Rosie's War (12 page)

As at the town station, our reception from the German soldiers here was one of confusion and much waiting around. I was surprised to see a number of male prisoners at work in the camp. It was not until later that we heard how Besançon had been a last-minute choice for us. The Caserne Vauban barracks had until the previous day been occupied by thousands of British and French male prisoners of war who had been captured before they could reach the beaches of Dunkirk.
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Dysentery had broken out in the stifling heat and dirt of that summer tragedy. Most had been marched away to Germany the day before we arrived but a hundred or so French prisoners had been kept behind to clean up these Augean stables. They had hurled buckets of water around the rooms and down the stone steps, burned infected rubbish and generally attempted to restore some degree of order to the place. They were just finishing when we got there but they had left behind them an indescribable mess.

The luggage carts appeared and spilled out our things into the snow. There was a rush for them, which was halted by an impeccable English officer who stood barring the way. He was very suave and self-confident and looked just like the screen heart-throb of the day, Leslie Howard.

‘Now ladies,’ he shouted above the melee. ‘I want you to line up in three groups. Those under thirty on the right, those over fifty on the left and the rest of you in the middle here.’

He had a clear, commanding voice that could easily reach across a crowd of several hundred women. He also had an officious NCO who went around repeating the officer’s instructions and trying to prod us into action. Unfortunately, most of the women didn’t understand much English and those who did took no notice. A male prisoner started to translate the instructions into French but even he didn’t seem to have much grasp of English. The confusion worsened as women milled about the courtyard trying to keep an eye on their belongings while being pushed and shoved into three groups. Eventually we were sorted. I wasn’t much interested in the proceedings as I only had the small bag that I was carrying.

Each group was (with much relief) allowed to collect its possessions. We were then marched across to our block, Bâtiment A. Some French male prisoners, true to form, attached themselves to our younger age group. They led the way. ‘Wait and see how clean your room is!’ one of them shouted gleefully.

We were led up a steep, stone staircase. At each floor I could see long, dark, narrow corridors with rooms going off at either side. Reaching the fourth floor, I walked into Room 101, my future home. I stood there, dazed and dismayed. We were in a room about the size of a small hospital ward. Straw palliasses and army-issue blankets were strewn about on the stone-flagged floor, which was swimming in filthy water. A wood-burning stove stood in the middle of the room. Over the walls were the numerous marks of swatted bugs and insects. There was an overpowering stench of urine. The wooden bed frames had been piled down at the far end of the room, where there was a vast hole in the ceiling.

The other girls looked equally aghast. My stupefaction lasted only a few moments before all my boarding school training came to the surface; it had at least taught me to look after myself.

‘Come on,’ I said to Shula. ‘Let’s get our bedding sorted then we can go and see what else they’ve given us.’

We rooted around to find the least damp straw mattress and blankets and dragged the bed frames near the stove. Hearing a commotion in the courtyard, we ran outside and over to the far end where a crowd was gathered. We both drew back in shock. Women were already fighting to grab anything from the pile of sorry equipment left over by the previous occupants. They were watched with amusement by the sentries. We looked on in horror for a few minutes. Then a middle-aged woman near me marched up to a sentry and poked him in the chest with her index finger.

‘Can’t you do anything about helping us clean up this place?’ she shouted. She sounded Canadian.

The soldier looked at her in astonishment and growing fury. Then he fired three shots rapidly in the air. His superior officer came rushing up for an explanation.

‘He’s telling the officer that the woman was laughing at him,’ a stout lady translated for us. The woman was quickly bundled away by her companions.

We both grabbed a spoon and a bowl and quickly went back to our room where we found that our group was beginning to sort itself out. It was a good couple of hours before a French prisoner barged in to tell us with a smirk on his face that dinner was served. I went back down to the courtyard to queue for soup, ladled out from vast urns by German soldiers with aprons over their uniforms. The portions were tiny and I asked for more. The soldier responded by spitting into my bowl with great accuracy.

As dinner came to an end there was a sudden commotion among the Germans. A white-haired man had arrived with a smartly dressed woman and a small child. He was theatrically attired and wore a wide, black hat. The Germans seemed deferential and rapidly escorted his party away. I never saw him again. I was told later that this was Edward Gordon Craig, the son of the famous Victorian actress Ellen Terry and a distinguished figure in the theatre himself. Apparently, he was sent back to Paris soon after this where he spent the rest of the war.

Most people were desperate to wash away the dirt after that long train journey. The facilities were bleak, as we soon discovered: the bathhouse was out of use and some rooms had a single cold tap and a stone basin. We had nothing. Like many others, we had to make do with the large horse troughs in the communal washroom on the ground floor of our building. On that freezing evening there was pandemonium and something approaching panic as hundreds of women tried to attend to their own toilet. The few lavatories at the corners of the courtyard were totally exposed. They did nothing to answer the needs of such a large number of internees, many of whom were elderly and infirm. I turned away as I saw two nuns approach the open latrine. I couldn’t bear to witness their humiliation.

I could not even attend to my own meagre toilet. I had already made the devastating discovery on the train that I had forgotten to pack my sponge bag at the Izards’ flat. As I lay on my mattress that first evening, with the raw December wind coming in through the hole in the ceiling, I was totally preoccupied by the fact that I didn’t have a toothbrush. I had no idea how or when I would get another. It was as if I couldn’t or wouldn’t believe the whole horrendous situation. So my mind focused obsessively on this one small thing.

My forgetfulness certainly affected me deeply in the months and years to come. I think sponge bags must be the luggage equivalent of handbags, full of treasures that only you know the reason for: the jar of cream with the last bit at the bottom that you are saving or the special flannel which has the rough corner to rub away any dry skin. I know that ever since this oversight I have found packing totally stressful, even for a short weekend away. And it was to be my toothbrush (or lack of it) that would become the centre of my screaming nightmares when I finally got home to London. For a long time after my return I would have the same dream: I had returned to the POW camp from which I had escaped and would be asking the German sentry if I could just go back in to make sure that my toothbrush was there!

Before I went to sleep that night it finally struck me that I was now a registered prisoner. With the perversity of human nature I had already memorized my new address: Chambre 101, Section 8, Bloc 2, Bâtiment A, Frontstalag 142, Zivil Internierunslager, Caserne Vauban, Besançon, Doubs, France.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Settling Into Besançon

H
undreds more prisoners arrived during the weeks that followed. There must have been nearly four thousand of us by Christmas. Every inch of space, including the cellars, was used as accommodation.

We counted ourselves lucky in our room. The huge hole in the ceiling at the far end meant that there were only eleven beds, even though the room was easily big enough to fit perhaps thirty. We were all young. I was installed between Shula and Christine, my new friends from the train journey. There were eight other occupants: a Mauritian girl called Rosemary whose husband was to be tortured by the Gestapo; Olga Scrieber, who was big, blonde and good-natured; Penelope Brierly, an English art teacher living in Paris who was very left wing; Margaret Heaton, an elegant English sculptress; a mother and her very small daughter who would sit for hours without saying a word; a pregnant Austrian girl who was soon to be released; and a devastatingly attractive Parisian called Marie.

It is often the most belligerent or the most self-sufficient people who cope best in prison. This was certainly the case at Besançon. Christine and I had fewer problems than many of the others in adjusting to life there. Our education at English boarding schools was to serve us well after all!

Each room had to select a
chef de chambre
, who would liaise with the German authorities. I proposed our ideal prefect-type, Christine, who was unanimously elected.

‘First off, we need to put together a rota for collecting food,’ she said as we huddled around the stove. ‘It’s daft for us all to go down individually and queue. Especially in this weather – we’re all freezing. Let’s choose two people who can collect each day and they can bring the soup to the rest of us.’

Queuing for food meant standing for perhaps an hour in the freezing cold. Each room was given a large, galvanized bucket to carry the soup. When full this was hard work: it would take two people to carry it across the muddy and often snowy courtyard then up four flights of icy stairs. Our hands were so blue and numb after queuing in the cold that we could hardly hold the bucket. The food was inadequate, dirty and monotonous. At midday we would get a meal of beans, swedes or potatoes stewed in greasy water and served from massive copper pots. The vegetables were often rotten or had been sprayed with sulphur. Sometimes there was an odd piece of tough, stringy meat. In the evenings we were given a spoonful of beetroot jam or ersatz cheese (a lurid and tasteless product squeezed out of a tube) to go with our bread. Diarrhoea and food poisoning were common.

Every three or four days we had to queue up to get the bread for our room. The ration was two kilos a week per person of the flat, round loaves. Two of us would take a blanket to a special store behind one of the blocks. When it was your turn you would walk up to the window and hold open the blanket to catch the bread that was thrown out. We were lucky being fit and young, as we could usually catch it before it landed in the mud. The bread was often green with mould. The date stamped on the bottom would usually show that it was at least one or two weeks old and it could only be cut with an army knife. It was made from some sort of rye flour and tasted very sour but not unpleasant to me. Most people found that it upset their digestion and a great many were made ill.

Christine had the job of waiting in line for the fuel chits. These could be exchanged for logs and coal to keep our old stove going. We soon discovered, however, that no amount of fuel could really warm the room. The winter of 1940–1 was one of the coldest in living memory. Even in the rooms that didn’t have a large hole in the ceiling, icicles would form inside the windows at night.

Repairing the hole was our immediate concern. Christine had an ingenious solution: she would get it fixed by the German guards, her accomplice being our beautiful Marie.

‘Point out the hole in the ceiling to our guard,’ she said to her. ‘After that, just simper and smile sweetly.’ Marie couldn’t understand much English, so Christine helped her by putting on a sickly smile and staring coyly up at the ceiling.

Marie was a great sport and a superb actress. She was also the sort of woman who can look like a model even in a prison camp. Having gesticulated to the guard, she just sat down on a chair by the stove and smiled beatifically. He quickly left and returned a while later with three other soldiers all laden with equipment. I watched from my bed as the four German soldiers tried desperately to repair the roof, while at the same time attempting to impress with their efficiency and asking her to meet them. Marie just sat there smiling. Once the roof was patched so that the rain didn’t actually come in, she gracefully got off the chair.

‘Je vous remercie,’ she said. ‘Mais je ne comprend pas l’allemand. Nicht verstehe.’ (‘I don’t understand.’) She shrugged her shoulders coquettishly. The men were crestfallen and left. They didn’t seem to bear a grudge, however, and still gave her special attention after that.

Christine had the measure of the German
Schwester
(Sister) or nurse who ran the entire floor of rooms under orders from the Kommandant of the camp. Schwester Ruth was the cartoon idea of a typical Nazi, with flaxen plaits under her cap and dressed in a grey uniform with a white collar. She was determined to make us drill for her each morning, to leave our beds in military order and to obey instructions at once.