Despair

We were given a moment to get our pants, shoes, and jackets on and rushed down the stairs.  I was still affected by the dander from the rabbits, and rushing made it hard to breathe and made my eyes water.  I kept wiping my eyes with my sleeves; I didn’t want to look like I was crying.

We saw the Triton’s rushed ahead of us out of the house.  We didn’t see her mother or daughter.  I was sure they stayed in the house at night.

We three were put into the back of a van with no windows and no seats and we were driven a long way.  When we were let out, there were soldiers all around with guns pointed at us.  It was a bright day and the sun hurt our eyes after being in the dark so long.  We were in front of a two-story rather elaborate-looking building.  We didn’t have time to look at it and we were rushed into the building and up the stairs into a room.  It was a circular room paneled in wood, very elegant.  I know this because I had a long time to look at the paneling.  The three of us were put at equal distance from each other, facing the wall, and each of us had a soldier behind him with a gun pointed at him.  We were warned not to speak, not to look around, and we obeyed.  And we stood that way for a long, long time.

There we stood, my nose and eyes still were a problem and my sleeve my only means of wiping them.  Even this they made me stop.

We were warned again not to move and told we would be shot as spies.  We stood there on and on quiet in our room, but sounds from other rooms and even screams could be heard.  The occasional scream helped in keeping us quiet and obedient to our captors and also darn thoughtful.  I couldn’t believe they would shoot us, and yet I wasn’t real sure.  I can’t remember being scared; I should have been.  I was apprehensive, and my thoughts were taken up by the immediate happening so much so that I couldn’t think too far ahead.

Sometime later after what seemed like many, many hours, we were rushed out of the circular room, pushed and rushed down the stairs, and ordered into a van.  We drove a very short way when the van door opened.  We could see we were in a court yard of a prison.  We had no time to look around.  We were pushed and shoved into a door and down some stairs to a basement room.  Here we were ordered to undress by an English-speaking guard and to undress completely.  Our clothes were searched.  Our bodies also were searched; we were even made to bend over so they could search our rectums.  I had never known anything was ever hidden there, but now I knew. They found nothing; we had nothing.

At first, they wouldn’t let us dress, and we stood shivering in this cold basement room.  Finally, a German officer came into the room and told us to dress and that they were putting us in a cell and that in the morning we would be shot as spies.We were all tired, hungry, and thirsty.  It was night and we hadn’t eaten or drank anything all that day.  We had to climb several flights of stairs, I lost count of how many.  We were shoved into a cell but not before we were made to leave our pants and shoes out in the hall.  There were two guys in the cell already who were Americans.  They had been told they would be shot a couple of days ago so it seemed being shot was perhaps the least of our worries, we hoped.  These two guys had heard, I don’t know how, of two Americans caught in the railroad station.  The soldiers in the station became suspicious of them they were there so long.  Their guide somehow took chances.  They, along with their guide, were beaten so badly that they told everything they knew before being thrown into prison.  That must have been how our safe house had been discovered.

I looked around the cell.  It was about eight feet by ten feet.  There was a toilet without a seat in the corner to the left of the door and a sink with one faucet on the far wall to the left of a window high up in the wall.  On the long wall on the right was a long shelf about six feet off the floor.  Under this shelf were five mats made of rough canvas and filled with straw.  These were our sleeping mats.  The rabbits were far gone, and I was feeling better except a feeling of utter despair swept over me.  I still have this feeling when I see situations or tales of despair whether real or fictional.  For a long time after I couldn’t bear to think of this day.

©Joseph H. Harrison 1999