He helped the man to walk to the gate. “This man is very sick,” he told the guard in English. “His disease may spread. He needs to go to the hospital.”
The guard eyed Ludwig, nothing the phlegm and blood on his chin and shirt. “Okay. Bring him out.”
Amazed at this fortune, Ernst walked Ludwig through the gate and helped him into the truck. “You go along,” the guard told Ernst. “We don’t want to touch him.”
So Ernst rode too, as the truck bumped along. Soon it stopped. “Get him out,” the driver called back.
Ernst looked out. “But this is just another open field!” It wasn’t even that; part of it was freshly turned dirt with bulldozer tracks on it.
“Yeah. Unload him.”
Appalled, Ernst hesitated. “Do it,” Ludwig said. “I will die anyway. You will have more room in the apartment.” He tried to laugh, but only choked.
“Move it,” the driver said.
Ernst got down and lifted Ludwig down. The man lay on the dirt. Now Ernst understood about the freshly turned earth; evidently all prior visitors had been promptly buried. “Farewell, my friend,” Ludwig gasped.
“Farewell,” Ernst whispered. Then he climbed back onto the truck.
Back at the camp, he was uncertain what to say. Men had gone to the “hospital” before and not returned, but it was assumed that they were taking time to recover. Now he knew that they were dead. It was a dying place, a burial ground, nothing more. The same place they took the bodies which were already dead. Was there any point in telling?
He walked back to his trench. Johanna looked up. “I thought I would be the first of us to go,” she said.
“Don’t go there,” Ernst replied.
She nodded, understanding.
• • •
The days passed. The prisoners were assuming the likeness of walking skeletons, except for their swollen bellies. Johanna herself looked pregnant, but Ernst knew that this was a grotesque parody. It was the edema of starvation that filled her belly. She was no longer able to go for her food. But Ernst was still strong enough to haul bodies out, slowly, so he still got extra rations, which he shared with her.
“I promised to repay you, Ernst,” she said. “But I think I will default.”
“Just survive,” he said. “That is all you need to do.”
Someone must have done something to annoy the guards, because abruptly the water was cut off. Thirst became a monster. Then it rained, and throughout the camp men lay with their faces up, mouths open, their cups out to catch more. It wasn’t enough, but there was no better choice. The deaths increased.
Then Ernst himself got the diarrhea. At first he went to the latrine trench, but soon that became too great an expenditure of energy, and he had to do it in his trench, and cover it up. Then he became too weak to get his pants down in time, and had to foul himself.
“I am sorry I gave you this,” Johanna said.
“It is throughout the camp,” he demurred. “We are so crowded, there is no way to avoid it.”
She nodded. It was true.
Next day Ernst managed to drag himself up, shake out his filthy trousers, and go for food. But there was a change. Bulldozers were coming in. “Move over!” the guards shouted, forcing the prisoners to crowed to one side.
Then the bulldozers started leveling the ground, erasing the mounds and trenches.
“But Johanna is in there!” Ernst cried, trying to return.
A guard swung around, rifle ready. Other hands caught Ernst and pulled him back. “Nothing can be done,” a man said. “They don’t care.”
Numbed, Ernst watched as the section of the camp was leveled. Johanna, and all others too weak to leave their trenches, had been buried alive.
If the Americans were now openly killing prisoners, instead of hiding it with the fiction of a separate hospital, what hope remained for the rest of them?
Indeed, there was activity outside the compound. Trucks were moving, and personnel were gathering around them. Were they going to bring out the machine guns? Was the camp being closed down the easy way? He had seen it on the Russian front.
“British,” someone said. Now Ernst recognized the markings on incoming trucks. What were the British doing here?
Soon enough it was known: this Rheinburg camp was in the sector of Germany to be managed by the British, and they were now taking it over. The Americans were departing.
Was this good news or bad news? It had to be good news, because nothing could be worse than the hunger, disease, and callousness they had suffered under the Americans. Perhaps the British would have some slight compassion.
Soon enough the British soldiers entered the compound. “Line up to be counted! Line up to be counted!” a sergeant called in English.
“Line up to be counted,” Ernst repeated in German for the benefit of those around him.
A British soldier overhead him. The man approached. “Who speaks English here?” he demanded.
Was this more trouble? Or a chance to get extra rations by being of use to the conquerors? What did it matter? Ernst raised his hand, and then several others who spoke English well did the same.
“Come here.”
They followed the soldier to the front gate, where an officer stood.
“This is appalling!” the officer said. “You are starving and filthy, and by the look of you, diseased too.”
“We meant no affront, sir,” Ernst said.
“We must use you to help our survey of the prisoners,” the officer continued. “You will translate our questions for the internees, and give our clerks their answers. We want names, ranks, military numbers and home cities. But as soon as you have done this, those of you in worst need will be taken to the hospital in Lintford.”
“Sir, we can do what you wish,” Ernst protested. “We do not need to be taken to the hospital.”
“We shall be the judge of that. Sergeant, give these translators food immediately, then go with them for the survey.”
It was done. Ernst had his first decent meal in a month. The British were formal but not callous.
There were repeated countings, as the orderly British got everything straight. Then Ernst, protesting as firmly as he dared, was put on a truck bound for the hospital. He did feel terrible, because the food made his diarrhea worse: now his system had something to work on. But he was not yet ready to die.
Then they came to the town, and to a building. Ernst stared, amazed: it really was a hospital, not a dying field!
The next week was something like heaven. Ernst and his companions were given food and medicine and were allowed to read and listen to the radio. Female nurses attended them. They slept in beds with clean sheets. They themselves were clean.
Some were already too far gone to be saved, but Ernst saw that the doctors were making every effort. Ernst himself recovered; his illness had been relatively new and slight.
He was returned to the camp. It had been transformed. It was larger, and there were tents throughout. The prisoners now had shelter! He saw others staring at him. He realized that he, too, had changed almost beyond recognition. He remained very thin, but he was in a clean uniform and he was reasonably healthy.
Soon he had spread the word: the hospital was real. After that, many more prisoners were willing to go. They had been struggling desperately to conceal their illnesses.
Now prisoners were being mustered out. But the processing was tedious, and Ernst was needed as a translator. It would be some time for him.
He did his work with a positive attitude. He had learned that the British had not realized how badly prisoners of the Americans and French were being treated, and were shocked by it. The British prisoners were being cared for and released, as they had assumed was the case throughout.
However, an officer advised Ernst, they had notified his family of his presence here, and it was likely that someone was coming to see him. It might be possible to advance the paperwork in his case, so that he could be released sooner
.
“Sir, I sincerely appreciate this,” Ernst replied. “But there are many here I can still help. I prefer to remain until I am not needed.” This was not wholly generosity; he still distrusted the fate of those who departed without returning. The British seemed different from the Americans, like day after night—but were they really?
The officer nodded. Ernst was dismissed.
The following day he was summoned again. This time there was a British airman in the office.
“Ernst Best,” the airman said.
“Present, sir.”
“Don’t you know me?”
Ernst looked at the man more closely. A familiarity dawned, then widened. “Lane Dowling!”
Then they were embracing. But almost immediately Ernst pulled back. “Lane, before we go any farther, there is something I must tell you.”
Lane frowned. “That you took my girl.”
Taken aback, Ernst nodded. “It was not my intention. I— we—”
“And I took yours. So we’re even.”
Ernst was set back again. “Krista?”
“Krista and Quality explained everything. I’ve got to tell you, Ernst, that in seven years it had thinned between me and Quality. I—I knew other girls along the way. But I couldn’t let her be lost in Germany. Then, when I found out what you did, I was glad, and mad, and amazed, and finally relieved. I realized that it wouldn’t have worked out with Quality. We’re different types. But Krista, now—there’s a woman I can relate with!”
Ernst had forgotten about this. Lane and Krista! But he realized that it was a good match. They were of a similar temperament. “Then there is no bad feeling between us?”
“Hell no, man! I saw your son. Krista’s taking care of him now.”
“Krista? But—”
“I pulled a string to get you released early,” Lane said. “Let me tell you, it was hell to locate you! The American camps won’t release any names at all, but after this one was transferred to British control, they got the names, and notified us. But they told me that you weren’t ready to leave the camp yet. So Quality came here.”
“Quality—here?” Ernst asked, dazed.
Then Lane took him down the hall to another office. There was Quality, just finishing at a desk. She was very like an angel.
She turned and saw them. “Ernst!” she cried gladly.
He embraced her. Then she explained. “Thee helped me when I was interned. Now I will help thee. I have learned some German, and I know how to help the hungry.”
“It’s been cleared,” Lane said. “She’s been deputized as an aide and assigned to you. You have been deputized as temporary staff. When you finish up here, you’ll know where to go. And now I have to go. There’re things to do in Wiesbaden, too.” He stood up straight, and lifted his hand in a military salute. “Good luck, friend.”
Bemused, Ernst returned the salute. Then Lane was gone, and they were walking back out to the camp to help the remaining prisoners. His life was reappearing before him.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I realize that there will be readers who are infuriated by the last chapter of this novel. It is considered un-American to suggest that any evil could be associated with America. Nevertheless, it is true: America, too, maintained death camps where disarmed German soldiers and even some women and children were systematically destroyed through starvation, exposure and bad treatment. This information was covered up for forty years, but now has come to light, and I think sensible Americans will prefer to explore it and try to find out how to prevent it from ever happening again.
The source of my information is Other Losses by James Bacque, published in hardcover by Stoddart in Canada. You should be able to order it through your bookstore, unless the proprietors, like so many others, prefer to pretend that the book doesn’t exist. The truth should be known, ugly as it may be.
According to this book, approximately three quarters of a million Germans were killed in American captivity, and one quarter million in French captivity. Only the British acted with decency in this respect. Apparently it was the determination of General Eisenhower and General de Gaulle that Germany should be rendered forever impotent, and the killing of German captives was part of the process. The Red Cross tried to protest, and the Quakers, and the British and Canadian governments, but they were barred from the camps, and mail privileges were denied, so that the prisoners themselves could not describe their situation.
What of the Geneva Convention? It was claimed that these were not prisoners of war, but Disarmed Enemy Forces—DEF— who had no such protection. In fact it was a gross and deliberate violation of human rights, similar to what the Nazis and Russians did. It has been easy to ask, pointedly, how the German people could not have known what their government was doing to the Jews and Gypsies. Now the question is reversed: how could we not have known what our government was doing to Germans who had laid down their arms?
Well, one reason is the same as it was for the Germans: we don’t know because we don’t want to know. Even those in a position to ascertain the truth may furiously deny it. I cite as evidence a commentary by Stephen E. Ambrose in THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW dated February 24, 1991 titled “Ike and the Disappearing Atrocities.” It is what is known in the trade as a “killer review” of Other Losses. It describes the author’s thesis, then goes on to say that “when scholars do the necessary research, they will find Mr. Baque’s work to be worse than worthless.” The review is, in essence, a comprehensive denial of Baque’s thesis, in part and in whole. Since the reviewer is the director of the Eisenhower Center at the University of New Orleans, so should know something about Eisenhower’s role in the war, this is a damning indictment.
However, my assistant Alan Riggs and I had read the book. I asked Alan to do a point by point analysis of the review versus the book and ascertain, as far as possible, the truth. He spent two days on the comparison and wrote up an 1800 word report. The essence was that, on the whole, the book was correct. The reviewer had two valid points: (1) That we can not at this stage know what was in the mind of Eisenhower, so can not attribute a base motive to him. (2) The author’s calculation of the number of German dead was in error. As to the first: lack of information about the secret motives of a man now dead works two ways. Eisenhower managed to hide immediate news of his adulterous love affair with his driver, Kay Summersby, but later documentation pretty well establishes it. There are significant hints that he did know and approve the death-camp policy. So Ike may indeed be innocent— but there is doubt. As to the second: the error in calculation, when corrected, still suggests more deaths than the official records admit. So it was our judgment that the death camps did exist as described.
Then came the reader response, in the Letters column of THE BOOK REVIEW for April 14, 1991. The letters covered the gamut from congratulating the reviewer, to authenticating the atrocities. Two were from actual prison guards at the camps, one was from a prisoner who had been at Camp Rheinburg and escaped for the same reason Ernst did—British intervention—and one was from an Air Force officer who had witnessed the condition of the prisoners. Another letter writer expressed a caution about Ike’s supposedly benign character: he described how Eisenhower had ordered the forced transfer of hundreds of thousands of anti-Communist Russians, Ukrainians and other Eastern Europeans to Stalin’s Soviet Union, where death and slave labor awaited them. Another letter mentioned an article on the death camps that had previously been published in a Canadian magazine, which had elicited letters from former prisoners thanking heaven that at last the truth was being told. Significantly, there was no rebuttal from the reviewer. It was obvious that he was in error. So the case seems secure: like the holocaust, it did happen.
Now some background on my writing of this novel. I am known as a writer of light fantasy, but I have been moving into other areas and have been addressing increasingly serious social concerns. Thus I have written Firefly, related to sexual abuse, and Tatham Mound, about the situation of th
e American Indians displaced by the white man’s colonization of their continent, and the GEODYSSEY series tracing the sometimes savage history of our species for several million years. Volk is similar in the sense that it contains provocative material, but different in other respects. It is technically a historical novel, but also an exploration of a personal interest of mine.
I started work on Volk in 1980, but publishers refused to take my non-fantasy efforts seriously and I was unable to place it. So I set it aside with only two chapters completed, and pursued other aspects of my career. Ten years later I took it up again, trusting that my increased leverage as a best-selling writer could enable me to get it into print this time. Originally it was to be a straight World War II novel, but in the intervening time the story of the “Other Losses” broke, and I realized that Ernst would not have ended up in an ordinary detention center, but in a death camp. Yet as the main character of my novel he had to survive, so he had to be in one of the camps that were transferred to the British.
There were other changes, because this novel, like most of mine, looked different when I was in the actual text than it did from afar, in preliminary summary. I had thought that Lane would learn that Ernst had been brutalizing Quality, and swear to kill Ernst. But I discovered in the course of research that Nazi SS men did not approve of abusing women, and could be disciplined for that sort of thing. So Ernst’s terrible necessity to brutalize Quality, to prevent his superiors from realizing the real nature of their relationship, was reduced to one episode. Since Lane encountered Quality before catching up to Ernst, no desperate scene could occur with the two men. I had thought that Lane would be shot down over Germany, and be a prisoner, but with Quality already a prisoner, and Ernst destined to become one, I realized that this would be too similar. I had also intended to have a sequence in the defunct Maginot line, and had finally found a book on the subject—and then my story did not provide me the opportunity. So that setting became part of one of the GEODYSSEY novels.
Krista had a smaller part, and was going to fade out after Ernst fell in love with Quality. But the characters of novels do not necessarily resign themselves to their fates, and Krista refused to fade, and became, really, the fourth main character, interacting significantly with all three of the others. So it went, but overall, the novel is similar to the one I worked out in 1980. Except that it is, oddly, less violent. I did not see reason to put in the usual dogfaces-in-trenches battle scenes when my story did not require it; I’m sure that others have done enough of that. So this novel shows other aspects of the war, and seeks other insights than mere victory and loss in battle. I had planned to make more of the German Spanish strategy, as their position would have been significantly strengthened had they taken Gibraltar and cut the allies off from the Mediterranean theater. But that is not the way history went, and this is a novel of history, not fantasy.