Mindful Survival

MINDFUL SURVIVAL 

By Wendy N. Cohen

The young soldier arched his back and ran his hands over his ribs once again. Damn, they sure were pronounced. If he got any skinnier, he would start looking like the Jews in the camp who had been there since the beginning of the war. Their whole torsos were just a mass of ribs. He felt his chest and was reassured by a layer of fat that still lay on his breast bone.

He thought back to the skeleton that had stood in his science classroom in high school two years ago in Warwickshire. Its strange leering mouth and the almost jaunty angle of its hips had often led him to muse about its past life. He remembered, one occasion, in particular, when his mind had wandered during an awkward presentation on human reproduction that the science teacher was muddling through. Growing up on a farm, he had seen plenty of animals coupling, as had most of his classmates. He did not feel the need to listen.

Instead, he had imagined the skeleton as a young man in Coventry, a city Horace knew well from his many visits to his grandmother and uncle. In point of fact, the young man in his imaginings had looked a bit like an older version of Horace, with sandy blond hair and piercing blue eyes. This older version of himself had a beautiful woman on his arm, and they had been walking along the street to a restaurant when the woman’s skirt had flared in the wind. 

Horace had let out an ill-timed chortle.

 “Horace, is there something you would like to share with the class?” Mr. Tibman had asked pointedly.

             “No, sir. Sorry.”  

Horace remembered feeling the heat rise to his face as his classmates turned to look at him, surprised at the outburst, given that he was usually a quiet, unassuming student. To make matters worse, apparently he had interrupted a particularly sensitive moment in the lecture on human reproduction.

             Horace, turned over on his cot, and felt his lips turn up as he imagined what might have happened if he had shared with his classmates and teacher what he had really been thinking about. 

             “A nice memory?” Horace opened his eyes and nodded to one of the older men of the camp, a Jewish prisoner named Konstanty, who occupied the cot beside him. The man was one of the real walking skeletons that peopled his days now, with patchy gray hair and only a few teeth left. His skin had scaly red blotches where he had burnt in the sun, and an old scar ran from his ear to his chin mirroring Horace’s more recent one. 

             Horace nodded a reply.

             Horace remembered his first encounter with Konstanty several days after he had arrived at the camp. They had just returned to the barracks from a full day of hard labor and the watery soup that served as their dinner.

             “Gobsmacked,” Horace had said to no one in particular as he eased himself onto his cot.

             “Yes, it is rather unbelievable the situation we are in,” had come from the cot across from his. Horace had stared in astonishment at the Polish old man. He had assumed that there was no one who spoke more than a few words of English at the camp. This man’s English was almost accentless. It was such a welcome sound that tears had sprung to his eyes.

             Noting the surprise on his face, Konstanty had continued. “I spent several years in your lovely country as a medical student.”

             “Did you ever get to Warwickshire?” Horace had asked eagerly

             “No, but I did get to Watlington and Aylesbury. Beautiful places.”

             Horace had felt a wave of homesickness overtake him as the names rolled off Konstanty’s tongue. Embarrassed by his emotion, he had quickly changed the subject.

             “And how did you get your scar?” he had asked, pointing.

             “Ah. That was defending my homeland, Poland, in World War I. The same homeland that spit me out and sent me here,” Konstanty had said with a strained laugh. Horace remembered the tinge of bitterness in Konstanty’s voice, the first---and last---time he ever heard that from this man.

Now, Horace eyed the entrance to the barracks and saw that the day was overcast. This would help during the hours of digging. He could hear the rest of the prisoners starting to get up. 

And then he heard an unfamiliar sound--- the rumbling of several cars passing the barracks on the way to the main office. A motorcade could mean only one thing: important visitors.

“Good news or bad news?” Konstanty asked with a wink.

“I don’t know, but I aim to find out.”

Horace threw his skinny legs over the side of the bed and looked out the open doorway. Six large black Mercedes Benz were snaking their way up what served as a driveway. Not waiting to grab a shirt, he ran to the barbwire fence. He wanted to see these Nazi bastards.

It had been the Nazi bombing of Coventry, only a few miles from his family’s farm, that had motivated him to volunteer in the British Home Guard at age 17, before he had even finished high school. The sight of the Coventry Cathedral in ruins, his uncle’s anguish over the demolished factory where he had worked for twenty years, and, finally, the destruction of his grandmother’s home had woken him from his insulated life on the farm. Although no family members had been killed or injured, the indiscriminate bombing of the city he loved had deeply affected Horace.

Then, at age 18, he had been drafted. He had volunteered twice for special missions. The first time he had been lucky. Two of the men on his crew had been killed. He had escaped with only a scar on his right cheek where a bullet had grazed him. This second time he had not been so lucky. 

His captain had ordered the men to stay low to the ground as they approached the target: A Nazi outpost that they had been tasked with destroying. Horace had followed orders and crept forward slowly, hunched over like a large beetle, the grenade in his hand ready to launch on command. 

“Wer geht da hin?” a deep German voice had called out in the darkness. Somewhere in the distance Horace had heard a dog bark and then the rustling of bushes. Horace had instinctively flattened himself to the ground and lain still, his pounding heart echoing loudly in his own ears. And then a flashlight had blinded him and rough hands had dragged him to his feet. 

He had been ambushed by a returning patrol. The grenade had fallen uselessly to the ground, pin intact, as Horace’s hands were tied painfully behind his back. He heard several soldiers crashing through the woods, more shouts in German, and two shots followed by heavy thuds: once again, the other two chosen for the same mission, gone. He had seen his captain struggling with his captors, cursing and thrashing, as he was dragged out of the woods. And then, as a bag was put over his head, he had heard the report of a pistol, and the captain had gone quiet. Horace had offered no resistance.

In the two months he had been at the camp, he had woken up several times during the night shouting loudly, caught in a replay of his capture. Only this time he was shouting to warn the captain and his fellow soldiers. In his dream, his warning enabled them to overtake the Germans and bring them back to the English army camp as prisoners of war. 

Konstanty had shaken him awake each time, fearing that Horace’s loud shouts in the middle of the night would bring on the wrath of the guards. Their fellow prisoners were too weak to protest much beyond some moans and general griping.

The third time it had happened, Konstanty had asked Horace the next morning about his dreams. His kindly voice and the note of concern had caused Horace to confess to his recurring fantasy. 

“You have a lively imagination,” had been Konstanty’s only comment. He had shaken his head and flashed a gap-filled grin. 

In reality, the German soldiers had held Horace captive overnight. By the next morning, he had been on a truck to the labor camp.  

After hours over rough roads, he had been glad to disembark. The sight that had met his eyes, however, had made him cringe back into the truck. His first thought had been “run,” but the presence of several armed guards had kept him in place. He had allowed himself to be prodded along the endless barbwire fence to a building where he had been officially registered as a prisoner of war. 

He had noticed that the land all around was packed dirt, though he had caught a glimpse of a forest about a kilometer away. Everything was covered with a layer of dust, even the people---if you could call them that: faces that went well beyond gaunt, with protruding teeth and eyeballs, and limbs like the legs of insects he had played with as a child. The prisoners here were barely clinging to life. 

And he had never gotten over his initial reaction to them, these people who, like his captors, spoke in the barking cadence of the German he had been trained to abhor. Even the occasional heavily accented English directed at him put him on edge. He was not like these people. He was an Englishman. He didn’t belong here. 

All the prisoners by now were lining up along the barbwire to see the visiting dignitaries. Horace squeezed in to a place right at the wires next to a tall post. A murmur was going through the crowd. This was Commandant Himmler himself visiting the camp.

Horace watched Himmler and the other German officers approach. He was taken aback by Himmler’s diminutive size and the scholarly glasses he wore. The man looked more like a librarian or college professor than Adolph Hitler’s right hand man. 

Just as he came abreast of where Horace was standing, Himmler suddenly turned and looked directly at him. Horace met his gaze, willing himself to not look away first. He was struck by the emptiness of the eyes that stared at him. The commandant seemed to be looking right through him, as if he didn’t even exist, or worse, didn’t even matter. The camp suddenly got eerily quiet, as if waiting for someone to say something. But nothing was said. The moment passed, and Himmler and his officers continued the walk to the main building. 

At that moment, Horace felt something give inside him. If two months here had reduced him to his current condition, how much longer could he last? He turned from the fence, shoulders slumped, eager to get back to the privacy of the barracks before the hot tears ran down his face. 

Heavy sobs wracked his skinny body as he lay on his bunk. Suddenly, he felt a bony hand on his back and turned to see Konstanty. 

Horace had been watching Konstanty on his work crew ever since he had arrived. Though clearly older than the other prisoners, every day he managed to join the others for the relentless digging and heavy lifting that were part of the never ending Nazi building projects. Horace had seen Konstanty struggle to keep up, yet continue to work hard day after day. And he was the one often encouraging others.

“How do you do it?” he asked the frail skeleton sitting on his bunk.

Konstanty caught his meaning instantly. He looked at Horace with his rheumy eyes. “Try imagining ahead,” was the raspy reply.

Just then the loudspeakers blared with the order to morning roll call. Horace nodded to the old man and they left the barracks together, taking their places next to the others, all desperately trying to look beyond the barbed wire, most to homelands that no longer existed for them.