Camp 30 (4 page)

“Not unless he's been rowing a boat across the African desert.”

“What?”

“Didn't you look at the uniforms? Those weren't soldiers, they were sailors.”

“Oh … I didn't notice.”

“Obviously,” Jack said.

We continued along the road past the guard tower. We turned when we came to a cross street and continued to circle the camp.

“If there are hundreds of prisoners, how come we've only seen four?” I asked. “The place looks deserted.”

“Deserted, but awfully fancy. I didn't think a prisoner-of-war camp would have such nice buildings … and flowers. What's with the flowers?”

“That is strange,” I admitted. “I thought it would be just dirt and— Did you hear that?” I asked.

Jack nodded. “It sounds like a crowd … yelling … or cheering.”

“Yeah, but that doesn't make any sense at all.”

We heard it again. It
did
sound like cheering. As we continued down the road, the noise got louder and louder. Then, up ahead, we saw where it was coming from. Behind the fence there was a soccer game going on! There were men, all in shorts, one side dressed in blue, the other in brown, racing up and down a soccer pitch. And on the far side of the field were spectators— hundreds and hundreds of spectators—cheering on the players. We drifted over toward the fence to see.

As we watched, one of the players made a dash down the side of the field. He moved past one player and then a second, and then put a high, arching cross to the front of the net. The goalie came charging out to get the ball, but a split second before he arrived another player got his head on it and the ball soared over the goalie and into the net. Jack and I joined in as the crowd roared its approval.

“That was amazing!” Jack yelled. “Amazing!”

“It was an outstanding play,” a voice called out.

Jack and I looked at each other and then for the source of the voice.

“That was his third goal of the match.”

Just inside the fence, leaning against a tree, stood a man—a soldier, a Nazi.

“That makes the score four goals to two,” he continued. His English was perfect, but there was an obvious accent—a German accent.

“The blue team is the Luftwaffe—you would say the air force—while the team in brown represents the African corps of the army.”

Africa? Our father could have helped capture
those
guys—he could have been fighting against them!

“I myself cheer for neither of these teams. I am with the navy and will cheer the sea-green team tomorrow. It will be a good match. Are you boys fans of the game?”

Neither of us answered.

“I know my English has become fairly good so I must assume that either you boys do not speak English or you do not wish to speak to a prisoner.”

“We speak English,” I said.

“Ah, so it is the latter.”

“We don't speak to Nazis!” Jack snapped. The man smiled. “I try to avoid that myself,” he said.

“I am an officer in the German navy and not a member of the Nazi party. Many people, even some Germans, do not understand the difference between—”

“Hey!” a voice yelled.

We caught sight of movement and looked up to the top of the nearest guard tower. A guard had poked his head out and was gesturing to us.

“You boys gotta move away from the fence!” he yelled. “This isn't a flipping sideshow, you know!”

We quickly backed away.

“It is all right, old man!” the German yelled up at the guard. “They're here to watch soccer, not to help plot my escape!”

“You keep outta this, Fritz, or I'll write you up on report!” the guard retorted.

“The name is Otto, and I doubt you have sufficient education to even know how to write!”

“Come on, let's get out of here,” Jack said, grabbing me by the arm. We hurried off down the road, leaving the two men, prisoner and guard, to continue hurling insults at each other.

CHAPTER FOUR

“
WHAT WOULD YOU SAY
to a soda right now?” Jack asked.

“I'd say, ‘Hello, glad to meet you.'” It was hot, and it had been a long walk to the camp and back.

Jack reached into his pocket and pulled out a dime.

“Where'd you get that from?” I asked.

“Mom. She said we should have a treat for being so good about moving again.”

“Why shouldn't we be good?” I asked. “It's our fault that we had to move in the first place.”

“It all worked out, though. Mom has a better job, she's getting more money, and we get to live in a bigger, nicer house.”

“And it's not like we were even in Whitby long enough to make friends,” I added. “Besides, it feels good to have Mom working somewhere other than the munitions factory. I was always afraid that something would blow up.”

“Me too,” Jack said. “Although working close to a bunch of dangerous Nazis maybe isn't the best either.”

“Mom said she didn't actually work inside the camp … I think her office is in one of those little buildings across the road,” I said. “Besides, there are those fences, and barbed wire and guard towers and guards and everything. They can't get out.”

Jack didn't answer.

“Can they?”

“Probably not. And even if they do, they're going to try to get as far away from the camp as possible, not hang around.”

That was reassuring.

“You should only be worrying about one thing right now,” Jack said, “and that's whether the soda is cold.”

We were walking along one of the main streets in town, and Jack had spotted a tidy little grocery store with a sign advertising cold drinks.

Jack pushed open the door of the store and a bell pinged to announce our entrance.

“Good afternoon, boys,” called out a little man from behind the counter. He was small and wrinkled and his voice quavered with age.

“Good afternoon, sir,” Jack and I both said.

“Nice manners,” the man said. “Not that my eyes see everything so clearly any more, but I don't think I know you two.”

“We're new, sir. Just moved in this morning.”

“House up on Chestnut, right?” he asked.

“Yeah, that's our place. How did you know?”

He chuckled. “Bowmanville's getting bigger, but it's still not that big. What can I do for you two young fellas?”

“We were hoping for a soda,” Jack said.

“A cold soda,” I added.

“We have some back this way in the refrigerator.” He circled the counter and started for the back of the store. His steps were tiny and halting and his advanced age was even more obvious. Just how old was he?

“What flavour you boys want?”

“Two lemon-limes, please, sir,” Jack said.

The old man pulled them out and handed them to us. “Don't know your folks, but they must be good people to raise such polite kids. I'm sure I'll meet 'em soon enough.”

“Our father isn't with us,” Jack said, and the man's eyebrows went up. “He's fighting in Africa … he's with the St. Patty's Regiment.”

“Good for him! And your mother?”

“We came here because she got a new job,” Jack said. “She's going to be working at Camp 30 as an assistant to the colonel who runs the place.”

“That would be Colonel Armstrong. My son tells me he's a good fella.”

“Your son?” I asked.

“Yep, he works up there. He's one of the guards.”

“The guards?” Jack looked at me, and I knew we were thinking the same thing.

“Um … I don't mean any offence, sir, but I was just wondering, wouldn't your son be a little bit old to be a guard?” Jack asked.

“All the guards are part of the V.G.C., the Veteran Guards of Canada. Men who served king and country in other wars but are too old to fight in this one. My son was a soldier in World War I.”

“That was a long time ago,” I said.

“Doesn't seem that long ago to me. Less than twenty-five years. Some of the V.G.C. soldiers fought in the Boer War, which goes back before that.”

“When was the Boer War?” I asked.

“Aren't they teaching you kids any history?” he asked. “That's what's wrong with schools today, not teaching kids about their own past. The Boer War was fought in South Africa. Began in 1899 and ended—with the British Empire triumphant—in 1902. Some of them soldiers are grandfathers many times over now.”

Somehow having grandfathers as guards didn't seem like a good thing to me. After all, these were the people keeping the prisoners away from my mother!

“My son is a young fella compared to some. He's just turned fifty.”

“Is there an age limit for the job?” Jack asked.

“Officially it's fifty-five, but I know a few of these fellas and they haven't seen fifty-five for a long, long time, believe me!” He laughed. “Maybe I should turn in my shopkeeper's apron for a rifle myself. Pay's not bad, and the hours would be a sight better than what I work here.”

He turned and shuffled his way back to the counter. We followed.

“That'll be eight cents,” he said, and my brother handed him the dime. He pushed a button on the cash register, it rang loudly and the cash drawer opened. He dropped in the dime and pulled out two pennies, handing them to my brother.

“You let your mother know that I can offer her good prices on all canned goods—I just wish I had more to offer. Don't have the variety we once had,” he said, gesturing around the store. Some of the shelves were only half full, and a couple were completely empty. “The war's made a lot of things hard to get.”

“That's okay. It's that way for everybody everywhere, sir,” I said.

“Not everybody,” he said. “Not for the prisoners up at the camp.”

We both gave him a confused look.

“They get whatever they want. Fresh fruit and vege tables, sugar, good portions of meat, cigarettes and even beer!”

“The prisoners get beer?” Jack asked in astonishment.

“Four different types they get to choose from, and that's not even to mention the alcohol they brew for themselves in secret stills right there in the camp. There's no shortage of anything for them.”

“But that can't be … that isn't fair,” I said.

“Not fair, indeed, but that's the way it is. Sometimes gets my son all bothered to think that the prisoners are getting more than the guards. Makes him wonder who the prisoners really are.”

“That doesn't make any sense,” Jack said.

“You're right, it doesn't make any sense. Something called the Geneva Convention says we have to treat prisoners well. I doubt they're treating our boys so well when they get captured!”

“Why would we be treating a bunch of stinking Nazis better than we get treated?” Jack asked.

“Lots of things that don't make sense to me,” the old man said. “The older I get, the less sense the world makes. Although from what my son says to me there aren't any Nazis up there.”

“No Nazis?” Jack asked.

The old man shook his head. “My son tells me they're German prisoners but none of them are Nazis. The Nazis are sent to a different camp, he figures.”

“But aren't all Germans Nazis?” I asked.

“That's what I thought myself, but my son was explaining it to me. The Nazis are people like Hitler
and his men. They're part of a political party, the people who run the country. But most of the people doing the actual fighting—the soldiers and sailors and airmen—they're just regular sort of folk. My son says they're fighting for their country, but they don't necessarily even believe in the things that Hitler's saying and doing.”

“They're probably only saying that now that they've been captured and they know the war's going against them,” Jack snapped.

“That's what I thought, too!” the old man crowed. “But my son told me that most of the prisoners are okay sort of fellas. 'Course some of them are pretty important fellas. Most of the prisoners are officers, including a number of generals. They even have Hitler's favourite U-boat captain in there—a guy who sank more Allied ships than anybody else. His name's Kretschmer … Captain Otto Kretschmer.”

“Otto?” I asked. “We were talking to a prisoner named Otto.”

“Half the prisoners are called Otto, or Fritz or Karl or Wolfgang. What sort of name is Wolfgang? So just how was it that you boys were talking to anybody?” the old man asked.

“We weren't really talking to him,” Jack said, stepping in. “We were walking by and this guy said a few words to us through the fence.”

“He seemed friendly and his English was really good,” I added.

“Most of them speak good English, I heard. A lot took English when they were kids in school, and since they got here they've been taking courses to learn to speak better. Personally, I think that's foolish. Do we really want 'em to speak better English so it's harder to find 'em when they escape?”

“Have there been escapes?” I asked.

The old man paused. “I shouldn't be talking about any of this,” he said in a low voice, “'cause it's all pretty hush-hush secret sort of stuff … but even an old man who's half deaf still hears things.”

“Things like what?” I asked in a whisper.

“Like the guy who got smuggled out in a laundry truck. And another who made himself a uniform to look like a Canadian soldier and just sashayed out through the front gate.”

“And they got away?” I gasped.

“Not far and not for long. Both captured almost right away. The guy in the laundry truck gave himself up 'cause he was afraid he was going to suffocate underneath all that laundry! Can you imagine the look on that truck driver's face when a German prisoner pops up from the back and offers to surrender!” The old man started cackling. “Poor fella's lucky he didn't put the truck off the road and kill 'em both!”
The front door pinged and we turned around to look. There was a woman pushing a baby carriage, struggling to get through. I rushed over and held the door for her.