‘My sister is at work in a German munitions factory,’ Felicyta said coolly. ‘And my mother. “Political prisoners.” That is German for “slave labour”. They are in a concentration camp.’
The embarrassing thing is, I already knew this, or sort of. But of course I hadn’t really put it together. Anyway, being an Ignorant American Schoolgirl gives me an open ticket to ask brazen, awkward questions, and I’d already put my foot in my mouth, so I just went on.
‘What is a concentration camp, Fliss?’
She shrugged. ‘A prison for civilians – for anyone the Germans don’t like. Poles because they are Poles, Jews because they are Jews. My mother because she gave a blanket to a Jew. My sister because she told the German police my mother was right to do it. People disappear all the time, and you never hear from them again.’
‘But how do you know where your family is?’
Felicyta kept her voice steady, her face still wearing an expression of patient tolerance for ignorant foreigners. ‘Two years ago my father got a postcard from a cousin in the same camp, who was allowed to ask him to send her a food package, and she told him she had seen my mother and sister alive.’
How utterly impossible it is for me to imagine – Felicyta’s mother and sister have been missing for two years. That was what Maddie was talking about on the train. She thought it was worse than being told someone was dead – not ever knowing what happened to them.
You can see why Felicyta is so angry at everything.
‘Fliss, how did you escape?’
She smiled a close-lipped, evil smile, only the corners of her mouth turning up, and said, ‘I stole a plane. OK, it was my own plane, but I did have to steal it! I was doing courier work for the Polish Air Force when the Germans invaded. I knew they would take over all communications aircraft, or destroy them, so I took this one myself. I flew to France. It took me three days, mostly flying in twilight, hiding the plane in woodland by day. France was still free then . . .’
It must have been in 1939. I was thirteen. I was in junior high school. I was oblivious to what was going on in Europe. Or anywhere except right where I was – Justice Field, Mount Jericho, Pennsylvania, the centre of the known universe.
Here is what I already knew about Felicyta’s sister – what I’d forgotten about hearing before. It happened just after I came to Hamble. I was sitting in the Operations room with a few other girls, waiting for the day’s ferry chits to be handed out. I was new enough to be shy and a little bit nervous about sitting down next to people I didn’t know, so I was sitting by myself – it was even before Celia had turned up.
The wireless was on, and because I wasn’t talking to anybody, I was listening to the radio. And it was this ugly story about a prison camp in Germany where they’d been running medical experiments on Polish prisoners, all women, mostly students – cutting open their legs and infecting them with gangrene, simulating bullet wounds, in the name of ‘medical science’ – to find treatments for German soldiers wounded on the Eastern Front. The BBC announcer read through an endless list of names that a former prisoner had secretly memorised when she knew she was going to be released. I was interested because the woman who’d memorised the names was an American citizen. It was compelling stuff – you couldn’t stop listening – but it was so absolutely awful that I couldn’t believe it, and I said so.
‘That’s got to be propaganda!’ I burst out. ‘You English are as bad as the Germans!’
‘You should read the Guardian,’ Maddie said. ‘It’s not all propaganda. The reports from the concentration camps are pure evil.’
‘Poisoning girls with gangrene?’ I objected. ‘It’s like trying to get us to believe the Germans eat babies!’
At that point Felicyta slammed her teacup down so hard she broke her saucer right in half, and stormed out of the room. The floor shuddered as the door thundered shut behind her.
Maddie thrashed her newspaper into submission and nodded towards Felicyta’s slammed door.
‘Her sister’s in a German concentration camp,’ Maddie explained in a level voice. She looked back down at the paper without meeting my eyes. ‘Felicyta thinks the Germans do eat babies.’
That was three months ago.
I am starting to understand why the Polish pilots are so fanatical about their hatred of the Germans. Thank goodness I haven’t got a ‘good old Pennsylvania Dutch’ name like Stolzfuss or Hitz or Zimmerman. Felicyta doesn’t know my middle name is Moyer, Mother’s maiden name, or that my grandfather still speaks old-fashioned Pennsylvania German sometimes. I will never tell her.
I can’t believe I have only been in England for three months – it seems like forever. And yet the war hasn’t really touched me. I haven’t lost my fiancé or my best friend or my mother or my sister. I’m not in exile. I have a home to go back to, and people waiting for me. I have an aunt who is going to take me to lunch at the Ritz and an uncle who sends me fuses!
But I am very glad that Kurt and Karl are only ten years old, far too young to be drafted, and that they are safe at home in Pennsylvania.
August 25, 1944
Hamble
Felicyta and Maddie came over to play cards with me at the Hatches’ last night, and there was an air raid. The siren doesn’t scare me at all when it first goes off – it sounds exactly like the hooter at the Volunteer Fire Company in Conewago Grove. I always think, That’ll be a fire somewhere – I’m glad Daddy’s not on duty here. Mrs Hatch shooed us out through the vegetable garden to get to the shelter. The house is on a high slope and as we stumbled over the cabbages in the dark, we got a frightening glimpse of half a dozen flying bombs travelling across the sky. All you could see were the red exhaust flames of their engines – from far away it looked like a line of glowing balls of fire moving slowly along the horizon.
There is only room for one camp bed in the Hatches’ shelter, because they built it themselves and it is tiny. The camp bed is ridiculously covered with a candlewick bedspread to make it seem cosy, and we all squeezed together on it to stay out of the mud. Fliss said to me, ‘Singing will not scare the bombs away!’
I’d been humming nervously, without realising I was doing it. I laughed. ‘It’s a Girl Scout camp song.’
‘Rosie is always singing,’ Maddie pointed out. I could feel her trembling next to me, and remembered how much she hates the bombs.
‘Sing properly if you’re going to sing!’ commanded Mrs Hatch. ‘Then we can all join in.’
So we sat in the underground shelter and I taught them camp songs. I sang ‘Land of the Silver Birch’ and ‘My Paddle’s Keen and Bright’ (again) and then I got bold and sang my ‘Modern Warrior’ poem to the same tune, and they beat time by clapping. And then I taught them ‘Make New Friends’. It’s easy, and we sang it as a round, again and again –
‘Make new friends
But keep the old,
One is silver
And the other gold!’
Kind of corny, but it seemed so appropriate.
There we were in the mud, singing so loudly that we didn’t hear the all-clear siren when it went! And Mr Hatch came home and broke up the party, hustling us all inside and tut-tutting about his wife being so easily corrupted by modern youth.
‘You might have at least been singing hymns,’ he chided her.
It was the best air raid ever.
Back in bed I started thinking about how I like to be in a crowd – it’s not like being best friends, or even a threesome, where sometimes two of you pair up and leave the other out. There’s always someone on your side when you’re in a crowd.
Make new friends
But keep the old . . .