Chapter 21: Forewoman

At Camp VV the next intake of women did not occur for some time, as the officers included in the Friday dinners were content with their current partners and brought them to the Mess Dinner as a sort of week-end leave. Joachim told Jane that this was quite usual.

"Most of the officers will keep to one woman for weeks, and sometimes months, until something happens to change their attitude. It is much less tiring and annoying to have a woman who knows what you want than having to explain everything to a new one every week or two," he explained.

"What might happen to change an officer's attitude?"

"Any one of lots of things," was the cautious reply.

"What sort of things?" Jane persisted.

"Well, if you must know, the most common thing is pregnancy, though sometimes a woman is just too intractable for her partner and he becomes bored with having to fight her reluctance. In other cases the opposite happens, and an officer, such as General von Buelow, enjoys having a reluctant woman, and he discards her when she relents and becomes boringly complaisant."

Thus Lady Johnson found herself at lunch time three Fridays later talking to two new women, one dark, the other fair-haired and a little younger, who were by turns frightened and outraged at being arrested and brought to the camp to be bed companions to senior officers.

"You don't realise who I..." started one of them but Jane cut her short, saying, "I don't want to know who you are, and I'm not here to listen to your protests. I am simply here to explain what will happen in the next twenty-four hours."

Jane went on to explain the naked parade, the cock-sucking, the dinner, the dancing and the night, finishing, "and in the morning, if he is satisfied with you he will serve you breakfast as any gentleman would."

"What if I don't want to do any of that?" asked the younger recruit, "I've never let my husband put his ... thing ... anywhere but the proper place. And I have never let anyone but my husband so much as touch me."

"Well," she said, "there are alternatives. If you make a bloody nuisance of yourself you can be sent to the other camp, in the wooden huts you can see through the window. There you get a small room to yourself and are visited by four or five junior officers a day for an hour or two each. They only feed you if you please all the men, and they have some pretty harsh punishments if you don't. That is where Countess Priscilla Belvedere was sent when she refused to do any of the things asked of her."

"Oh God," said the dark haired woman, "I saw her when she came back from her arrest. She had been gone a fortnight and she wouldn't speak to anyone. She just sits on the floor and cries. The Earl said she won't even lie on a bed in the daytime, let alone sleep in one at night."

"Isn't there any way we can avoid this?" asked the fair one.

"If you asked really nicely and the Colonel were in a good mood, he would return you to your husband tomorrow, but there is a catch," said Jane, inventing a scenario as she spoke.

"Really? But what's the catch?"

"The catch is that someone from the Resistance who lives near you would be arrested and very publicly shot in front of the village population. Then you would be returned in a posh staff car with a high-ranking German officer escorting you and loudly thanking you for all your help. Then a lorry driven by German soldiers, full of food, mostly hard to get items, and fuel would make a delivery to your house."

She paused to let that sink in.

"What would the Resistance think you had done? And what would they do in retaliation? Oh, and you would still have spent tonight being raped, but by common soldiers."

The Colonel was very pleased by the cooperation the two new women offered to their companions.