Challenged at the gate, Kohler handed over the blanket pass and his papers, but Jakob Dorsche hadn’t come to meet him and that could only mean there had been trouble. ‘Einen Moment, bitte, Herr Hauptmann Detektiv Aufsichtsbeamter,’ grunted the Feldwebel. No youngster, he had seen enough of the Russian front to be ever mindful of it. The cranking of the field telephone came from the guardhouse. Most of the prisoners on the day shift had now been at work for hours but two lines of waiting details were under guard and probably replacement woodcutters though they carried no axes or saws and only miserable bundles tied up with rags. They were Ostarbeiter, eastern labourers—Poles and Russians mainly and considered Untermenschen (subhuman) by the Nazis. There had been thousands of Wehrmacht POWs in the camps to which he had been consigned during the rest of that other war. Though it had never been a picnic, and they had often been cold, hungry and definitely starved for female company, there had still been a camaraderie.
