Do the Birds Still Sing in Hell? by Horace Greasley Page B

skills.’
    It was Frank Talbot, an airman from Worcester. The prisoners were dumbfounded. Some sneered and hissed.
    ‘My skills were made for the wonderful German soldiers.’
    The SS officer smiled as he spoke. ‘Excellent… and what was your profession back in England, prisoner?’
    Talbot looked back at the mass of prisoners and then back to the SS man.
    ‘I am an undertaker, sir.’
    A huge cheer rang out from the ranks of astonished and laughing men. After the beating that followed, Frank Talbot spent two weeks in the sick bay with a fractured skull and abroken tibia. He would tell the men afterwards that the pain he suffered was worth it.
    The men were ordered to reveal their civilian roles. Incredible though it seemed, a gentleman’s barber would be spared the normal duties. By this time every man in the camp had lice and keeping prisoners’ heads shaved was the only way to control the spread.
    Horace was shown into a small room adjacent to the offices of the camp and a queue of POWs made to line up outside. It was there that Horace shaved the lice-ridden heads from dawn until dusk with no running water or electricity. As the day went on his feet swelled inside his battered boots until they cried out for mercy, but by sitting the prisoners on an old shoebox and distributing his weight from one leg to the other every few minutes, he managed to give each foot a break. And he thanked his lucky stars that he could manage cutting hair, for nothing could be worse than the work the outside parties were being made to undertake.
    The first workers returned after day one looking more pale and gaunt then their starving malnourished comrades inside the camp. Flapper had been one of those assigned to the work party. He said that at first that the men were glad of the change of scenery, happy about the fresh air and a little exercise as they’d been marched the short distance just outside the village of Mankowice.
    They had been carrying shovels, picks and spades and some assumed they were about to start work on a building project, perhaps digging the foundations for a new factory or maybe another camp. They had stopped outside a graveyard and one by one were ushered through the gates of the elegant, well-kept cemetery.
    At first Flapper believed they were simply there to tidy things up, a gardener’s working party. Then he noticed thenames on the gravestones. Isaac and Goldberg, Abraham and Spielberg. And the Star of David carved or painted into each stone. A Jewish cemetery. Given the rumours that flew around the camp there was no way the Germans would want to trim the bushes and control the weeds. Instead the prisoners were instructed to dig a hole six feet deep.
    ‘This grave is for anyone who disobeys my orders,’ an English-speaking sergeant explained.
    The full horror of their task became clear as he rambled on. They were to exhume the dead bodies of the Jews and rob them of everything they had taken with them in death. Gold rings, watches… even the gold fillings from their rotting teeth were pulled out with pliers. The SS stood watch as the crumbling skeletons were abused, robbed of everything. Afterwards the remains of the bodies were taken to a huge pit dug by a previous party and thrown in without ceremony. Garwood cried as he relayed the details to his friend: the bodies of small children and women dressed up in what were once their finest clothes – mere rags now, soiled rags – and how the prisoners had been made to strip the skeletons bare, just to make sure nothing was missed.
    ‘Is nothing sacred to these bastards, Jim?’ he asked between tears.
    It had been a bad day, possibly the worst so far. As each day, week and indeed month passed since he had been captured, Horace had drifted off to sleep at night thinking things couldn’t get any worse. But they did.
    As unpleasant as conditions were, Horace could not complain about the task he had been allocated inside Fort Eight at Posen. The men were glad