CHAPTER 13
I did some reading after that, after they dragged him screaming into their private little world, and years later I found out more.

Hoess was an odd mix, one minute claiming it was all a big mistake, his men misinterpreting his orders, and the next minute boasting about how efficient he had made his disassembly line for human beings.

They took his testimony, they used it against the rest of the shits, and they didn’t hang him. Instead, they sent him to Poland, where a short-drop gallows was constructed in a dark echo of a bespoke suit, and they DID hang him, out there in the open for the survivors to see. His wife may have cried for him. I doubt anyone else did.

Bob called us into his billet for a cuppa in March, and he was restive.

“It’s come, lads”

Ernie was the first to ask, and Bob gave us his gentle smile. “Demob, boys. You’re off home. Mr Nolan’s been working through the troop lists, sorting the hostilities boys from the TA, the TA from the regulars. Married men off first, of course”

Ernie was bristling. “And us nearly-weds, like?”

Bob laughed. “You’re on first draft, lad, you and the other three. Five days’ time and you leave for Cuxhaven and a boat to Harwich. That do you?”

He sat grinning for just enough time for the words to strike home. “And Mr Nolan is offering each man a telegram, just in case there’s someone they’d like to warn, like. So they can make sure the Yank’s out of the house—“

A cushion hit him in the face, thrown by Bill, and then it was more laughter, and it was like the day the rum was issued. Promises were made, photos were shared, and throughout it Bob kept the same sad smile in place. This was the same man who had slapped me to get my mind on the enemy instead of my own fear, who had pulled me out of a burning tank and thrown me clear as Wilf sat smashed in his seat. I looked across at him in a lull in the chatter.

“And you, Bob? When are you off?”

“Ah, Ginge, always straight on target, aren’t you? Regular army, that’s me. Someone has to stay behind, what they call a cadre, aye? We'll get new lads out, young boys…”

He paused, and looked round our faces. “I keep forgetting, lads. Young boys is what you are, isn’t it? Not right, this, not right. You boys should have been at college, or getting on in a proper job, and what have we done to you? Shitty world, lads, shitty world. Anyways, I will be resting here, or mebbes down to another posting in Germany, training up new crews. You lads, if I were you, I’d be packing. Aye, and first, get the words sorted for your telegram. Ernie, be one for your young lady, like?”

Ernie was serious now. “Don’t rightly think so, Bob. Happen as I’ll send one to the old woman, she can let the lass know. I think Mam should have the benefit”

Harry was shaking his head. “No, lad, no. Think on: your old mother gets the telegram boy at the door, what’s she going to think? That you’ve copped one somehow, aye? Send it to thy lass, and explain why to the old woman when you get back. She’ll understand”

Bob was nodding. “Spot on, Harry. Who are you sending one to?”

“My uncle Albert, I think. I… Jerry did for the rest of the family. They were in Anderson shelter in back garden. Whole row took a stick of bombs, and they were buried, and water main fractured, and…”

He looked away for a while. “Uncle Albert, aye. He’ll do”

“Ginge?”

“Aye, Bob? Oh; Mam, of course. Bill?”

“Aye, same here. Dad said he’s got a place for me in local engineering firm, so he’ll need time to sort out wheres and whyfores and whatnots. Be strange, like. No uniform. No reveille. No bull”

Ernie laughed again. “And nobody shooting at you? You forgot that one!”

I grinned at him. “Ernie, mate, at least you couldn’t see the bastards doing it! I won’t miss THAT, I can tell you!”

“Sorted then”, said Bob. “Three days’ time we meet here again, and we say farewell, make sure we’ve got forwarding addresses, stuff like that. That gives us a day to get over the hangover before you set off”

Bill perked up. “Hangover? On NAAFI beer?”

Bob’s cheekier smile was back. “On NAAFI beer and the bottles of schnapps I bribed my little kraut batman to dig up from his cellar”

As usual, his organisation was immaculate, and the hangover was just about gone as we clambered into the back of a Bedford for the long drive to what was left of the port of Cuxhaven. Bob was standing there among a group of other stay-behinds, surrounded by comrades, and yet he still looked absolutely alone. We had been a crew, a unit; to be pretentious but still absolutely correct, we had been a weapon, and a bloody effective one. Apart from one kid too prissy to pee inside the tank, we had worked together far better than should have been expected. We had lost Wilf, which would always hurt, but Bill had fitted in so well I sometimes forgot he was a newcomer, and interloper, an offcomer.

Bob had been the catalyst, but we had each done our part as well as anyone else, but so many of them lay now like Wilf, waiting for Graves Registration to gather them up and put them together where we would be able to come and visit some day. I made the promise to myself, that I would be back, that I would honour the grave of my friend once his place had been prepared.

Off we went, bouncing down the road with a raw wind cutting round the sides of the canvas. Goodbye to Germany, I thought, goodbye to fat brown and white calves and comfortable country views. Well, it stopped being comfortable quite quickly. Some parts of Schleswig Holstein, like Kiel, may have been bombed, but it was nothing compared to what we saw as we approached the industrial areas close by the port. All I could think of was Fountains Abbey, but city-sized. Walls reached up and didn’t meet roofs, sunlight poured unhindered through where windows had been and while the Sappers and civvy labourers weren’t working, dull-eyed Germans simply stared at us, moving only when some of the lads threw out cigarettes or sweets. Then, there was sudden action, including the occasional blow. I almost felt some sympathy, but then remembered Hoess.

You started this. You were behind Belsen, and that place Hoess ran. You reaped the bloody whirlwind, and it was called the Royal Air Force. That brought another thought: what the hell had the Yanks dropped on the Japs that had done so much more than this bombing? I realised I did not want to know, actively did not wish for any more knowledge. What was done was done, and we were going home.

“Dismount! Muster by troop!”

Monkeys, of course. I gathered what kit I had and slung it down to Ernie, followed by his own, and we looked across the rubble to see a makeshift jetty with some sort of passenger liner tied up to it. One of the monkeys was shouting, as they usually did.

“You are lucky little tankers today, for you is not going on some cargo ship with its holds full of charpoys and pukes but on a proper Irish ferry with cabins and real toilet paper. Sling your kitbags and form column of fours!”

“By the left—“

The monkey had been right. We had a cramped little room—cabin—with bunk beds for the four of us. No window, porthole, whatever, and it was a bit airless, but we had come through the whole of the campaign in something a lot more tightly squeezed. We could cope. There was space beneath the lower bunks, berths, that was their name, to slide our kitbags in, and there was a dining room that did teas, and Germany was soon moving in the other direction, which was away from us, and that, as far as I was concerned, was the right fucking direction and unless it was to visit Wilf I never, ever wanted to see it again.

There were proper toilets on board, too, bogs, heads, whatever the matelots called them, and six hours after we left port Harry went into one after throwing his boots away, and put the muzzle of a Webley into his mouth before pulling the trigger.