Chapter 2

I followed the road towards the town of Neukirchen, unsure of where I was going and what I was to do when I got there. Some five or so kilometres on, I came across the deviation the woman told me about - the one that led to the Autobahn to Kiel. On impulse, I took it. I thought it was smart not to follow the route I told the woman back at the cottage. Neither did I want to go to a town just yet. Not until I had figured out a story.

Boggy looking farmland lay all about the route. I trudged along the verge, my ears pricked for sounds of any oncoming vehicle. I thought to bolt into cover rather than face questioning by who knows what. However, there was little cover about unless I elected the open drain at the side of the road. Dark, sludgy water occupied that space, and I had no desire to get soaked through again. Presently, I did hear the sound of a vehicle and I elected to stay put on the road and cast fortune, again, to the wind.

A small, covered truck approached, painted yellow. As it pulled up, I saw ‘ReichPost’ stencilled on the door. The swastika had been painted out in accordance to the dictates of the Allied Control Commission. The little BMW van screeched to a halt beside me and the Postman leant over to wind down the passenger window. I had no idea whether he’d been to the woman’s cottage and, if he had, how much the woman had told him. I tensed up as he called through the window.

“Where are you heading, sir?” he asked in a pleasant voice. He was old, dignified and excessively polite.

“The Autobahn,” I replied.

“But, that is a long way. Are you meeting someone, sir? You will be tired and hungry this way. There is nothing but a few cottages. You should have gone to Neukirchen and caught the bus.”

I was growing tired of Germans telling me what I should or shouldn’t do, no, matter how well-meaning and sensible. “Yes, I told him, I’m meeting someone along the way. He has a car and will take me to Kiel.”

“Ah, I see. I can take you a few kilometres, then I will have to turn off.” With that, he opened the door. With little hesitation, I jumped in. Once mobile again, he started in with the questions. All over Germany, it seems, people will ask questions of you. ‘What is your name, where are you going, when did you last eat?’ the list goes on and on. I explained I was on leave from the RAF and was visiting friends who were staying on a farm back aways. It seems the postman knew everybody in the district, who was staying with who and who was away. I navigated around the conversation, avoiding direct questions requiring tricky answers and changed the topic. I asked him about himself, how long he’d been delivering mail, and such like to divert from his incessant questions. When trapped, I resorted to my old standby - ‘I don’t understand.’

With a merry ‘guten tag’ he dropped me at the turn off and drove away. I was relieved, but satisfied with myself I had given little away that could be verified. I walked on towards the Autobahn, enjoying my own company once again. Who knows what I will next encounter?

The Autobahn in question was the main one from Hamburg to Kiel. There was sure to be a lot of military and civilian traffic. There may be more questions and encounters with authorities. This, I must steel myself for, but, I must have a credible story, I must or all will be curtains for me.

I had time, now to think of a plan. The cottage had rekindled memories of Emily, the British, female driver, who I’d fallen in love with back in Thuringia. Where was she now, I wondered? She would surely have been posted back to England and reunited with her husband. If so, I knew nobody else in the West who I could trust. Perhaps that’s where I should be heading. But, England was a long way from here. It seemed impossible I should travel so far - and across the English Channel - without my true identity being revealed. But, what else was I to do?

Towards evening, I still had not reached the Autobahn. I feared I was lost, when another truck approached. It turned out to be a group of farmworkers going back to their billets and I hopped into the back with them. They were Poles who spoke little German and no English at all. Spying the RAF wings on my breast pocket, they shrugged and talked among themselves. But, Polish is a Slavic language with a lot in common with Russian. Although, I couldn’t speak the language, I could understand most of what they were saying. A thought then came into my head of who I could be.

These last two years, Europe had seen the biggest mass migration of people since at any time in recorded history. It was full of refugees, from the East, prisoners of war heading back home, Germans fleeing the Russians along with Czechs, Poles, Hungarians and sundry other nationalities from countries occupied by Soviet armies. Every town and city in Germany featured camps for displaced people trying to find a place to live and a job to do. That is besides the thousands of people released from concentration camps. I resolved to head to Hamburg and lose myself among the throng of Slavic speakers who must surely be congregated there.

“The English must have a whore out this way,” said one of the Poles to another.

“Perhaps that Magda down near the turnoff?” said someone else.

“Tits like udders who would open her legs for anything with a dick,” said a third worker. “That right, English?” said the man, looking at me, content, I could not understand him.

“Better than your cows, Polish,” I replied, in Russian. There was a stunned silence. All eyes were upon me. I shouldn’t have said anything, let alone in Russian, but I couldn’t help myself. I’d heard enough barrack room humour that it was almost a reflex.

“You know Russian?” said one, in surprise. With that, he burst out laughing, followed closely by his fellows. “How come you know Russian?” asked the man.

“My mother is Russian,” I told the man. “I grew up with the language.” They seemed to accept that and we babbled away in our respective languages until arriving at their lodgings. The Autobahn was just down the road, so I bid goodbye to the Poles and walked down to the turn off.

A sign pointed the way to Hamburg, and I began to walk in that direction. I thought that, in my new guise, the RAF jacket would become a handicap, so I resolved to get rid of it at the earliest opportunity. I was bound to meet British soldiers and officials the closer I got to the city and I had no answer to the awkward questions that were bound to follow. I also had no money. I learned enough from the Poles to know I needed to register myself with the Allied Control Commission office as a ‘displaced person’ before I had any chance of finding legitimate work, earn money and find some lodgings. This was my plan. I had to think up an identity. The Poles told me Russians were returned to the USSR regardless of whether they wanted to go. I could not be Russian, nor an ethnic German expelled from the Soviet Union. My German was simply not good enough. I would need to be an Eastern Pole speaking a dialect similar to that of Ukraine. I thought I could carry that off pretty well as there were many in Rostov who spoke a similar dialect. On my way to Hamburg, I practiced the sounds, the slang and peculiarities I heard among the Ukrainians.

“Przemsyl’ was the town I selected - tucked right down in South Eastern Poland not a stone’s throw from the Ukrainian border. I knew the language, there, was almost indistinguishable from the Ukraine. It would take a very well trained ear to detect the difference. It was tolerably warm, so I tossed the jacket into a culvert by the side of the road. In my dyed overalls, I thought I looked similar to thousands of workers looking for work rebuilding German towns and cities. Towards evening, I jumped into the cab of a lorry heading to Hamburg with a load of wooden bulwarks.

I told the driver I was a Pole looking for work in my halting German. He told me I could help unload his lorry at the depot in the Hafencity for 10 Reich marks. I had no idea of the currency. In the East we used rubles, but it sounded pretty fair. Actually, a Reich mark was now worth next to nothing, but ten was enough to buy me a decent jacket and workmen’s cap. (The ‘Deutsche mark’ wasn’t introduced till a year later in 1948. Till then, The Western part of Germany used the old Reich mark, British pounds or American dollars)

The lorry driver dropped at the ‘Camp for Displaced Persons’ outside Hamburg and a German guard directed me to the registration office. I waited my turn in silence among the throng of persons waiting to receive their card. No-one spoke much, such was the tension in that hall. The camp, itself, consisted of rows of prefabricated huts built on a former parade ground. German police guarded the gate, but the surrounding wire fence didn’t seem to present too much of an obstacle. Otherwise, they told me, I could come and go as I pleased.

My turn came and I fronted up to the desk. A waspish, officious clerk fired questions in terse bursts, while she jotted down items on a form. “Name? Nationality? Birthplace? Mother’s maiden name? Work experience?” and so on. I fired back the answers in the same way they were asked, but the clerk didn’t seem to notice my impertinence. “Hut 16B, your temporary papers, Next?” And that was that. I was Polish, I had a temporary permit to work and live in the British Zone of Occupation. My status would be reviewed in 6 months. I was given a ration card and 5 British pounds with which to buy essentials. There was a store in a Nissen Hut with piles of clothes and personal items provided by the Red Cross. I was given a packet containing chocolate, cigarettes, soap and a towel and sent on my way to find my bunk.

I was quartered at the end of a four double bunk room. In the middle of the room was a table with 8 chairs. I was tired and it was getting on for evening. I selected an apparently unused bunk and turned myself in for the night. I’d barely slept for an hour when I was rudely shaken awake. “Hey, friend, the bunk’s mine,” an ugly voice snapped in Polish. There followed a punch to the small of my back. Slowly I rolled over to confront the bully, an overweight, bald headed man about mid thirties. I did not participate in a war, survive the casual brutality of Soviet instructors, made Captain in the FA-VVS, the principal army air cooperation arm of the Soviet Armed Forces then fly a dozen clandestine missions to be pushed around by a drunken Pole. I straight punched the bastard to the jaw and sent him staggering back and over the table with a crash of falling chairs. I then jumped down, and stood facing his fellows. After a short time, they backed down and turned away.

I had made my point but I didn’t want to have to fight everyday in this wolf pack to establish myself. Something better had to be found. I wasn’t afraid of labouring, but I learned how low paid and exploited they were in this town. Men desperate to feed their families and find shelter will do anything, accept any condition, for a few pounds in the pocket. I was too educated to accept this. There had to be something else that was better paid.

I spoke three languages, two of them well, and my third, German, improving all the time. I have skills, I thought, that must be worth something to the relief agencies who worked among the thousands of refugees. In the Red Cross hut there was a section that dealt with tracing relatives. There was always a crowd waiting and a couple of harried workers who seemed totally overwhelmed by the work load. In the morning after breakfast, I presented myself and asked to see the manager. After an interminable wait the manager beckoned me into the sparse office. He was bespectacled, slight, a Swiss who had the look of a hunted man. I enquired whether he needed an interpreter and he agreed to give me a trial pending putting me on the payroll. It wouldn’t earn much, but better than a labourer’s wage, and there was a chance I could advance into the British administration. They, too, had a dearth of interpreters fluent in Slavic languages.

In any case, it would be a chance to practice the dialect I had selected for myself. I was put to work that afternoon, dealing with a Pole who was trying to trace his brother. There were more of them, Fathers, Mothers, Grandparents, Sisters, Brothers and Children. It seems most every refugee had lost someone in their immediate family after being kicked out of their homes, forced to flee air raids and armies, or simply looking for somewhere they could survive.

While the Articles of the Potsdam Agreement had demanded Russian prisoners of war and ‘guest workers’ of the Nazis be returned to the USSR, only the British seemed to abide by it by spirit and deed. The Americans found various ways to obstruct the practice while the French didn’t abide by it at all. Their zone centred on the Saar and it was widely known that Russians unwilling to be returned to Russia had only to make it through this ‘inner border’ and into the Saar Region. There, plenty of jobs were available in industry for anyone willing to work, no questions asked. I thought about this, but wondered whether I was any safer among my countrymen.They may grow suspicious and uncover my real identity. I don’t imagine French Intelligence would be any more sympathetic to me than the British. A ‘Chekist’ would not win friends among Soviet defectors, I was sure of that. (‘Chekist, ‘ from the Bolshevik ‘Cheka’ secret police, was a generic slang term for anyone working for the GRU, KGB and their predecessors)

I worked there a couple of weeks translating for the Red Cross, when, inevitably I came across the guy I slugged back at the hut. I thought I’d seen the last of him, because he had moved out shortly after. But, he stood before me, insolently staring at the Red Cross worker as I translated for him. He’d come looking for his brother, he said, who had taken part in the Polish Uprising. The last he’d heard of him was that he’d escaped the Nazis to hide in the sewers until the Soviet Army entered the city. After that he’d fled West, he thought, with the remnants of the Home Army. It sounded like a tall order to me - he could’ve wound up dead, or gone anywhere within Europe. If he’d a trade, he could’ve gone South to Frankfurt where, it was said, there was plenty of work and opportunities abroad, in the US and Canada. But, the Red Cross had records and registers and, providing he’d used his own name, it was possible to trace his whereabouts, given time and hard work.

Eventually, the man turned and stared me straight in the eye. “Do they know who you are?” he said, menacingly, in Polish.

“What do you mean?” I asked, with a hint of uncertainty.

“I know a Russian when I hear one. I had plenty of opportunity to listen to your voices when you took over our homes back in ‘39. I worked for your officers or I would’ve been sent East to the camps like so many in our village. What are you hiding from? Do you not want to be sent home to your comrades? Huh?” he smiled. “You are far too strong to have been a prisoner of the Nazis and far healthier than any guest worker I’ve seen. That leaves one of only two remaining possibilities,” he continued. “Either you are a Chekist pig or a deserter. Which one are you?”

“I don’t know...” I started to say when he interrupted, waving a finger from side to side.

“Oh, no, no, no, don’t play games with me. You can save the bullshit for them,” his arm swept around the room. “You know, and I know what you are. Now, the question is, what are we to do about it?”

I stared straight back at this bullish Pole. I didn’t know how to answer. “I don’t know anything about what happened back in ‘39,” I said, eventually. “I was at school.”

“Southern Russia?”

“Rostov,” I told him.

“Ah, yes, I was right,” he said, triumphantly, “and you joined up?”

“Air Force.”

“So, Russian, did your plane crash in Germany or did you fly it to the West? Perhaps you took your chance then realised the British here were sending everybody back to Stalin,” he chuckled.

“I served,” I told the man, coldly, indignantly. “I served my country. I am not a traitor!”

“Well, then, you are either a fool or a Chekist or, maybe, both. You should have kept on running to the French. Now you are trapped, no? The British will still hand you over to Stalin’s men. I tell you, every Pole in the camp would gladly betray you to the British. You should have kept on running. Now you are fucked, no?”

“So, are you going to tell them?” I asked, slumping with defeat. “Have you finished this game and now can you get on with it?”

“I’m curious,” he said. “You are much too proud to be a deserter. I think you are an officer, no? You are a poor spy, so, I think you are unwillingly in the West. You can’t go back or your people will send you off to Siberia. I think you are a serving officer, Russian. You do not shrink from the suggestion, so I think I’m right. We are the same,” he chuckled, ironically. “I cannot go back to my village because it is now part of Russia. You cannot go back home because they will treat you as a traitor. You can’t go to the Saar because your countrymen will find out who you are and betray you. You are trapped like a rat,” he grinned. “Perhaps you want to kill me? You hit hard,” he said, rubbing his jaw, “but, you are not a murderer. You are Air Force and pilots shoot at other planes, or bomb people from high up in the air. They don’t look into the eyes of their enemies, before slitting their throats. No, you are more gentlemanly about the act of killing. For you, you play games in the air with other pilots.”

“And you?” I asked. “Did you serve with the British, perhaps, or maybe stayed behind and joined the Home Army? Perhaps you even joined with Polish regiments fighting with the Soviet Army?” The man sat down in his chair and fell silent. “Neither?” I went on. Something in his eyes disturbed me. I saw sadness and maybe something else. Was it guilt, I asked myself? Why had this man not run to the office already and told them all he’d found out about me. Why the hesitation? “You were Waffen SS,” I told him.

“Correct, Russian, and now we are even,” he replied, slowly. “Can you blame me for wanting to take back my village from you Russians, from the NKVD pigs who swarmed over our fields like locusts, slaughtered the Polish Officers...”

“And you placed yourself among the Nazis who swarmed over the rest?”

“The Germans chased Russians out of our country in ‘41. They slaughtered Bolsheviks all the way to the gates of Moscow, that was enough for me. The SS recruiters came and I joined up, willingly. I am from Eastern Galicia, so, more Ukrainian than Polish, no?” I nodded. “The Poles, they were not willing to fight for the Germans, but Galicians were. I joined the 14th Waffen SS Grenadiers, the 1st Galician.”

“Why do you tell me this?” I asked. “You had the advantage, and now you have betrayed yourself. You have hidden among the Poles these past two years. Why betray yourself, now?”

:”Because you will not tell anyone. You are the only person who I could tell my secret. We have a bond, now, and none of us dare betray the other. You will help me when I ask, I will do the same. I cannot trust anyone else on this Earth and neither can you. We will keep in touch. You will do this because you have no choice. And now, I must leave you to your work among these fools. My brother is dead, tell them that. My former brother lives among the English, these days. He moved there from Italy where the Poles interned the Division. You should go there and look him up? He’s maybe the only other person you can freely trust.”

“Thanks for the advice.” I told him.

“It’s free, Russian,” he smiled, then left.

I asked my co-workers for a break, then left to find a bar. I was shook up, confused and fearful of this new twist. Why had he really told me of his service among the Nazis? He had kept the secret for two years and was smart enough to fool his countrymen. Perhaps it was nothing more than a confession, as a Catholic might do at his church? He needed to get it off his chest to the only person he knew couldn’t betray him. I needed to get out of here, I thought, Move on and away from this crazy Galician. I had an identity card, now, from the British Authorities. That must be also currency in other areas - in France, perhaps, or England? I must get out before the Galician starts raving in a bar somewhere and shoots me down. Tonight, I must grab my gear and head West - to come what may.

I finished my shift and headed back to my hut in the compound. I packed up quickly, walked to the gate and waved to the policeman on duty. I moved among the shadows of that city, still with bomb sites and piles of rubble left over from the war. I crossed the river and set off down the road, out of the city. I hitched a lift with a tanker heading for Bremen on the river Weser. It was a major port and I thought about stowing away on a ship, somewhere, to America, or, perhaps Britain? I was heady with a new adventure. These places were all new to me - a fantasy that I could never experience as a Soviet citizen and a serving officer in the VVS. But as a ‘Polish displaced person’ the possibilities seemed beyond the imagination.

Bremen was administered by the Americans as their port from where their soldiers embark back to the states and aid and supplies shipped in. The British and Americans co-operate by means of the ‘Bizone’, so, there were no checkpoints and my money was good. US military personnel were everywhere and the port seemed to have been revitalised with their money and patronage. Shops were brimful of goods, rebuilding taking place everywhere - in a town pretty well levelled from Allied bombing. There was a shortage of labour and good wages were on offer paid in American dollars. I exchanged my British pounds for US currency with a local tout. The black market abounded, and, it seemed, every shady character in Germany had made their way here to take advantage.

I found myself an American bar. I’ve learned this was the best place to find contacts who could help me find a place, and meet new friends. In the middle of the day it wasn’t busy, so I bought myself a beer and found a table in the corner where I could watch the comings and goings. A brunette woman was sitting on a bar stool, looking about her in the same way I was doing. I think her motive was commerce, however, as were all single women in an American bar at any given time of the day in this town. I imagined during the war she would probably have been doing the same thing with a bar full of U-Boat crews. How little some things change, I thought to myself, regardless of what regime gave the orders or set the rules. The market seemed slow at the moment and it wasn’t long before she was looking in my direction. Presently, she came over and stood before me.