This story was written in 2004, imagining the thoughts of
a Nazi soldier
As I aroused from an imposed stupor, I recalled a previous
occasion when my head seemed to vibrate. At that time, I had likened it to a
thousand drummers were performing inside my head and not at the glorious
Nuremberg rallies. I was finding it hard to find my bearings and gradually
realised that I had never been in this place before, although its reputation
was widespread among the Reich army .
My last recollection was the onslaught of khaki upon the
previously still beaches of Normandy. My friends and I, only minutes before,
been playing cards and telling jokes in the concrete tower that we occupied
along the French coastline.
We had been put on alert in case the enemy had tried to
storm our position. Before we could take stock of the situation, there were men
being despatched from the landing craft and manoeuvring up the beach like
thousands of khaki turtles returning to their homeland.
Barrack room activities had taken on a perverse sense of
normality and we were prepared to continue in the uneasy security that we had
found for ourselves. We did not realise, nor could we understand, that our
seemingly ceaseless surge of military strength was being halted and our mighty
nation was being repulsed like a dominant child being turned over by the rest
of the school.
It was not the spray of the random bullets that surprised me
but the unexpected blast from an exploding grenade. The sudden display of
pyrotechnics resulted in the shattering of the rocks before me. A splinter of
the seemingly impenetrable object was projected into my femur and a spring of
blood gushed up out of my uniform trousers. I did not see the direction that it
came from, only the sense of impending conclusion to an unfinished life. The
unexplainable and unquenchable desire to at least leave life surrounded by
those that we hold dear suddenly gripped my soul before I fell into a
fathomless darkness.
I had been carried, at great risk to my fellows at arms, to
the port of Cherbourg. I was handed over to the boat master who transported me
to this island of tranquillity in the middle of a tumultuous sea. We had to
evade the fleets of the enemy but I was entirely unaware of the dangers in this life as I struggled
not to enter the next one.
As my eyes opened wearily to the new day that had been given
to me in this temporal sphere, I was aware of the cell like ward to which I had
been admitted. The sharp whiteness of the surgical jackets contrasted with the
deep blackness of the cell where I had been placed. In my haziness, the grey
uniforms of my fellow soldiers melted into the inky backdrops so that they
looked like disembodied puppets in a macabre performance.
“Gerhardt, you made it then,” a friendly voice shouted from
the twelfth bed away from me. “We thought that you would never make to the
island.”
It was a cheerful welcome to the cocoon that metamorphosed
broken men into human beings that could look life, however difficult, in the
face again.
At that moment, I did not want to respond, such was the
effect of the anaesthetic on my tonsils and the physical exhaustion from the
operation. I had felt better after ten rounds in the ring with the regimental
boxing champion.
My eyes were slowly adjusting to my surroundings. I was in a
glorified cave with about nineteen other men, all in need of bodily repair. We
were lying on well-manufactured beds covered with good quality mattresses, the
pristine sheets and the regulation grey blankets with their neat red stitches
along the edges.
Above our heads was a large metal pipe, stretching from one
end of the ward to the other, as becomes the giver of life. It brought warmth
in a cold environment and fresh air to replace stale expiration.
In what seemed like a journey into the abyss that waited for
the dead, there was sanitary provision. There was no Wagnerian nightmare for
there was disinfectant to deal with, or at least disguise, the awful odours of
urine, gangrene and demise.
There was water dripping down the walls, like the
perspiration running down the fevered
face of a delirious man. The liquid was collected into channels grooved
into the concrete floor and carried away as the tears of frustration, pain and
isolation of the ward’s inhabitants.
On each bed, there was a bloodied man or one who was
comatose. The blood that was still seeping through the farrowed wounds through
the thickly swaddled bandages made their unwelcome and most obvious stains upon
the linen that had clearly been starched at the requisitioned laundry. The
sound of groanings like the ghostly winds chasing through the trees was
accompanied by the intolerant pleas to be quiet. There was cursing and swearing
as men tried to come to terms with their injuries and their shattered emotions.
It was as though the men of the grey uniforms and the sturdy steel helmets had
come together, like the elephants of deepest Africa, to some remote dying
field. The truth was that I was one of the forgotten soldiers, taken out of the
equation of usefulness, isolated by the rest of my countrymen by water and by
the continuing warfare. We were destined to live like rabbits or elves,
entombed by the vast murky darkness.
Behind my bed, through the walls carved out of rock came the
warm, welcoming smell of stew, I could imagine dedicated men, striving to give
the cream of the German fighting force the best meals that they could muster
using the limited ingredients that they could scavenge on the island. The meal
did smell exquisite as a man reaching heavenly rest being given the eternal
ambrosia in order to take away his temporal remembrances.
In the cell in the other direction, there were the muffled
sounds of screams as new casualties were admitted to the surgeon’s knife. There
were hidden agonies, the noises of uncertain futures before they succumbed to
the silencing effects of the anaesthetics. I did not want to believe that I had
made those embarrassing sounds as I lay on the operating table but, even in my
state of stupor, I had made my confessions to the medical staff in their
priestly gowns in case I did not wake up in this life.
I lay on the bed, traumatised, scarcely believing the
nightmare that I had experienced was the reality of my war. The leg was numb,
tightly swaddled in bandages so that it could not be moved. If nothing else
could be said about my wartime encounters, at least I could be counted
fortunate to have my life and my entire body at the end of it. On that first
morning, I dared not look under the blanket to inspect my injuries in case I
was mistaken and my nerve endings were playing a cruel joke and the leg that I thought
was present had been removed by medical hacksaw.
As the days went by, I became increasingly aware of my
surroundings, where there was no physical proof that one day succeeded another.
There were the passing islanders, who had brought produce from their land to be
consumed by the occupying army. Usually, they by-passed the wards as they
travelled resolutely on their route to the kitchen. When they did look in
occasionally, there were looks of pity. This reaction was not related to our
wounds or our separation from our loved ones, but to their sure knowledge that
the war was nearly concluded as a result of the Allied invasion of the
mainland. There was also the look of disgust as we were the unwelcome guests
who had imposed our presence upon them. It was certain that many of them had
not forgotten or forgiven the Reich armed forces for the strafe of bullets from
the aeroplanes onto the quay that had resulted in so much innocent blood being
mixed with tomatoes that they had intended to load upon the boats. Beneath the
façade of civility, there was the plaintive longing that we would leave so that
they could get on with their serene ways. In an attempt to show their contempt
for the unwelcome populace, the islanders tried all manner of minor
misdemeanours, just as though they were putting one toe over the line of
legality that had been drawn by the new administration.
The other non-German people
were the Poles and the Slavs, who had been captured and wrenched from
their motherlands so that they would be slave labour to the Aryan race on an
alien isle, Their faces exuded hate and their hands were made callus by the
constant digging out of the caverns for the injured German soldiers. The utter
animosity felt by the prisoners towards their captors would have been exhibited
on the patients by the means of spittle on our faces if they could be certain
that we would have turned the other cheek and not emptied the contents of a
pistol into their bodies. They wore grimy and perpetually sweaty clothes, the
sign of ceaseless servitude for a thankless master.
In contrast, there was the nursing staff and doctors in
smart, clean and well-ironed uniforms. The men, who were in the majority, wore
short sleeved white medical shirts, with pens and necessary instruments bulging
out of their pockets. It was a far more pleasing sight to observe the checking
of the patients by the few German womenfolk that were allowed near the front
line. Even the aroma of soft, clean bodies wafting near to the invalids was an
inducement to get well, acting as a feminine reminder that we were to return to
the girlfriends that we had left behind so that we would serve our country.
As my strength grew so I began to make restricted journeys
along the corridor. At both ends of the infirmary that was completed, there were
escape shafts that were like the inside of industrial chimneys. There were iron
rungs to hold onto but it was totally impossible to climb up the escape route
unless you were capable of moving all of your limbs. If there had been an
emergency, there would have been no relief of the daylight at the end of the
tunnel, only a slow and agonising death in the darkness. The depths hat
protected us from aerial attacks would have been the instant tombs for those
who could not escape.
After a number of months, I was physically well enough to be
released to the local barracks and to the rigorous discipline of a serving
soldier. It was a relatively short spell in the sunshine for, in the Spring of
1945, the garrison on the island surrendered to the Allied army.
As the years have progressed, the children and grandchildren
of my generation have returned to the island, not in tanks and armoured
personnel carriers but in Mercedes with suitcase. They do not carry rifles and
pistols to hold hostage, injure or kill, but they use their cameras to capture
images of a gentle and gracious island. Instead of being the enemy, the
occupying force, they are welcomed as visitors.
They visit the underground hospital and see it as a museum.
The wonder what it must have been like to have been a patient in the dark
cavern.
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