John Katzenbach: Hart’s War

"It's not the time it keeps," Tommy said in reply.

"It's the time it promises."

Bedford laughed out loud.

"Man, what you mean by that?"

The southerner smiled again.

"Suppose I fix it so you gets to see those limey friends of yours whenever you want? I can do that. Suppose you start getting an extra parcel each week?

I can make that happen, too. What you need. Hart? Food?

Some warm clothes? Maybe books? Even a radio. I can get you one. A good one, too. Then you be able to listen to the truth and not have to rely on all the scuttlebutt and rumor that floats around this place.

You jus' got to name your price."

"Not for sale."

"Damn." Bedford stood up, finally irritated.

"Y'all ain't got no idea what I can get with a watch like that."

"Sorry," Tommy replied briskly.

Bedford seemed to snarl for a moment, then replaced the look of angry frustration with another grin.

"Time will come, lawyer man. And you'll end up needing to take less than you're offered here today. Ought to know when a trade is ripe.

Don't want to be making no trades when you truly need something'.

Always get the short end, then."

"No deals. Not today. Not tomorrow. Be seeing you. Vic."

Bedford shrugged, with an exaggerated motion. He seemed about to say something else, when both men heard the shrill whistle of the afternoon

Appell. Ferrets materialized by each block of huts, shouting "Raus!

Raus!" and men began to emerge from the buildings, slowly making their way to the parade ground.

Tommy Hart ducked back inside Hut 101 and replaced the legal text on the shelf. Then he joined the flow of men shuffling through the afternoon sun toward the assembly.

As always, they gathered in rows five deep.

The ferrets counted, walking up and down the rows, trying to make certain no one was missing. It was a tedious process, one the Germans seemed to accept with dedication. Tommy could never understand how it was that they weren't bored senseless by the twice-daily exercise in simple mathematics.

Of course, he conceded inwardly that on a day that two men died in a tunnel, the ferret who missed a count would very likely find himself on a troop train bound for the eastern front. So the guards were being cautious and precise, even more so than their usual cautious and precise natures ordinarily allowed for.

When the count was satisfactorily accomplished, the ferrets returned to the front of the formations, reporting to the Unteroffizier assigned to that day's task. He would, in turn, report to the commandant. Von Reiter did not attend every Appell.

But in order for the men to be dismissed, he had to give the order. The kriegies found this extra wait wildly irritating, as the Unteroffizier disappeared through the front gate, heading toward Von Reiter's office.

The delay this afternoon seemed lengthy.

Tommy stole a glance down the formation. He noticed that Vincent Bedford was at attention two spaces away. He looked back to the front, and saw that the Unteroffizier had returned and was speaking with SAO MacNamara. Tommy could just make out a look of concern on the face of the colonel, then MacNamara did an abrupt turn and marched out the gate with the German, disappearing into the commandant's office.

It was ten minutes before MacNamara reappeared. He strode swiftly back to the head of the formations of airmen.

But then he seemed to hesitate for an instant before speaking out, in a large, parade ground voice: "New prisoner coming in!"

MacNamara paused again, as if he wished to add something.

But the kriegies' attention swung quickly in that momentary delay, to where a single U.S. flier, flanked on either side by goons with rifles, was emerging from the commandant's office. The flier was tall, a half foot taller than either of the guards accompanying him, trim, wearing the sheepskin jacket and soft helmet of a fighter pilot. He marched forward rapidly, his leather flight boots kicking up small puffs of dust from the earth, coming to attention in front of Colonel MacNamara, where the flier snapped off a salute that seemed creased, it was so sharp.

The kriegies were silent, staring ahead.

The only sound Tommy Hart heard, in those seconds, was the unmistakable drawl of the Mississippian, whose every word was filled with undeniable astonishment:

"I'll be goddamned…" Vincent Bedford said loudly.

"It's a damn nigger!"

The arrival of First Lieutenant Lincoln Scott at Stalag Luft Thirteen galvanized the kriegies. For nearly a week, he replaced Freedom and the War as the primary topic of conversation.

Few of the men had had any inkling that black pilots were being trained by the U.S. Army Air Force at Tuskegee, Alabama, and fewer still were aware that they'd begun fighting over Europe late in 1943. Some of the later camp arrivals, B-17 pilots and crew mainly, told of flights of shining, metallic P-51 fighters diving through their formations in pursuit of desperate Messerschmidts, and how the 332nd fighter wing wore distinctive red and black chevrons painted on their tail rudders.

The men from these bombers had had the luxury of some experience in their acceptance of the men from the 332nd; as they pointed out in debate after debate, it really didn't make much difference to them who it was or what color they were, as long as the fighters drove off the attacking 109s, because being chopped apart by the twin twenty-millimeter cannons mounted in the stubby Messerschmidt's wings and dying in a flaming B-17 was an ugly, frightening business. But there weren't many of these crewmen in the camp, and there was still widespread disagreement among the kriegies as to whether any black man had the required intelligence, physical ability, and the necessary heart to fly warplanes.

Scott himself seemed unaware that his presence stirred loud and sometimes contentious arguments. On the evening he arrived in the camp, he had been assigned to the bunk in Hut 101 that had been occupied by the dead clarinet-playing tunneler. He had greeted the other men in the room in a perfunctory manner, stowed what few belongings he had with him beneath the bed, then crawled into his space and remained quiet for the remainder of the night.

He told no warrior's tales.

Nor did he volunteer information about himself. How he'd been shot down remained unknown, as did his hometown, his background, and his life. Over his first few days in the bag, a few kriegies made efforts to engage him in conversation, but Scott politely and firmly rebuffed each attempt. At mealtimes, he fashioned simple spreads from his allotted Red Cross parcels. He did not invite anyone to share with him, nor did he ask anyone to share from their parcels. What he received he used, alone. He did not join in camp conversations, nor did he sign up for classes, courses, or activities. On his second day at Stalag Luft Thirteen he obtained from the camp library a ripped and worn copy of Gibbons The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and from the YMCA he accepted a Bible, both of which he read silently, sitting outdoors in the sunshine, back against the hut, or on his bed, bent toward one of the windows, searching for the weak light that filtered past the grime-streaked glass and wooden shutters into the room.

He seemed, to the other kriegies, mysterious. They were surprised by Scott's stand-offishness Some found arrogance in his aloofness, which translated into a number of thinly veiled cracks. Others merely found his solitude unsettling.

All the men, even those like Tommy Hart who might have been seen as loners, relied on and needed each other, if only to reassure themselves that they weren't alone in the world of confinement that was Stalag Luft Thirteen. The camp created the oddest of psychological states: They were not criminals, but they were in prison. Without each other's support and constant reminders that they belonged to a different life, they would be adrift.