Slavomir Rawicz - The Long Walk

Exhausted, walking skeletons of men that we were, we knew now for the first time peace of mind. It was now that we lost, at last, the fear of recapture.

They came from the west, a little knot of marching men, and as they came closer I saw there were six native soldiers with an N.C.O. in charge. I wanted to wave my hands and shout, but I just stood there with the other three watching them come. They were very smart, very clean, very fit, very military. My eyes began to fill and the tears brimmed over.

Smith stepped forward and stuck out his hand.

‘We are very glad to see you,’ he said.

IT WAS HARD to comprehend that this was the end of it all. I leaned my weight forward on my stick and tried to blink my eyes clear. I felt weak and lightheaded like a man in a fever. My knees trembled with weakness and it required real effort to prevent myself slumping down on the ground. Zaro, too, was hunched over his stick, and one of Kolemenos’s great arms was drooped lightly about his shoulders. The rough, scrubby country danced in the haze of a warm noon sun. The soldiers, halted but five yards from us, were a compact knot of men in tropical shorts and shirts swimming in and out of my vision.

I dropped my head forward on my chest and heard the voice of Mister Smith. He talked in English, which I did not understand, but there was no mistaking the urgency in the tone. It went on for several minutes. I flexed my knees to stop their trembling.

The American came over to us, his face smiling. ‘Gentlemen, we are safe.’ And because we remained unmoving and silent, he said again in Russian, very slowly, ‘Gentlemen, we are safe.’

Zaro shouted and the sound startled me. He threw down his stick and yelled, his arms above his head and fingers extended. He threw his arms about the American and Smith had to hold him tight to prevent his running over to the patrol and kissing each man individually.

‘Come away, Eugene,’ he shouted. ‘Come away from them, I have told them we are filthy with lice.’

Zaro started to laugh and jig inside the restraining arms. Then he had the American going round with him in a crazy, hopping polka, and they were both laughing and crying at the same time. I do not remember starting to dance but there we were, the four of us, stamping round, kicking up the dust, hugging one another, laughing hysterically through the blur of tears, until we collapsed one by one on the ground.

Kolemenos lay sprawled out repeating softly to himself the American’s words. ‘We are safe… we are safe…’

The American said, ‘We shall be able to live again.’

I thought a little about that. It sounded a wonderful thing to say. All that misery, all that sorrow, the hardship of a whole year afoot, so that we might live again.

We learned from Mister Smith that this was a patrol on exercise which would take us, if we were not too weak to march, a few miles to the nearest rough road where they had a rendezvous with a military truck from their main unit. He had told them that we had come so far a few more miles would not kill us. With the main unit there would be real food.

The patrol produced groundsheets from their packs and rigged up a shelter from the sun. We lay beneath it resting for about an hour. My head throbbed and I felt a little sick. We were handed a packet of cigarettes and some matches. Even more than food just then I wanted to smoke. To handle so ordinary a civilized commodity as a box of matches gave me a warm thrill. The smoke itself was bliss. From somewhere came a big tin of peaches, ready opened, and we dug our fingers in, stuffed them in our mouths and crushed the exquisite juice and pulp from them. We drank water from Army water-bottles and were ready to go.

It seemed to me that none of us could have recalled details of that cross-country trek. The patrol adjusted its pace to our weary shamble and it must have taken about five hours to cover ten miles. Zaro marched with me and we buoyed ourselves up with the pretence that we were getting along at a swinging military pace.

‘The heroes’ return,’ Zaro grinned. ‘All we need now is a band to lead us.’

The altogether delightful quality of everything that happened to us at the end of the march was that it required no resolution or decision from us. There was a bumping ride by lorry at that breakneck speed which is the hallmark of Army driving anywhere in the world. We were as thrilled as schoolboys with the trip — our first on wheels since we left the Russian train at Irkutsk eighteen months ago. We were in process of being gathered up and looked after, told what to do, tended, and later, even cosseted. The British took over completely.

I never found out exactly where we were. At that time I did not care. Any guess I might make from perusal of maps could be hundreds of miles out. Smith must have found out, but if he ever told me, the information did not register. I hugged to myself only the great revelation that this was India.

The young British Lieutenant who watched us ease ourselves down over the lorry tailboard was amazingly clean, spruce and well-shaven. I observed him as the American told him our story. His expression as he stood listening in the shade of the trees at the small roadside encampment was incredulous. His eyes kept wandering from Smith to us. He was trying to understand. He put several questions, nodding his head slowly at each answer. I thought how young he looked. Yet, he was about my own age.

The American told us, ‘He believes me now. He says he will make arrangements for us to be deloused and cleaned up here because he can’t take us back to base in this condition. He says he will have to isolate us from his troops until this is done but that we will be well fed and cared for. He says we need not worry.’

That night we were given a hot meal that ended with stewed fruit and steamed pudding. I had my first experience of hot, strong, tinned-milk Army tea, lavishly sweetened. We were given cigarettes. We were given first-aid treatment for our torn and bruised feet. And that night we slept secure, wrapped in Army blankets, in a tent.

The novelty, the bustle and the excitement of it all kept me going. There was no time for me to stand still and discover how near to collapse I was. Breakfast the next day absorbed my attention — more tea, corned beef, Australian cheese and butter from tins, unbelievably white bread, tinned bacon rashers and marmalade.

The delousing was a thorough affair. We stripped off all our clothes — the sheepskin surcoats, fufaikas, fur waistcoats, caps, masks, padded trousers, sacks and skin gaiters — and piled them in the open. The blankets we had slept in were thrown on top of the heap. Head and body hair was shorn off, bundled and thrust among the clothes. Over the lot they poured petrol and suddenly it erupted into a roaring bonfire, billowing black smoke into the sunny, clear air. Everything went, consumed in flame.

Kolemenos said, ‘I hope those bloody lice die hard. They have had a good time at my expense.’

I turned to him and he to me. Then we were all exchanging looks and the laughter bubbling out of us. We had realized we were seeing one another for the first time — really seeing for the very first time the lines, the set of the mouth, the angle of the chin and the character of the faces of men who for twelve months and four thousand miles had shared the wretched struggle for survival. It seemed the most comical thing that had ever happened to us. I had never thought of what might lie beneath the matted hair, and neither, I suppose, had they. It was like the midnight revelation from some fantastically-prolonged masked ball.

‘Why, Zaro,’ I said, ‘you are a good-looking man.’