20
Through 1942 Ralph’s camp, 3GW, found a measure of peace. They were well fed, away from danger, away from death. Most were getting several postcards or letters each month.1 In June Ralph surprised Ronte on their second wedding anniversary, organizing through the Red Cross for an enormous vase of red carnations to be waiting for her when she returned from her factory shift.
3GW was also buoyed by the news that Colonel Ulbrich’s reign had ended. The Wehrmacht took conditions for Western Allied prisoners seriously, even if they had no qualms about murdering prisoners they considered less than human, and Ulbrich and Stalag XVIIID had become an embarrassment. In October 1942, Stalag XVIIID closed down, with responsibility for all Arbeitskommandos in Slovenia handed initially to Stalag XVIIIA/Z Spittal. As this camp was too far away, authority was transferred again to XVIIIA Wolfsberg.2
Ralph also had a growing friendship with one of the few other men on site with any language skills. Leslie Laws was a jazz pianist by trade. He was a bit older than Ralph, in his early thirties, with a wife called Rose, and four young children back in England. When war broke out, he joined the Royal Engineers and became a driver. His closest friend was a Scotsman and fellow Royal Engineer, Andy Hamilton. The pair had trained together, shipped out to Greece together, and, like so disproportionate a number of their ranks, were left behind together. As with Ralph, those who did not belong to intact combat units had often been left to fend for themselves. Les was restless, and had probably the best luck in camp. He’d attempted escape four times, yet somehow had not been sent away to Poland. Andy was even on the crew with him. Les had good looks, a strong jaw, soft blond hair, and a trimmed moustache; like Ralph, he styled himself on Ronald Colman.
Among men who had mostly finished school at thirteen, he and Ralph were both ‘Renaissance men’. Leslie could speak French fluently and ran a well-attended class for his campmates, Ralph being one of them.3 He’d also started to pick up a bit of German. Later, thanks to the Red Cross, Leslie was able to renew his passion for music. He cobbled together a small band with donated instruments, playing the piano accordion himself.4 It wasn’t much, and nothing like a real piano, but it kept Leslie occupied, and the camp entertained.
Life at 3GW improved further when permission was granted to trade at local markets, supplementing an already generous diet. Toiling on the roadworks, Ralph and his fellows qualified for the ‘heavy worker’ ration, which brought with it larger portions, and meat. Red Cross rations made this practically a feast. With access to the local market, they could trade for fresh fruit and vegetables, herbs, and, of course, alcohol. Because Courlander was needed at the work site, Ralph became responsible for the market transactions, both collecting the official ration and trading with local farmers. He began to converse with locals, and to understand the difference between the ethnic Slovenians and ethnic Germans (though, with the Slovenian language suppressed, everyone spoke German in public). Only through careful sounding out could one work out who belonged to which group. Eventually, Ralph befriended a Slovenian, Jan. He was an engineer, a civilian from Maribor who worked onsite with the prisoners.
Otherwise, Ralph simply toiled away on the roadworks, and improved his German. He knew Šentilj was not an ideal place for an escape; there were an unusually large number of German troops nearby, not just the Wehrmannschaft but also, unusually, border guards. Although German-occupied Slovenia had for all other administrative purposes been absorbed into the Reich, the official annexation never took place.5 Partisan resistance had deterred this. As a result, there was still a border, and still troops patrolling it.
With so many troops around, the POWs were even more eager to hear news of the war, most of all from North Africa, where almost all the prisoners had served. Most news was from the local paper, the Marburger Zeitung. Though it was propaganda, useful war information could still be gleaned from its coverage of North Africa and the Eastern Front. Ralph knew the Germans were on the defensive back in Africa. The paper wrote on 2 November 1942, ‘The major enemy attack in Egypt, defended by the German and Italian defensive front of El-Alamein, had already caused extraordinarily high losses of tanks and airplane losses.’6 For days Ralph, Leslie, and all the other POWs waited with bated breath to see who would win the battle of El-Alamein. Then, on 7 November the following was printed: ‘The Italian Army has announced: that Italian and German divisions were in fierce fighting with enemy tank formations in the Fuka–Marsa Matruh area.’7 Marsa Matruh! That brought back memories. Ralph had been based at HQ there while he was mapping Libya; he knew it was some 200 kilometres west of El-Alamein. That meant the Allies had broken through! In the coming days the papers did not admit defeat, but spoke of rearguard actions and German forces moving west. Knowing the tide had turned in the theatre where the prisoners had fought, the camp was jubilant. Normally depression swept POW camps during winter. Not this time.
Preparations for Christmas and New Year now began in earnest. The POWs had little trouble from their guards. Most of the young Nazis had long since been shipped to the front. In their place were Austrian men in their forties and fifties, too old to fight, too young to retire. The prisoners were warmer now too, since the Red Cross also sent fresh winter uniforms. Ralph outdid himself gathering food and alcohol for the festivities; no one had partied so hard in years.8
At the new year 1943, while Ralph still nursed his hangover, he noticed something was different. All the border guards and local Wehrmannschaft had gone. The puzzle gnawed at him for days, until a week into January 1943. Ralph was doing some trading in the village when one of the border guards – a local resident – returned. He was drenched in blood: not his own. Hushed whispers darted across the street. An older woman stormed onto the road and screamed at the guard. She was furious, crying and shouting in Slovenian, which meant Ralph could not understand a word. Finally, she spat in the guard’s face and stormed off.9 Ralph later asked some locals what had happened. The guard had been sent to Pohorje, where Reich forces had killed a great many ‘bandits’. It was not clear whether the woman had a son among the dead, or was just a wholehearted supporter. Ralph thought about this, and the German notices regarding ‘Communist bandits’. That a country under occupation might have problems with banditry, he didn’t doubt. But, seeing that woman so passionate in defence of the so-called bandits, Ralph began to suspect there might be more afoot. For its part, the newspaper did not celebrate the slaughter of the Pohorje Battalion. It carried only a quiet piece on the funeral of a few German soldiers killed fighting the ‘gangs’.10 Ralph determined to gain Jan the engineer’s trust, and try to learn what was really going on.
The end of winter brought more good news, with the German defeat at Stalingrad. Then spring 1943 brought change. Roy Courlander left the camp to visit the dentist in Maribor, and did not return. This was not unusual: men were transferred in and out (usually out) every few weeks, and the once 100-strong working crew was closer to half that now. Ralph now became the Übersetzer, meaning he was exempt from manual labour and could practise his German full-time. Hopes of getting any information from Jan, however, were dashed. Jan did have a connection to the Partisans. For that, the engineer had been arrested and either executed, or sent to die in a concentration camp.11
Jan’s arrest led to a sea change in Ralph’s thinking. First the woman in town, now this? Disappearing a Slovenian engineer didn’t fit the German narrative that the Partisans were simply bandits. Ralph began to suspect that the Partisans were most likely Slovenian patriots. More importantly, they could be allies.