(Last updated February 2, 2010, not a whole new draft, though, just matching to the new draft of previous chapters)
“Having a Heat Wave” (September 10, 1942, late afternoon and evening)
It was hell in every way imaginable including lasting an eternity. Or maybe it just seemed like being in an inferno forever. The Germans traveled for hours before taking a short break. Katherine was reasonably rational for the first hour or so—maybe it was only the first half an hour, maybe it was just a fraction of that—but by the time they stopped, she had completely surrendered to the desert’s oppressive heat in a way she couldn’t yet imagine surrendering to human oppression. She had saved British lives, defeated the Afrika Corps—well, a small part of it—she felt entitled to now give in to the desert’s torture, after all it wasn’t asking questions. And besides it wasn’t in her interests to have the Germans thinking she was some kind of super enemy agent instead of just a nurse who did one extraordinary thing. So, she shut down. What use was it to keep vigilant now. She might as well give in to weakness when strength would gain her no advantage even if she could call it up, which she wasn’t sure she could. She was completely wiped out.
The crushing heat overwhelmed her, but it was only part of the problem as there was sand blowing and the movement of the vehicles kicked up more to the point where it invaded every part of her body. The eyes took the worst of it even though she had goggles. Her nose was also bad—she had to keep forcing herself to breathe through it because when she opened her mouth she swallowed sand and dehydrated herself more. Her ears and teeth also had sand in them and her toes—protected though they were by heavy shoes and socks—had somehow been infiltrated by sand. She could feel it and was glad she didn’t have to walk very far.
While the people she was traveling with had obviously had some time to acclimate to this, she had been in the temperate Mediterranean just this morning and before that in Britain, which was having a reasonably wet, cool summer.
During the crash and organizing everything afterwards, burning the papers, and the subsequent situations, she had been operating first on determination then on adrenaline. But now suffering from complete adrenaline exhaustion, she felt like the helpless prisoner she was—of both her human enemy and the desert. Soon after they left the ridge with its crashed plane behind them, she gave in to the feelings of resignation and vulnerability that she had previously pretended. She was helpless before this heat; so drained of energy that she forgot the canteen and ignored everyone else in the truck. She stopped thinking and felt only heat, breathed in burning air, tasted the grit of sand. The ride jarred her teeth and she bit her tongue a couple of times. The noise of the engine pressed against her ears and into her brain tissue. After awhile she couldn’t remember any other state of being other than this misery.
She felt she had earned the right to a complete breakdown. Not that it mattered to her whether she had earned it or not. She no longer had any reason to resist giving in to it and she wasn’t going to try.
Whoever invented the idea of a fiery hell, had definitely been here; and like hell, she was sure it would never end.
That was probably the last conscious thought she had before just about losing all sense of herself as something separate from the heat and the torture. And she was alone in her misery; none of them spoke; one had to shout to speak and that just filled your mouth with sand.
When the column finally stopped, Katherine was barely able to get out of the vehicle. Captain Kichner came up to her as she fell to the ground, the hot ground—hot like a stove—but she just couldn’t stand and there was no place to move to even if she had the energy.
The German looked down at her. “How the mighty have fallen,” Katherine assumed Kichner was gloating—she had no energy to remember how bad she was at reading him.
“I hate you.” She did have enough sense to know that her barely understandable words weren’t even worth saying.
“Major!” His next words coldly admonished the ranking officer of his prisoners. “Didn’t you notice your seat mate has the beginnings of sunstroke?” Cleere moved to kneel beside her.
“Oh, dear.” He started to get up, but before he could, Kichner handed him his own canteen and Cleere forced her to drink a little. Then he poured some on her cap and let it soak through. Then another drink. Cleere asked her if she was nauseated and she admitted she was. He then got even more serious and told her she had to take the water slowly, to hold the water in her mouth for a bit before swallowing. And he also poured more over her cap. He then got up and reached into the truck to find her heavy coat and put it down next to her and helped her move to it. By this time she actually could move a few inches, and it was a relief to move to the coat’s insulating barrier.
Major Cleere was arguing with their captor about taking off her handcuffs. She didn’t care. The move to the coat took almost all the rest of her energy. She felt paralyzed. The only thing she could do was lift the canteen to her mouth every few minutes. That became her whole life.
A sip and hold it. Another.
Captain Kichner berated the major for not noticing her state: the major had been sitting beside her, after all. And as senior officer among the prisoners, she was his responsibility.
“Heat stroke is serious. I don’t want to have to face Rommel with a dead female prisoner! You need to watch her and be responsible for her!” Kichner stormed off.
Katherine watched him in wonder. Where could he possibility get so much energy in this heat. She laid down. The next thing she knew there was a German boot stomping down an inch from her face.
“Sit up,” Kichner demanded. Without moving his foot, he pulled her back into a sitting position and then twisted his boot a bit and lifted his foot and beneath was the mangled body of a dead scorpion. One leg still moved for a second more. “They are attracted to the shadow of the truck.” He had refilled the canteen and he used the water in it to pour some more on her cap, which had dried already. She was just a little revived—just enough to finally respond to part of the argument Kichner and Cleere had had a little while before.
“If I die.” She could barely speak. “At least you will be held to account for it.”
“Would that make it worth your life?”
“Just a little bit ago,” she paused to take a breath and search for words, “it would at least have mitigated it.” She gathered strength to finish. “But now I’d rather live to complain about you in person.”
“Keep that thought.” Kichner unlocked her handcuffs. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
“What have I done so far that is stupid?” A pause. “Well, except for collapsing on the sand? Oh, and not drinking. I—can’t—think, too—tired, too—hot.” She drifted after having trouble thinking of the words.
He didn’t answer and left when the major came back with chai from where his men were fixing it. Cleere only allowed her a taste of this sweet rich mixture of tea, tinned milk and sugar. “Nothing like anything back in Britain,” he told her. “But the lads out here live on it. Sustains us, you know. But you aren’t ready for more than a couple of sips.” After she took her sips—over a minute apart. He sat down next to her. “I am dreadfully sorry that I didn’t notice your state. One becomes used to people being aware of what the Sahara does to them. Crushes one, it does. Dreadfully sorry about that. Unconscionably idiotic on my part. I think I had started thinking of you as someone who could do anything.” He had another canteen and poured some more water over her cap without even asking.
“How long… you –?”
“How long have I been here? Let’s see, I think only about half a dozen lifetimes. Actually, in real time a year. Been here before on archaeology digs. So, headquarters must have thought it was a good place to put me. But am not sure any of my skills have been useful though headquarters seems to think that the higher and better the education, the more leadership qualities one has. I have been trying to learn how to fight wars and lead men ever since. They are complicated subjects and may never be my forte but I was anxious to do my part for the war effort, of course. Probably why you became a nurse, huh? I still can’t believe how heroic you were.”
“Look, that was just a one time thing. I was close and no one was watching me and I saw one chance.”
“But how did you even know how a mortar worked?”
“Ah, I new a young army man once who showed me.” She didn’t say what army he was in. She decided to change the subject. “You belong in a university.” She paused and swallowed. “Oxford?”
“Got it in one. Does it show terribly?”
Katherine felt herself start to recover some sense and some ability to speak if only slowly, “I’m afraid the sand hasn’t changed that air of pure British academia.” She paused for a drink and to gather strength just to say, again slowly, reaching for each word, “To go from the Oxford calm to all this must have taken some doing.”
“Well, they send one for some months of grueling training first. That was the first shock. Wasn’t in any kind of shape, One played cricket and did some rowing and thought one was in great shape but discovered that wasn’t up to army standards. What about you?”
“Nothing to tell, really. A quick course in nursing and they decided that, though, I wasn’t the best nurse, I had leadership qualities and put me in charge of others.” Again a pause for a drink and to get her brain to actually decide not to mention that she knew someone who got her this position. “Do you think one’s education helps one fight and lead?”
“Sometimes yes, and sometimes no. Students I thought possessed no discipline or determination have turned out to have both in smashing abundance when the situation called for it. Dons like me have learned we can do more than we thought.” He was laughing at himself: at his old attitudes and his expanding self-knowledge. “If I survive the experience I dread to think what I shall be like at the end of it, if I live to see the end, I wonder if I will be able to return to the life I once lived. My wife may not recognize me.”
“Is she still in Oxford?”
“No. She is Scottish and when the bombing started in 1940 she took our daughter and went home where we thought they’d be safe. And Scotland has been safe. So that left me free to join up and do my bit.” He changed the subject, “I can usually tell where someone is from, but I can’t tell with you.”
Katherine knew that he was also unconsciously trying to figure out her class: it was almost automatic for many people and they were uncomfortable when someone’s speech didn’t make it clear. She told him, “We moved around a lot when I was younger and my earliest years were spent on the continent. My aunt with whom I have lived since I was about 15 speaks a sort of middle class London, but I never fell completely in with that. Her husband was born in Poland so his speech is heavily accented but he tutored me heavily when I moved in and maybe I picked up something there. I tended to mimic people from every part of Britain I lived in when growing up. Sorry, hard to specify only one influence.”
“In some ways you sound somewhat like Kichner.”
“Don’t know where he picked up his English. Although I hear some American influences. I too have been influenced by American speech, through the movies. I go to a lot of movies. Maybe in different ways we had some of the same influences.”
“Except for the German.”
“I studied German early on in school and I adored my German teacher and think I may have tried to copy the accent. Maybe that’s why.” Though there was no one around them, she lowed her voice. “Don’t tell the captain I know any German, but thought you should know in case you need to make use of my knowledge. I wouldn’t want to be caught out but my German is really quite good.”
“Oh, bloody marvelous.” He stopped. “Sorry.”
“For what? Oh, the word, ‘bloody’. I’ve gotten used to it dealing with wounded soldiers who use it a lot. And in nursing it comes up in literal descriptions of bandages and bed clothes, and things as well. I’ve stopped hearing it as a forbidden word at all. Besides, having been raised on the continent as I said, I didn’t hear British curse words early in life and so they don’t have the same level of taboo for me. But I warn you of using it when you get home. After weeks of hearing it every day and being incredibly tired, I used it at home. My aunt looked at me with an incredibly disappointed expression and my uncle, who is incredibly understanding, said, ‘I think you should watch where you say that.’ At which point I felt too incompetent to be allowed to cross the street by myself.”
“Quite, quite. I wonder if after all this, I will be fit for civilized society in many ways. I can’t imagine going back to the life I once loved: it feels so unreal from this vantage point.”
Kichner’s men had been getting the prisoners and their things back into the trucks and then he came over to them. “Ah, the gentleman and the non-lady.”
The major made to get up indignantly. Katherine put a hand on his arm and said with more strength and presence of mind than she could have mustered a few minutes before, “He is just trying to be charming, Major. Do you think you can teach him proper behavior at his age? Let it go.”
The captain looked at her as if he was trying to figure her out. “In Germany, women are expected to do womanly things like nature intended and not get involved in men’s business.”
She had already expended all her energy on the previous conversation so Major Cleere took what he thought would be her side. “A country that refuses the help of half its population in an emergency situation, is destined to lose.”
“German women help by being women and support personnel. We allow nurses, of course, but they are not put in uniforms or allowed to interfere on a battlefield.”
“Ah, well, we in Britain are still in dedebted to our warrior queen Boudica who wouldn’t give in to Roman rule. And in this very area of the world, Kahinah led her tribe against the invading Arabs.”
“If I am not mistaken, both of those women died while leading their people into massacres.”
“As many male leaders have done. But sometimes one has to fight back even in the face of overwhelming force. It allows for pride in one’s descendants.”
“If you have descendants at all.”
She knew she was in bad shape when she refused an opening to an argument, but she didn’t care what the German believed and had never heard of either of these women. She made a note to find out about them but used her energy to take another sip from the canteen.
The captain seemed a bit amused at his prisoners. Katherine got the impression that he regarded them both as specimens of some kind of long forgotten tribe he was studying. He looked over at her and shook his head as if to dismiss both the major and her as having been too long out in the sun. She certainly had been.
She tried to hand him back his canteen, but he held up a hand. “Keep it and keep sipping constantly. I’ll get another canteen. That one is now yours. When you use up all the water, let someone know and they will get you more. Do not worry about conserving it.”
She felt grateful and because of that, also felt like throwing it at him. But it would have taken too much effort and she had already developed an affection for the canteen and didn’t want to give it up, She was also grateful to have the handcuffs off and didn’t want to give him an excuse to put them back on.
Now, she faced the hurdle of getting to her feet. Kichner held out his hand and she looked at it. Cleere was also getting up and when he had gotten to his feet, she asked him, “Major, would you be so kind as to please help me up.” Which he did.
And then it was back to the transport from hell. But Katherine now had a lifeline. Her new friend the canteen with its water.
Dusk came and the column didn’t stop. Dark followed very shortly thereafter and they drove into it. She was revived a little by the temperature which had turned pleasantly cool. But it kept getting colder. And colder still. She reached for her coat and wrapped herself in it. The major leaned over to help and yelled into her ear, “Keep drinking. Cold also dehydrates.” She reached for her canteen and resolved never to let it out of her grasp again.
Soon she was shivering despite the coat. Cold air blew over them as they drove on. She moved off the seat and huddled on the floor and went back to feeling helpless. And not needing to live up to some male idea of fortitude, she turned her little area into a cocoon. Even the canteen no longer offered comfort although she dutifully drank from it. Now, her lifeline and affectionate companion was the coat. Were they going to drive all night?
Finally, she felt the vehicle stop. She could hear men jumping out of trucks, She pulled herself back up to the seat. Everyone else seemed to know what they were doing.
She just sat there since she had no idea where to go or what to do. And Kichner and Cleere were arguing again. Again about her. She really needed to care, but she was shivering too much. The cold, sapped her strength, and her will, just as the heat had earlier in the day.
Katherine knew she was alive but, unlike Descartes (who she had learned of—her education was so hit and miss), it wasn’t because she could think since she had lost that ability as well as even the ability to care about it. How about ‘I suffer therefore I am’?
Kichner had been dressed in full uniform during the heat of the day and hadn’t changed when it turned freezing. The major had at least been in shirt sleeves during the day and put on his jacket after dark thus proving that he was human. She had no such proof about the German captain.
Katherine suddenly realized that Captain Kichner was insisting that she spend the night away from the other prisoners. In his tent. That didn’t sound good and she tried to say so, but her voice came out through a throat stripped hoarse by the amount of sand she had swallowed as an unrecognizable croak. Even as miserable as she was, she was beginning to care about this development. But the two men were not interested in whatever she was trying to say.
“Oh don’t be silly, Major. I just don’t trust her and want to make sure she doesn’t do anything else totally unexpected like talk you and your men into some kind of weird escape that would force me to shoot you and then I would have to justify it to Rommel and I hear it takes a lot to justify killing prisoners to him. I am willing to take on that challenge but only if I absolutely have to.”
“But it isn’t proper.”
“What could be in this situation? There is nothing that is going to be proper; we aren’t equipped to be dealing with a woman out here. But stop worrying about me, look at her. She is sunburnt, unkept and dirty. Jer mousy brown hair is not only filled with sand but is in braids; who wears braids these days? I do have standards and even at the best of times, I doubt she is ever pretty.”
“Captain, that is uncalled for!” Cleere was as indignant on her behalf for this insult as he had been when the captain had hit her.
Captain Kichner turned to her. “Has anyone ever called you pretty?”
She swallowed and finally was able to make a sound from her raw throat. “No.” Ah, there was sound. She smiled. “Not without a full day’s effort, and then they were exaggerating.” She paused for breath, and decided to make a joke out of it and tried to find the right words to show herself to be the opposite of pretty. “Have been told my face has character. Like being described as having nice personality, I think. I suspect ‘plain’ is the word people use behind my back.”
The captain smiled but Major Cleere objected. “Now, hold on — with a little makeup and tweezing your eyebrows like girls do these days—.”
Katherine glared at Cleere. Kichner picked up on it. “Major, I do believe my female prisoner doesn’t want me to believe she could ever be pretty. On the other hand she may be one of the few European women with a hundred miles or so and so she is concerned about being alone with a barbarian like me.
Katherine’s expression admitted that he was right, “Major, it really doesn’t hurt me at all that he thinks I am plain.”
The captain was still smiling as he said, “I have a heater.”
“Captain, you really know how to appeal to a girl, don’t you.?” She meant it as sarcasm but suspected it was actually true. She got her thoughts together. “May I suggest something that might work fine for all concerned. Perhaps the major can also share your tent tonight as well.”
“It would be a tight fit.” The captain thought about it for a moment. “Yes, that can be arranged. It might be crowded but better all around. But right now he has obligations to the other prisoners. Don’t you, Major?”
“Well, yes.”
“Surely, you aren’t going to tell me, you don’t trust me to be alone with her for even a few minutes? All right, I’ll take my sergeant as a chaperon.” He turned to her, “I want to have a serious talk with you to convince you not to do anything to upset things further.”
He motioned toward a tent that had already been set up. Inside was a cot and a table, a chair, a light and a newly lit petrol heater giving out miraculous warmth. He took the chair and sat her down on the cot. His sergeant followed them in and Captain Kichner turned and addressed her, “Sergeant Hauber here is the best I’ve got. He doesn’t smoke, doesn’t drink and doesn’t frequent brothels when we are in towns. He grew up in a family of women and had daughters. He will be our chaperon on the few occasions when we might be alone, and he will have to accompany you whenever you think you need privacy.”
Hauber started to interrupt him but he barely got a sound out before Kichner told him. “I am sorry, Sergeant. I have given you many difficult jobs in the past, and this may be right up there, but I need it done and who else would you recommend?”
She was at first too stunned to form her complaint, but she finally came up with an attempt to satisfy him. “What if I gave you my parole?”
“If you were a real officer, I would believe you and accept it. But you aren’t, and I don’t trust you. Women do not belong in a war. They don’t have the same attitudes that men have, they have no traditions to hold up and there is no precedence to know how to treat them when they are wearing a uniform. There are older rules of war for treating women. I believe, historically, the most common way to control women in war is rape. But Rommel wouldn’t approve and I am disinclined to try to justify that to him—especially the way you look.” He paused and seemed to come up with a new idea. “But I admit that you have shown yourself to be concerned about British soldiers so I will allow a slight compromise. The sergeant will go with you when you need privacy, but he will also allow you to be several yards away and mostly out of sight for up to two or three minutes. But if you get away or anything happens to him, I will kill some of the prisoners and follow you to hell and make sure you also personally pay for it and then I will take my chances with Rommel.” His tone turned harsh and cold. “Do you understand me?”
“Absolutely.” A change in her voice showed her suitably intimidated and she wasn’t pretending this time.
“Sergeant, I want you to do the following: One. never leave her and me alone together for more than five minutes—I want to protect myself from charges brought by her later and it might make her feel more comfortable. Two, watch yourself when you are with her. Do not ever think of her as if she were a normal woman who wouldn’t stab you in the back if she got a chance. I do not want to cause your death or to kill any of the prisoners. Protect yourself and her and me.”
“Jawohl, Herr Hauptmann.”
“That’s the best I can think of to do for all of us.” He turned back to her. “You can have the cot. I don’t want you to think that’s because I am a chivalrous gentleman. It is because I intend to handcuff you to it. The major can have a sleeping bag next to your cot and I will be on the other side of him. The sergeant will be across the opening. Crowded but your reputation should survive.”
“It is kind of you to worry about my reputation. And, though you think I am some kind of wild creature, I want to assure you that I am too practical a person to plan to run out into the desert without water or transport.”
“No, I don’t think you are planning it, but I don’t know what will come your way that might make you think you could actually accomplish something, and I just want to make sure you don’t decide to take advantage of a situation in which only you could see an opening. I don’t regard you so much as ruthless, as I do inventive. Too inventive.” Then pausing for a moment, he changed his tone and said, “Sergeant, see if Untersturmführer Hofmann is available to have dinner with our guests and me.”
Dinner was for four, but only two of them talked much. Katherine was too tired to talk but had somehow found the energy to seethe with anger at the captain. Kichner’s sense of humour seemed to have vanished and he silently kept to the seriousness with which he had told her how it would be.
The food fit the place—it was dry and full of sand. It didn’t even smell like food. And she wasn’t hungry, probably still suffering the effects of the heat.
Cleere and the young Untersturmführer discussed their travels. Hofmann had been to that exotic land, America and he spoke about the strange people there with their strange sport of baseball that was so different from any European sport—Cleere pointed out that it was similar to cricket which Hofmann insisted was not a real European sport—he stressed the word European. He also discussed how the supposedly egalitarian Americans were so impressed by the King of England giving up his throne for an American woman. And then he went on about how these were the people who were now preparing for war against Germany. Like most people of most nationalities, he was proud of his country and it showed although he actually seemed to be trying not to be too very German about it.
By the time dinner was over, Katherine’s eyes were closing involuntarily and she was slumping in her chair. The sergeant came back to take her a little way out of camp again and when they got back, the major and his sleeping bag were there. She crawled into the sleeping bag that was on the cot, taking her shoes in with her to stash at the bottom of the bag, she wanted no further encounters with scorpions. And just about the same time as the handcuffs were locked in place, she fell asleep.
