance visible through the rain that dripped off his cap and down his face. ‘I am a German officer. I most strongly protest.’
‘He protests!’ Pilsudski stood so the commander felt dwarfed. ‘This butchering son-of-a-bitch protests,’ Pilsudski continued in a voice strong enough to be heard full across the parade ground. No one was to miss this humiliation. Satisfied he had achieved his objective, he leaned low across the table until he was looking down upon the pained face of the commander, showering him in venom and spittle. ‘Listen! You started this war. You lost. So shove it.’ Pilsudski jerked the middle finger of his right hand into the face of the commander before turning from him in contemptuous dismissal. ‘Sergeant. Search the prisoners!’
At the command the first man in each line of prisoners was prodded forward by the guards until they were standing in front of a table. After considerable further encouragement from the muzzles of the standard-issue Lee Enfield .303s and a barrage of abuse from their captors, they began taking off their clothes, item by item, and placing them on the tables.
‘All of ’em, sauerkraut,’ one of the guards bawled, giving a reluctant prisoner a savage dig under the ribs. He smiled arrogantly through a mouthful of
gum while the German slowly obeyed until he had joined the seven other prisoners standing naked in front of the tables. The guards went through their clothes, indiscriminately filching cigarettes, wallets, combs, even family photographs.
The search seemed to be over. Nothing incriminating had been found, and the sergeant was looking in the direction of Pilsudski for further orders. It was time. Time to revenge the fate which had cast Pilsudski as babysitter in this gut-rotting dampness instead of letting him loose in Europe; time to revenge a birthright which had left him a good six inches shorter than most men; time to revenge the suffering of his aunt and grandmother at the hands of Germans – not these Germans, of course, but these were the only Germans around. It was time. Pilsudski gave a curt nod.
At the sign, each of the prisoners was thrown across the table, his head forced down by a guard until he had lost his footing in the mud and was spreadeagled. As he lay there, surprised, stunned, a second guard armed with a heavy leather glove forced his legs wide apart and violated him, the guard’s gloved finger piercing and entering, twisting deep inside and raping not just the body but the soul. One began to emit a low howl of anguish and degradation but a shouted reprimand from a fellow prisoner choked it off. After all, why admit the shame, why give the guards still further satisfaction?
‘You are … tearing up … all the rules,’ the commander began, barely able to find words as he struggled to contain his feelings. ‘What in God’s name do you think this is?’
‘A medical inspection. For piles. If anyone asks. Which they won’t.’ Pilsudski’s manner was cold as
the wind. He didn’t regret a thing. ‘By the way, one of the prisoners is excused. The queer. They tell me he’s been comprehensively inspected already.’
‘So. I think I understand.’
‘Sure you do, Fritz. How do the rules of war go? To the victor the spoils. To the losers, a finger up their ass. And it’s a damn sight less than you bastards deserve.’
‘You have already defeated us. Is that not enough?’
‘No, not by a long chalk. I want every stinking German left alive crawling on his hands and knees, begging for mercy, just like you left that faggot the other night. I hope I make myself clear.’
There was no point in further protest. In war he had been a senior officer but in defeat he felt no better or more worthy of respect than any other man; the German turned on his heel as correctly as his ailing legs would allow and joined the end of one of the lines.
It took more than two hours for the guards to finish their work, and the drizzle continued to fall as the parade ground turned into a sea of slime. There were tears mingling with the rain that flowed down the cheeks of many of the Germans, tears of emasculation and despoliation, tears of despair at having been captured, of having failed both their comrades and their country. But most of all there were tears of guilt at being survivors when so many others had found the courage to do their duty to the very end. In laying down their arms instead of their lives they were guilty of desertion, of dereliction, of having betrayed the womenfolk and children they had left behind. As Pilsudski knew, almost every one of the men on that parade ground secretly believed he deserved the punishment being meted
out to him. Pilsudski might be a vicious bastard but, as losers, theirs was the greater sin.
Such feelings of guilt are the general rule for prisoners of war. But to all generalities there are exceptions. And in Camp 174B, the exception was Peter Hencke …
‘It’s an unpalatable prospect, Willie,’ the Prime Minister growled, breaking a lengthy period of silent contemplation as he searched for the soap under a thick layer of suds.
William Cazolet took off his glasses and gave them a vigorous polish to clear the condensation. He felt such a fool on bath nights. In the fortified Annexe off Downing Street where the Prime Minister spent much of his time, the ventilation was close to non-existent behind windows which were permanently enclosed in thick steel shutters. It made the bathroom hot and steamy, just as the PM liked it, but for visitors – and there usually were visitors on bath night, even female secretaries taking shorthand – it could be an ordeal. It was one of the many eccentricities of working and living with Winston Churchill.
‘What prospect is that, exactly?’ Cazolet asked, leaning forward from his perch on the toilet seat in an attempt to restore the circulation to his legs. It could be uncomfortable sitting at the right hand of history.
The Prime Minister grumbled on, almost as if talking to himself. ‘There was a time, not so long ago, when the British were the only players in the orchestra. We were on our own. Our empire provided all the musicians. I conducted, even wrote most of the score. My God, but we made sweet music for
the world to listen to.’ There was no hiding the pride in his voice. ‘Had it not been for us, Europe would now be listening to nothing but the harsh stamp of German brass bands. D’you know, Willie, I’ve never liked brass bands. All huff and puff without any trace of tenderness. Could you ever imagine Mozart composing sonatas for brass bands?’
He paused to scrub his back and puff fresh life into the cigar which had been lying sad and soggy in an ashtray beside the soap dish. The Old Man was lacking his usual jauntiness tonight, the secretary thought. Cazolet was only twenty-eight, a young Foreign Service officer thrust by the opportunities and shortages of war into the tight-knit team of prime ministerial assistants who were responsible for taking care of the Old Man’s every need, transmitting his orders, acting as a link between Downing Street and the mighty war machine over which he presided, ensuring that he took plenty of soda with his whisky and, if necessary, putting him to bed. Some couldn’t take it, working round the clock in the cement cocoon of the Annexe and the War Cabinet Rooms beneath, without sunlight or sight of the world above, discovering what the weather was like only through bulletins posted on a board in the corridor, subjected to the Old Man’s vile temper and suffocating in an atmosphere of constant cigar smoke. But Cazolet had taken it, and it had given the young man an uncanny aptitude for reading the PM’s thoughts.
