Before the Dawn

31

SAM

Dresden, 13th February

‘Private Archer and Private Manganello, your sentence has been decided. You will be shot at dawn tomorrow.’

The officer who read out our sentence, speaking in English, could’ve been reading out a weather report. Somehow, I kept my expression neutral, the way I used to when Kirk was whaling on me, staring straight ahead with my hands down by my sides. I heard Davy, standing beside me, swear under his breath, but he kept still too. We’d already agreed that, whatever happened, we wouldn’t give these Nazi bastards the satisfaction of knowing how we felt.

It was just after dawn. A short while ago we’d been brought to this little side room at the Straflager, the prison in Dresden city centre where we’d been locked up after the factory burned down, to hear our sentence. Seated behind a table were four German officers, wearing immaculate uniforms with swastikas on the sleeves. Davy and I were still wearing the clothes we’d been brought in. They were torn, stained with soot and pumice, and we were both crawling with lice.

‘Bring sie hier raus,’ the officer ordered one of the guards, his tone bored now. We were bundled out of the room and marched back to the main room of the Straflager.

The prison was in a large, circular building, bitterly cold, stinking and so crowded there was little space to move, or even to sit down. The main room had an enormous glass roof that made me wonder if it had been some sort of library or museum before the war. All the doors were bolted on the outside, and every morning, groups of prisoners were taken away, never to be seen again. Tomorrow, Davy and I would be among them.

We jostled for a space at the edge of the room. Davy slumped to the floor and buried his head in his hands. ‘This is all my fault, man. All my fucking fault. I’m so fucking sorry.’ His voice broke on the last word.

‘Don’t.’ I put a hand on his shoulder, alarmed; I’d never seen him like this, not even after we were caught when we’d tried to run away. ‘At least we screwed things up for those bastards, right?’

He didn’t answer me. I thought about Ruby, Ma, and Meggie, wishing I could see them all one last time. How would Ma feel when I didn’t come home? And Meggie? How had they managed all these months without the money I’d been sending home before I went to France? I’m sorry, Ma, I thought. I failed you.

And Ruby? Did she still think about me? Or was she already moving on with her life?

I realised that, despite everything, I felt strangely calm. At least I knew what was coming now. What else could I do but accept it? I sat too, hugging my arms around my knees and looking up at the glass roof. Through it, I could see the faint shapes of clouds moving across the sky.

As the morning went on, Davy cheered up, cracking jokes about the Germans. At noon one of the doors at the side of the room opened, and people surged forwards as guards brought in metal drums filled with soup. There were no bowls or spoons – everyone had to drink out of their cupped hands and scuffles broke out as people jostled for a place in line. I didn’t bother; I wasn’t hungry anymore.

I spent the rest of the day dozing, and listening to Davy, who was taking the mickey out of the other inmates now. ‘Shut it, yank!’ one guy, a Brit, called, but he sounded good-natured enough.

Eventually, darkness fell. There were no lights; the room was dark as a cave. I wondered what time it was, and how long Davy and I and whoever the other poor bastards they were taking with us tomorrow had left.

‘You OK?’ Davy asked. We were sitting back-to-back now, for warmth; the temperature was plummeting.

‘Yeah.’

The air raid sirens started wailing. No one reacted. They went off most nights; nothing ever happened.

Suddenly, Davy sat up. ‘What’s that?’

I frowned into the darkness. ‘What’s what?’

‘Listen.’

Over the wail of the sirens, I began to make out another sound: the deep bass drone of plane engines. It grew and grew, until the walls were vibrating with it.

I realised I could see the faces of the men around me. The sky through the glass roof of the Straflager was getting paler, illuminated by long ribbons of slowly falling light.

Davy leapt to his feet. ‘Flares! Shit! They’re gonna bomb the hell outta this place!’

People began jumping up, shouting, pushing to try and get to the doors, but they were still bolted shut; no one could get them open. I found myself separated from Davy, pressed against a wall as the light from outside grew brighter and brighter and the sky turned orange. There had been no explosions yet. The throb of the plane engines died away briefly, then returned, a deeper and more insistent sound, making the building shake so much I got scared it was gonna collapse around our ears.

The bombs began to fall.

They made a sinister rushing, whistling sound. I knew it was only a matter of time before the prison was hit. People were screaming, pounding on the doors to be let out, but no one came – the guards had already scarpered. An incendiary came through the roof, raining shards of glass and metal down on the people stuck in the middle of the room. It hit with such force that it broke up; no one who was directly underneath could get away and they were showered with lumps of whatever it was inside those things that made them burn. Their cries were awful, but no one could do anything; getting close would mean getting the stuff on you, too, and there was nothing to put it out with. I crouched into a ball, my arms over my head, my eyes screwed shut. I’d rather have been shot by the Germans than go like this, I thought. At least it woulda been quick.

The air around me was getting hotter and hotter. Suddenly, there was a tremendous explosion and something slammed into my back like a giant fist, sending me flying forwards. I sprawled on my hands and knees, debris raining down around me. The building had taken a direct hit.

As the smoke cleared a little, I saw the bomb had torn a gaping hole in the wall across the room. If we could get over there we could get out. I yelled for Davy but I couldn’t even hear myself; the noise of the bombardment was terrific and my ears were singing from the blast. I clawed my way through rubble and bodies, looking for Davy, my nostrils thick with the stink of burning.

At last, I saw him, sprawled on his back. He looked peaceful, his eyes half closed; at first I thought he was asleep, and I couldn’t work out how the hell he’d managed it with all this going on. Then my brain caught up with my eyes and I saw his lower half was crushed under an enormous lump of stone that had fallen from the roof, too heavy for me to lift. I shook him by the shoulder, yelling his name again. His eyes came open a little. They were unseeing, vacant.

He was dead.

Another bomb shook the building, more pieces of stone falling from the ceiling and crashing to the floor just inches away from where I was crouched next to Davy. The roof was about to cave in.

I passed a hand over Davy’s eyes to close them again. ‘Shit, I’m sorry, buddy,’ I said, my voice cracking on the last word. I scrambled over to the hole in the wall.

Stepping into the street outside was like walking into an inferno – the whole city seemed to be on fire, the air thick with dust and smoke. Coughing, my eyes smarting and streaming with tears, I stumbled clear of the Straflager. I was just in time; seconds later, the roof and walls sagged inwards with a great roar, burying Davy and everyone else who’d been left behind.

I yanked off my shirt, tying it around my face to keep the worst of the smoke out of my lungs, and staggered down the street away from the prison. There were people everywhere – ordinary German citizens trying to flee the carnage. But there was nowhere to go. The planes had gone but the fires roared all around us, great vortices of sparks and flame spiralling into the sky, which had turned a deathly red. Every so often, I’d hear the crash of another building falling. The heat was ferocious, printing itself onto my skin.

A woman stumbled out into the street in front of me, her face, hands and clothes blackened with soot and blood, her mouth open in a soundless scream. She was only a little older than I was. ‘Helfen Sie mir, bitte!’ she pleaded with me, sobbing. ‘Mein Kind!’ Then, in broken English: ‘My child! Trapped!’

She tugged on my arm, and I stumbled after her, towards the ruins of what looked like some sort of store. Lumps of burning debris were scattered across the street. The woman began digging in the rubble, wailing, ‘Monika! Monika!’ She turned to me again, her face wild with desperation. ‘Bitte!’

As I began to help her, I heard a faint cry from somewhere underneath the fallen stones. ‘Mutti!’

‘Monika!’ the woman cried. We heaved and pulled the stones aside, and I saw a pale shape below us – a child’s face, streaked with tears. The woman began to sob.

I grabbed the girl under the arms. She was no older than Meggie had been when I left to join the army, wearing a torn blue nightdress, her hair a tangled nest of curls. She clung to me as I lifted her from the ruins of the building, calling for her mother. As I turned to hand her to the woman, there was another blast nearby. The shock knocked me flat; I felt a wave of tremendous heat pass over me as flames shot through the air, and I dropped the kid, throwing my hands over my head to try and protect myself.

Hearing screams, I scrambled to my feet, looking round for the woman and her child. They were nowhere to be seen. The building I’d rescued the kid from moments before was a ball of flame. I guess there had been an unexploded bomb in there, or a gas main had gone up.

Out of a fog of smoke, a shape lurched towards me. Monika. Her clothes and hair were on fire, her arms outstretched, her mouth open in a soundless, agonised scream. I grabbed her, trying to push her to the ground to put the flames out, but she panicked and fought me; she was surprisingly strong for her size. I grit my teeth at the sudden, searing pain as the flames caught my undershirt and I had to let go of Monika to beat them out.

I looked round desperately for water. There was nothing. I finally managed to wrestle Monika to the ground, but it was too late. She’d lost consciousness and gone limp, her eyes rolling up to the whites. There was no sign of her mother anywhere. No sign of anyone. ‘Wake up,’ I pleaded with Monika, shaking her gently. ‘Dammit, wake up.’ Her head flopped back and forth.

She began to have some sort of seizure, her back arching, her body stiffening. All I could do was watch. Finally, she went still. As I knelt there, staring at her, another building at the end of the street collapsed, sending flames leaping into the blood-coloured sky and an avalanche of burning rubble spewing across the street, cutting off my only escape route.

I was trapped.