The Autobiography of Devon Miles

Special Operations Executive (SOE)

Part 2:

In the United States, the Office of Special Services, otherwise known as the OSS and precursor to the CIA, was formed (unofficially) on July 11, 1941 and (formally) recognized on June 10, 1942. It was modeled after the SOE and almost always had a close relationship with us. Its 13,000 personnel were often drawn from the American military, but many civilians were participants as well. Their first major outing was in Algeria, as part of Operation Torch, where we unfortunately, (and for no reason that I ever learned of), would not work with them. The Americans were also engaged in identifying pro-Allied civilians and they were additionally tasked with finding appropriate landing sites for the American's African campaign. By 1943, the OSS made contact with the Austrian Resistance and utilized Heinrich Maier as the head of operations. This station was able to obtain for the Allies the plans for Germany's feared V-2 rockets, "Tiger" tanks, the Messerschmidt BF109 and the ME 163 "Komet". They were also among the first to hear about the Auschwitz Concentration Camp through their contacts with the Semperit Factory near the camp. Unfortunately, there was a double agent amongst the ranks, and the group was eventually found out.

After reaching the British V army in Italy, I was returned home, and naturally was debriefed at SOE headquarters and given some time off. I went out to visit with my parents at their country home where I spent three weeks coming up with tales of what I had been doing with the "Inter-Service Research Bureau". I spun fanciful stories of traveling all over the British Isles and to Commonwealth countries to help coordinate military training and equipment. This provided suitable cover for why I had been such a poor correspondent. It was fortunate for me that Mother and Father had not traveled extensively, confining their wanderings to Scotland, France, Germany, and Italy. It was an easy task to create stories of meeting with counterparts in Canada, Australia, India, South Africa, and the Caribbean. I entranced Mother with stories of warm, palm-shaded shores, skiing down snowy mountains and the enticing scents of unknown spices in the marketplaces. I think Father, however, looked somewhat askance at my vivid descriptions of people I supposedly met and the landscapes that I had "viewed". I will always recall him stroking his (now) very white mustaches and looking at me with an amused gaze from his deeply blue eyes while I spoke.

After my R&R with my family, I returned to London, ready to get back to the continent and into the action. My capture had done little to quench my desire to get back into the game of spy craft. In fact, my successful escape from German hands emboldened me and filled me with a feeling of invincibility. Such is youthful ego!

The SOE gave me a fantastic birthday present when I re-established myself at Baker Street that April of 1944; initial preparations for the D-Day landing to come in June were underway, and we were naturally an integral part of them. Unlike Operation Torch, Operation Jedburgh would involve integrated SOE-OSS teams. It was the first real cooperative effort between the two agencies, and the thought of working directly with the Americans thrilled me. Like many Britons of my generation raised on cinema extravaganzas of the American cowboy and the conquest of the Old West, I viewed the typical American male as tall, strong, silent, and brilliantly successful. Little did I know that my next assignment would end up creating a life for me that I could never have imagined.

Operation Jedburgh included three-man teams that were dropped into German-controlled France, along with air-drops of matériel. The teams consisted of a leader, an executive officer, and a non-com radio operator. Approximately 100 teams were inserted in the lead-up to D-Day and they were tasked with sabotage, interference with German logistics, supplying resistance groups and providing diversions and cover for the landing forces. It was dangerous work, but I did not know how dangerous it was until years later. Of the SOE forces involved one-quarter of the men and one-third of the women did not survive. Of the 119 agents captured and sent to POW and Concentration Camps, only eight women and 23 men survived.

I was one of the 23 men.

But I am getting ahead of myself. In London that April, I was assigned as the executive to a team to be dropped into Normandy, between Villers Sur Mer and Lisieux. Only two of us would be dropped and we would meet our radio operator at the drop site. Our "radioman" was actually a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl who we knew only as "Delphine". The name was quite appropriate since she had lovely blue eyes. She was still quite the tomboy, as the team leader called her, but with as much heart and guts as any man I have ever encountered. The leader was a tall, loosely-jointed Californian, about five years older than I was, a second lieutenant in the Army and terribly gung-ho about it all, despite having been in the fight to secure Italy. As I came to know him, I realized that he was a man who believed strongly in himself, in the ability to achieve a goal if you worked hard enough at it, that morality was the most important human attribute, and that one person could make a difference. If you haven't guessed by now, our team leader was Wilton Knight. His code name was "Galahad".

We were tasked with creating logistical interference with German military movement by broadcasting bogus instructions to the units in our sector. My language skills were key in our endeavor. Wilton would give me the false coordinates to broadcast and I would either translate them into German for Delphine to transmit as Morse code, or I would broadcast directly. Wilton (who could speak a bit of German, but with a poor accent) and I were given Wehrmacht uniforms and papers and I was known as "Paul-Heinz Müller" while Wilton was given the name of "Gerd Konrad" . I was bequeathed the rank of Lieutenant and Wilton was my driver, a corporal. Delphine would be our cook/housekeeper and possibly my mistress if things became too dicey. She at least would be able to say that she couldn't tell a fake German from a real one, especially since she would claim that she had essentially been kidnapped by us.

A word or two about Wilton; like a Gary Cooper character he said little but did much. I came to learn that although the war had interrupted his advanced studies in engineering, there was nothing he couldn't put his hand to and repair, make smaller or more efficient. He was well-read and quite thoughtful; he liked young children and could always dig a candy out of his pocket for them and was encouraging of me right from the start. I don't recall a time when I did not look up to him as an older brother. I always felt that underneath his joshing manner with Delphine there was a potential there and once asked him if he would find her again after the war. He waved me off, saying that she was much too young for him, but she would be ideal for me. I truly thought of her as one would think of their youngest sister and had no interest there. Hindsight being 20/20 of course, Wilton would have had a better life if he had pursued Delphine. But I am getting ahead of myself again.

Wilton and I were dropped into the Normandy countryside two hours before dawn and Delphine was right there to help us pack up our parachutes. Erwin Rommel by then had been transferred to Army Group B and tasked with the defense of Normandy. Much like he had done in Africa, he did his best to not merely defend the beaches but make the countryside inhospitable to airdrops and landings by flooding fields in the rear. We were fortunate to be dropped into a field that was just muddy; there was no splash to alert anyone listening, but we did "squish" a little. By early morning we were hidden away in a safe house, getting some much-needed sleep. Delphine woke us in mid-afternoon with cups of a steaming, if watery, facsimile of coffee and some fresh bread and a small bit of cheese. We really hadn't had much opportunity to talk with the girl before and the few words that we exchanged were in whispered French. We were both delighted to find that she spoke excellent British English. She had a rudimentary knowledge of German, enough to spell our transmissions into that language plus a few basic phrases, but she claimed to be repulsed by the tongue of her country's conquerors. We spent the rest of the daylight hours poring over our maps. Delphine's knowledge of the countryside was invaluable to us; we knew precisely the topography of the region and we had seen and memorized arial photos showing us where structures were, but it was her intimate knowledge of which buildings remained standing that week and who inhabited them which made our mission possible. In fact, Delphine was at least as important to our team's success (if not more important) than Wilton or I. Twenty years later, after I had moved to the United States, I got a lovely letter from a woman from Deauville by the name of Madame Dorotheé-Marie Saint Giles along with a picture of a young matron, her tall husband and two daughters and one son. It was our Delphine, grown up, proud and happy.

But I am once more getting ahead of my story. Once darkness fell, we left the comfort of our safe house and made our way to an old sheep farm's barn some miles to the northeast. The sheep farmer was an ancient widower and there were no more animals. He kept to himself, seemingly occupied in drinking the ale and cider his late wife had put up years before. He had the odd habit of using the empty bottles as urinals at night or at any time he did not want to utilize his ramshackle outhouse. When a bottle was full, he would place it against the outside of his two-room house. Naturally in a storm they would fall over and break, leaving a stench that covered the surroundings quite fiercely. While unpleasant for us, it served as a deterrent for any "visitors" that might want to explore the remaining sheep-pens and stumble upon our apparatus.

We received and broadcast irregularly, both as a safety precaution and because of the necessity of waiting to pick up the Nazi's broadcasts of their positions and decoding them. We usually relied on a courier who visited us at night with the latest German codes and broadcast frequencies. We would then pick up one of their logistical orders in an adjacent sector and design bogus orders for the troops in our area that would end up snarling military movement in one way or another. We would have the Germans from two different companies attempting to get through a cross-roads at the same time or direct them to approach so that they approached each other head on. One time, we had one company convinced that the invasion had already begun, and they marched out to attack their own forces. It was actually great fun and at times the three of us laughed ourselves silly over our games.

We slept during the day, usually hiding under the old, dirty hay left behind. At night if we weren't broadcasting we were out hunting or scavenging. If we were lucky, our couriers would bring a loaf of bread or some cheese. Delphine would pick dandelion and lamb's ears leaves and berries and Wilton and I would hunt small animals and bring water up from a nearby stream. If we were lucky enough to catch something, we would build a campfire as far away from the sheep pen as we could, choosing a different site and hiding the remains of the fire every time.

Naturally, after some weeks we were required to re-locate in order to prevent the Nazis from finding us and to meet different military needs. We were sent to the small city of Lisieux where we set up deep in the crypts of St. Jacques Church. The Monseigneur of the church was a youngish man who did all he could for us (including looking the other way at the presence of Delphine) and made us feel as comfortable as possible in our subterranean lair. Of course, living next to the dead was uncomfortable and it was cold and damp below the church, but it was safe. Fortunately for us, no one died and was buried in the crypts during our sojourn! Our task was primarily to intercept information about Rommel's forces since his headquarters were nearby, just to the east. Being that much closer to the Nazi forces made all of us much more nervous. The town was being patrolled and it was not safe to broadcast, so we relied on couriers either coming to the church as parishioners or one of us going out to make a contact. Wilton and I were very worried about sending Delphine outside of the church, but there were times when it was necessary. Most often I went out, ostensibly as a swaggering German military man, but I was truly terrified. At night I dreamt that I forgot every word of German I knew, or that instead of wearing a lieutenant's Wehrmacht uniform, I would be in a British private's khakis. Delphine, usually fearless and unconcerned with the spiders, insects, and the vermin we encountered wherever we were stationed, became jumpy and a bit paranoid. Wilton's sleep was filled with half-formed words, moans, and grunts.

Nevertheless, we gathered a good deal of information regarding Rommel's forces, equipment, and preparedness. We also learned some of what they thought the Allies' battle plan was. This allowed our forces to put out a disinformation campaign that helped immensely. Still, as the weather warmed and the days grew longer, the three of us all noticed that the atmosphere in Lisieux became more and more anxious. Rommel knew that an invasion was coming and was out and about inspecting his forces first-hand. I thought that if one could get close enough to him on his tours of his troops, he would be an easy target. Reality set in immediately, however. His assassination would cause the Nazis to indiscriminately kill the civilian population of Normandy.

Indeed, Rommel felt confident enough to leave the field to return to his home in Germany to celebrate his wife's birthday. Most unfortunately for him, her date of birth was June 6th.

We had vacated St. Jacque's on the night of June 5th-6th. In order not to implicate the good priests of the church, we made sure that we took every last scrap out of the crypts with us. Wilton and I were in our Nazi disguises and it appeared that we were making our poor little housekeeper drag our belongings to a new location. What we were trying to do was to move to an out of the way location toward an area that the German forces wouldn't roll through and after the invasion make our way to a pick-up point to be returned to our respective organizations. This meant walking toward the north from Lisieux for a few days before turning west and heading to Caen. Wilton and I had thought about commandeering a German staff car since it would have been quite easy for him to hot-wire it, but we decided that most German lieutenants would be marching with their men toward the coast and not riding through the countryside with a driver and a young girl. We were obliged, therefore, to slip out of town and abandon our uniforms. Unfortunately, my fastidiousness was my undoing. Wilton had literally torn off his uniform and quickly donned his shirt and slipped his still booted feet into his heavy twill peasant's trousers. He hurried deeper into the woods, buttoning himself up along the way to where Delphine waited with our equipment.

I however, unbuttoned my uniform and folded it neatly, hiding it under some rocks in the wet field. I remember thinking that the fabric, heavy though it was, would decay quickly in the wet. Having buttoned up my pants and shirt, I turned to take a last look behind me at the road we had taken, only to be met by the muzzle of Walther PP pistol aimed at my head. My only thought at the moment was to make as much noise as possible so that Wilton and Delphine could melt away into the woods behind me.

At that time, we of course did not know of the Kommandobefehl or Hitler's "Commando Order", promulgated in October 1942. In essence, the Germans stated that Britain and its Allies were using inhumane and illegal punishments on captured Germans, up to and including summary execution. Hitler and General Jodl used these flagrant lies to justify their own treatment of members of the Resistance, SOE and OSS, whether in or out of uniform. The order allowed any officer to take whatever actions he deemed appropriate when an enemy was apprehended, up to and including immediate execution. In reality, the Reich realized that they were obtaining healthy and often relatively young people. If their punishment would ultimately be death, why waste a bullet on them when they could be sent to one of their concentration camps and be worked to death instead?

In my best, and loudest French, I argued with my captors and decried the indignity of a man walking on his own land and being accosted and having a pistol pointed at him, most especially when he was a staunch supporter of Herr Hitler and the German army! The soldiers, who were no older than I was only laughed and assuming that I did not understand them, joked about what a fool I was and how much they would enjoy observing my punishment.

Once again, I found myself thrust into a cattle car after being locked in a cellar for several days while Operation Overlord burst upon the German's forces in Normandy. I thought that perhaps I might be rescued by Allied forces once they took the area, but when the door to my prison was opened I was again faced with sullen Wehrmacht soldiers.

The trip I took into Austria is a blur to me now. Unlike my first excursion east, I had become weakened by the limited food we'd had and the lack of anything by dirty water during my two days in the cellar. Still, I knew that it was important that I look and act as strong as possible. I think I took some comfort in providing enough noise and commotion for Wilton and Delphine to escape, as I hoped they had. Having already once been a prisoner, I knew that if it were possible to escape, I would.

It was not possible to mark time on the train transport. All I remember is stepping out into bright, blinding light at the huge Mauthausen concentration camp. The camp had nearly 100 sub-camps, all of them extraordinarily large, holding thousands upon thousands of "enemies of the state". Mauthausen was a Stufe III or "Grade III" camp where the most incorrigible enemies of the Reich were sent. It earned the reputation of being the toughest German camp, even called "The Bone Crusher" by the Reich main security office. It provided slave labor to the surrounding mines, quarries, munitions factories and several Messerschmidt plants. It had originated as a private company belonging to Oswald Pohl, a very high-ranking officer in the SS. His company, Deutsche-Erd und Steinwerk GmbH (DEST) owned the Wiener-Graben quarry in the town of Mauthausen. Originally the quarry had produced the cobblestones for Vienna streets, but Albert Speer had decided that the granite was needed to rebuild Germany's cities in his new style. Later, more mining and quarrying were done in the Sankt Georgen site in Gusen because it was more productive than the Weiner-Graben quarry, leading to the building of the original secondary camps. In addition to working in the quarries, the prisoners (or slave-laborers, if you will) were hired out to private companies and farms, including Messerschmitt, where POWs built the Me 262 and V-2 rockets. Eventually Mauthausen's subcamps covered most of Austria.

When the Allies began bombing the main camps, the prisoners were forced to dig tunnels and build subterranean factories. By 1945, Messerschmitt was able to build 1250 Me 262s a month underground.

With its designation of a Stufe III camp, Mauthausen had many prisoners to dispose of daily. When someone became too sick or weak to work, they were transferred to the Krankenrevier or the "Sick Barracks" for extermination. Like the other camps, they soon had crematoria working day and night. By early 1945, life expectancy amongst the prisoners averaged only three months.

When I arrived in mid-June of 1944, I found that I was one of 47 allied prisoners who had worked for the SOE. We were a mixed group of English, American, Dutch, Free French, and Italians. They did their best to keep us separated, not only to prevent us from fomenting any mischief, but because of their "Bullet Decree", formally known as "Operation K"; other than Americans and Brits, any escapees were to be shot. In fact, captured escapees were brought from other camps to Mauthausen just for the privilege of being shot there.

Work in the quarries was the worst, most dangerous and barbaric situation in the camp and as such was reserved for the Russian prisoners and the "troublemakers". Not, of course than any other work in the camp was easy or that any of the prisoners were properly clothed, fed or housed, but those of us who weren't sent to the rock piles could look forward to a slightly longer life span.

One more time, I was extremely fortunate. After exiting the transport train we were lined up on the platform. By that point, I was so used to speaking in German when not with Wilton and Delphine, that I naturally responded to the officer who looked me over and expressed surprise that I was British and not Aryan. I responded to the even more surprised officer in my perfect, idiomatic German declaring fealty to king and country. By rights I should have been shot where I stood, but I didn't care. I assumed that my life was likely over anyway and the least I could do was maintain my pride at being a British subject. However, the overseers of the camp complex felt I could be useful to them as a "Lagerschreiber" otherwise known as a camp clerk. While this ultimately saved my life, it did not endear me to my fellow POWs. As a clerk, I got a slighter better ration and did not have to engage in hard labor. Working twelve hours a day, every day of the week was luxurious compared to what the others were forced to do. I won't even go into the women prisoners who were forced into the camp brothel.

At any rate, I was useful to the Nazi war machine, but I also was privy to a great deal of information in my position and did my best to use it to extend the lives of those I could. I was able to change a name or two on each list to save someone from a more barbarous assignment or medical experimentation, and despite of the curses of my fellow prisoners who could not know what I was trying to do, I persevered as best I could to help them.

I also was able to see the information regarding the transportation schedules of incoming and outgoing trains. By 1944 cattle cars packed with Jews from Hungary and inmates from other camps in danger of being overrun by Soviet forces were coming into Mauthausen in a constant stream. Just as soon as one train was emptied, it left to allow another to disgorge its human cargo. Originally empty trains were used to bring the quarried granite into Germany proper. Now, they might then be used to move more military units to the east to throw them against the Russian forces, but they might just as well be unfilled, heading back towards a concentration camp that still needed to be emptied. I became familiar with the procedures for sweeping the cars to insure that no prisoners remained and with the refueling processes and made it my business to learn how large a crew would be on the train and what cars they would be assigned to at the time they left the camp gates.

With Russian forces storming through Hungary, it made the most sense to hide myself on a transport returning to Budapest.

First, however, I needed to gather some implements. I was specifically looking for a sharp-edged object, like a pen-knife. Quite naturally, these were not objects to be left where prisoners were likely to have access to them. The officer I reported to, Sonderfüer Brandt had a pen-knife on his watch chain to sharpen small items like pencils. He was unlikely to give it up, unfortunately and he was very careful not to remove it from the chain. I thought about possibly using the metal straight edge of a ruler, but if I removed it from its wood it would be too flexible to be much use and carrying about a ruler would call attention to me. The granite pieces lying about were too hard to be hand worked into anything useful, although I did look at the small pieces that were lying about and eventually found one that had something of a point and was small enough for me to hide. I also had been able to find a piece of piano wire that was just long enough to be useful as a garotte and I had the twine that held up the thin pants we were given.

I chose a transport that would be traveling through the forests east-southeast of Mauthausen during a moonless night. I slipped aboard just as the train jerked forward, hiding in a corner of the last car. Like all the cattle cars still in use by the autumn of 1944, the wood it was made of was dry and in some spots cracked and the slats that made up the floor had narrowed enough to get the edge of my sliver of granite into, so that I could pry up a good piece of it. I did what I could with the stone and the piano wire to sharpen it into a useful and sharp point and laid in wait for the soldier assigned to the end of the train to make his inspection. These inspections typically happened when the transport was shunted to a siding to allow a train filled with unfortunates to speed by on their way west to the death camp. It was dark when we pulled aside and I easily overpowered the young man, silently and quickly killing him with the garotte. He was barely more than a teenager, only a few years younger than myself, but by that time I had lived through so much that I felt I had become ancient.

I took his rifle and pistol and all the ammunition for them. He had brought along his field pack, intending to eat and then sleep in the last car. This was a huge prize for me, and I quickly rifled through it, tossing his personal and identifying documents through the opening I enlarged in the floor of the car. I thought to take his trousers, but he had wet himself during my assault and I felt that I would rather keep my thin, dirty but dry pants. I did take his boots, belt and his watch and his cigarettes and lighter. The boots were tight, but I didn't care in the least. I packed everything else as tightly as possible into his field pack, enlarged the hole in the flooring even more and then dropped myself and my booty onto the tracks. I lay there face down in the gravel, inhaling the creosote of the ties and waited for what felt like an eternity before the train moved on again. Finally, when I could no longer feel the vibration of the engine through the rails and the ties, I got up and walked into the woods.

It was still summer, although I knew that the colder weather was not so far away anymore. I also knew that the Nazis would be defeated sooner rather than later. The next day, with the sun warming my back and the clean fragrance of the earth displacing the smell of death that I had lived with for weeks, I thought about living here, in the wild, as a hermit. I hated the world, hated myself for killing a man, hated everything about civilization. I might have had a nervous breakdown because I had crazy ideas and thoughts about how I would survive on my own, winter and summer without any human contact. A pelting rain brought me to my senses. I might be able to make it through a few weeks of winter if I could find a cave near enough to a reliable source of food, such as a good fishing stream, but as unprepared as I was, that was all I could count on.

I stumbled on for another two day before I came across a small house on the edge of a small lake. Well beyond the opposite shore of the lake, I could make out the spire of a church which presumably was surrounded by a village. Why the house on this side sat alone, I never did find out, but nevertheless it was my salvation.

As I trudged up the path to the front door, I could make out a figure looking through the neat white curtains, sizing me up. I suppose my obvious fatigue and skeletal thinness was no cause to feel threatened, because the door was opened with alacrity, to be filled by the figure of an older woman. As I staggered forward, she pulled me inside and closed the door just as quickly as she had opened it. She wore typical country clothes; a white blouse and green-gray dirndl skirt with an old but clean embroidered apron and her steel gray hair wrapped around her head in a braid. She still evidenced some plumpness, but I noticed that her skirt had been pinned up to keep it from slipping down. The little cottage smelled of baking bread, a warm smell that I had forgotten about in the last few months. It brought into sharp focus all that I had been through since leaving Oxford, things that I had firmly pushed to the back of my mind, things that I had first thought of as adventure and then as just my job, my work. I collapsed into one of the chairs at the kitchen table and for the first time in many years sobbed. Although I was still far from home, I knew that I would see my family again, that I would not die in a Nazi death camp, that my ashes would not be mixed with the ashes of many others and that my mother would not have to bear the pain it all would have brought her.

My benefactress waited for my emotional outburst to run its course. In her Austrian-accented German by and by she stated, rather than asked if I was American, British, French, or Russian. A warm hand, dusted by flour wrapped itself around mine, and soft gray eyes appraised me gently as I answered. She introduced herself as "Gertruda" but told me to call her "Trudie" and then she bustled off to get me a bowl of water and a towel to wash my face and hands. Then she brought me the remains of her last loaf of bread and made a cup of weak tea using a pinch of what must have been very precious tea leaves. No cup, before or since, has ever tasted so good. When she saw that I was able to tolerate the tea and bread, she gave me a small piece of hard cheese, hoping that because it was well aged and not terribly fatty, I would be able to tolerate it.

After eating, she brought me to a small room that had a narrow bed in it. I sank into its feather mattress gratefully and was asleep under its soft quilt in moments. When I awoke it was late afternoon and the fresh bread was cooling. Trudie was at the stove stirring a large pot of soup. She apologized saying that she had no meat that day for the soup but had vegetables and a little bit of barley and with the fresh bread, I would have a good evening meal in a few hours. While it cooked we talked. She told me that her husband and son had been conscripted into the German army after the Anschluss. They had been cheese makers and had once had a few cows, but the Germans had taken them and the flock of chickens too. Fortunately for her and those who came to her in need, they hadn't thought to ask about the wheels of cheese put away for ripening. They also didn't think about the eggs the hens had laid and Trudie had one chicken who she had kept to produce chicks, so she had been able to raise two more who were now laying. She still had her kitchen garden as well and there were some fish in the small lake. All in all, she was able to survive and care for those who needed her help.

Her husband and son had both been killed on the Russian front. After she had been informed of their deaths, she decided to help any allied personnel or partisans who might find their way to her door. She would occasionally pass encoded messages to a contact in the main market town of the area, well beyond the little village on the other side of the water, and proudly told me that I was the third allied soldier that she had cared for in the last year or so. I was a little wary of her at first; it just seemed too lucky by half to have stumbled upon her home. For days, I always kept watch over her activities, always watched as she prepared my food to insure that she didn't adulterate it somehow and slept lightly lest she sneak up on me. Trudie seemed to understand my wariness and just allowed me to watch her every move. In her wisdom she knew that she would win my trust eventually. In essence, she treated me like the son she had lost. She always spoke in a warm, caring manner, often patted my hand or my shoulder as a mother would and made sure that she provided me with the best of her food. Eventually I was won over by her sweet kindness and allowed myself to be cared for while I got my strength back.

The weather had turned cold that October by the time that Trudie told me of the plans her contact had to repatriate me to the allies. The Nazi war effort was beginning to come apart at the seams (although Hitler and his government wouldn't admit it to themselves at the time) and Russian forces had pushed into Hungary, filling the eastern corner of Austria with a combination of hope and fear. The British and Americans were marching east towards Austria as well, but it would be months before liberation. I was to be smuggled into Yugoslavia via the country roads. From there I would be brought west to meet up with allied forces again.

I had come to Trudie with a void where my soul used to reside. I didn't care what happened to me or whether I lived or died. Between the horrors of Mauthausen, (and I've written here but an infinitesimal portion of what I saw and what I experienced), and my killing of the young train guard, I felt I had given up all my rights to humanity. I had been debased and degraded to the point where I could justify death: the young German's, mine, anyone's. While the weeks in Trudie's cottage did not return me to full emotional health -I still have horrid nightmares in times of stress- the process of healing began under her kind hands.

As a child of the well-born class, my mother did little hands-on parenting and my father even less. The actual duties of feeding me, dressing me, cleaning me, and teaching me letters and numbers fell to a succession of nannies. Some were wonderful women, some were not so wonderful, and one was a horrid, sadistic creature who fortunately only stayed with us one month. When I was old enough, the last nanny was dismissed, and I started at public school. Trudie was therefore a unique figure in my life, the only time I experienced maternal love and physical caring at first hand for nothing other than the love of one human for another. Finding my way to her was a miracle and even though she is long gone, I bless her every day. Leaving her cottage was traumatic, certainly for me, but I think her as well. We cried in each other's arms for many minutes and while I sent her what I could from war-torn London and later as many little luxuries as I could from my travels, I never was able to go back to see her again. I hope that in death she was reunited with her husband and son and that she received the reward she so richly deserved.