Biographies & Memoirs

27

Looking for the Connection

Ralph was scratching his head for ways to make contacts among the Partisans. Conversations with Kristina Tinka, the young Slovenian woman living near the camp, had gone nowhere, though in the meantime Ralph had managed to assemble a few escape aids. He’d stolen a compass from Gross’s office, an act Ralph expected they could work out between them if caught. A riskier steal, in public no less, was a map of the region which Ralph tore out of a school textbook left open on a cafe table.1 What he needed was to get out into the countryside, where Slovenians could speak in private, away from Nazi ears.

Such an opportunity arose in regrettable circumstances. The prisoners were now barred from pub and cinema trips, after several drunk lecherous men had sexually harassed a waitress.2 The non-drinking group were particularly annoyed to lose their privileges. The Crow therefore needed to keep dozens of thirsty prisoners in high spirits, and so he expanded Sunday shopping operations. He’d head out with three or four others – usually Leslie, Len, Kit, and Andy – and travel with a guard to farmhouses, where the prisoners would barter for meat, fresh vegetables, cider, spirits, and wine. Payment was in Red Cross cigarettes, coffee, chocolate, soap, and tinned goods. Len’s services were provided too: he’d bring his carpenter’s tools and fix doors, windows, furniture, or roof leaks in exchange for goods.3

For contacting Partisans, however, this too proved a dead end. The farmers hated the Germans, and Ralph’s language skills actually put him at a disadvantage: by now he had learned the nearby southern Austrian dialect well, but this turned out to make him sound so much like the Nazi officials from over the border that it spooked the locals. Having a guard nearby didn’t help either.

For the guards at least, these trips proved fruitful. Ralph’s favourite was Gustl Breithof, a middle-aged man from South Tyrol, a German-speaking region that had been annexed from Austria in 1919 by Italy. In 1939 it had been an awkward point in relations between Hitler and Mussolini. The resolution was an ultimatum: Tyrolians could either stay in the region and give up their name, culture, language, and ‘become’ Italian (like Slovenians in Primorska), or they could emigrate to the Reich. Gustl had chosen to emigrate.4 For Gustl and the other guards, the prisoners were the only source of alcohol: guard wages were pitiful, and prices too high to afford much in taverns or shops – by now, in any case, most Slovenian farmers refused to sell to Germans. Many times, Gustl and the other guards sampled the purchases with such enthusiasm that the prisoners would carry their guards’ rifles while they all staggered back to camp.5 The rest of the prisoners were also delighted by the alcohol.

There was more cause for celebration. On 6 June 1944 came D-Day. The Western Allies had invaded France. The Germans were now fighting on four fronts: France, Italy, the Soviet Union, and in the Balkans against the Partisans. The Marburger Zeitung carried the news of D-Day with unexpected honesty: ‘The long-awaited British and North American attack against the northern French coast began last night . . . the enemy, with simultaneous heavy bombing attacks, dropped strong airborne units . . . protected by heavy and light warships, a number of enemy landing craft also advanced.’6 For Leslie and many of his fellow Brits, though, the jubilation was muted by concern for the safety of their families at home. For the past two years, German cities had been pulverized: under the premise of focusing ‘on the morale of the enemy civil population’; like the Luftwaffe, Allied air forces were authorized to kill civilians in their homes.7 Hundreds of thousands of people were killed this way by the war’s end. And in recent months, German radio and newspapers had started talking of ‘wonder weapons’ and ‘retaliation’.

Leslie took German propaganda about the V1 flying bombs launched against southern England after D-Day to heart. A typical example of such propaganda declared:

a fiery circle has been drawn around London, which has been fighting for days for its life against a terrible weapon of attack. In the centre of the town at the bend of the Thames fierce fires must be raging. A thin veil of clouds over London is coloured dark red . . . in London the fires will never be extinguished.8

Hearing about the threat to his home, Leslie went ballistic. Cursing the Nazis, he seemed ready to tear down the wire barehanded, so much did he fear losing his family.9 The war was coming to a head, both abroad and in Maribor.

The railway worksite was now having visits from a cheerful and good-looking Slovenian man with brown hair: ‘Flash Harry’ or ‘Harry the Bum’, depending on which prisoner you asked. He wandered in and out, sometimes speaking with the guards, who told the crew he was a forest warden making a timber inventory.10 It was clear that what attracted him to the site was the chance to pinch a meal or a cigarette. He’d pester the whole crew trying to bum a cigarette. Sometimes Harry would look for conversations in German. Leslie indulged Harry in conversation but rarely in cigarettes.

Through their daily work on the railway the prisoners were aware that services in Štajerska were in disarray. Partisans had been blowing up bridges, derailing trains and halting services, and Maribor Station was clogged with trains caught in bottlenecks.11 Leslie and Ralph were now convinced that the 14th Division was still in business. Exactly where, however, was the question to which no one had an answer.

Summer, meanwhile, was moving along, and with it their window of escape. On a pleasant July day, Leslie finally popped the question to Lisa over tea. ‘Lisa, do you know where I could find some Partisans?’

Lisa froze. Her eventual reply was cryptic: ‘I do not. They are over the hills somewhere.’12 Leslie took the hint and felt unable to press her any further. He was reluctant to let Lisa risk her and her family’s lives on his behalf.

Ralph and Leslie felt a sense of urgency, but camp life needed to go on. They both continued the music and drama, developing new acts. Everything had to appear normal. Keeping the show going was complicated by regular transfers, though. Connor – still bearing the photo of the Soviet POWs – had been transferred along with many others central to camp life. Replacing them was a group of twenty from Stalag XVIIIA in Wolfsberg, which brought their number to around eighty. Previous newcomers had been from Italy, captured in North Africa. But many of the arrivals here now were older hands caught in Crete. A short show was put on to keep up the happy impression and distract the newcomers. Henare Turangi, a Maori soldier also in the Ronald Colman moustache club, had developed a musical axe-juggling routine. It made a great impression on the new arrivals.13

Some of the newcomers to Maribor did not believe in fanciful tales of the Partisans, but others had come determined to escape. Colin Ratcliffe was one such man.14 A young New Zealander, he’d spent two years on the run. He had lived in a cave in Crete, subsisting on wild plants, snails, and local help. Finally caught in 1943, Colin and his fellow runaways had not been sent to a Stalag, but to the notorious Mauthausen concentration camp, where they endured labour designed to work them to death.15 The authorities then realized that these prisoners were supposed to be in an army camp and transferred them to Stalag XVIIIA. Now Colin had been moved on to Maribor and, like Leslie and Ralph, hoped to escape to the Partisans.

Those hopes seemed dim. Little indicated that there was a chance of establishing contact. For all their scheming, Leslie and Ralph had not made much progress – nothing to show besides a compass, a map, and a vague sense that the Partisans were nearby. It was late July already. If the Germans kept retreating, the prisoners would be moved deeper into the Reich. Their plan seemed dead in the water.

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