Opposite Sides (49 page)

“
This doesn’t
look good.” The Hauptmann flicked the canvas wall so that it
rippled and sprayed the air with clouds of reddish desert dust.
“This canvas screen is not satisfactory. You need to ask for more
tents. Several could be accommodated out there. Leave the nurses
here and move the doctors to there.”

Hans pointed to the
corner of an outside courtyard where part of a stone wall had
fallen down. Specht brushed the suggestion aside in a burst of
anger and frustration.

“
Easy to say,
Hauptmann but this is war! Everything’s impossible
here!”

“
I am not
interested in excuses, Herr Oberstleutnant. Is it not better that
the Wehrmacht run this camp rather than other branches of the
military? Remember, these people have only become your prisoners
because the front lines have moved. Treat them badly now and you
may be signing your own death warrant should the fronts move and we
become their prisoners. Remember what Generalleutnant Rommel has
said.”

This time Specht did not
reply. He beckoned to a passing guard, and mumbling something about
tents and water supplies, he saluted and strode away in the
direction of his office. The new man, a young soldier in his early
twenties, was left with the job of showing Hans around the rest of
the camp: the water tank that hopefully was replenished every two
days, the two rough shower cubicles and the stinking latrines as
far away from the hospital as possible.

As they were retracing
their steps back past the medical area, Hans suddenly stopped and
pointed at a nurse who was holding the side of her glasses exactly
as . . . His face softened and he smiled to himself as his mind
went back to the happier time before the war. A glimpse. The
running nurse was in a hurry to get to the hospital
block.

“
Ach, Herr
Hauptmann, you like the look of her?”

The guard hesitated in
his step. He laughed roughly, then opened and shut his mouth like a
fish, waiting with uncertainty for the reaction. When the answer
came, it did so with an air of disinterest.

“
No,
Grenadier. For a moment, she just reminded me of someone I used to
know.”

The answer gave the
soldier courage and he spoke again,

“
I keep clear
of her, Herr Hauptmann! Good looks but she has a tongue on her like
a whip. I have heard her lash out and I was a good five metres
away. A soldier who was taken to the hospital with dysentery told
me about her quick temper. Said everyone gave her room, even the
British. Shame she’s such a snake. Pretty woman like
that.”

The man began
coughing violently, a rough, hacking smoker’s cough.
Not good in such a climate such as
this
, thought Hans.

“
That
‘snake’, as you so politely put it, might be a very good nurse,
soldier. Remember, she may be more valuable than you!

The guard lost his grip
on his gun and spent several seconds fumbling and grasping as it
began to slip away from his fingers. Suddenly he managed to wrap
his fingers round the butt and prevent it from hitting the ground.
He looked at Hans like a pup that had just vomited rubbish. He
hoisted his rifle back onto his shoulder and followed his
superior.

The following morning,
Hans began his interrogation of the two new British officers. A
list of the captured men, together with their ranks, had been laid
out on the table. As soon as he had made himself as comfortable as
anyone could possibly be, he began checking the names of the people
he needed to speak to. The first list contained the names of the
new prisoners and under that were the names of two of the medics
who had requested a further supply of medical supplies from the
stores.

“
Armkey,
Barker, Briddle, Dodge, Keller.” Hans filled in the names: one
prisoner on each form. That done, he turned his attention to the
requests. “Pennyweather, Turn . . . ”

Hans’s heart
missed a beat. He re-checked. It was there . . .
Turner. The name seemed to leap from the page and
impinge on his mind.
He reached and took
the ‘T’ prisoner information file from the shelf. His fingers
flipped the pages until his eyes caught the heading he was seeking.
He eagerly began scanning its contents until he found the
name.

Corporal
J.R.Turner, Doctor number 3046623. Royal Essex, medical
division
.

In a way he was
disappointed. Why did he assume it could have been Jan? Why did he
feel a tingle of excitement when he first noticed the name? He had
heard nothing of her for almost three years so why should she leap
into his mind? He sat staring at the name. He almost wished it had
been Jan. It would have been good to see her again and know that
they could still be friends, inspite of the war. He wondered what
she was doing right now, in this war that had built a wall between
them, a more impenetrable wall than all their teenage quarrels had
ever done. He wondered if she had returned to look after her ageing
aunt. Then he remembered she had been training to be a nurse. In
London perhaps? That is where she said she would like to be. In one
of the large children’s hospitals. As soon as he thought of that,
he was worried that her hospital may have received a direct hit. He
had heard that London had been badly bombed. The thought of Jan
lying under all that rubble, maybe wedged under a hospital beam
unable to escape as the building burned. He sincerely hoped that
was not the case. It was too horrible to contemplate futher so he
closed his mind to such thoughts.

He looked at the list of
names again but could not get his mind away from Jan. Maybe Jan had
been posted overseas like the nurses here. If so, he hoped she was
well back behind the lines, maybe nursing in Cairo or some other
town.

Jan and Andrea. The two
names were intertwined. The thought of Andrea ripped into his heart
and made his chest ache. No news. His mind had been forced to
create a reality around her, of a happy child in the countryside.
Wishful daydreaming. The reality is, is she the child of an enemy?
He, the enemy of a child? Or, is she a child of no-one, with no
father or mother to protect her in her hour of need?

He began to worry that
Miss Turner had grown too old to look after Andrea. And, if Jan had
been called up, how would she be in a position to keep Andrea safe?
The thought of it churned over in the pit of his stomach and made
him feel sick. He realised he did care what happened, to all of
them, for they were as much his family as were his aunt and uncle.
But, it was a helpless situation: his own daughter was now his
enemy. And so it was with Jan. It had been that way since September
in thirty-nine when they became officially on opposite
sides.

Enemy! That was a far
worse name than being the pest she was during their school days. It
had never given him much thought before that all those students,
the people in the town he had got to know and all the friends he
had made were now classified as enemies. Enemies of the Fatherland
and that if they were to meet face to face, then both would be
expected to aim their weapon on the other, and shoot. He wondered
how he would react if ever he did come face to face with any of
them: Gerald, Loppy, Robert, or even Jan. How could he treat those
friends of his as his enemy? It was a ludicrous situation.
Frightening. Ludicrous and frightening at the same time!

He knew he had to push
such sentimental thoughts to the back of his mind if he were to
survive. He had to, if he was to retain any form of sanity. And
that was especially true with regard to his daughter.

‘
Corporal
James Roger Turner, 28 years, captured . . .
’

Hans did not know him,
yet he immediately felt a connection to him. The muscles of his
cheeks tightened as he gritted his teeth. He was still thinking of
Jan when Oberstleutnant Specht interrupted his thoughts. He wanted
to know if he could deal with the nurse who had made a name for
herself for embarrassing the youngest guards. She had an ample
supply of female hormones and knew how and when to turn them on to
her advantage. The majority of these young men had come from the
country and their knowledge of the opposite sex was raw and
explosive. They were young recruits who had crumpled under the
stress of constant shelling and now were instructed to perform
monotonous duties, marching up and down the compund, seemingly
guarding injured prisoners, many as young as themselves. And, this
nurse knew exactly how to distract their minds.

Nurse Rollings had been
implicated in a failed escape plan. Three men who had been caught
on the other side of the outer perimeter and had already admitted
that the nurse had been their decoy by distracting the two young
guards on duty. It was most unfortunate for the group, for as they
dropped down off the wall that ran behind the hospital, one of them
had landed heavily on his ankle. A few minutes later he was
surrounded by a circle of loaded weapons pointing in his direction.
With the alarm raised, it was not long before the other two were
marched back into the compound.

In the confusion, the
young woman seized her own opportunity, and when the rubbish truck
stopped and the driver got out to check his front wheel, she
unlatched the canvas cover and jumped in. A pair of sharp eyes
spotted her and she was hauled out, arms and legs waving in all
directions until the guards dumped her on the ground. Hans had been
informed of the escape. The men had taken their recapture in good
spirits but not so for the nurse. She was proving to be far more
difficult and defiant .

The guards had a
nick-name for this nurse but they kept it to themselves. Hans had
noticed the way, these young ones spoke and laughed among
themselves when they thought their seniors were not looking. Nurse
Rollings was never very far away and one could not help noticing
the curvature of her body and ample breasts even under the cloth
layers of her uniform and as she was the youngest of the women,
Hans guessed the young warriors poured all their pent up longings
and desires on her. It was difficult enough being so far from home
but when there appears to be a flirting female, it was no wonder
that the young bucks went wild. They acted more like randy
schoolboys than disclipined soldiers and because of that, they
needed to be kept under close surveillance by their older
counterparts.

Two days after the escape
attempt, the young prisoner was escorted in to the Hauptmann’s
office. She was most attractive and Hans could see why young
female-starved recruits would be attracted towards her like moths
around a lamplight. And, this young nurse knew it.

The two soldiers who
remained at attention outside the office door were much older. The
Kommandant had selected them most carefully as married men with
families to consider would not be so easily distracted from their
task.

“
Name?” The
Hauptmann asked as soon as the prisoner had entered the small
makeshift office.

“
Your
documents tell you that.” She was certainly rebellious. Hans looked
deeply into her light silver-blue eyes and concluded that they were
enchantingly beautiful. However, he had a job to do so it was
better to focus his attention on the top of her head,
instead.

“
Let me make
it clear to you, Miss, that if you refuse to co-operate with me, I
will have no option but to hand you over to higher authorities. The
Kommandant may not able to have you removed so quickly, but I
assure you, I have that authority. You either answer the questions
put to you now, or I will see that you will be removed to a more
secure camp. It is your choice now: you either co-operate with me,
or you face a much more difficult interrogation
elsewhere.”

He leaned back so that
his chair rested on its back legs. Laying on the table top was a
map together with an assortment of objects and packaged food
pieces.

“
Your
name?”

“
Warrant
Officer Margaret Rollings, number 4099832. That’s all I need tell
you.”

Hans waited patiently to
hear more. He stroked the back of his little finger, and waited.
When she offered nothing else, he asked,

“
Have you
forgotten something Warrant Officer?”

“
Sir!” Her
eyes clouded over as she spat the word out in annoyance. She stood
close to the table, her hands motionless at her sides. She could
have been taken for one of those mannequins he had seen in a
Kurfurstendamm shop window.

“
We found
your bag.” He emptied its contents on to his table and swiped over
them to separate the items into two distinct groups either side of
a large envelope. “These things that were inside. How did you get
them?”

“
I do not
remember, sir.”

“
It is clear
to me that these items must have been taken from the hospital
stores and these came from our own stores. How did you get them,
Warrant Officer?” She glared at her interrogator but refused to
give out further information. He removed her file from the envelope
and, while he waited for her to answer, tapped his fingers lightly
on the cover of a file as the seconds ticked by. “I have your file
before me.” He opened it. “I note that you are our most junior
nurse. Therefore, your value is small. I also note that this is not
the first time you have been repremanded, nurse. Remember, Warrant
Officer that you are bound by every rule of this field hospital. At
the moment, I’m asking only for information about that escape
attempt.” Hans paused. He was prepared to wait all morning, if
needed. Time was not in a hurry in this camp. Time was only
something that moved and changed outside the walls. Inside there
was only the waiting as though one were within a pause, waiting for
battles outside their sphere to decide their fate. But even within
that climate, there was a job to do. “Where did the things in your
bag come from? . . . Who got you the army rations? . . . They
certainly are not of British issue.” He waited, this time tapping
his fingers lightly on the table edge. Still there was no reply. He
leaned towards the prisoner standing before him and spoke
deliberately but quietly. “Co-operation is to your advantage.
Co-operation will be rewarded, Warrant Officer Rollings. Your
forces are miles away. How did you think you could survive with so
few things? Do you not know how difficult it is to survive in
desert conditions?”