The Moon Tunnel

Even on the day of the reprisal Siegfried had never believed it would happen until he said the word itself. Then came the echo, amongst the cacophony of rifle shots, in the deep ravine beyond the village. He remembered so little of that day but so much of that moment: the pungent scent of the Greek oregano on his fingers, the tobacco on the breeze, and the shuffle of the firing squad’s boots in the silence.

There was only one image from before that moment, before the gunshots made the crows rise: the old man, his father’s age, being dragged from the house where they’d found the guns, and where the girl in the blue dress played on the step. The old man clutching a wooden puppet to his chest; taking it like a talisman to the site of the execution. Then, defiant, he’d smoked the cigarette Siegfried had given him.

In the end he’d shouted the order because he felt if he waited longer, allowed the minutes of the old man’s life to lengthen any further, he’d buckle and never finish the job. The man’s life was the length of a cigarette, smoked with a shaking hand.

He’d given him sixty seconds more, after the butt fell to the earth. The tension he knew was unbearable and unfair, but he’d promised, and he could see the old man’s lips moving in prayer, the puppet – a crudely made doll – still held. There was no rope, no post, no need. The old man stood.

With five seconds left he heard the running feet. If he stopped now he knew the man would live. And then what of Siegfried? How could he live with such shame? So he counted on, hearing the footsteps, and as he shouted ‘Fire!’ the flash of the blue dress fell into the old man’s arms. His men, petrified by killing, fired blindly.

The old man was no longer there, superseded by an image, like a clip of newsreel: a bundle of obscenely flexible limbs, tumbling into the grave Siegfried’s men had already dug. But the girl lay in her dress, the blue swamped with red.

‘A single volley,’ he’d said, knowing the villagers would have heard. He scanned the rocks above, had he heard a stone fall? A goat, perhaps.

He had wished many times that it had not been him standing in that noonday sun, his shadow crowding in around his boots. He had killed often in that war, and while he pitied them all he remembered only the old man in the ravine with his puppet, and the girl who had run to him. They’d buried her later, on the high pass, and he’d marked the spot with a cairn, knowing he’d never return. After the war, he’d told his men, he’d lead the family to the grave. They’d marched on, never looking back.

He’d rehearsed then, as they crossed the snowline, the arguments he would use to salve his conscience: that they’d found the guns in the old man’s house; that they’d made him do it, the villagers of Agios Gallini, killing the guard he had selected for them from the occupying civilian authorities. Serafino, a gentle man, an Italian for God’s sake! But they’d killed Serafino, taken his body into the hills, leaving only his bloodied rifle. Siegfried had to respond, to impose the authority which it was his responsibility to hold. The young men had gone, into the mountains or the factories of the cities. Only the old man remained, with the women and the children. The old man with his puppet, and the guns hidden in the grain store. And then the running footsteps of the granddaughter, the accident which no one would believe.

And now, perhaps, his own death lay at the end of this endless railway journey.

The carriage, fetid and shrouded by padlocked blinds, trundled on. Outside, unseen, was England. He’d liked England, and liked the English, and he’d wept with the others as the landing craft had taken them off the Normandy beaches, out to the prison ship, through the floating bodies of the victorious.

His fellow prisoners played cards, slept or nursed their wounds. Opposite, his second-in-command dozed as flies buzzed around a shoulder wound which festered, adding a sweet smell to the airless compartment. He pressed his face against the drawn blinds and thought about the old man and the girl, as he had thought about them every day during the nightmare of the last two years.

The heat made his head swim so he checked that the guard in the corridor was reading his paper and prised open the tear he had made in the canvas blind with the sharpened edge of his belt buckle. He could see crops sweeping by, an endless flat garden of lettuces, carrots, onions and summer corn. And water, great rivers, narrow drainage ditches and open meres. And once a field worker, a woman, with a headscarf of red rag, and a face of pure astonishment, waved as the secret train rolled on.

He’d slept then, for minutes but maybe hours, until the guard had come through, unlocking the blinds. His eyes screamed with the light: a blazing world of sky and cloud. The engine wheeled and they juddered to a halt at the station, and as he gulped in the air from the half-opened window he saw the cathedral: a Norman pile over the small town, black with the smoke of a thousand years. It made his heart break for home.

And then, too quickly, by trucks to the camp. Over the entrance a number: 45. He was prepared to die, as they had been warned they would die. The British shot their prisoners, everyone knew, and that was why they should have fought to the death.

They lined them up inside the wire and barked something in pidgin German. He laughed back, senior officer in charge, and the men laughed too, finding their pride despite the rags of their uniforms. So they marched them past the food hall and straight into the huts.

They stood, after the guards had gone and locked the doors, wondering why they were still alive. The beds were unmade, slept in, and dishevelled. On the walls memorabilia crowded, newspaper cuttings, old photographs, letters from home, all in Italian. In the shower block they could smell them: the people who had gone before. By the stove a group shot nailed to the wall, a crude sign painted with a figure 8 held in the front row like a football trophy, the faces sunburnt, smiling.

But where had they gone? They’d all heard what was happening in Germany, in Poland, in the camps. Could it happen here? Had they made room for them with a firing squad? This was the fear that hung over Hut 8. He took the bunk furthest from the door and sat quietly while the others talked. On the window ledge a pine cone stood, reminding him again of home, bringing tears of pity to his eyes. He pressed his face into the rough blanket on the bunk and smelt it again: the scent of those who had gone before.