Opposite Sides (68 page)

“
I still
don’t know how you managed it, Jan.”

“
You are not
the only prisoner of war to be invited into a British home for
Christmas,” she explained. “It is the closest we can be to being a
family. Did you enjoy it?”

Hans patted her on her
knee. It was the most he dared do with the driver sitting directly
in front of them.

“
Wonderful
day, many thanks.”

They sat quiet for a few
minutes peering into the pitch black outside the windows. It was
impossible to tell whether one were still in town or driving along
a country road. How the driver was able to stay on the road was
beyond belief.

One thing that had been
puzzling Hans was how Jan and her aunt had managed to be guardians
for Andrea so long. He broached the subject with Jan as the car
crawled along the roadway.

“
When the
Blitz hit London,” she said. “many of the records were destroyed.
Then, with things being topsy-turvy . . .”

“
Topsy-turvy?” he asked. He had never come across that
expression before.

“
All mixed
up,” she explained. “It was easy to fill in forms I knew would
never be checked on. I said Andrea was my love child and that’s why
aunt wanted to care for her. That’s why her name is recorded as
Crawford-Turner. Caroline’s father never wanted anything to do with
his grand-daughter. He never forgave Caroline for what she did.
Anyway, I managed to get a pass for Andrea to share Christmas with
us. And once we had that pass, the rest was easy.”

“
I do
appreciate what you have done, Jan and don’t know how to thank you.
You realise you’ve made me very happy?”

“
It’s made me
very happy, too, Hans, to see you two together.”

The car rounded a corner
and the vehicle’s headlights lit up part of the high barbed-wire
gates of the POW camp. Hans reached along the seat until he found
Jan’s hand. He squeezed it gently, urging her to shift a little
closer towards him but not too much or their driver might become
suspicious. The next moment, the car slowed and came to a halt. The
duty guard checked the papers and then the gates yawned open and it
was like being expelled from some giant mouth as they drove out of
the civilian blackness and into the lit quadrangle of the British
Army’s prisoner of war camp.

“
Jan, I wish
. . . .” But he did not finish for the driver opened his door and
got out.

Hans released Jan’s hand
but did not make an immediate effort to get out of the vehicle. The
driver was occupied with handing over the travelling documents
concerning the return of the prisoner and Hans knew he had only a
short time left before the rear door would be opened and he would
be told to exit. He wrapped his arm around Jan’s shoulders and drew
her closer until he could sense her breath. Her face was so close
now, that to reach her glasses, she had to slide her fingers
upwards, lightly brushing his cheek as she did so. As she gently
pushed the frame, the memory of its familiarity touched his heart.
Their lips touched and he could sense her willingness to respond.
He kissed her deeply and passionately. He felt tingling pleasure
pulse throughout his body. She returned his kiss and he knew at
once by the intensity, that she really did love and care for
him.

Quite a few families this
year had opened up their homes during this Christmas. They had been
willing to extend the goodwill of the festive season to those who
were considered their enemy. The prisoner of war camps had allowed
well-behaved prisoners to enjoy these few hours. Yet none had
enjoyed themselves quite as much as Major Erwin Hans
Resmel.

CHAPTER
22

Last
Days

The fighting on the
western front had not been going well for the Nazi war machine.
Over half a million men had been lost, together with most of their
tanks, artillery and transport and many thousands more were now
being taken prisoner. Tired and disillusioned men had been prepared
to lay down their weapons and give themselves up but their
commanding officers had been given instructions to shoot anyone who
looked like deserting. Even so, as British and American troops made
their way across the fields of France, the fighting was as fierce
as it had always been. A hardened core of foot soldiers and those
too young to know a different life were still willing to believe
the Nazi propaganda machine and fight on. Reports began to seep
through lines of communication, that the Führer leader had grown
pale and puffy, had become, when agitated like a twitching
cockroach; calm and quiet one minute, screaming and raving like a
demented spirit the next. The news percolated out like coffee, at
first a pale trickle until it had become rich and coloured in
detail and the enemy was quick to seize the opportunity.

Hans heard about Hitler’s
last major December offensive in France through a communication
early in ’45. Maybe the censors had missed it or maybe they had
left it in as a deliberate act. He read that the Führer had thrown
his remaining panzers into an attack on the Americans in the wooded
hills of the Ardennes.

There is to
be no withdrawal! No surrender! The Americans and their allies must
be smashed!

Win or die! Had not
enough men been slaughtered like cattle? The push into the Ardennes
had been a terrible mistake which had been doomed to fail the
minute the idea was hatched. Hans knew very little about anything
for most information was closely guarded. Since November he had not
received a single bit of news from Germany and as the New Year
approached, he realised that Elisabeth would never share in
Christmas celebrations ever again. Once more he had survived where
his wife had died. The depression he felt had brought back memories
of his loss for Caroline. But he had to struggle on for he was not
the only one to have felt such loss. He was obliged to put the
other men before his own needs and make an approach to the
commanding British officer in the hope of releasing Christmas
mail.

At the beginning of
January, the Red Cross mail and parcels did arrive. Such arrival
always lifted the prisoners’ spirits and for several days
afterwards there was a burst of activity within the camp as items
were traded and snippets of homeland news were exchanged. Hans
found he did well from his allocation of cigarettes, for there were
always other men willing to exchange even the most rarest of
‘goodies’ for a packet or two of something they could
smoke.

As soon as the trading
had subsided and men slipped into some favourite place to savour
the sweetness of smoke or the spiced flavour of home-produced
sausage.

Now that the weather was
improving, life as a POW in England was mainly spent in walking to
and from the camp to spend hours hoeing and tending vegetable crops
on one of the neighbouring farms. Food rations were quite adequate,
often better than any that the Afrika Korps had received during
their final year in North Africa and a lot better than the civilian
population in Europe.

Prisoners were told that
Allied tanks had now crossed the Rhine and that Hitler had taken to
his underground bunker in Berlin where he was preparing for his and
Germany’s final stand. What they were not told was that their
Führer’s rantings were becoming more frequent as he screamed into
the faces of those generals still loyal enough to risk the dangers
of trying to get through battle lines already squeezing Berlin from
every direction. If only they could have heard, they would have
wondered why their demented leader was still in charge.

Traitors! All
traitors! Can I trust none of you stupid, cowardly idiots? Nothing
remains! Nothing is spared me! I’ve been stabbed in the back by
idiotic imbeciles too soft to stand and fight
! Bubbles of froth and spit seeped out between his quivering
mouth as he raved.
My orders were to stand
firm! There was to be NO
surrender! Why
doesn’t the Wehrmacht listen? I’ll tell you: because you’re all
cowards, that’s why. And traitors! All traitors! You are the ones
destroying the Reich, not me. All fools! Find the SS! We have to
make preparations! The SS know how to fight for Berlin! Prepare for
complete victory or total destruction
!”

Nature was making her own
preparations. Spring was in the air. Everything was exploding;
exuberantly bursting from her winter rest. Golden daffodil trumpets
had heralded in sweeping masses of bluebells carpeting a grey
woodland floor with its brilliance of blue. Soft, pale lime-green
leaves began to stretch themselves like hatching butterflies and
slowly, but surely, the dull woods of winter were being transformed
into a waving mass of green. Calls of a solitary cuckoo spread out
unseen; a dappled voice breathing life into the awakening
forest.

Hans had spent much of
this morning working in one of the fields. It was a wonderful warm
spring morning and he had been pleased to have been outside. It was
so peaceful. No sound of war had intruded. Fighters no longer
whined overhead and these fields were away from any bomber flight
path.

He was
returning to camp with the working party when he saw Jan standing
just inside the prison gates. The men had been singing the Afrika
Korps favourite song, ‘
Lilli
Marlene
,’ as they
marched together under guard between farm and camp. Jan was
his
Lilli
and,
unlike the girl in the song, his girl was there to welcome him, not
to say ‘goodbye.’

As soon as they had
walked through the gates and been dismissed, he left the others and
made his way over to her. It always lightened his heart to see her,
even if she and one of the doctors had been called in to attend to
an ailing prisoner. This time she was unaccompanied.

“
Jan, how
wonderful to see you again.”

She held up her hand
towards him and spoke quickly,

Hans, I haven’t got long.
Can we talk somewhere?”

“
I’ll clean
off this dirt and then we can go to the mess and talk. Wait here. I
won’t be long. Don’t go away.”

She laughed and patted
her First Aid kit box she always carried with her when she
came.

“
No fear of
that! Orders received, Major. We’ll have about half an hour. I’m
not going to let this opportunity go. I have to report for duty at
14.20 hours.”

A moon-shaped grin
dominated Hans’ face and gave him the appearance of a cheeky
schoolboy. Jan remembered the time when such a grin would have
annoyed her. As a teenager she was annoyed with many things in her
life and felt more a prisoner then, than many of these men did now.
She watched him as he darted away in the direction of the curved
Nissan-hut that had been his sleeping quarters since his return to
England. He was nimble on his feet for the field work had made him
fit again. He was as good as his word, for within four minutes, he
returned tidy and clean, dressed in his military
uniform.

“
There’s a
quiet corner we can go to,” he suggested quickly, indicating the
area he had in mind. As they hurried over, he told her that some of
the younger men had found themselves girlfriends when they had been
out on the farms.”

“
Land-girls,”Jan added.

“
Yes. They’re
very friendly towards the boys. And they all like it. They snatch a
few minutes to practise their English when the guards take time to
light up. The fraternising’s not really allowed. But girls and boys
. . . it doesn’t matter where they’re from . . . they always find a
way. And who am I to stop them?”

“
Well, you
can’t say much, can you? Here’s a senior officer of theirs chatting
up a girl, right now. Right under the noses of his captors. Really,
Major! What is this camp coming to?”

“
Do you think
anyone notices this nurse is not here just on official
business?”

Jan shrugged her
shoulders.

“
Does it
bother you?”

“
No. All
anyone can see is that we are going over to the mess hall. Quite
plausible.”

Yet it must have looked a
bit strange to anyone who took the time to observe them, to see the
pair walking and talking at ease with each other: one in a
Wehrmacht uniform; the other, a British ATS nurse. But then, this
was a camp, so maybe not.

Music was playing over
the sound system. It was American rag-time. Hans found a table at
the far end of the hut and they sat facing each other, the tops of
their heads almost touching.

“
Hans?” Jan
began, sliding her hand slowly towards him over the table top. He
automatically placed his own hand over hers, enjoying the feeling
of contact.

“
What?”

“
I wish this
damn war would hurry up and end and then we can be together.” She
was silent for a while. Hans could feel her fingers moving under
the palm of his hand. When she spoke next, the volume of her voice
was low and guarded for she did not want anyone other than Hans to
hear what she wanted to say. “I do love you, Hans, regardless of
the uniform you are wearing.”

“
I have grown
to love you too, Jan but it doesn’t help while there is still a
war.”

“
I have
always felt there was something between us and I do not just mean
the disagreements we've had in the past.” She looked into deeply
his eyes and into the past they had shared together. “I was
terribly angry at first because you acted as if I did not exist.
Then, when you came to aunt’s to stay, I had to learn how to share.
I had never done that before and then I got to used to it and
thought of you as mine. Others had brothers or sisters, like Anne;
someone with whom to share, to do things together. Like when we
rode that bicycle together. That was fun and I really wanted you to
like me.”