Last Man to Die

There were nine tables set up in line on the small parade ground. Before eight of them the camp’s entire complement of prisoners was standing to attention in the incessant drizzle; behind the ninth, raised on a dais, sat the stocky form of Pilsudski as he surveyed the scene. The senior prisoner, a tall, scrawny man who was a commander in the German Navy, leaned heavily on a stick and had just finished remonstrating with him.

‘So, Commander, you want to know what this is all about, do you?’ Pilsudski was saying, staring down at the German officer, his thick Slavic features making the other man seem frail and vulnerable. ‘Well, I’m going to tell you. Last night someone broke into the office here.’ He waved towards the primitive wooden construction which, before the sports area was commandeered, had served as changing rooms and a small grandstand. ‘And I want to know which of your men did it. Damn me but you Germans don’t seem to be able to control yourselves,’ he added, the morning’s news still much on his mind. ‘Some property’s missing, so we’re going to look for it.’

Already the commander could hear the noise of wrecking as guards went through the tents overturning beds, tearing palliasses, emptying kitbags and the other hold-alls in which the prisoners kept their meagre possessions, ripping everything apart. He knew that anything of value would be gone by the time the prisoners were able to begin picking up the pieces.

‘But it cannot be. The offices are outside the wire; my men could not possibly have …’

Pilsudski began to chuckle, a harsh, false sound which revealed no humour, only crooked teeth. The German could feel the implacable bitterness behind the red eyes; he shivered, and not solely from the growing cold. The captor, still chuckling, began shaking his head slowly. ‘You’re surely not trying to tell me it was a Canadian soldier? No, not my boys. They know how to behave themselves. So, you see, it must have been one of yours.’

‘Impossible …’

‘Not only is it possible,’ Pilsudski interrupted, ‘but to my mind inevitable wherever you find a German. You’ve thieved and pillaged and raped just about everywhere you’ve been in Europe, so why should you make an exception here?’ The grin didn’t falter, the teeth still showing, but the eyes had narrowed. The German did not see the danger signs; he was propped unsteadily on his stick, clearly a sick man and in some considerable pain after standing for nearly an hour in the drizzle.

‘This is utterly unjust,’ he protested, but was cut short as Pilsudski’s swagger stick sliced high through the air to come crashing down across the table.

‘Don’t talk to me about justice, you Nazi bastard. If I make you eat shit, at least that’s more than most of your prisoners got over the last six years.’

With considerable effort the German pulled himself up off his cane and stood erect, looking at Pilsudski, his defiance visible through the rain that dripped off his cap and down his face. ‘I am a German officer. I most strongly protest.’

‘He protests!’ Pilsudski stood so the commander felt dwarfed. ‘This butchering son-of-a-bitch protests,’ Pilsudski continued in a voice strong enough to be heard full across the parade ground. No one was to miss this humiliation. Satisfied he had achieved his objective, he leaned low across the table until he was looking down upon the pained face of the commander, showering him in venom and spittle. ‘Listen! You started this war. You lost. So shove it.’ Pilsudski jerked the middle finger of his right hand into the face of the commander before turning from him in contemptuous dismissal. ‘Sergeant. Search the prisoners!’

At the command the first man in each line of prisoners was prodded forward by the guards until they were standing in front of a table. After considerable further encouragement from the muzzles of the standard-issue Lee Enfield .303s and a barrage of abuse from their captors, they began taking off their clothes, item by item, and placing them on the tables.

‘All of ’em, sauerkraut,’ one of the guards bawled, giving a reluctant prisoner a savage dig under the ribs. He smiled arrogantly through a mouthful of gum while the German slowly obeyed until he had joined the seven other prisoners standing naked in front of the tables. The guards went through their clothes, indiscriminately filching cigarettes, wallets, combs, even family photographs.

The search seemed to be over. Nothing incriminating had been found, and the sergeant was looking in the direction of Pilsudski for further orders. It was time. Time to revenge the fate which had cast Pilsudski as babysitter in this gut-rotting dampness instead of letting him loose in Europe; time to revenge a birthright which had left him a good six inches shorter than most men; time to revenge the suffering of his aunt and grandmother at the hands of Germans – not these Germans, of course, but these were the only Germans around. It was time. Pilsudski gave a curt nod.

At the sign, each of the prisoners was thrown across the table, his head forced down by a guard until he had lost his footing in the mud and was spreadeagled. As he lay there, surprised, stunned, a second guard armed with a heavy leather glove forced his legs wide apart and violated him, the guard’s gloved finger piercing and entering, twisting deep inside and raping not just the body but the soul. One began to emit a low howl of anguish and degradation but a shouted reprimand from a fellow prisoner choked it off. After all, why admit the shame, why give the guards still further satisfaction?

‘You are … tearing up … all the rules,’ the commander began, barely able to find words as he struggled to contain his feelings. ‘What in God’s name do you think this is?’

‘A medical inspection. For piles. If anyone asks. Which they won’t.’ Pilsudski’s manner was cold as the wind. He didn’t regret a thing. ‘By the way, one of the prisoners is excused. The queer. They tell me he’s been comprehensively inspected already.’

‘So. I think I understand.’

‘Sure you do, Fritz. How do the rules of war go? To the victor the spoils. To the losers, a finger up their ass. And it’s a damn sight less than you bastards deserve.’

‘You have already defeated us. Is that not enough?’

‘No, not by a long chalk. I want every stinking German left alive crawling on his hands and knees, begging for mercy, just like you left that faggot the other night. I hope I make myself clear.’

There was no point in further protest. In war he had been a senior officer but in defeat he felt no better or more worthy of respect than any other man; the German turned on his heel as correctly as his ailing legs would allow and joined the end of one of the lines.

It took more than two hours for the guards to finish their work, and the drizzle continued to fall as the parade ground turned into a sea of slime. There were tears mingling with the rain that flowed down the cheeks of many of the Germans, tears of emasculation and despoliation, tears of despair at having been captured, of having failed both their comrades and their country. But most of all there were tears of guilt at being survivors when so many others had found the courage to do their duty to the very end. In laying down their arms instead of their lives they were guilty of desertion, of dereliction, of having betrayed the womenfolk and children they had left behind. As Pilsudski knew, almost every one of the men on that parade ground secretly believed he deserved the punishment being meted out to him. Pilsudski might be a vicious bastard but, as losers, theirs was the greater sin.

Such feelings of guilt are the general rule for prisoners of war. But to all generalities there are exceptions. And in Camp 174B, the exception was Peter Hencke …

‘It’s an unpalatable prospect, Willie,’ the Prime Minister growled, breaking a lengthy period of silent contemplation as he searched for the soap under a thick layer of suds.

William Cazolet took off his glasses and gave them a vigorous polish to clear the condensation. He felt such a fool on bath nights. In the fortified Annexe off Downing Street where the Prime Minister spent much of his time, the ventilation was close to non-existent behind windows which were permanently enclosed in thick steel shutters. It made the bathroom hot and steamy, just as the PM liked it, but for visitors – and there usually were visitors on bath night, even female secretaries taking shorthand – it could be an ordeal. It was one of the many eccentricities of working and living with Winston Churchill.

‘What prospect is that, exactly?’ Cazolet asked, leaning forward from his perch on the toilet seat in an attempt to restore the circulation to his legs. It could be uncomfortable sitting at the right hand of history.

The Prime Minister grumbled on, almost as if talking to himself. ‘There was a time, not so long ago, when the British were the only players in the orchestra. We were on our own. Our empire provided all the musicians. I conducted, even wrote most of the score. My God, but we made sweet music for the world to listen to.’ There was no hiding the pride in his voice. ‘Had it not been for us, Europe would now be listening to nothing but the harsh stamp of German brass bands. D’you know, Willie, I’ve never liked brass bands. All huff and puff without any trace of tenderness. Could you ever imagine Mozart composing sonatas for brass bands?’

He paused to scrub his back and puff fresh life into the cigar which had been lying sad and soggy in an ashtray beside the soap dish. The Old Man was lacking his usual jauntiness tonight, the secretary thought. Cazolet was only twenty-eight, a young Foreign Service officer thrust by the opportunities and shortages of war into the tight-knit team of prime ministerial assistants who were responsible for taking care of the Old Man’s every need, transmitting his orders, acting as a link between Downing Street and the mighty war machine over which he presided, ensuring that he took plenty of soda with his whisky and, if necessary, putting him to bed. Some couldn’t take it, working round the clock in the cement cocoon of the Annexe and the War Cabinet Rooms beneath, without sunlight or sight of the world above, discovering what the weather was like only through bulletins posted on a board in the corridor, subjected to the Old Man’s vile temper and suffocating in an atmosphere of constant cigar smoke. But Cazolet had taken it, and it had given the young man an uncanny aptitude for reading the PM’s thoughts.

‘I’ve always thought the American military display too great a fondness for brass bands,’ Cazolet prompted. ‘Very loud. No subtlety.’

‘But my God, how we needed them, and how generously they have given. Yet …’ There was an unaccustomed pause as the Old Man searched for an appropriate expression, hiding behind a haze of cigar smoke. ‘It seems we are destined to march behind one brass band or another, Willie,’ he said slowly, picking his words with care.

Cazolet wiped the condensation from his glasses once more while he studied the other man. He saw not the great war leader, the stuff of the newsreels and propaganda films. The Old Man was no celluloid figure in two dimensions but a man full of self-acknowledged faults which at times made him impossibly irascible even in the same breath as he was visionary. The spirit seemed unquenchable, yet the body was seventy years old and was visibly beginning to tire. What else could one expect after six winters of war? Flamboyance and strength of character were not enough any longer to give colour to the cheeks, which were pale and puffy. Too many late nights, too many cigars, too much hiding underground. Of everything, simply too much.

‘How was Eisenhower?’ Cazolet enquired, anxious not to allow the PM to slip off into another empty silence. Anyway, it was time to probe. The PM had been unusually reticent and moody since his meeting with the American general on the previous day, and Cazolet could sense something churning away inside.

‘He is a determined, single-minded man, our general,’ the Old Man responded. The deliberate way he punctuated the words did not make them sound like a compliment. ‘The very characteristics that make him such an excellent military leader make him nothing of a politician. And he is American. He thinks American. He listens too much to Americans, particularly his generals, most of whom seem to have gained their experience of battle out of books at West Point. They are all quartermasters and caution. I judge an officer by the sand in his boots and the mud on his tunic rather than the number of textbooks he has managed to pacify.’

The PM contemplated the moist end of his Havana, deliberating whether it was yet time to call for its replacement. Since his heart murmur three years earlier his doctors had told him to cut down, to cut down on everything except fresh air and relaxation. Idiots! As if the greatest danger facing the British Empire was a box of Cuban cigars and the occasional bottle of brandy.

A potent mix of smoke and steam attacked Cazolet’s lungs and he stifled a cough. ‘They say Eisenhower can be weak and indecisive, that he listens to too many opinions, carries the impression of the last man who sat upon him.’

Churchill shook his head in disagreement. ‘If that were so we would not be at odds, since I would be constantly by his side, ready to sit upon him at a moment’s notice.’ He patted his paunch. ‘And I would make a very considerable impression!’ He broke into a genial smile, the first that evening. He was beginning to feel better. To hell with the doctors. He lit a fresh cigar. ‘Don’t underestimate the general, William. He is not weak. A conciliator, perhaps, who prefers to lead by persuasion rather than instruction. But above all he is an American. Americans are boisterous, unbroken, raw, full of lust and irresponsibility, goodheartedness, charm and naked energy. And above all they haven’t the slightest understanding of Europe. For them it is little more than a bloody battlefield on which they have sacrificed their young men twice in a generation, some troublesome, far-flung place on a foreign map. That’s why they deserted us after the last war. They threw away the victory then; we must not allow them to do so again.’

‘What do you want from them?’

‘There are many things I expect of our American friends – ships, arms, food, money, materiel. But one thing above all they must give me, Willie.’ His blue eyes flared defiantly. ‘They must give me Berlin!’

The blackout curtains were drawn tight around the luxurious manor house adjacent to SHAEF forward military headquarters in newly-liberated France. It wouldn’t do to have the Supreme Allied Commander shot up by some Luftwaffe night-fighter, not when he was having dinner and, with growing agitation, giving forth of his own version of the previous day’s meeting.

‘Would you believe the man? He tried to scold me. Said I was smoking too much, that it was an unforgivable extravagance at a time of general shortage. Damn nerve!’ General Dwight Eisenhower started to chuckle in spite of himself. He regarded the PM, half-American on his mother’s side, as something of a father figure and so tolerated the older man’s bombastic and occasionally patronizing manner. He was no less a chain smoker than Churchill, yet even in his addiction he revealed his modest, less flamboyant character. Strictly a ‘Lucky Strikes’ man.

Eisenhower paused to indicate there was a serious point to his tale. ‘Extravagance! I told him I was willing to be extravagant with everything but men’s lives. Yet he still insists on taking the most outrageous risks …’ The general shook his head sadly, staring into the flame of the candles that lit the beautifully laid dinner table separating him from his companion. ‘The Brits are running out of time. They’ve been bled dry; Britannia with her wrists slashed. It’s making the Old Man impatient, rash.’

The genuine regret in Eisenhower’s voice was not lost on his companion, who was British, and who mistook neither the irony of sitting in a Europe only recently freed from German occupation while surrounded by seemingly endless supplies of vintage champagne, nor the absurdity that war seemed to be fought either from foxholes or from the luxury of liberated French chateaux. ‘So what did you tell him?’

‘Just that. He was being rash. So then he gets het up and says risks have to be taken, it’s the art of war. Art, for Chrissake! I told him that dying isn’t an art but a ruthless damn military science.’ He stubbed out his cigarette as if he were crushing bugs, grinding it to pulp in the crystal ashtray. ‘You see, he wants Berlin. A final master stroke to crown his war, so he can lead the victory parade through the captured German capital.’

‘What’s wrong with that?’

‘Oh, not a lot, except the military value of Berlin doesn’t amount to a row of beans and it’d cost at least one hundred thousand casualties – American casualties – to get there before the Russians. Christ, can you imagine how tough the Germans are going to be fighting for their own capital? !’

The telephone interrupted them for the fourth time since they had sat down to dine, and Eisenhower jumped to answer it. This proved to be a mistake for as he drew back his chair he seemed to double up and a flash of pain crossed his face. Chronic indigestion. When in England he had blamed it on the endless diet of Brussels sprouts and boiled cabbage which seemed to be standard fare in London, but in France he had run out of excuses. They didn’t eat boiled cabbage, and the pain was getting worse. The strains of war were plucking at him, demanding that he ease up. The point had been brought firmly home when he discovered a rat in one of the classrooms serving as his office. He had taken out his revolver and, from a distance of no more than a few feet, shot at it. He missed. Carefully he had put on his glasses and shot again. And missed again. The third shot succeeded only in blowing off its tail and a sergeant had used a chair to put both the rat and the Supreme Commander out of their misery. Eisenhower was tired, he had been losing weight and the patchwork quilt of lines beneath his eyes had sagged into whirlpools of fatigue. He needed to steady his hand and to get his mind off the war, but how could he? Even as he talked on the telephone his jaw was chomping with frustration.

‘OK-OK-OK, run up the white flag. If State insists it’s vital I see the Crown Prince – where’d you say he was from? – you’d better fit it in. Then you go and ask the State Department, very politely, if they’d mind putting a cork in their courtesy calls and letting us get on with winning this goddamned war!’ The grinding of his teeth could be heard across the room. ‘And one more thing. No more interruptions, eh?’

He hobbled back towards the table, massaging his bad knee. It always swelled when he was run down, and his habitually high blood pressure hit new peaks and he lost still more of his hair. And he could really do without this run-in with Churchill.

‘For Chrissake, he’s being preposterous. Even if we do take Berlin, we can’t hold it. We already agreed at Yalta that it’ll be in the Russian zone of occupation after the war. So five minutes to hold Mr Churchill’s victory parade and then we hand it back. That’s about twenty thousand US casualties for every godforsaken minute. A high price for an old man’s ambition, eh?’ He swirled the whisky around the glass, watching the candlelight catch the finely cut patterns in the French crystal, wondering what his troops in the field facing von Rundstedt had eaten that evening, and envying them their simple tasks of war. ‘I’ll not let the old men of Europe play their games with my troops,’ he said quietly. ‘My duty is clear. To win this war, and to win it with the minimum loss of Allied lives. If lives are to be lost, better they be Russian than American or British.’

There was no response from his companion. Perhaps he had gone too far. He felt the need to justify himself. ‘There’s something else. Something pretty scary. Our intelligence guys believe Hitler may be planning a retreat from Berlin to the mountains in Bavaria and Austria, a sort of Alpine redoubt. He moves everything he can in there and conducts endless guerrilla warfare. God, it would be tough rousting him out of there. The war might never end.’

‘But is that likely?’

‘He’s fighting for his life; he’s not going to roll over just to please Churchill.’

‘So …?’

‘So to hell with what the Old Man wants. We concentrate on cutting off any chance of Hitler’s retreat to the mountains.’ He drained the glass. ‘And if it means Stalin taking Berlin and half of Europe, it would be a pity. But not a great pity.’

‘What a way to run a war!’ Churchill exclaimed, more soapy water splashing over the side of the bath and dripping on to the carpet.

Cazolet looked despairingly at his suit, the razor-sharp creases of half an hour ago now a sorry tangle of damp wool.

‘Some intelligence men sitting on their backsides in a Zurich bar hear whispers about a mountain fortress, and Eisenhower wants to cast all our plans aside. For mere tittle-tattle and rumour!’

‘But surely there may be something in those reports,’ interjected Cazolet. He could always recognize when Churchill’s enthusiasm ran away with his prudence, particularly late at night.

‘Let us suppose, let us for one fraction of a moment suppose …’ Churchill responded, his jowls quivering with indignation and stabbing his cigar like some blunt bayonet in the direction of the younger man. ‘Let us suppose that the same American intelligence experts who just four months ago so lamentably failed to spot thirty-one Nazi divisions massing in the Ardennes to launch the Battle of the Bulge were, on this occasion and in spite of their track record, right. So what? What can Hitler do in the Alps? Let him have his caves, let him freeze in the winter snows just as he did on the Russian plains. He can do no real damage in the mountains. But Berlin …’ At the mention of the word, his voice lowered, the brimstone being replaced by an almost conspiratorial timbre. ‘Berlin is the key, William, the key. Without it, everything may be lost.’

The waters heaved and parted as Churchill raised his considerable girth out of the bath and gesticulated for Cazolet to hand him a tent-size cotton towel. ‘It is quite simple. Either we take Berlin, or the Russians will. Vienna, Budapest, Sofia, probably Prague, almost every one of the great capitals in Central Europe will soon be occupied by the Red Army. If he gains Berlin, too, Stalin will have his paws around the heart of the continent. I have to tell you, Willie, I do not trust him. He talks of friendship, but every time Comrade Stalin stretches out his hand to me, it always feels as if he is reaching directly for my throat!’ Churchill, suddenly distracted, sat naked on the edge of the bath.

‘And behind us, here in London, I fear the worst, Willie. Defeat. Before the end of the year, at the election.’

Cazolet couldn’t help himself. The idea seemed too absurd. ‘Nonsense! How can you lose after all you’ve done? They must support you.’

‘I love them, with all my heart I love them, but I have little faith in their gratitude.’ He sat silent for a moment, drawing in his chin until it became lost in the loose folds of flesh. He tried to hide the misting in his eyes, but there was no mistaking the catch of emotion in his voice as he resumed. ‘My own father. One of the great statesmen of his age. Yet they threw him to one side. Broke his heart on the great anvil of politics …’ Tears were starting to roll down Churchill’s cheeks as he remembered the humiliation, even as Cazolet recognized the hyperbole and inexactitude. Churchill’s father had been a drunken womanizer, a disgraceful husband and even worse father, and had died at a young age of syphilis. Perhaps that was why the son had to work so hard to weave the legend and why he, at least, had to believe so passionately in it.

‘No. All triumphs are fleeting, Willie. One cannot expect gratitude. After the last war we promised them homes fit for heroes. They’re still waiting. And if Stalin and his acolytes are to rule from the Urals to the Atlantic, right up to our own doorstep, I’m not sure how long the electorate could resist inviting them in, even here. So you see, we need Berlin, to stop the disease spreading, Willie. If we lose. Berlin we shall lose the peace. The battle for Hitler’s capital is the most important contest of the war. Sadly, it seems we shall have to wage it against our American allies.’