Carnival

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For some time now the train had been stopped in a cutting to the west of Belfort, in the Vosges Mountains and still in France. Crammed in on the hard wooden bench of wartime, Kohler ached for a cigarette. Mein Gott, had it been an hour of silence already? All lights, no matter how tiny and scarce tobacco was, had been forbidden. Louis, he knew, longed to sigh and drolly say, C’est une attaque aerienne, mesdames et messieurs, but soon they’d cross the frontier into Alsace, now the Greater Third Reich, soon Louis would have to be constantly reminded that speaking French in public was verboten.

It didn’t bear thinking about, their being sent on this investigation, this ‘Karneval.’ With the heat, the overcoats and the crowding, misery was compounded but ach, no one complained in a coach full of Waffen-SS-a Sonderkommando, a ‘special’ commando. One simply did as ordered.

‘Raus, Alles.’ Get out, all of you, croaked the sergeant-conductor. The snow, a metre or more deep in places, was pristine under a full moon and not a cloud up there, just stars like you’d never seen, except for the low and throaty drone of aircraft. The RAF at 9.05 p.m. Berlin Time, 7 February 1943, one hour of daylight saving time in winter, two in summer!

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