Five Past Midnight - James Thayer [5]
Lieutenant Heydekampf was the camp's Lageroffizier (camp officer) , senior to all guards but the commandant. He had lost his left arm in the Great War. The left sleeve of his coat was tucked into his belt. He spoke English well, learned on the job. He was a kindly man who tolerated no cruelty by the guards toward the prisoners.
Standing at sluggish attention, the British POWs were in five-by- five rows. The senior allied officer, RAF Group Captain Ian Hornsby, stood at the front center. The Americans were in the northernmost group, nearest the chapel. Twenty-two guards were in the yard, and more on the catwalks and towers.
Captain David Davis of the Royal Ulster Rifles smiled evilly then drew a finger across his throat in an exaggerated motion. Not once since D-Day had Davis been addressed by a German guard without responding with the slashing pantomime. Earlier in the war Davis would have been sent to the cooler for five days for such insubordination. Now Lieutenant Heydekampf bit down and turned away. An endless topic of conversation in the guards' mess was their fate when the Americans or Russians—pray God it would be the Americans—overran the camp. Surely the POWs would not slit their throats once the guards threw down their rifles. But, just in case, none of the guards was going to be anywhere near Captain Davis on that day.
Or anywhere near the nameless American who always lined up during the roll call in the back row, staring straight ahead, chewing rapidly on nothing. The American was captured six months ago, dressed in a U.S. Army Air Force uniform. He had refused to divulge his name or rank to his interrogators at Dulag Luft, the airmen's reception camp at Oberursel. At Dulag Luft, he had defeated sophisticated interrogation techniques by simply saying nothing, not one word to the interrogator. Instead, after three hours of questioning, the American had reached across the desk to grab the interrogator by the lapels, used him as a battering ram to break open the interrogation room's door, then sprinted across the campground toward a command car, dragging the hapless interrogator along as a shield. The escape attempt had been foiled by a sentry who had shot the American in the leg, a poor marksman, as he was aiming for his back. After the American had recovered in the camp hospital, he was shipped in manacles to the castle.
None of the guards believed the American to be a flyer. He lacked the airmen's camaraderie and high spirits, unmistakable among flyers even in the meager conditions at the castle. There was a ruggedness about him, and a recklessness that bordered on indifference to his own safety. The American had attempted six escapes from Colditz, one a month since his arrival, receiving twenty-one days in a solitary-confinement cell each time. He was either escaping or serving time for it.
Still out of sight behind the walls of the prison, the Mitchell bomber drew closer. Its damaged engine drummed unevenly, fluttered, then quit altogether. One engine continued to thunder. Some POWs cocked their ears to better pick up the sound. They could tell the plane was on a northwesterly course. Perhaps its target had been the Leuna synthetic oil plant near Leipzig.
Several intoned silent prayers. Others whispered, "Come on, old fellow," and, "You'll make it, friend."
"Silence there," Heydekampf ordered. "Back to attention." But he, too, turned to glance over the roof of the castle, searching for the plane.
Because they were in a forty-yard-square courtyard surrounded by five-story walls, the guards and POWs would not see the plane unless it passed directly overhead. The bomber sounded like it might oblige. Near the passage to the German yard the camp commandant, Colonel Erich Janssen, also stared into the sky. He monitored the roll calls but let Hey- dekampf do the work, and seldom said anything, merely nodding when Heydekampf gave him the completed roster at the end of the roll call. The sound of the failing bomber grew louder.
Built on a high promontory