“Detonators for explosives,” Linda responded.
“Great,” Wayne sighed to himself.
Wayne continued his monotonous job throughout the afternoon hours. At six o’clock, the sky cloaked in darkness, the loud whistle blew again. Linda waved a goodbye to Wayne. With no unauthorized chatting of any kind allowed between the prisoners while in the plant, even saying a “goodbye” could bring about a disciplinary action on the offender.
Ari signed the prisoners out for the day. They were then handcuffed and loaded onto busses to be shipped back to their respective holding areas from which they had been shipped in earlier that morning.
As he sat on his uncomfortable vinyl seat, Wayne’s mood swung from joyful to downcast. He was happy that he didn’t have to work in the quarry, but he was still no closer to achieving his goal of getting a hold of the gadolinium crystals that he so desperately needed. Plus, he still had no idea as to how he was going to go about it. Wayne attempted to fight his feelings of depression as the bus pulled through the big iron gates of Hollenburg, but it was all too overwhelming.
Rain and hail poured down relentlessly. To the men in Barracks 19, as they readied themselves for bed, it sounded like a barrage of marbles were landing on the roof. Hailstones, some the size of golf balls, frequently made contact with the antiquated wooden structure. Leaks from the shabby ceiling dripped down throughout the barracks.
George Van Leuven, at the age of sixty-two, was one of the oldest men interned in the camp. He had been a slave laborer for the Reich since he was a young man of twenty-eight. Once living the life of a model German citizen with a promising career as a secondary school teacher, he was shattered when, late one warm summer night, the Gestapo arrived at his apartment to arrest him. While his father met the Reich Office of Citizenship criterion for being considered one of a pure German bloodline, it had been discovered that his maternal grandmother had been a Negro. Hence, his family tree, bloodline, and genes were officially, by Reich standards, “tainted with non-Aryan traits” and “an inferiority to the ideal make-up of a true German”.
George lay on his bunk, sick and trembling with a fever. He thought that maybe he had come down with a cold, as had often happened to him before, only to have it go away after a brief spell. But in the last twelve hours, whatever he had that was causing him to feel ill had taken a major turn for the worse.
Samuel sat at George’s side and placed a cold washcloth on his sweaty forehead. “C’mon George,” he said, “you’re gonna be fine. All you got is a little sickness. You gotta lower your temperature and then you’ll be just fine. Be feeling like new again.”
Wayne approached quietly, “Hey, Sammy, I really have to thank you. You weren’t kidding. What I’m doing now is a piece of cake.,” he paused. “Is everything all right there, George?”
Samuel answered, “Old George isn’t doing so well.” Dabbed a cold washcloth over the sick man’s sweaty forehead.
“What do you think it is?” Wayne asked.
“I’m not sure. Could be typhus.”
“How come he hasn’t gone to the hospital?”
Samuel looked up at Wayne. “Do you know what happens when a prisoner reaches an advanced age and goes to the hospital sick?”
“No, What?”
“Kunz, the chief medical officer, declares the guy obsolete and he gets a nice injection of 10cc of carbolic acid directly into the heart.”
“Carbolic acid?” Wayne was not familiar with it.
“Carbolic acid,” Samuel said solemnly, “as in the shit that will stop your heart from beating.”
George started to shake violently. “Is that you, daddy?” he asked deliriously.
Samuel took the elder’s hand in his own hand. “Yes George, it’s me — your father,” he said in a comforting manner. “Get your ass better so we can go out fishing again together. Like we used to.”
George muttered, “We ain’t never been fishing before.”
“Well, then we’ll start to,” Samuel countered. “Now get yourself some sleep, George. It’ll help break your fever.” Samuel let go of his hand and stood up. “George has been like a father to me,” he told Wayne. “When I first got here, he showed me the ropes. Made my life a lot easier those first few years. I owe him a lot. I hope he pulls through.”
“Me too,” Wayne said.
That night, Wayne realized what a big blunder he had made on his first day in camp. The middle-aged long time prisoner he had been assigned to share his bunk bed with, a man by the name of Mitch, asked Wayne, the new prisoner, to switch sleeping places with him on their bunk bed. Wayne was originally assigned the bottom bunk. Mitch claimed that he would only be able to sleep well and not toss and turn all night by occupying the lower bunk. Something to do with his childhood, he said. Wayne did not see that it made any difference and gave it no thought when he agreed to switch places with Mitch and take the upper bunk himself. With a steady trickle of rain falling on his blanket from above, Wayne cursed himself for getting duped so easily.
The freezing rain and hail metamorphosed into a moderate snowfall as the night faded into dawn. A fresh coat of two inches of pure white snow blanketed Hollenburg Concentration Camp by the time horn blew.
As the prisoners moved out to morning roll call, Samuel, standing beside George’s bunk, called to Wayne, “Wayne, come here.”
Wayne joined Samuel beside George’s bunk and asked, “How’s George doing?”
“George didn’t make it,” Samuel said rather nonchalantly. “Help me grab his body.”
“I’m really sorry,” Wayne said and reached to pat his friend on the back. Samuel backed out of his reach.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, now grab the body.”
The prisoners formed fresh tracks in the snow as they marched to the roll call area. Wayne and Samuel moved forward with the procession, each helping to move George along with them by having the limp cadaver propped up between their bodies and pushing it onward.
Wayne had no idea of what they were doing. Finally, he felt compelled to ask, “Uh, Sam, buddy, I have a question for you. Now I don’t mean to prod, but I am slightly curious as to why we are carrying this corpse to morning roll call with us.”
Samuel breathed heavily as he said, “As far as the SS knows, George is alive. It’s Saturday, ration day. Therefore, when ol’ George shows up at roll call, he gets his Sunday rations, which will, naturally, go to us. You can have the bread, the cigarettes are mine.”
“I thought George was like a father to you.”
“Same thing happens to him whether we do this or leave him in the barracks. Besides,” Samuel reasoned, “a ration is a ration.”
Wayne thought about what he was doing as they arrived at the quickly moving, long ration line. Due to the fact that there was no morning roll call on Sundays, the inmates were given rations for Sunday on Saturday. Wayne had to agree with Samuel’s reasoning — why waste a ration? Wayne never did get enough to eat. He salivated at the idea of an extra bread ration coming his way but he also was not keen on the idea of his body being on the receiving end of a whip again.
“You get in front,” Samuel instructed Wayne as they closed in on the tables from where the SS Noncoms were giving out the rations. “I’ll hold him up from behind. Right when we get the shit, help me carry him away like we’ve doing.”
Wayne began to assert his concerns about getting in trouble for what they were doing, “Yeah, but… but…”
“DO IT!” Samuel shot back, already anxiously anticipating the added nicotine fixes awaiting his lungs.
Wayne did as Samuel said and stood in front of the cadaver. When his turn came up, Wayne was handed his ration of seven cigarettes, two slices of bread, and a small strip of dried beef. Next in line was George, who, with Samuel thrusting up his right arm from behind, had his small ration bag shoved in his open hand by an SS Noncom. Samuel received his rations immediately after. The line kept moving rapidly. Wayne and Samuel walked, with the recently deceased body propped up snuggly between them, another five hundred feet when Samuel said, “Okay, we can drop him.”