(Second draft, of at least a dozen and more likely more: last updated 2/3/10: Suggestions on readability, understanding & accuracy encouraged & acknowledged)
“Am I Black and Blue (from the song “Am I Blue”)” (September 10, 1942, mid afternoon)
Kichner glanced below them at the British column and told the Oberleutnant, “The British column has stopped out of range. I think we are going to have to call it a standoff—if we just drive off, they may see our dust and come after us at a time and place where they have the advantage. Now we can bargain with them by giving them the nurses, who do us no good anyway.“
“Not her!” Although he was the lower ranking officer his objection was certain and emphatic.
Kichner calmly ignored the Oberleutnant’s tone but agreed with his conclusion. “No. She is now a prisoner of war, no longer to be regarded as a non-combatant. She’ll go with my prisoners back to base.”
He switched languages smoothly and just as smoothly brought her to her feet by pulling her hands upward, “Do you want to save your nurses from being prisoners and get that British column out from an attack by two German columns who have the high ground?”
Still dazed and choking on blood which Katherine couldn’t even wipe from her lips, she still had a little adrenaline to draw on and used it to say, haltingly, “That’s… why… I did… that.”
“Hmm. I thought you were just juggling ammo for practice.”
It wasn’t a good joke—though because she was a good juggler, it was more appropriate than he could know—but she was surprised at even a hint of humour after she had put him in this position and she responded in kind, “Practice… needs… be… done daily.”
“You will remain a prisoner.”
“Thought… you’d… be angry.”
“’Angry’ doesn’t cover it, but the rules of war do. You need to convince your team not to give us any trouble over the transfer and to accept the fact that you aren’t going with them.”
“Agreed,” she said with difficulty.
He called over his Untersturmführer, and again smoothly changed languages, back into German asking for handcuffs which his younger officer supplied although with a surprise that had him question his superior, Katherine easily followed their German. “Do you think those are necessary to control a woman, Herr Hauptmann?”
The captain looked at him as he put the handcuffs on his prisoner. At first his look had included a flash of anger—he immediately controlled that, but his impassive blue stare caused the Untersturmführer to change his stance, suitably chastised before his commander said a word.
When he did speak, Kichener’s words reached only those in this circle of four. “Untersturmführer Hofmann, she is to be treated as if she is a two meters tall, full-fledged, male, enemy commando—neither you nor I have ever seen and maybe not even imagined a female soldier, but I want you to believe in
it now. She may never act like a soldier again, but she did it once and she must never be given the chance a second time. I will punish anyone who offers her even a centimeter of leeway.” His voice was hard, cold and menacing. “Take her back to her nurses and watch her as if she is a British soldier who hasn’t yet
surrendered—since she is a woman, neither her honour nor her word could be relied upon even if she did offer her parole. How do I know how to treat a woman soldier. Who could envision running into such a thing?”
Switching back to English, he told her, “You must convince your nurses to be ready to head for the British column, I am going to try have men find a path down and to arrange for them to walk there.”
“They’ll… need water….”
“You, I might send off with no arrangement for water, but I will not send them that way.”
“How…can… you talk to British?”
“If they were Americans or Canadians, I might try smoke signals, but I doubt the British could read them.” Again Katherine was surprised at the attempt at humour even if it was again feeble. Although she knew that no one was exactly what you expect them to be, this man struck her as harder to read than most. Maybe she believed too much in his appearance and attitude. “I suspect we can find their wireless frequencies. Or we will flash Morse code signals at them or something. That is my job. Your job is to prepare your nurses. If all goes well, we will all live to try to kill each other on some other day.”
“Agreed.” She would have liked to have added something sarcastic about her supposed lack of honour, but she didn’t want them to know she understood any German at all, well enough that it was her first language; she had learned English on her father’s knee but everyone else around her for the first seven years of her life had spoken German.
Katherine gave up some pride for practicality and asked for water to wash out her mouth before talking to her nurses. Kichner nodded to the Untersturmführer who offered her his canteen as the other two officers left to arrange to talk to the British column. When she had rinsed out her mouth until she no longer spit out blood, she took a long drink and handed back to him his canteen and he motioned her to walk ahead of him. He would obviously obey orders and try to treat her as if she was a dangerous animal who might do anything. She assumed Untersturmführer Hofmann spoke English as she suspected Kichner would have
assigned someone who would report back on what she said. Didn’t matter since she planned to do just what she had agreed to do. That was going to take both finesse and intimidation if she knew her nurses. She hadn’t even looked in their direction since before starting her run towards the mortar. They would have seen him hit her. They would see her swollen cheek and the blood that had flowed from inside her mouth and now stained her uniform and the handcuffs and bruises that would be turning her skin in various places black and blue. They would be indignant on her behalf.
Then seeing it from their standpoint, she realized that they were wrong. She should be dead. Kichner should have let her fall over the cliff. At the very least, she should have a broken jaw. Of course, the Germans would have had to fight the British if the British knew a woman had been allowed to fall off the cliff, and it would have been stupid for him to burden himself with a prisoner with a broken jaw. But she had expected uncontrolled anger that led to stupidity, not such total control. He not only pulled his punch to just the amount necessary to daze her—how, she wondered, had he known just the right amount?—but he had thought through the new situation immediately and figured out a way to put things back into a state of equilibrium, since there could no longer be an easy triumph for his side.
As they approached, Mary and Joan started to rush to her. She gave an order with some of her remaining strength: “Back! Sit down!” Her tone of voice stopped them from moving forward. Good enough. She softened her voice and tried to talk more normally. “Go on. We need to talk.” She needed to convince these two that she was fine; she had had no reason to try and convince the enemy of that.
“But…”
“Go on. When you are seated, we will talk.”
“You’re bleeding.”
“I did know that. But it has pretty much stopped no treatment needed although if either of you has a small piece of gauze or clean cloth, that might help.” Joan came up with something. “You are to be repatriated. A
British column is over that ridge just out of range of their mortars.”
The two nurses hadn’t seen anything of what the commotion was about and this came as a shock.
“Is that what you were doing?”
“Yes, I fired a warning shot before they got into range. What I need you to do is to get ready to walk in the heat of the afternoon sun. Make sure you have no sand or anything in your shoes. Make sure you have a thickened head covering, maybe a scarf under your cap. Prepare for an ordeal.”
“Do you have to walk in handcuffs?” Joan asked.
“I’m not going. Gave up my non-combatant status.”
“We won’t go without you!” Mary had an unfortunate tendency to make snap judgements.
“You will do as you are told by the head of this team. And I am your commanding officer until you reach the British column. Add it up, two of you, maybe thirty British soldiers down there, versus two columns of Germans who have the high ground. I am one person. Look at this logically. You have been taught to control your emotions in order to work as front-line nurses—has your training been useless? Well?”
Mary finally hung her head just slightly. It was enough for Katherine to continue, “I will stay a prisoner whether you stay captive or go free. So, why would you not be repatriated? I expect you to make what I did
worthwhile. I expect you to do the rational thing. And I demand that you follow my orders. And my orders are: one, you are to walk to that column and two, once there you are to remember that if they try to attack the Germans, they are likely to get me and the other British prisoners killed even if they are able to destroy the Germans without getting themselves, and or you, killed or captured. So. don’t pressure them to follow us––discourage it to the best of your ability. They may not listen to you, but try. This engagement is over. Everything is being arranged by others. You are to play your part and live to treat British war wounded and save lives, which is what you came out here to do. I will go with these British prisoners and see if they need a nurse. When we reach German headquarters and you have gotten back to British troops, you can talk to them about trying to arrange a trade for me if we are all still alive and that turns out to be possible. It will be easier after they stop being so angry at my interference in their little ambush!”
The captain’s words echoed in her mind and she ended up using the concept; at first without realizing she was close to quoting him, and then she continued because he was right. “Let us all live to fight another day.
I have risked my life for just this outcome. I will not have you screw it up thinking you are helping me. You can help me by surviving to save British lives. And if you want to help me even more you can get back to some place and tell them to look into trading for me—I just repeated myself didn’t I? Because I want to impress upon you that that is the best way to help me! Can you see that?”
They were quiet in the face of her firmness.
“I don’t like it.” Mary again. Katherine sighed. She didn’t do it often. but they had learned to translate that long suffering sigh as extreme disappointment. Mary was already less defiant than she had been with her
last insistence, so she didn’t have as far to go to end up embarrassed with downcast eyes. Only then did Katherine go on.
“Not asking you to like it. You will like it less during the walk in the hot sun, I am hoping they find a path that is mostly in shade but even that will be terrible in this heat. That walk is not going to be a picnic, and I don’t envy you having to do it. But that is what is going to save everyone’s lives. You will need to help one another, or you might not make it. You are going to envy me sitting up here or riding in a truck. Stop worrying about me and start worrying about yourselves. That walk is going to be the worse thing either of you have ever been through. You must not dawdle and you must not hurry. Just walk a good steady pace. I suspect you will reach the bottom of the ridge in a little over two, maybe as much as three hours depending on the path. If the British commander is smart, he will pack up you and the rest of his column and get as far away from here as he can tonight. Make yourself ready. Good luck.”
“Good luck to you.” They started hugging, but Katherine didn’t let it last that long. She turned and looked at the Untersturmführer who took her back to Kichner. When they got to him, Hofmann summarized in German
everything that had gone on.
Katherine waited until he finished and then asked, “Did the British agree?”
“I don’t think they believe I have two of their nurses to send them, but as soon as they see them, they will agree to the terms. I have arranged for the British to supply water at the bottom of the ridge and we will give them all the water they can drink before they start and a couple of canteens of water to take with them. Carrying too much water would throw them off balance and make it harder for them to get down safely-–-my men have found a decent path down that will be partially in the shade—water seems to flow down that way when it rains here . At the bottom of the ridge will be one British soldier who will have binoculars and a signal light to inform their column that nurses have started the climb down.”
He looked over the ridge. “A vehicle is starting off now to set the soldier and the water at the bottom of the path. As they start off, let me introduce you to the ranking officer of my British prisoners—he is so anxious to meet you that one of my guards had to knock him down to keep him from rushing to protect you from my unchivalrous behavior.”
She moved her left hand up to her jaw, and he asked, “Does it hurt?” Neither his tone nor smile had a trace of cruelty, but they also held no trace of guilt. He obviously felt he had been justified. She admitted to herself that he had been, but she’d admit none of that to him.
“It hurts, it’s swollen and I could use a little more water to rinse with.”
His expression changed just slightly; just a tiny bit chastised. He took off his own canteen and handed it to her saying, “Now, I am properly shown to be what the British call a boor. I could at least have made sure you had water after hitting you and yet twice you have had to ask for it.”
“A gentleman would have. Of course, no gentleman would have hit me like that no matter how much he wanted to.”
“How would such a gentleman control a woman who acted like a soldier?”
“A point. Still, I claim you have proven yourself no gentleman.” She was sure that Kichner spoke the language well enough that he could hear the sarcasm in her tone of voice.
“Fortunately, Germans are no longer bound by such British definitions.”
“So, you admit that the modern German officer is not a gentleman? I had been hearing as much.” She was surprised that she had the strength to banter with him. Must be some adrenaline left. She knew it wouldn’t last much longer.
“And I had heard that British ladies didn’t spit.” She had been taking water from his canteen, rinsing it through her mouth and then stopping to spit it out onto the sand. It was still a light pink.
“Well, at least ladies who hadn’t had their teeth knocked into their cheek—or was my cheek knocked into my teeth?” She noticed the Oberleutnant’s column was packing up. Her nurses were disappearing over the ridge on a path they seemed to see down the side. Joan waved at her and she nodded back. She took another drink from the canteen and this time swallowed it. And another. And a couple more. And then handed the canteen back to its owner just as they reached his other prisoners.
The major looked as stereotypically British as the captain looked German. Katherine had a split second vision that both had come from unimaginative Hollywood casting. “Are you all right?, he asked walking forward slightly bent over and holding his side.
Instead of answering immediately, she stopped and saluted as she had been drilled to do. He paused with surprise. She figured he had been here for more than a year and so hadn’t gotten used to nurses or any other women officers. He was seeing her as a civilian nurse. Finally he straightened up and saluted back. She realized he was taller than she had at first thought. It broke the stereotype just a little.
Captain Kichner took the moment to say, with a gleam of amusement, “I think it is my responsibility to introduce you. Fraulein Katherine Bowman, allow me to present Major Carl Cleere of the Long Range Desert Group.” He stopped to reconsider and even though he had ignored her rank up to now said. “Or should it be the other way around? By British custom you introduce a man to a woman but by military rules a lower ranking officer to a higher ranking officer. So which should prevail here?”
They ignored him and Major Cleere also didn’t seem to know what to do with her rank so he ignored that as well, “Miss Bowman, allow me to tell how impressed the other chaps and I are by what you did. It took a lot of pluck and, I dare say, was exceedingly marvelous. Never seen anything so jolly good. Damned fine show and all that. But are you all right?”
She heard his sharp, crisp, precise upper class pronunciation and the academic phrasing to go with it. Out here it sounded slightly ridiculous. “Are you? I hear you tried to come to my rescue. That was gentlemanly of you.” And, yes, she emphasized the word, though she refrained from looking at the German.
“I feel absolutely dreadful that I couldn’t come to your aid.” He turned to Kichner, “Captain, I protest your beastly treatment of this lady. It was shockingly bad form. Unpardonable. You had no right to hit her.”
“Major Cleere, if you had done what she did, would I have had the right to hit you?”
“Of course. But that’s not the same thing at all—it is a ludicrous comparison. Miss Bowman is a woman, a nurse, and a non-combatant.”
“She was. But now she is a prisoner of war. Her sabotage was done out in the open for everyone to see. I had to take note of it. And besides, I did not hit her to punish her but to stop her from any additional shenanigans. I do admit her actions were perfectly understandable, but it changed her status and gave me no time to treat her with the kid gloves-–-did not have any around anyway.”
While they argued, Katherine found a shaded piece of sand and collapsed onto it. The major turned to her, “Captain Kichner is an appalling barbarian with no pretense of chivalry, I’m afraid. German colleagues I knew ten years ago were civilized, really quite decent fellows. Recently, the whole country has lost its way. But, let me be honest and admit to you that Captain Kichner has been quite decent to us.”
“Maybe you didn’t ruin any of his plans of conquest, glory and promotion,”she said, noting that now she could be expected to know Kichner’s name.
“Well no, we surrendered to an overwhelming force from which Captain Kichner was assigned to escort us back to his base. Hardly a shot was fired before the capture as we could all see it was hopeless. Rommel has convinced us all that his prisoners of war will be treated decently so the men have little enthusiasm to fight to the death in hopeless situations.”
“Do I get the impression that you think this is a strategy of Rommel’s, not just that he is a good human being who is never-the-less in a position of power fighting for a country that has gone mad?”
“Of course, it is likely to be both. Rommel is called the Desert Fox because of his ability at tactics. He may well have figured out that it would be to his advantage for his opponents to have no great reluctance to surrender. His own men have the right to expect to be treated when captured as they treat their own prisoners. And fewer of his own men would be killed in last ditch fighting by his enemies. So far I’d say it is working to his advantage.”
“Are you an expert at military tactics or strategy, then?”
“What me? Certainly not. Taught archeology before the war. Only started observing warfare when it started affecting me after I joined the army a couple of years ago. First reading up on it all the way back to the Trojan Horse trick.”
Katherine wondered what the Trojan Horse was, She figured it was probably one of the many things every school child knew but that she had missed in not having gone to school from about the time she was 8 to the time she 12 or so. She knew other things: how to juggle, walk a tight rope, tell fortunes and whatever else she had been able to get someone to teach her. But not knowing the basic information made her look stupid or “alien”. Running into these things frustrated her so that she was grateful when their captor interrupted.
“Reuniting the British is really a charming part of my job. but we need to be going.” Kichner turned to Cleere. “See if you can find an extra pair of goggles for her and whatever else she might need.” To her he offered, “Do you want to take any personal items?”
“May I?”
Kichner called over Untersturmführer Hofmann to take her to get some things that had been saved from the plane. He told Hofmann to check out everything before handing it to her. She could tell him where to look and what she wanted but she couldn’t touch anything until he handled it first. With those instructions, Hofmann took her back towards the plane while the captain and the major engaged in a heated discussion as they left.
“Really, captain, you are treating her as if she is a poisonous snake. Surely, that is not necessary. And, and you should take off those handcuffs.”
“Major, I really would like to treat her delicately, but I am concerned for the consequences. I would feel far more comfortable with her chained in a dungeon.”
Cleere was appalled. “That isn’t a seeming image.”
“Why, Major, whatever do you mean?” She could hear the laughter in the captain voice but couldn’t tell if it was good-hearted or sinister: from the subject matter, she would suspect sinister, but she was realizing she had reason to doubt her ability to read him.
The major was disconcerted and was only able to come up with, “You are just afraid of a woman!”
“That’s right: A woman who could do what she did. Of course, it helped that she is a woman and so no one believed she could do any damage—I know I didn’t believe she could.”
The major agreed, “Actually, never seen anything that so well exploited a moment. Couldn’t have done it myself. Would like to set it up as a training exercise. Astonishing good show that.”
“Your countrymen… women… are….”
The two groups were out of earshot of each other and Katherine never clearly heard another word of the conversation. She was amused that this German captain took her so seriously. She felt that his sense of humour seemed incongruous, but that might well have been prejudice on her part. And his relationship with the major was odd, almost chummy—they seemed to be able to separate out their jobs from their ability to work together now that their positions had changed into captor and captive.
She and Untersturmführer Hofmann passed close enough to the ridge that she could see the British soldier’s jeep at the bottom waiting for the nurses. “Sir, can I see where my nurses are?”
He glanced back at his captain still talking to the major and decided to allow this, although he took precautions—grabbing her arm and keeping her under control as he took her to the edge. He was at least six inches taller and infinitely stronger and was sure he could control her, and she was sure he was right.
She saw her nurses making their way down the ridge. The nurses were going to keep the British here for quite sometime as the column couldn’t get transport up to help them and therefore were stuck until the nurses got down on their own thus giving the Germans several hours head start away from them.
After picking out some useful things, she noticed the Oberleutnant’s column was moving out to the southwest, away from the British column. Also someone had dug a grave and buried the pilot. And the captain’s men were making some odd arrangements. Although, they weren’t showing themselves often over the ridge, they were doing so occasionally very fleetingly as out of sight they were now packing to leave. And they had rigged up a line that she suspected would show some movement along the ridge. She couldn’t see how it would work, but she could tell it was meant to give the impression they were still here after they left.
When it was ready, she was taken to the first vehicle and put behind the driver and the captain, alongside the major. Behind her and the major was a heavily armed German guard. Major Cleere told her that he wasn’t able to talk the captain into taking off her handcuffs but he had found goggles, and then he also told her where the canteen was.
She had taken from the plane a thick cotton scarf which she tied around her nose, mouth and neck under her uniform cap. And she had also been able to bring a second uniform, and a few other things. And the Untersturmführer (now that he was talking to her in English) had recommended that she take a coat though she couldn’t imagine needing a coat in this place. She had spent a couple of months in a desert a few years ago and remembered that it had cooled off in the evening, but she had never experienced anything like this oppressive heat and couldn’t imagine that this desert could cool off much.
Now that she had nothing else to think about, the heat enveloped her and seeped deep into her until it started to be all she could focus on. She knew she was suffering from extreme adrenaline depletion as well. But when she glanced at her watch, she realized that the crash had happened less than two hours before. It had been a busy time and now she had nothing else to do so she found herself rapidly falling into a stage of complete mental, emotional, as well as physical inertia.
And she wasn’t looking forward to this trip. It wasn’t going to be a trip to grandmother’s house, unless it was Red Riding Hood’s grandmother. And these wolves had more powerful weapons than sharp teeth.
See Chapter 3, Late Afternoon and Evening of Day One
Copyright 2007-2009 by B. E. Warne: All rights reserved.
For those writers who would like to see the differences between the first and second drafts, we have kept a version of the first draft for instructive comparison.