The Farmer's Daughter Read Free Page B

where he was. He looked round him. This was not France, not a road under fire, it was a Nissen hut lined with two-tiered bunks and there was an English sergeant standing in the doorway shouting ‘Raus! Raus!’
    Wide awake now and all too aware of his situation, he shook himself and swung his legs over the bed onto the cold concrete floor. Everyone else in the hut was doing the same and shuffling off to the ablutions. The war was over for him and his comrades and he would be a fool not to feel relief. He could not admit it, of course, especially in front of those fanatical Nazis who viewed the invasion as nothing but a minor setback. The enemy would be driven back into the sea, they said, and there would be no rescuing them as had happened at Dunkirk. To them, Hitler was invincible.
    The British sent all prisoners to holding camps when they first arrived where they were deloused, fed and interrogated. The Tommies were pretty good at that and when faced with exhausted, hungry, dispirited men, soon found out much of what they wanted to know. He hadn’t witnessed any beatings and, as far as he was aware, they stuck to the rules of the Geneva Convention, though rumours were flying that if you were sent to the London Cage, you were in for some rough treatment.
    Each prisoner was categorised according to his perceived belief in Hitler’s dogma. Those labelled ‘black’ were the strongest Nazis and likely to cause trouble, the ‘whites’ were opposed to National Socialism and could, in some measure, be trusted. The majority were ‘greys’, neither one nor the other; they had fought for theirhomeland and for their families, not for Hitler and his cohorts. The blacks were sent to special secure camps. Karl had been considered grey, which meant he had been sent to a normal prisoner-of-war camp, here in the fens of East Anglia.
    Life in the camp was boring. The men were left to amuse themselves and, under the direction of the Lagerführer , Major Schultz, and various other volunteers, organised games and entertainments and educational classes to relieve it and keep them occupied. There was even a newspaper put together by the prisoners themselves. It had a page of events and entertainments being staged, the results of sports and games, snippets of gossip and a letters page. News was culled from hidden wireless sets which were tuned in to Deutschlandfunk , and the BBC, translated for those who did not speak English. Being able to read both versions, he was amused by the different slant they put on events.
    The attempted assassination of Hitler was a case in point. He had read both accounts, one of which said it proved how unpopular Hitler was with his own people and they would rise up against him and force him to sue for peace, and the other that the crime was down to a handful of traitors and cowards. The editorial comment had said, ‘Our beloved Führer is impervious to such traitorous attacks. He has God and Right on his side. The enemy will learn this to his cost, as will the perpetrators of this outrage. Everyone who has had any hand in the conspiracy, however small, will be hunted down and receive the fate they deserve.’ It seemed Hitler was decidedly rattled and this latest edition reported that eight very senior officers had been hanged with wire from meat hooks after what Karl guessed was a cursory trial. There had been thousands of arrests and more to come, they were promised, until every traitor had met his just deserts. He wished the plotters hadsucceeded, but that was a wish he kept to himself. He had no doubt Lieutenant Colonel Williamson, the camp commandant, read every word.
    Even so, there were those who considered it their duty to escape and they were busy making plans. Whether they would come to fruition he did not know, but he did not give much for their chances of making it back home, or even off the island. A few, considered trustworthy, were being allowed out to