David Gibbins - The Mask of Troy

Lewes came to a halt and switched off the engine. Mayne jumped out and strode briskly towards a group of officers. A man saw him and detached himself from the group. He was wearing rubber boots and off-white dungarees over his battledress. He was of average height, and had pasty skin and a shock of blond hair. ‘Are you Major Mayne?’ He had a Scottish accent, and seemed terribly young. Mayne nodded. The man looked relieved. ‘Good. I’m in medical charge. I’m supposed to take you in.’ He turned and watched the medical lorry draw up behind them, then pursed his lips and called back to the group of officers. ‘Captain Hamilton. You’ll have to block out the red cross on that lorry before it goes any further.’ He turned to Mayne. ‘I’m ready. We have to go now. The lorry can follow us.’

Mayne gestured at Lewes, who had lit up a cigarette beside the jeep. Lewes nodded, carefully stubbed his cigarette butt and pocketed it, then climbed back inside again and fired up the ignition. Mayne turned to the man before getting in. ‘How big’s your team?’

‘Three nurses from an army casualty clearance unit, and six civilians from the UN Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. We arrived yesterday afternoon. Have you heard of the other camp, up the road? A place called Belsen. That was liberated yesterday too. We’re all they could spare. At Belsen there are tens of thousands. Here, there are maybe two and a half thousand, about four hundred still alive. It’ll be half that by tomorrow morning. My name’s Cameron, by the way.’

‘ Two and a half thousand? You mean people?’

‘Ever been into one of these places before?’

‘Not like this.’

‘Two days ago I was a final-year medical student at Guy’s Hospital in London. The call came for volunteers and we were flown out immediately. I’ve discovered that two days can be a long time in war.’

Mayne said nothing, but sat back in the jeep. For the first time he allowed himself to think properly about where they were going. The empty feeling came back in the pit of his stomach. Cameron swung into the rear seat beside Stein, who nodded at him. Lewes gasped, his nose crinkled up. ‘Blimey. What’s that stink?’

Cameron looked up. ‘That’ll be me, I’m afraid. On my clothes. In my hair. I can’t smell it any more.’

‘Lord above.’ Stein turned away, a hand on his face. ‘What is it?’

‘Faeces, rotting flesh, burning rags, unwashed bodies. Sweat, old sweat. That’s the warm, sour, acrid smell.’

Mayne glanced at Lewes. ‘Time we got some air flow.’

‘Sir.’ Lewes released the clutch and the jeep jumped forward down the narrow paved lane towards the trees. The smell coming off Cameron disappeared briefly, but soon the air was full of it, a terrible stench billowing out of the place ahead of them. Mayne peered at the greyness above the trees again, and could see wisps of smoke. He had been right. There was a fire, and they were getting closer to it. He swallowed hard and twisted back to Cameron. ‘Why blot out the Red Cross symbol on the truck?’

‘It terrifies them. The people here. The SS doctors and nurses wore it when they carried out medical experiments. And they used it to delude the new arrivals that they were going for medical checkups when they got off the train at the camps. In reality they were being sent to the gas chambers.’

‘Gas chambers?

‘Do you remember the Soviet accounts of Majdanek, the camp in Poland they liberated last year?’

‘Colonel Stein and I were just talking about it.’

Cameron paused. ‘Most of the Jews here came from a place called Auschwitz. They’ve got a number tattooed on their wrists. They were force-marched west as the Russians advanced through Poland. What seems to have saved them from the gas chambers was the Allied bombing of Dresden. They were going to be used as work parties to clear the ruins. But as the Nazi machinery crumbled they were pushed into existing slave labour camps out here and abandoned. Some of the camps were Konzentrazionelager, like Belsen. Others were satellite camps, Arbeitslager. That’s what this one seems to be, some kind of forestry labour camp, originally using Soviet prisoners of war. What you’re about to see amounts to mass murder, nothing less, a horrible crime against humanity. But this place was not an extermination camp. Unless, that is, you count the daily summary executions, the medical experiments and all forms of bestiality meted out by the SS guards on these people.’

‘How on earth did they survive the other place, Auschwitz?’

‘They all talk about the end of the train track, the railhead. Some kind of selection took place. It’s as if everything after that is expunged from their memory. But the people who survived it had been selected as slave labour, living in a camp next to the gas chambers. Armaments, munitions, you name it. Some of them worked underground, in a salt mine converted to an aero engine assembly plant. It sounds like Dante’s inferno. A pit of hell. But not as bad as the hell above ground. It must have been a huge camp. And the gas chambers. We’re talking hundreds of thousands murdered, more. Men, women, children. And not just at Auschwitz. There were more of those places. They called them Todesmuhlen.’

‘Death mills,’ Stein murmured. ‘My God.’

‘What you’re about to see…’ Cameron looked down. ‘It’s like. ..’ He paused, struggling for words. ‘It’s as if Europe has been struck by a gigantic meteorite. I mean the Jews. What we see here, what we’ll only ever see, is like the residue round the edges of an impact crater, the detritus blown out of the middle. Everything else is pulverized, destroyed without trace.’

Mayne tried to keep focused. ‘In the camp. This one. Where we’re going. What’s the drill?’

‘Our priority is to treat them with DDT, to kill lice. The lice carry typhus. We spray and scrub them, in a kind of human laundry. The next stage is a makeshift hospital. The huts are too filthy, indescribable. We’re going to burn them. The Red Cross lorry should contain army tents and folding beds.’

‘You’ll set them up out here, away from the camp?’

Cameron shook his head. ‘Unless we’re ordered to evacuate, everyone stays inside. The horrible truth is that we can’t release these people. The risk of spreading typhus is too great. Already some of the healthier ones have escaped and are living rough in the forest. We need to get them all back and disinfect them.’

‘What about food?’

‘The first troops in here yesterday gave them everything they had. Standard British army compo rations, greasy pork in tins. Virtually inedible at the best of times. The soldiers watered it down into a kind of soup. It was well-meaning, but for some of the inmates it just brought on diarrhoea that killed them within hours. One thing that did work was tea. We’re brewing it by the gallon. The lorry’s also bringing sacks of Bengal famine mixture – sugar, dried milk, flour, salt, water. But for many it’ll be too late. Even the healthier ones, the small number who can take solids, are a problem. They keep half their food and hide it. It’ll just rot, and cause another health hazard. They simply can’t believe they’re being fed. They’re hoarding it for when the guards return and the nightmare resumes. I shouldn’t say it, but they’re like animals, hiding food and squabbling over it. There’s no morality here. It’s far beyond that. This is war, my friend. Not on the battlefield, but here. This is what war does.’ He covered his eyes with one hand. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said hoarsely. ‘This is the first time I’ve actually tried to describe it.’

Howard gestured back at the Red Cross lorry, now trundling along the lane behind them. ‘And medicine?’