But underneath the excitement Gary sensed tension. Whenever there was any break in routine you always worried that what was already a bad situation was about to get worse. Especially when the SS showed up. Even the regular Wehrmacht guards seemed nervous.
Gary made his way to Ben's barracks. It was just two old classrooms knocked together. The school gear was long gone to be replaced by the stuff of a POW camp, bunk beds and stoves and light bulbs dangling from the bare ceiling, and little cupboards made by the prisoners out of bits of scrap wood. But you could still see the mark on the wall where the blackboard had once hung, and sometimes, Gary was sure, you could smell the chalk.
Gary found Ben. He'd hoped to get a chance to talk to him. But Ben, 'Hans', was holding court at the centre of a little group of men, banging on about Einstein, general relativity and the life and death of the universe. Even Willis was sitting on a bunk, smoking a skinny cigarette and listening.
It was always like this inside the camp. The kommando system split the prisoners into two groups, two subcultures. In the kommandos you had the work, and a change of scene, and some fresh air, and the comradeship of those you worked with. The housewives, stuck in the camp, had turned it into a kind of talking shop. They painted and sketched; they kept diaries; they put on stage shows and choral concerts; they organised seminars on everything from German military insignia to surrealism to quantum physics. They even paid each other in lagermarkenfor their performances. It was just another sort of escape, Gary supposed.
And then, too, there were the love affairs. There was a lot more of that than Gary had expected; the stalag queens who painted their faces and dyed their lips with beetroot juice were just the surface. This was what you got, Gary thought, when men could only turn to each other for comfort. Now he watched Willis watching Ben, and he wondered what the truth was between the two of them.
He waited a bit, but seeing he wasn't likely to get a chance to talk to Ben before lights-out he cleared off, went for a piss and to brush his teeth, and made for his own barracks.
When lights-out came Gary was lying in his bunk. He listened as the stalag creaked its way into the night, a crowded ship. The twenty or so men in the room with him snored and sighed; you slept badly, no matter how tired you were, and only a few of them were asleep at any moment. Sometimes during the night you would hear soft sobbing. But there was no bunk-hopping tonight.
The school's old sash windows had been wallpapered over for the blackout, but the paste was cracking now and the paper peeling, so that Gary could see something of the night outside. There was an occasional splash of brilliance as a searchlight beam crossed the face of the building. The noises of the camp continued, the sharp clip of a patrolling guard's boot, a cry as some whackie or other failed to find peace. But as the hours wore on his senses seemed to expand to fill the night, and he could hear the call of an owl, a rumble of distant traffic, the drone of a Messerschmitt patrolling somewhere over Kent.
And tonight there was something new, unfamiliar German voices talking softly, the voices of the SS working through the night. He wondered how many other inmates listened to the same conversations, and how fearful they were.
It was no surprise when the call for an appell came in the middle of the night.
VIII
Few of the men still owned watches, but one man, holding his wrist up to the glare of a searchlight, said it was after three a.m.
The men pulled their way out of their bunks, looking for their trousers and coats and socks and clogs – no boots in the camp, to impede the escapers. Then they clattered down the stairs, bumping in the dark.
Lights blazed in the camp offices, and in the assembly hall, dining hall, gymnasium and other large rooms. On the chill dewy grass of the football field the men lined up behind the senior officers of their own nationalities; as well as British there were Poles, French, Belgian, Dutch, and empire troops like Canadians and New Zealanders. Gary was the only American, as far as he knew, and he stood with the British, as indeed did Ben, somewhere in the dark, a fake American.
The SS, with the Wehrmacht senior officers, walked up and down before the lines, inspecting the men casually. They spoke softly, too quietly for Gary's bits of German to be any use. SBO Danny Adams and the other senior officers were called for a brief conference.
Then the men were formed up into parties. The British, the largest contingent, were split into three, each of about fifty men. Gary dodged around a bit to be sure he was in the same third as Ben. Willis was here too.
A guard called briskly, 'Come!' Gary's group was the first to be led off towards the assembly hall. As the men shuffled forward Gary could smell mouldy greatcoats and the sweet stink of bodies not properly bathed for a year, and he sensed their gathering fear as they were marched around in the middle of the night by the SS.
The men filed into the assembly hall. It was brightly lit. Gary glimpsed a row of trestle tables set up at the head of the hall, before the stage where schoolboys had once received their school colours. SS officers sat in a row behind the tables, black as rooks on a wall. They shuffled piles of paper. There were a few scientist types too, anonymous in white coats, fiddling with bits of equipment. Wehrmacht guards stood around, their rifles to hand, looking as tired and resentful as the prisoners.
At the back of the hall an area had been fenced off by a curtain. The prisoners were led behind this. A couple of guards stood on chairs so they could see over the group. One guard, a brisk and competent hauptmann, clapped his hands. 'Clothes off,' he said. 'Socks too, gentlemen. Make a pile over there. Then three lines.' He made chopping signs. 'One, two three.'
'Come off it, Hauptmann. What about the blessed Geneva Convention?'
'Get on with it, please.' The hauptmann turned away.
'What larks,' Willis Farjeon said.
Grumbling, moving slowly, the men complied. There was muttering. 'Maybe it's just a delousing.'
'No. Bloody SS. They're probably testing some new type of gas on us.'
'They wouldn't do that.'
'Why bloody not? I don't see any Swiss flags out there. No, we're for it, I tell you. Hang onto your bollocks, lads.'
The heap of clothes quickly grew. The men were all much diminished by being stripped like this, their joints like bags of walnuts, their genitals little knots of flesh beneath their flat bellies. No doubt Gary looked just as bad. And Ben, small and skinny anyhow, looked tiny, even boyish in this company.
They formed up into their three lines. Again Gary made sure he was in the same group as Ben. He ended up right in front of him, with Willis behind Ben. Willis winked, grinning.
The curtain was drawn back. The prisoners were marched in their lines up the assembly hall, until the leaders were at the desks manned by the SS officers. Some kind of testing began on them, and Gary saw the flash of cameras.
As the lead blokes were processed the men shuffled forward slowly, naked, humiliated. The bare shoulders of the man in front of Gary were striped with scars, as if at some point he'd been whipped. It all felt unreal to Gary, a strange incongruity of uniforms and weapons and naked prisoners in a school hall, and all in the deepest pit of the night.
He turned and murmured, 'Hans? You all right?'