CHAPTER 55
Pete was driving the bus the next morning, and I caught him giving me a sly look every so often, when he clearly thought I wouldn’t catch him at it, for he broke into a cheery smile each time I looked round quickly. I collared him before I boarded.

“What’s up, pal?”

“What do you mean?”

“You looking at me all queer, like. What’s on your mind?”

He sighed. “Just today’s trip, Gerald. That and a load of things all piling up on each other. It was that little chat you had with young Ashley, in a way. Look: first thing we’re doing today, the first place we’re visiting, is a graveyard. We don’t need to mention the other place, but I look at the lad and all I see is my Pete, and then I see what war did to you lads, and, well, I look at the headstones, and…”

Susie had come up to us just then, and she stepped forward to hug the big man. His arms came up around her, and he lowered his chin onto the top of her head. Her voice was muffled, but still clear.

“I‘ll do this bit, Pete, because Gerald can’t, even though I know he wants to. Thank you for caring about us, and thank you for being such a great Dad. Some of us here never had that, so we need an example now and again of it done right way”

She kissed him gently on the cheek as she disengaged, and did the same to me as she stepped up onto the bus. The more she was out, the more I saw of her, the more I questioned the sanity of those who had insisted she was a boy. I saw my Tricia’s eyes shining behind hers.

She stopped on the top of the stairs. “Pete? Got request for you, for a coffee stop, even if these old buggers don’t drink it. Been looking at the maps, and I would love to see Pied Piper”

He nodded. “Yup, I know where you mean. I’ll see what I can do”

We pulled out of our overnight stop at a fair clip, clearly using the engine to burn off some of his night sweats, and we were soon bowling along at a decent speed, through rolling country with plenty of dark woods on the hillsides. This was looking far more like my expectations of Germany than the rebuilt concrete monstrosities we had passed at the start of the trip, and I wondered if it was because the Germans had folded rather than fought, in the end, as the Russians had flattened the East. Whatever the cause, it was a lovely place, and Susie’s coffee stop was a prize indeed. We parked near a large river that held some islands, and the houses were exactly what old pictures would have shown, with plenty of wood framing and red tiles, and in a way it reminded me of the older parts of home around the Shambles. We stopped long enough for a stretch, and to help Maurice deal with a few of his own hygiene issues while Susie sent Valerie and Andy the obligatory postcards. I just thanked the Almighty that neither she nor Ashley bought one of the noisy whistle thing all the kids seemed to have.

Back on the bus, more gentle hills and fields, and then we could see the bulk of a large town ahead of us. Hannover it was, and thankfully our destination was at the edge of the town, and it was as lovely as such things can be. The entrance was inscribed ‘The land on which this cemetery stands is the gift of the German people for the perpetual resting place of the sailors, soldiers and airmen who are honoured here’ and we took a while to rest our souls before we walked in. Ernie popped into one of the little chapel style buildings to find the register, and with Maurice very, very quiet in his chair we found Percy and left our wreath.

“Help me up, Gerald”

“You sure, Maurice?”

“Absolutely, my friend. We will honour him properly”

Seven of us stood before the stone, set about with flowering shrubs in plots between sweeping avenues of perfectly mown turf. Matthew’s voice rang out.

“Ten—SHUN!”

No caps, so no salute from us, but we stood there for Trooper Scott until Maurice started to sway, and then without a word turned and marched out as best we could. One more of our own saluted. Honoured, as the inscription said. I heard Susie and Ashley whispering as we set off again, and the only words I caught were from her: “Oh, that’s not a big place. Some are a lot bigger”

We bypassed the city, for which I was glad because I just wanted this part of the day over and done with. Not forgotten, never forgotten, it could never be. Just over. Harry wasn’t there, of course, but still…

Heathland, tank warning signs, dark woods that seemed familiar, and a massive firebreak that I recognised as the place we had leaguered in that awful day.

“We’re nearly there, Susie”

“You recognise it?”

“Aye, but back then what we had to go on were smell”

“Eh?”

“We could smell place. From what seemed like miles off. Harry…”

I took a while to find the words. “Harry were our driver. Got out OK when Wilf copped it, but that place… That place killed him just as dead as PAK killed Wilf. Stay with me, lass. Please”

Once again she took my hand as the bus turned right into a large parking area. Pete killed the engine, and all of us just sat for a minute until Ashley spoke up.

“Gents, can I just say that this is one place I have heard of. Could I—could I please just wait with bus?”

Pete raised an eyebrow. “Suddenly sensitive, son?”

Ashley dropped his chin. “It were book we did at school. Anne Frank, aye? This is place… Look, I’m not being daft, am I? I mean, you’ve been to graves, graves of mates, and this isn’t like that. I mean, none of my mates were born, were they, and here’s me upset about a girl in a book!”

Maurice coughed, horribly, but got his words out.

“Are we not your mates, son?”

Ashley was silent for some moments, then nodded. “Thank you. Thank you. That means a lot to me. I were feeling really shit, like, really out of my depth with this…. Look, Mr Barker said it to me, about pub, and sister and Mam, aye? And it got me thinking, about how little I really know, and lads like me we laugh at the old men, like…”

He shook his head. “The lads, lads like me. We haven’t got a fucking clue, have we?”

Rodney sighed. “My dear boy. My friend, I pray you never have occasion to gather such clues. By all means, stay with the transport, but think of how helpful a lad like you could be with Maurice’s chair. Think on, and if you wish come with us and feel worthy. That is what you have just demonstrated, an understanding too many fail to achieve. Come with us, if you wish, help Maurice and be welcome”

Not much more was said as we walked towards the little group of buildings. Not much, really, in facilities, but they had marked the sites on a map, and there was a museum of sorts, and, well, all I wanted was to be outdoors and, if possible, somewhere else entirely, but Harry needed his farewell.

There was a reasonably smooth path through the woods, heather everywhere like up on the grouse moors, and now and again there was an outline in the ground where a hut had once been. I moved over by Ashley, and talked him through it.

“Germans had called a truce, son, and a lot of the guards were still here, but they’d stopped feeding folk”

Rodney nodded. “I remember that particular advice, Gerald. What, Julian? You told us we would kill them if we fed them”

“Yes indeed. Ashley, my good fellow, you have to imagine the place as it was in ’45. The plan tells us we are at the main gate, or somewhere near it. There are Huns in uniform with spare fat on them, but we are not to touch them. There are people crying as we lock the gates behind us, and I do not just mean the inmates for I saw many of our own men in no fit state for active service just then.

“Some people wander, aimlessly. The more active mob us, begging for food. The others sit or lie… They lie, and many of those one knows immediately will never move again. There are huts, shabby, filthy things, and they are full of even more human wreckage. There are…”

He stopped abruptly, a sob escaping him. “And I am supposed to be a healer, and there is nothing I can do for these wretches, and then, over there, behind the places where there were huts, there are stacks, piles, drifts of corpses. Too many to count, too many to register fully on the senses, too many even to be able to see as individual human beings. And your friend, Gerald? Ernie? I think I remember him. He drove for us”

“Aye, Julian, happen he did. Ashley, Susie… Look. There were too many to pick up and bury, so we ended up… Harry could drive vehicle with tracks, obviously, and they had bulldozers, and that’s what Harry---Maurice, you got some water in your bag? Ta”

I waited till the boy had finished, which thankfully was into the grass and not on the path, and laid an arm over his shoulder.

“Here, rinse your mouth out, get rid of taste. Over now, aye? Nowt left to bring up”

Susie passed him some tissues for the snot and the tears, and after a while he was able to walk on with us. When he had his breathing right again, he just asked “Harry?”

Ernie nodded. “Aye. Said he couldn’t get smell out of his boots. Had… had an accident on way home, with a pistol”

Rodney gave yet another sigh. “He wasn’t the only one who had an accident. Some of the guards had them as well”

Ernie’s grin was not a happy one. “Aye. Like Percy Scott said, not enough of the fuckers”

I remembered that morning, three plumper bodies naked on the ground, Bill and Ernie saying absolutely nothing. I looked round the park we were passing through, for that was what it felt like, even with the hut outlines and the low mounds of the mass grave, heather bright on top. German teenagers from some school party were passing, and I couldn’t help asking myself, was it your grandmother in the heels and the stylish hat, or your grandfather in the suit with the velvet collar, picking and stacking as Harry drove? Birds sang in the trees, bees droned, young people laughed, and the smell was in my nostrils.

We put a wreath to Harry on one of the stones by the entrance, and Pete looked around at the happy school kids.

“Gents, Susie, I think it’s time we got out of this fucking place”

Susie joined me in bed that night, in some plastic motel north of Hamburg. Nothing silly, of course, but neither of us could face being alone with all those dead.