Weaver

XXV

By Sunday night the POWs reached Bexhill, from where they were to be moved on by truck.

They were crammed into the trucks, some German military stock and others purloined farm wagons, maybe fifty men to a vehicle. There was no room to sit or lie down. Ben was stuck somewhere in the middle of the truck, surrounded by a forest of greatcoats that stank of cordite and mud and blood.

The truck swayed as it drove, and he was thrown against the bodies of the others, and they against him. In the night it was pitch dark. There wasn't even a glimmer of headlights to be seen; the Germans seemed to be operating under blackout rules. The prisoners had no food, no water. And of course there was no toilet. You just went where you stood, and after a while the floor of the truck swam with piss and shit and a few pools of vomit.

He thought he slept a little. It was hard to tell. The journey had the quality of a nightmare.

Once Ben slipped on a puddle of something, and would have fallen. But a beefy hand caught him under the arm, and hauled him back upright.

'There you go, mate.'

'Say, thanks, I was nearly down in the dirty stuff there.'

'You're all right. What accent's that? Canadian?'

It was the man who had tried to help him during the march. Ben could barely understand him, and couldn't see the man's face. 'Um, I spent a few years in America. But I came from Austria originally.'

To his surprise the man understood. 'You a refugee from the Nazis, then? I saw plenty of them in France.'

'You were with the BEF?'

'Yep. Barely got out of that without my arse being blown up by Stuka bombers, and after five minutes over here I've been jugged. Not having a good year, am I?'

'I guess not. I don't recognise your accent. Are you Scottish?'

'Not likely. I'm Scouse. From Liverpool. Used to be a house painter before the war.'

'So did Hitler,' someone said, and there was a rumble of weary laughter.

'Danny,' the Liverpudlian said. 'Danny Adams.'

'I'm Ben.'

'You just hold on, Ben, you'll be all right.'

'Yeah.'

When the dawn came the trucks jolted to a halt, and Ben was shaken awake. The backs of the trucks were opened up, and to German shouts the men jumped down to the ground. They were clumsy and stiff, and many fell, after a night spent standing up. But they helped each other, the fifty or so men in Ben's truck. Within a few minutes they were all standing in a rough huddle, surrounded by German troopers with rifles, and dogs, three big Alsatians, on leads.

'Bad news, lads,' someone called on seeing the dogs. 'They've shipped their girlfriends over.' That was met with a snarl in German. 'All right, Funf, keep your helmet on.'

By the dawn light Ben tried to see what kind of place he had been brought to. He was in what seemed to be an open field, coated with green grass, on a raised rectangular scrap of ground. Truck wheels had churned the turf. The earth was cut up by grassy ditches, and the whole space was enclosed by a ruined wall. At the heart of the site Ben made out a concrete platform with the remains of a kind of cross structure embedded in it. Two Germans in the black uniform of the SS were strutting about this centrepiece, pointing at it with swagger sticks and gazing around at the site.

The air was fresh; he could smell the sea. 'Where the hell are we?'

A murmur went around the men. One of them, a local, recognised the place. This was Richborough, at the very eastern extremity of Kent. Another old Roman ruin, now in the hands of the Nazis.

A party of Germans came forward, laden with shovels. One of their officers put his hands on his hips and shouted at the POWs: 'Welcome to your holiday camp, gentlemen. We must ask you to pay for your deposits by digging out your latrines.' The soldiers threw the shovels on the floor.

'Oh, good,' said Danny Adams. 'A German comedian. I feel better already.'

The men moved forward, grumbling.