I felt Giles with me in that moment. This was the spirit with which he’d lived his entire life, and it was how I too could find meaning, whatever came next, even with all of my fear for my son and my uncertainty about my own future.
C H A P T E R 23
JOSIE
Pforzheim Prison, Germany
September, 1944
I tried not to mark the passing of time, but that window meant that I had no way to ignore it. I had seen the end of spring from that cell and had watched summer pass.
One day, a guard came to my door. They usually changed over my waste bucket in the morning so I pushed myself off the bed and picked it up to hand it to him, following the same routine I’d had for months. This time, the guard shook his head in and motioned for me to follow him. Stunned, I took a wobbly step out the door.
“What is the date?” I blurted.
“13 September,” he said curtly.
I had been in that cell for close to five months. Had the war ended in that time? If so, and the Allies lost, it was entirely possible that nothing in the German prison would have changed. I was already struggling to walk on wasted muscles, but my knees gave out at the thought that I was leaving that cell to enter a world where Hitler had won. The guard grabbed me by the arm to drag me into an office after I collapsed. He dropped me unceremoniously into a chair, then sat opposite me to complete paperwork. I sat bewildered as he flicked from page to page, every single slip of paper marked with the words Nacht und Nebel.
Was this sudden change in my circumstances a good thing, or a bad thing? I had no idea, and I was so worn down—so overwhelmed—that I could not even bring myself to ask. Eventually, the guard slipped the paperwork into a folder, propped it beneath his arm, and motioned for me to follow him back out into the hallway. I pushed myself to my feet and collapsed again. He huffed impatiently and once again was dragging me by the arm as I stumbled after him—but then—we walked through a door and I was outside. I looked up at that vibrant blue sky and I sucked in a sharp breath, greedy for fresh air.
All too soon, he pushed me into the back of a van and zipped the canvas door closed behind me. Was this an opportunity to escape? But no. I was still handcuffed, still weak. I had no way to cut the canvas open anyway. I sat alone in that van for an hour or more as it drove, thrown mercilessly from one side to the other with every corner. When it finally stopped, I was once again manhandled from the back and found myself standing outside of another prison.
“Karlsruhe,” the guard said abruptly. “You’ve been transferred.”
There was an all-female wing at Karlsruhe—even the guards were women. A brusque guard named Hertha oversaw my paperwork, and the pitying glances she kept flicking at me as I waited told me I looked every bit as rough as I felt. When she handed me my prison uniform, I thanked her in German, and she was visibly relieved.
“Where am I?” I asked her.
“Karlsruhe is a civilian prison.”
“But…why am I at a civilian prison?”
“You aren’t the only prisoner of war they’ve sent us in the past few days but we have no idea why you’re being sent here. And your N&N designation means we are not supposed to let you associate with the rest of the prisoners. We’re supposed to keep you in solitary confinement permanently…” She paused, glanced at the door, as if checking that we were alone, then dropped her voice. “But we don’t have enough cells for that, so you’ll be bunking in with another N&N prisoner.”
“Nacht und Nebel,” I whispered. “I know it’s ‘night and fog.’ What does that mean?” It was well and truly obvious to me by that point that being an “N&N” prisoner was no positive thing, but I was still curious about the term.
“It’s just a designation of political prisoner,” she said. “Come.”
She led me patiently through the long corridors of the prison, stopping automatically when I slumped against a wall because my muscles were too weak to hold me up. I was exhausted from the effort of carrying myself upright for the first time in months even though I was grateful that Hertha did not manhandle me like the male guard did.
Most of the cells we passed were empty, but I saw hundreds of female prisoners outside in the yard through the windows. When Hertha pushed open a door and I saw long rows of showers inside, I could not help but to weep. I was still wearing the same outfit I’d been in when I was arrested five months earlier and had not bathed since that day. My clothes were so stained with blood and dirt and sweat that most of the fabric was stiff.
Hertha went back to the door and peered through the small window, looking back into the hallway, then she reached into her pocket and handed me a slip of soap.
“Thank—” I started to say, but she cut me off with a low hiss and shook her head. I nodded in understanding—she was obviously concerned she’d get in trouble for helping me—but I was certain my gratitude showed in my eyes.
The water in the showers was icy cold, but I didn’t care one bit. I washed every inch of my body with that soap. To pull on even that stiff prison uniform, after months in the same filthy clothes, was one of the most pleasant sensations I had ever experienced.
Once I was dressed, Hertha took me back through the prison block, all the way to the front office, then down another corridor. Here the doors were much closer together, but unlike the main dormitory, each cell was enclosed. She stopped, unlocked a door and swung it open. I gasped in surprise. This space was much larger than my previous cell, with two chairs and a low table, and a cupboard, and even a bed with a straw mattress on it. A woman lay on the mattress, facing the wall so I could not see her face.
Perhaps other prisoners would not smile at a shared cell with a single bed, topped by a thin, filthy mattress that was already occupied. But there was so much for me to be excited about in that room. Human company! Soft furnishings! A toilet and even a sink!
Oh, even if I could just drink as much water as I wanted, I would be in heaven.
Hertha motioned for me to step into the cell, and the prisoner rolled over on the bed and sat up with a start. As the door slammed closed behind me, I wondered if I’d finally lost my mind.
“Chloe? Is it really you?”
“Fleur?” I croaked. She rose from the bed and rushed to my side as my knees gave way, catching me just in time to help me to the bed. My whole body shook with sobs, but she held me close, and rubbed my back.
“Eloise,” she said firmly. “They know my real name, so it only seems fair that you do too.”
“I’m Jocelyn,” I wept. How had I survived for so long without so much as an embrace? Now that I was hugging a friend again, it seemed as vital to my survival as air or water and food. “My friends call me Josie.”
“…so, Veronique and I decided that was enough, we’d alert Baker Street. But as we were preparing the transmission, the Gestapo arrived…” I swallowed roughly. “She took an L pill. The last time I saw her, they were dragging her outside to try to force her to vomit. I have no idea if she survived.”
Eloise listened silently as I explained about the circumstances that led to my arrest. I could not bring myself to explain the torture I had endured at Avenue Foch. Even bringing it to mind was enough to make me weep.