Last Man to Die

His host noticed the faraway look beginning to creep into Churchill’s eye and decided to intervene. ‘Winston, I think it’s time for a toast,’ he said, refilling the Old Man’s glass. ‘I sometimes wondered whether we would ever reach this point, but at last it seems as if the war is almost over. We’ve won – no, you’ve won the war, Winston. I know those Yankee interlopers have come in for the finish, just like they did last time, and will no doubt claim much of the credit …’

‘Just like they did last time!’ someone added.

‘But it wouldn’t have happened, couldn’t have happened without you and what you’ve done. I know there will be many more toasts in the weeks and months ahead, but as an old friend it would do me great honour if this could be the first.’ He raised his glass. ‘To you, Winston. With our thanks for winning the war.’

It was a genuine accolade, made all the more poignant because as an old friend there was no need for Muirhead to have made the gesture. There was a mutter of appreciation from around the table as the others joined in, and already Churchill’s eyes were brimming with tears. He wiped the trickle away with the flat of his hand.

‘Not quite over yet, you know. Still all to play for,’ was the only response he seemed able to mount as Clemmie reached over to pat her own tribute.

‘Still all to play for’, Churchill heard the echo in his mind. Was it so? Eisenhower’s response to his telegram, received that afternoon, had been blunt. ‘Keeping all options open,’ it had said. ‘Review the situation on an ongoing basis … No rush to judgement.’ All the cliches at which an American military mind could clutch. But in the event, Eisenhower’s unwillingness to impair his authority over military matters had been clear and uncompromising. The hard facts were inescapable.

‘I have not won this war, Bill,’ Churchill continued, in a tone that dampened the reverie around the table. He waved down the polite protest of his host. ‘Perhaps historians will be kind and maybe it will be said that I prevented us from losing the war, after Dunkirk. But look around us. Look not just at the West End of London, but across the battlefields of Europe. This war is now an American war, fought with American guns, American money and American lives. Today they have more troops engaged in combat than the whole of the British Empire. It is the Americans who will win this war, eventually. And, to my everlasting regret, it is they who will be largely responsible for the peace.’

As his host picked up the conversation, Churchill could not but remember the words of Eisenhower’s response. Far from pouring through the bridgehead at Remagen, the Supreme Allied Commander was being cautious, blaming the fragile state of the bridge, stating that it would take several days before it was clear whether the bridgehead would hold. So British troops in the north who were ready to advance on Berlin would have to continue sitting on their backsides while Eisenhower’s penpushers dithered about whether US troops had enough prophylactics and nylons for the battle ahead. Damn the man! The war wasn’t over yet and he wasn’t ready to watch American generosity give away everything he had fought for. As he poured himself a brandy, Churchill resolved once more: He wasn’t going to let go, there was too much at stake. While Eisenhower prevaricated, the peace was being lost. The Americans would have to be persuaded or pushed into changing their plans, to set aside their fears of an Alpine Redoubt. Not for the first time he cursed the shortsightedness of others; once again, as at Dunkirk, he was fighting alone. But fighting he was. By one means or another, they would get to Berlin first!

Dinner that night at Camp 174B had been a quiet affair. Not that a mixture of sausage, canned herring and white bread eaten out of an empty corned beef tin and washed down with a mug of tea ever excited great enthusiasm, but the guards were grateful it had been finished rapidly. It left more time for a game of cards and a quiet cigarette.

It was shortly before dusk when one of the Canadian captors’ attention had been attracted by a soldier beckoning in his direction from the shadows of a tent. As he approached he saw the prisoner held a watch in his hand; it was to be a trade. Another Kraut who wanted extra rations or a dry pair of boots.

They moved behind the tent to put themselves away from the general body of prisoners. Illicit trading like this went on all the time, but it paid to be cautious. You didn’t want the whole world to know that you were getting a genuine Swiss watch with twelve diamonds in the movement for the price of a couple of packs of cigarettes. Yet this deal was proving tricky. It was an excellent watch, one of the best the guard had seen in the camp, but the prisoner was demanding a ridiculous price.

It was as they were bent over in heated discussion, the guard wondering whether he should just confiscate the thing anyway, that he felt the cold touch of steel on the back of his neck.

‘Don’t try to be a hero. Just do as you’re told, friend,’ a voice said in heavily accented English. ‘Put down your rifle slowly.’

He tried to turn round but the steel jabbed into his neck. ‘I’ll blow your head off if you try anything stupid.’

‘You can’t have got a gun – even if you had you wouldn’t dare use it,’ the Canadian protested, the uncertainty flooding through.

‘You’re going to gamble your life on it?’

‘What do you want?’

‘Your rifle laid on the ground, very slowly.’

‘Or else?’

‘Or else you die, my friend.’

Shit, why did it have to be him? The war nearly over, soon back to the farm outside Calgary with lots of silly stories to impress the girls about how he personally beat Hitler and won the war. And there would be no damn medals for getting his balls blown off in this God-forsaken part of Britain, a million miles from the front. Slowly, very slowly, he bent down and placed his rifle on the ground.

‘Wise move, soldier.’

The guard didn’t even have time to stand erect. No sooner was his hand away from the trigger than he was hit from behind with the heavy metal bracket that had been wrenched from a camp bed and held against his neck. It wasn’t a very good imitation gun, but now it didn’t matter. They had a real one, and a guard’s uniform. All the tools they hoped they would need …

The brandy was flowing, and Churchill was once again in excellent humour. The women had withdrawn to another room, leaving the men to their own devices. In the absence of the ladies it had been confirmed that prices in the West End had indeed soared, and the only thing the whores were offering free was abuse.

‘It was the same during the last war,’ Muirhead confirmed, to the amusement of his guests. ‘Nothing changes.’

‘My dear sir, but it does,’ Churchill interjected forcefully, wagging his cigar across the table and scattering ash everywhere. ‘How well I remember, when I had returned from the Boer War, I received several very encouraging propositions from such ladies who made it abundantly clear that there would be no charge. I can only ascribe the present unhappy bout of inflation in the West End to a sad decline in values.’ He chortled along with the rest, enjoying his own joke.

‘That was rather special,’ Muirhead chided. ‘You had just escaped from a Boer prison camp and been chased across half of Africa by their army.’

This was why the Old Man enjoyed Muirhead’s dinners; the host always made a point of giving him plenty of scope for relating some of his favourite stories.

‘Why bother to escape, Winston? What drove you to it?’ enquired one of the guests.

And with scarcely time for a perfunctory cough of modesty, he was off. ‘The Boer’ – he pronounced it ‘Booa’, as if to emphasize the race’s reputation for thick-skinned stubbornness – ‘the Boer has so little imagination. A diet of maize and dried beef or, if we were fortunate, dried beef and maize – it was impossible! I would simply have faded away. So you see, my escape was not a matter of bravery. I had no choice in the matter. My stomach insisted.’ He smiled, using his fingers to pop a little cube of cheese into his mouth which he chewed with relish.

‘“Winston Churchill: Dead or Alive”,’ Sir William offered.

‘If only the British electorate had wanted me as passionately as the Boers!’

While the other guests chuckled, Churchill paused to scratch his crotch with a total lack of self-consciousness. His table manners were atrocious. He had long ago ceased to bother about such trivial things, and when Clemmie had forcefully reprimanded him he had justified his behaviour as the self-indulgence of an old man. Anyway, he countered, it hadn’t caused any slackening in the flood of dinner invitations.

‘Seriously, Winston. If you had been captured you most certainly would have been shot, if only to discourage others. Why risk your life? Was it really that important?’

‘I never realized how important until I returned home, where I found that my escape had been the focus of the newspapers’ attention for weeks. Unwittingly I had become a hero, a symbol of national resistance, and my escape had succeeded in bolstering the determination of the entire country to continue with the war until victory. It is a matter of morale, and you cannot fight a war without morale. As one editor kindly wrote, “One man, by his actions and example, can so inspire a nation that he will light a fire across a whole continent”.’

There was an appreciative silence around the room and a look of sheer wickedness crept into the Old Man’s eye. ‘And, as I discovered, you can get a good discount into the bargain!’

The camp was in darkness. There were no lights along the perimeter fence and the only illumination came from within the old football changing rooms, which now served as a guard hut, and from the bright moon. But it was a blustery night with clouds scudding across the sky. Had any of the guards bothered to look they would have found shadowy figures flitting between the tents, playing hide-and-seek in the sporadic moonlight, but most of the Canadians were relaxing in the guard hut. There were just four guards on the main gate into the compound, and two patrolling the walkway between the double perimeter fence. Guard duty was a pain; there had never been any trouble and no prisoner in his right mind would want to escape back to the hell pit they’d just left in Europe. They were all, prisoners and guards alike, marking time till the fighting was over.

So when, from inside the shadowy compound, the pair patrolling the perimeter walkway saw one of their number beckoning to them, no suspicion was aroused. He had probably found two prisoners screwing or some other bit of fun to enliven the endless night hours of cold and boredom. They let themselves into the compound through a side gate in the wire; they didn’t even think twice that the gateway was shielded from the main guard house across the compound by the prisoners’ tents. After all, they hadn’t put the tents there. Even after they darted between two of the tents and came face to face with their fellow guard pointing his Lee Enfield straight at them, they were still not concerned. It was only when they heard the familiar click of a round being forced into the chamber that they realized all was not well, and not until the moon had squeezed briefly between the clouds and fallen across Hencke’s lean and determined face did they realize that this was not, after all, going to be their night.

‘But you’re …’ one gasped in sudden understanding. It came too late. They had already raised their hands and were being relieved of their weapons.

‘I … don’t want to die,’ the youngest guard blubbed as his wrists were tied behind him with a length of guy rope.

‘Keep your miserable mouth shut and you won’t have to,’ a prisoner responded. The young guard was almost relieved when he felt the gag pushed firmly between his teeth.

The guards’ legs were pinioned and they were bundled into the corner of one of the tents. It was only when the prisoners were leaving that one of them remembered. ‘You’re the miserable little bastard who held my head down on the table the other day, aren’t you?’ The youngster’s eyes, all that could be seen above the gag, showed large and white. He was petrified. ‘I’ll never forget that. You were laughing your head off.’ The prisoner stiffened and swung back a leg as if to smash the Canadian’s testicles. None of the other prisoners did or said anything to stop him; the guard deserved everything he got. But as the German looked at the whimpering body on the ground in front of him, he seemed to change his mind. He knew what it was like to be defenceless and scared. He spat in disgust and turned on his heel. Escape would be revenge enough.

A few minutes later a group of men moved towards the guard house, eight prisoners being marched sullenly along with three uniformed guards, rifles at the ready, escorting them from the rear.

‘Open the gate!’ one of the guards shouted. ‘Got a bunch of troublemakers who need a little gentle reminding of who’s in charge of this friggin’ camp.’

The gates swung open and the prisoners marched through. The duty sergeant nodded as they approached, his rifle slung over his back as he took a drag from a cigarette. He waved a lazy torch in their direction. Hencke was standing directly in front of him before the beam fell across his face.

‘Heil Hitler,’ Hencke snapped.

‘What …?’ was the only word the sergeant managed to expel before a rifle butt thumped him in the gut, putting him on the floor and rendering him incapable of any noise except a low gurgling retch. Around him the other guards were receiving similar treatment before being trussed and dragged off to join their companions in the tent.

The prisoners now had seven rifles. They also had surprise on their side and there was scarcely a protest when they burst into the guard hut and over-powered sixteen other guards. The seventeenth, the captain on duty, was taking a shower and thought the interruption was some prank by the other guards. He was not in good temper when he stepped from under the water to remonstrate, with nothing more than a sponge to maintain the dignity he thought due his senior rank. He was in even poorer temper after he had been bound and, minus even his sponge, dumped with the other captive guards.

‘I’ll freeze to death,’ he complained.

‘Be grateful that dying will take you so long,’ came the response, after which the captain ceased protesting and saved his energy for trying to burrow as deeply as possible into the pile of warm bodies inside the tent.