Black Camp 21 Read online

  BLACK CAMP 21

  Bill Jones started his career as a print journalist, before establishing himself at Granada Television in Manchester as a documentary filmmaker. During a television career spanning thirty years he produced multi-award-winning programmes for ITV, BBC, Channel 4, PBS, National Geographic, Discovery, Sky and numerous other international channels. His films have been presented by, among others, Billy Connolly, Martin Clunes, Sir Trevor McDonald and Joanna Lumley.

  In 2011 he wrote his first book, The Ghost Runner: The Tragedy of the Man They Couldn’t Stop (Mainstream), which won Best New Writer at the 2012 British Sports Book Awards and was runner-up in the William Hill Awards. His second book, Alone: The Triumph and Tragedy of John Curry (Bloomsbury), was published in 2014, winning the Outstanding Writing award at the British Sports Book Awards, and a second shortlisting for the William Hill Awards. Both books are currently in development as feature films.

  Born in Bridlington, Bill now lives in Ampleforth, North Yorkshire. Black Camp 21 is his first novel.

  BLACK CAMP 21

  Bill Jones

  First published in Great Britain in 2018 by Polygon, an imprint of Birlinn Ltd.

  Birlinn Ltd

  West Newington House

  10 Newington Road

  Edinburgh

  EH9 1QS

  www.polygonbooks.co.uk

  1

  Copyright © Bill Jones 2018

  The right of Bill Jones to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patent Act 1988.

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN 978 1 84697 460 1

  eBook ISBN 978 1 78885 062 9

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library.

  Typeset by 3btype.com

  After D-Day, in June 1944, almost every able-bodied Allied soldier was fighting overseas. Within a few weeks of the invasion, over 250,000 war-hardened German POWs had been sent back to camps in Britain.

  The prisoners were well fed and their guards were often a mixture of reservists, volunteers and policemen. Few of the camps were ready – most were still under construction – and the flood of men moved quickly from chaos to crisis.

  Around 70,000 of the Germans had been classified by their captors as ‘black’ prisoners. These were SS fanatics, usually very young, who had sworn to fight on until death. For them the war was far from over. It was only just beginning.

  During the latter months of 1944, the most dangerous ‘blacks’ were transported north to the Highlands of Scotland, to a camp which still stands today on the edge of the village of Comrie, exactly as it was.

  It became known as Black Camp 21, and the truly shocking events that climaxed there in December 1944 provided the inspiration for this story.

  For Kay – without whom, nothing.

  Official Memorandum

  From:

  The Office of the Prison Governor

  To:

  Various

  I wish to report that today, in accordance with the verdict of the Military Court (12/7/1945), we have carried out the execution of five German prisoners. Commencing at 9 a.m. – at half-hourly intervals – the men were hanged at His Majesty’s Prison of Pentonville by the state executioner, Mr Albert Pierrepoint. Each death was officially witnessed by myself, the prison chaplain and a qualified medical practitioner. In addition, there was a single (female) member of military intelligence in attendance. However, for obvious security reasons, I have omitted all names (including my own) from this memorandum.

  There were only two incidents of note to report. Prisoner A – the first to be executed – was seen to spit in the chaplain’s face, following which he was heard to shout his allegiance to Adolf Hitler before the necessary restraints could be applied. Prisoner E – the last to die – requested a very short private conversation with the solitary female witness before the court’s judgement was executed. Given his extreme state of agitation, this permission was granted. Prisoners B, C and D went to their deaths in silence. Each of the condemned chose not to engage with the chaplain’s formal blessing.

  Following pronouncement of death, the five men – aged between 19 and 23 – were buried in an unmarked prison plot. As I understand it, there are no plans for the bodies to be returned to Germany.

  Dated this 6th day of October 1945

  1

  6 August 1944

  near Falaise, northern France

  03:15 hours

  There was no way to be sure, but tomorrow, thought Hartmann, it will be my birthday.

  To keep himself amused, he tried to work it out, counting back to the last day when he’d known where he was. Things had changed so quickly.

  Two months before, the men still celebrated their birthdays, necking stolen champagne from thick green bottles, sleeping off their hangovers under the stars.

  Now, as he lay sleepless under his sludge-dripping tank, deep within another nameless wood, absolutely nothing was certain. Even if he was out by a few days, it didn’t matter. Most of the people he’d partied with were already dead, and the ones who still breathed barely spoke.

  Still, if it was his birthday – and if he had a wish – he knew what he wanted.

  The rest of them could bitch about hunger, making themselves puke with plundered fruit, or tossing hand grenades at runaway chickens. Hunger he could abide. Russia had taught him that. If he could be guaranteed just one thing – even for a single minute – he’d happily forgo his potato ration, even his precious sliver of sausage.

  Silence was the thing. Silence was what Hartmann craved most – next to certainty – and only the dead were guaranteed both.

  War was noise; and the noises were universally terrible. Hidden by the black canopy of oak above his shelter, shoals of enemy bombers droned in from the sea. Futile slices of tracer fire chased after them, followed by the occasional half-hearted squirt of a machine gun, while in every direction hot steel cooled and clanked like an invisible plague of robotic crickets.

  Silhouetted by pools of paraffin light, he could make out tank crews repairing tracks and patching shattered sumps, and in the strange summer darkness every clunk and curse rang clear.

  Nothing Hartmann did could shut it out. However tightly he buried his head in his arms, the sounds were still there. If his calculations were right – and if he slept – he would wake up a year older, but the noise would still be there. And by daylight it was always much worse.

  The ear-shattering rumble of his Tiger; the screaming voices on his radio; the crashing trees and the horses galloping between crackling hedgerows; the rising whine of approaching fighter planes. The shells ripping through armour, followed by the pitiful sound of comrades burning.

  For days – for ever, it seemed – they had been stumbling, leaderless, back towards Germany.

  For the generals there was always some kind of escape. They could flee into the forest with their cyanide pills and their pistols. The rest of them were stuck with their garbled orders and their mantras.

  Fight to the last man. That’s what they’d always been told. Since they were kids, the same instruction: to the death.

  Fight until the diesel runs out would have been smarter.

  In the black void beneath his tank, Hartmann reached out a hand until he could feel its slick underbelly. Soon the fuel would be gone. Another two days; three at most.

  He tried again to work out what the date might be, inching back closer in his mind to a day when he knew exactly what he’d been doing. Mid-May. Yes. He remembered it now. A good day. A happy day.

  Everything had been certain then, when the spring roasted the pantiled rooftops, lighting up fields of apple blossom in a
world he felt he owned, which he had risked his life to win.

  It had been Koenig’s turn for a birthday, and the two of them had hijacked an open-topped staff car, driving it out along deserted roads to the Normandy coast near Arromanches. Hartmann had taken the wheel, allowing his friend to grin and yodel at the village girls.

  ‘You’re twenty now. Behave yourself.’

  But Koenig had just laughed and shouted louder. ‘You’re not going to stop the car anyway,’ he yelled. ‘What does it matter?’

  Both had worn their laundered uniforms: grey caps with glossy black peaks and double-winged eagles; drab slate-coloured tunics enlivened by a double lightning bolt gleaming against their stiff black collars.

  Above the speeding black Mercedes, a lone gull looked down on the two men.

  Each of them could smell the sea and sensed from the knotty swept-back hedgerows that they were near. Since neither had ever seen it before, Hartmann’s pulse drove him and them faster. All this was their land now, reawakening from its late frosts under their red flag; their swastika; their Führer.

  Koenig, as always, had seemed absurdly high-spirited. Away from the front, his hair had thickened and the golden childhood mop Hartmann had always envied now riffled in a chill northerly wind.

  ‘You’re wearing the medal, Erich.’

  Koenig threw his head back and roared. ‘I’m a hero. I’m a hero.’

  ‘Sure you’re a hero. But can you swim?’

  When the road ran out, they parked, looking out in wonder across the grey waters of the Channel.

  Hartmann had been the first down on to the sand, ripping off his boots and wading deep into the surf. Behind him, Koenig had loitered in the dunes, collecting sticks for a fire.

  To the east and west, a smooth plain of sand stretched unbroken to a distant point where it seemed to fracture along its own blue horizon.

  Because the tide was low, line upon line of weed-matted wooden breakwaters had been exposed, marching in from the sea. When Hartmann saw them, he turned back.

  ‘They look like men, Erich. They look like soldiers.’

  But Koenig wasn’t listening. Up on the cliff edge, a pile of bleached driftwood was already burning strongly in the dry wind. From the car boot, he’d pulled a blanket, a hamper, two full bottles of schnapps, and a gramophone.

  ‘It’s Charlie and his Orchestra,’ he bellowed. ‘Get your arse up here, Max, and let’s dance.’

  The sounds of a swing band drifted towards Hartmann in dreamy, disjointed phrases. Ahead of him, across a frigid expanse of sea, he could make out the English coastline. Surely they will never come, he thought.

  Only a few hours earlier they’d driven behind a convoy of German sappers heading happily towards the coast, and up here, hidden within the marram grass, fresh concrete pillboxes were going up every day. Soon every grain of sand would be covered by a machine gun. From Kraków to Cherbourg, Hitler was building an impregnable fortress; a new frontier where nothing could ever die but the light.

  Turning away from his thoughts, stirred by the icy water around his toes, Hartmann smiled. Above him on the ridge, silhouetted by orange flames, his friend was dancing alone.

  Sometimes, it was true, Koenig scared him; most of the time, really, if he was honest. No one he’d ever known was possessed of such certainties, or such belief. And yet no one he knew was so joyously reckless either.

  ‘I’ve always been too old,’ he muttered into the breeze before stumbling up the cliff for his first waltz of the afternoon.

  It hadn’t taken much. Neither of them had tasted alcohol for months and the schnapps quickly unravelled them. To the hissing melody of illicit jazz, Hartmann swayed in his underpants while his salt-wet trousers steamed on a branch.

  ‘May I have this dance?’ Koenig whispered with a theatrical flourish. ‘Or are you here with another man?’

  Locked together for an hour, the pair had quick-stepped and tangoed. As the flames shrank to embers they slumped with their backs against a solitary tree and peered out over the deserted strand.

  ‘Happy birthday, darling,’ said Hartmann. There was a woozy slur in his voice.

  ‘Why, thank you,’ Koenig replied. ‘It’s been a wonderful evening.’

  For a minute or two, neither could speak through the laughter. When they stopped, an awkward silence hung in the space between them.

  Over two years lay between this and their last proper meeting. Away in the west, thick clouds were threatening, and as the breeze stiffened, red sparks peppered the gloom.

  ‘You should move your trousers, Max. They’ll burn,’ Koenig whispered.

  Slowly, Hartmann stood up and pulled them back on. It was growing cold and the booze was souring in their bellies. Since they’d arrived, Koenig had removed only his cap, placing it carefully beyond danger. Now, as the wind refreshed the flames, even the medal on his chest seemed to be burning, and when Hartmann bent down to touch it, it was warm.

  ‘It’s a close combat clasp.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘The Führer presented it to me. In Berlin. The Führer himself.’

  Hartmann rubbed the soft zinc between his fingers; a swastika over a crossed bayonet and stick grenade.

  ‘He has very small hands. They’re like an artist’s.’ Somewhere inland a guard dog was barking. Down below, the rushing tide had obliterated all but one footprint, and only a thin ribbon of beach held fast. ‘His voice was very soft too, Max. Soft but not weak.’

  Hartmann released the medal. Silence waited awkwardly between them.

  ‘I’m sure he’s a great man,’ said Hartmann finally. ‘You only have to look at what he’s done for our country.’

  With one powerful sweep of Koenig’s leg, Hartmann was down and they were both rolling towards the sea. As they went, ribbons of barbed wire hidden in thick, flowering gorse sliced chunks out of their clothing. Face to bloodied face, throwing breathless punches at the water’s black edge, neither man could gain an advantage.

  ‘You’re a German,’ screamed Koenig. ‘Show some fucking respect.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Erich. I’m truly sorry.’

  ‘We’re in a war now. You can’t be like this. If we kill more than they kill, we win.’

  ‘You’re right. You’re right.’ Hartmann had broken clear, and was panting heavily on the wet sand. ‘I was just never quite as good at maths as you were.’

  From the beginning, they’d always fought; so viciously, sometimes, no one else could remotely understand their friendship.

  Hartmann had been born in Vienna, the only child of a woman who’d strolled out of his life when he was three. As a small boy, he’d been solitary. As a teenager, he’d been sullen and argumentative, but there’d been no war then and his German-born father – a professor in law, and devoted Nazi Party member – seemed untroubled by Max’s adolescent unorthodoxy. Since the boy had no siblings, or mother, a little latitude was deemed necessary. And when it mattered most, his child had always been a model of convention. In early 1934, the two of them had packed their bags and moved to Munich where Max’s father rose quickly through the party ranks.

  To his relief, like every good Aryan child, Max had joined the Hitler Youth, wearing his black shorts and necktie without resistance. At the summer camps, he’d even been happy, thwacking the drum in a marching band with such zest that his instructors thought him destined for the Schutzstaffel.

  ‘A son in the SS,’ Professor Hartmann had told him. ‘How I will sing on that day.’

  On this, at least, father and son were united.

  Hartmann had no issue with duty and – in the absence of anything better to do – proclaimed himself happy to die for Germany. Privately, however, the academic’s son felt stifled by the dreary company of his fellow teenagers, and struggled with indoctrination. If Hitler needed him to kill Russians, Poles, Americans – the British even – that would be fine. Just so long as it all ended happily, and the company improved.

  And then, at a t
orch-lit Youth Rally in Nuremberg, he’d met Erich Koenig.

  Lying next to each other on the competition rifle range, they’d matched shot after shot. For an hour, they’d shredded helpless paper targets, and when the trophy was finally presented for top marksman – in front of the brown-shirted thousands – both boys had stepped up to share the honour.

  To the ranks of braying onlookers, they had seemed an improbable pair.

  Where Hartmann was tall and languid, Koenig was muscular and short. Where Hartmann’s hair was sleek and black, his new friend’s ran wild and blond, matching a personality incapable of concealment. If Koenig felt it, he said it. Hartmann, on the other hand, inhabited a face sentried by anxiety; a face with such high cheekbones that his eyes lurked in permanent shadow. A young man preoccupied, it seemed, by difficult questions; an affliction which his new acquaintance found baffling.

  That night they’d got drunk together for the first time. After two beers and half a bottle of stolen schnapps, Koenig had passed out with his head on Hartmann’s lap.

  This is strange, Max had thought. The only things we share are our blue eyes and our uniforms. Erich is two years younger than me, and everything I am not. My father is an intellectual while Koenig’s carves headstones. My mother has disappeared. Koenig’s takes in other people’s washing. He is driven. I am led. He is fanatical. I am resigned. He is terrifying and yet he has a weakness for laughter which marks him out, makes him interesting. Somewhere inside this drunken eleven-year-old, Max had felt certain, beat a heart worth looking for.

  Ten years later, he was still looking.

  Down at the shore’s edge, on their knees, the pair had stopped fighting.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Hartmann. ‘I should have known better. You’re too easy to annoy.’

  Koenig shrugged. Every fibre of his uniform was ruined. He felt sick and tired and had nothing left to say. Turning away from the sea, he picked his way through the crushed undergrowth back up towards the car. At the fire, he kicked the ashes back into life, threw on the last handful of wood, and stood glumly waiting for Hartmann to reappear. Far away to his left, the early evening sky was glowing, and the chug of a hidden fishing boat had been picked up by the wind.