The Young Lions

"Oh, my God," the Lieutenant whispered at the window.

The crowd was around the two dead men, now, enveloping them. The prisoners made very little noise as they trampled over the two dead forms, stamping hard again and again, each prisoner jostling the other, seeking some small spot on the dead bodies to kick.

The Lieutenant pulled away from the window and leaned tremblingly against the wall. "Eleven thousand of them…" he said. "In ten minutes they'll all be loose."

There were some shots from near the gate, and three or four of the prisoners went down. Nobody paid much attention to them, and part of the crowd surged, with that dull, flickering non-tonal murmur, in the direction of the gate.

From other barracks other crowds appeared, coming into view swiftly, like herds of bulls in the movies of Spain. Here and there they had caught a guard, and they made a co-operative business of killing the man.

There were screams from the corridor outside. The Lieutenant, fumbling at his pistol, with his dear memories of the orderly defeat of the last war bitter in his brain, went out to rally his men.

Christian moved away from the window, trying to think quickly, cursing himself for being caught like this. After all he'd been through, after so many battles, after facing so many tanks, artillery pieces, so many trained men, to walk of his own free will into something like this…

Christian went out into the other office. The trusty was there alone, near the window. "Get in here," Christian said. The trusty looked at him coldly, then walked slowly into the private office. Christian closed the door, eyeing the prisoner. Luckily, he was a good size. "Take off your clothes," Christian said.

Methodically, without saying anything, the prisoner took off his loose striped-cotton jacket and began on his trousers. The noise was getting worse outside, and there was now quite a bit of shooting.

"Hurry!" Christian ordered.

The man had his trousers off by now. He was very thin and he had greyish, sackcloth underwear on. "Come over here," Christian said.

The man walked slowly over and stood in front of Christian. Christian swung his machine-pistol. The barrel caught the man above the eyes. He took one step back, then dropped to the floor. There was almost no mark above his eyes. Christian took him by the throat with both hands and dragged him over to a cupboard door on the other side of the room. Christian opened the cupboard and pulled the unconscious man into it. There was an officer's overcoat hanging in the cupboard and two dress tunics.

Christian closed the cupboard and went over to where the prisoner's clothes lay on the floor. He started to unbutton his tunic. But the noise outside seemed to grow louder, and there was confused shouting in the corridor. He decided he didn't have time. Hurriedly, he put the trousers on over his own, and wrestled into the coat. He buttoned it up to the neck. He looked into the mirror on the cupboard door. His uniform didn't show. He looked hastily around for a place to hide the gun, then bent down and threw it under the couch. It would be safe there for a while. He still had his trench knife in its holster under the striped coat. The coat smelled strongly of chlorine and sweat.

Christian went to the window. New batches of prisoners, the doors of their barracks battered down, were swirling around below. They were still finding guards and killing them, and Christian could hear firing from the other side of the Administration Building. Some of the prisoners were knocking down a double door on a barn-like structure a hundred metres away. When the door went down, a large number of the prisoners surged through it and came back eating raw potatoes and uncooked flour, which smeared their hands and faces a powdery white. Christian saw one prisoner, a huge man, bent over a guard, whom he held between his knees, choking him. The huge man suddenly dropped the guard, who was still alive, and forced his way into the warehouse. Christian saw him come out a minute later with his hands full of potatoes.

Christian kicked open the window, and without hesitating, swung out. He held by his fingers for a second, and dropped. He fell to his knees, but got up immediately. There were hundreds of men all around him, all dressed like him, and the smell and the noise were overpowering.

Christian started towards the gate, turning the corner of the Administration Building. A gaunt man, with the socket of one eye empty, was leaning against the wall. He stared very hard at Christian and began to follow him. Christian was certain the man suspected him, and tried to move quickly, without attracting attention. But the crowd of men in front of the Administration Building was very dense now, and the man with one eye hung on, behind Christian.

The guards in the building had surrendered now, and were coming out of the front door in pairs. For a moment, the newly released men were strangely quiet, staring at their one-time warders. Then a big man with a bald head took out a rusty pocket knife. He said something in Polish and grabbed the nearest guard and began to saw away at his throat. The knife was blunt and it took a long time. The guard who was being slaughtered did not struggle or cry out. It was as though torture and death in this place were so commonplace that even the victims fell into it naturally, no matter who they were. The futility of crying for mercy had been so well demonstrated here, so long ago, that no man wasted his breath today. The trapped guard, a clerkish man of forty-five, merely slumped close against the man who was murdering him, staring at him, their eyes six inches apart, until the rusty knife finally broke through the vein and he slid down on to the grass.

This was a signal for the execution of the other guards. Owing to the lack of weapons, many of them were trampled to death. Christian watched, not daring to show anything on his face, not daring to make a break, because the man with one eye was directly behind him, pressing against his shoulders.

"You…" The man with one eye said. Christian could feel his hand clutching at his coat, feeling the cloth of his uniform underneath. "I want to talk to…"

Suddenly Christian moved. The ancient Commandant was against the wall near the front door and the men had not reached him yet. The Commandant stood there, his hands making small, placating gestures in front of him. The men around him, starved and bony, were for the moment too exhausted to kill him. Christian lurched through the ring of men and grabbed the Commandant by the throat.

"Oh, God," the man shouted, very loud. It was a surprising sound, because all the rest of the killing had taken place so quietly.

Christian took out his knife. Holding the Commandant pi

Christian sighed and, still carrying his knife in his hand, went through the hall of the Administration Building and up the steps to the Commandant's office. There were bodies on the steps, and liberated prisoners were overturning desks and scattering paper everywhere.

There were three or four men in the Commandant's office. The door to the cupboard was open. The half-naked man Christian had hit was still lying there as he had fallen. The prisoners were taking turns drinking brandy out of a decanter on the Commandant's desk. When the decanter was empty, one of the men threw it at the bright blue picture of the Alps in winter on the wall.

Nobody paid any attention to Christian. He bent down and took his machine-pistol out from under the couch.

Christian went back into the hall and through the aimlessly milling prisoners to the front door. Many of them had weapons by now, and Christian felt safe in carrying his Schmeisser openly. He walked slowly, always in the middle of groups, because he did not want to be seen by himself, standing out in relief so that some sharp-eyed prisoner would notice that his hair was longer than anyone else's, and that he had considerably more weight on his bones than most of the others.