St Kilda Blues (Charlie Berlin #3)(64)
Rebecca rolled over. Her left leg rested against him and her right lay against his belly. Her right breast was on his chest, her hand soft against his cheek, their skin crackling in contact as if they were both alive with static electricity and then she was kissing him. Sometimes she spoke, sometimes she was loud, foul-mouthed if she thought it excited him, or sometimes just gasping and moaning, fingernails cutting into his back, sweat pooling between her breasts or dripping down on him when she was on top, which she knew he liked. She was on top of him now, moving, rocking, twisting, her eyes on his. The pleasure would come soon, but it was what came after that frightened him.
On a bombing mission, being awake and alert could save your life and drowsiness could kill. The aircrew were offered the amphetamine Benzedrine by the station medical officer for alertness, to stay wide awake on the night missions, to be fully conscious, with every nerve-ending active and tingling as you waited for the flak burst or night fighter cannon shell that would cripple you or the aircraft or hopefully quickly and painlessly end your young life, if you were lucky enough to be unlucky that way. And now, strangely, with the war long finished, sleep was still his enemy.
THIRTY
Bitter cold, hunger, exhaustion and despair were Berlin’s memories of the last days of the war and his captivity. The Germans had built most of their POW camps as far east as possible, into Poland, Czechoslovakia and East Prussia, maximising the distances escapees would have to travel to safety. In early 1945, with the Red Army’s relentless advance into German-held territory, tens of thousands of Allied POWs were forced out of the camps at gunpoint, joining millions of frightened refugees already jamming the roadways. They began marching slowly westward, back into Germany through what were quickly becoming the worst winter blizzards in a hundred years.
Berlin’s camp had been evacuated over two days, with the thousands of prisoners split into more manageable groups of several hundred each. A small detachment of armed guards was assigned to each group, along with several very skittish German shepherd attack dogs. The dogs constantly fought against the leashes of their handlers, lunging and snapping at prisoners who fell behind the column or wandered off the roadway.
On the seventh day of the march the guards forced the column of shivering POWs out of the sleet and into the meagre shelter of a wooden barn shattered by repeated Russian air strikes. It might have been around four or five in the afternoon but if the winter sun was still out there beyond the leaden clouds the POWs couldn’t tell. The horse-drawn army field kitchen the German soldiers called Die Gulaschkanone, or goulash cannon after its tall, smoking black chimney, was nowhere to be seen so the starving men knew it would be another night without food.
Berlin had found the potato a little over an hour after he and the other exhausted, freezing men had slumped gratefully down into the shelter of the barn. After cleaning his boots as best he could he tried to sleep, but something jammed into his back. He dug for it, expecting a stone, and was bewildered at finding a potato hidden deep under the filthy straw. How it had escaped detection by the hordes of refugees who must have used the barn every night was hard to understand.
His fist closed around the black lump and he slipped it carefully into the pocket of the khaki army greatcoat issued to him after he was captured. Like all the others, Berlin was starving, but he held onto the potato. It reminded him of home, of his grandmother and a time when he was safe and warm, with a full belly, and he held it tightly through the night. There might be worse to come and he would need the potato, though he knew that if things became even just a little worse he would not survive.
The next morning the snorting of a horse woke them and there was a watery soup waiting in the big boiler of the field kitchen. Berlin joined the line of hungry men, his hand still closed around the potato in his pocket. Some of those with dysentery stayed a little longer in the shelter of the barn, sobbing as they squatted and added another layer to the misery and squalor that would greet whoever used the place for respite that evening.
As the men waited, stamping their feet and swinging their arms to keep warm, someone half jokingly suggested they should perhaps add the horse to the soup and just pull the wagon themselves. The Gulaschkanone was designed to be hauled by two horses, and their single carthorse looked as exhausted, scrawny and underfed as the POWs. Berlin doubted it would add much in the way of nourishment.
He checked the sky for any breaks that might give respite from the sleet and snow. Sunshine would be welcome to warm their freezing bodies but clear skies would also make them easy targets for roaming Sturmovik, the Russian aircraft responsible for their burnt-out lodgings and the rocketed trucks and tanks they passed along the road. The grey sky and snow-covered landscape merged seamlessly at the horizon, meaning they would at least be safe for the first part of the day.
Behind the barn a stand of fruit trees stood leafless and forlorn. Among the bare branches Berlin saw ravens waking from rest. They were fat and sleek, eyes glinting, black feathers shimmering through the winter mist. The ravens would breakfast at their leisure while he starved, filling their bellies without the usual raucous squabbling over every morsel. It was a very good time for carrion-eaters.
After breakfast the POWs moved off, shuffling westward. Around midmorning Berlin heard gunfire from somewhere ahead of the column. Single shots, spaced – pistol or rifle fire, not the steady, constant rumble of the Russian artillery far behind them. It was sleeting now and the prisoners kept their heads down. Berlin squinted into the distance and saw the guards at the front of the column beginning to force the prisoners off the main roadway and into the snowdrifts.