Five Past Midnight - James Thayer [8]
The blankets were lifted. Lieutenant Heydekampf s clothes had become charred shreds. The hair on the left side of his head was scorched. His neck and wrist and calves were raw. The soles of his boots had been burned off.
The crowd around them grew larger. The American rolled to his knees. Smoke wafted from his blackened jacket and pants. His right ear was singed and his right arm would require salve. His eyebrows had been burned almost to the skin.
Lieutenant Heydekampf opened his eyes. Through heat-blistered lips he gasped, "You!" He coughed roughly and panted for breath. "I thought you were the devil."
The American grinned and spoke to a German guard for the first time since his capture. "I've been called that before."
3
THE AMERICAN scraped a rusty nail with a fingernail file. The filings dropped to a tiny red pile on a copy of the Overseas Kid, the German propaganda newspaper for POWs, used mainly for toilet paper. The American worked rhythmically until the nail shone like new.
Next he began filing a piece of charcoal. A cone of shavings grew on the paper. Also on the table was a tin marked NUR FÜR KRIEGSGEFAN- GENE (FOR POWs ONLY), a grainyjam distilled from sugar beets. Leaning against the wall was a baseball bat he had carved from a pole stolen from the castle shop.
He was on the first floor of the British ward. At his elbow was dinner: one-seventh of a loaf of black bread and three small potatoes. At the stove near the door Lieutenant Reginald Burke of the Royal Tank Regiment was stirring tomcat stew, a catchall for anything available that day.
"Are yours in, Yank?" Burke called from the stove.
The American threw him the three potatoes. Burke sliced them, letting the wedges drop into the kettle. The stew also contained a handful of barley and kohlrabi, a plant resembling a turnip. He tossed in a pinch of salt. Pepper was not issued because a POW who was attempting escape had once thrown it into a guard's eyes. Tomcat stew was inedible to anyone but the starving.
The POWs knew the American as John, and they knew it was a pseudonym adopted to protect his life, for reasons they could only guess. The American had told only the senior allied officer his true name.
Burke was a Londoner, with hooded eyes and ears that stuck out at ninety degrees from his head. The turret of his Churchill tank had been on fire when he fled through the hatch, and the burn scar on his neck resembled purple crepe. He lifted a pot from the stove, then moved to the table to fill the American's cup. The ersatz coffee smelled like a wet dog.
Two other kriegies were lying on their bunk beds, weak from pneumonia and dysentery. The Colditz infirmary was full. The American opened a D-bar from a Red Cross parcel. He cut the chocolate into fourths. Then with his spoon he gathered the crumbs that had fallen from the bar while he quartered it. He placed these atop the chocolate pieces, careful to apportion the crumbs evenly.
Burke ladled stew into a bowl. "This is as ready as it'll ever be."
The American rose from the table to take a bowl and cup from Burke. He carried them to a bunk where Captain Lewis Grimball of the Wiltshire Regiment was shivering under his blanket. The spring thaw had not reached the castle's interior. The American helped him to a sitting position. Grimball coughed raggedly. The American wiped spit from the corner of Grimball's mouth then held the cup to his lips.
Grimball sipped, then wheezed, "This tastes like bloody dirt, John."
"Here's your chocolate." The American placed the candy in his hand, then stirred the nail rust and charcoal powder into the ersatz coffee, and handed it to the Brit. Rust prevented anemia and the charcoal helped control dysentery.
Grimball coughed again. He nibbled on a piece of bread.
The American also served a meal to Lieutenant Richard Cornwall of the Essex Scottish