Behind the Lines
Chapter Ten: A Day in Hell

They all started early that morning. Wesley carried out an early church service before loading up a rickety metal sided little van with what he needed. Much to his surprise both Monique and old Father Pierre insisted on coming to, which made the van somewhat crowded especially as Marta had joined them at the last moment.

Across at the bar Theo and Rex got into their trucks and drove down to the holding area to pick up the freshly deloused and examined slave workers.

Outside of the town hall Alan was packing the cases and equipment into the half track.

For some reason the troopers were milling around the entranceway. Alan espied Hans and crossed over to him.

“It has been a interesting couple of days Hans.” Alan held out his hand. “Good luck my friend. I have been honoured to know you.”

“Me too Scharfuher. It’s funny but I don’t even know your name.”

“Alan.” Alan told him before explaining. “My mother was taken by the American actor Alan Powers.”

Hans gripped Alan’s hand and shook it.

“Go luck Alan. Here’s to hoping we both survive this dam war.”

“If we do look me up. With any luck I’ll be running a gymnasium.”

“Will do. I’ll be the one running a restaurant.”

They stepped back from each other, the moment gone, they nodded to each other before getting on with their work.

The Captain came down the steps his lieutenants flanking him with Charles, Rex and Salina.

“Well Captain if the three patients behave themselves it looks like they will survive their physical injuries though the mental scars will take longer.” Charles told him.

Charles and Terry did a ward round earlier to see their patients only to find them in surprisingly good spirits.

Charles stopped by the bed of the trooper who had lost an arm and an eye.

“I am sorry I couldn’t save your arm and eye. I did my best.”

The young man looked up at him and actually smiled.

“I may have been winged Doctor but I am still alive thanks to you. My wife is coming down to stay with me when I’m transported to a military hospital in Germany.”

He lifted his remaining hand up and offered it to be shaken.

“Good luck trooper.” He took the hand and shook it.

“Safe journeys Sir and thank you.”

As they walked slowly down the stairs Salina turned and gave her lieutenant a quick peck on the cheek.

“Where will you be off to Sir?” The Captain asked.

“You mean after examining the centre staff. We will be going to the coast to visit a artillery outpost. Where it is specifically I leave to the Scharfuher.” He paused if expecting a challenge of some sort. “I think this were we say goodbye.”

“Yes Sir.” There was complete respect between these two men. “Troopers line up!!”

The troopers who had been lazing about around the entrance galvanised into action and lined up along the foot of the stairs in the time it took for Charles and the other three to get into their vehicle.

Charles stood up in the half track noticing that even the three patients had been wheeled out to join the rest of the troopers and ancillary staff.

The Captain raised his hand as if preparing for the Nazi stiff straight arm salute but changed his mind when he noticed Charles shaking his head slightly.

“Troopers general military salute. Salute.”

Everyone from Captain to a lowly cooks mate saluted crisply in perfect unison.

Charles returned the salute for the other three.

“It has been a privilege getting to know you all. I know that Germany’s destiny is in good hands with you” Charles said with great humility.

Regaining his seat he tapped Alan to drive on.

The half track roared into life and trundled down the road toward the centre.

“Do you think we will see them again Captain?” The lieutenant that Salina had flirted with asked.

“I have no idea, why? You still fancy your chances?”

The young man grinned.

“No sir, not when I found out her husband is in a reserved occupation. He is a top surgeon in Berlin.”

“Just as well she would have eaten you up alive.”

After all the tension of the last few days it was good for the two men to be able to laugh.

“Yes but it would have been fun in the process.”

Roaring with laughter they re-entered the Town Hall.

Each vehicle was due to arrive from each of the three roads into the centre.

As the vehicles grew closer to the check points at the electric fence gates the guards prepared to greet them, each squad leader clutching a clipboard whilst two armed guards stood each side of him.

Wesley was the first to reach his checkpoint.

He slid down the window making sure his dog collar was prominent.

“Hello my son.” He said with a gentle smile while his heart was racing fit to bust. “The Commandant has given us permission to hold mass in his private chapel today.”

The guard made a point of checking his clip board.

“Yes Father you’re down on my list. We will need to check your vehicle and your good self. Out of the truck please.”

They got out and while one of the guards checked the truck they were subject to humiliating body searches by the second one.

When it had been all been done and the guards were collected before them Wesley played a dangerous card.

“Will you be coming to the service?” He asked.

“No we are on duty Father.” The clipboard holder told him.

“Then kneel before me to be blessed.”

Reluctantly and embarrassedly they did so.

Wesley walked forward and placed a hand on the head of each of them in turn.

“God watch over these brave man and show them the path they must follow to be in your light.”

As he helped each one to his feet he placed a tiny capsule inside the collar of each of them where it stuck waiting unseen for their moment.

They all got back into the truck and following precise instructions drove to, surprisingly, the research block and not the accommodation block as expected.

Rex and Theo arrived next at their check point.

“I’ve two loads for you.” He told the guards as he got out of the first lorries cab. Rex followed suit.

“There’s some engineers in this lot.” Rex stuttered slightly. “They are the Jews from the Polish ghetto.”

Clipboard in hand the NCO went and pulled back the end cover to exposed the huddled frightened figures inside.

He counted them and went and did the same at Rex’s.

“Your one short?”

“Yes, a girl, a mobile brothel claimed her before we had gone more than a couple of hundred miles.” Theo said shaking his head ruefully. “She’ll be entertaining the brave lads on the eastern front I should imagine.”

The clipboard grunted before signalling the two guards to search them.

Having been satisfied they were given strict instructions where to take their cargo, the dormitories. They set off both men casually examining the area and compared it to what they could just see the night before.

When they reached the dormitory there was three black attired guards to greet them if that was the proper word for this situation.

They off loaded Theo’s truck first and while they were being ushered in by the guards the two men cross to the back of Rex’s truck.

As they off loaded the people Theo managed to whisper to the Unknown Soldier.

“The packages are in place. Yours are in a disused oven. Good luck.”

“Good luck to you too.” Was the muttered reply.

The Unknown Soldier fell as if he had been kicked.

“Get up scum!” Rex yelled grabbing his collar dragging him to his feet before whispering. “There’s a tunnel to the centre we’ll be in there.”

The guards came round the corner to see what was going on which allowed two of the Unknown Soldiers agents to slip round the other side of the truck to join the others going in without being searched.

Unseen secret panels in the back of Rex’s truck slid open and two agents dressed exactly like Theo and Rex got out. In the commotion the two hero’s were draped in spare rags and hustled into the dormitory as their doubles drove the trucks away.

Once inside Theo and Rex made for the doorway to the tunnel that lead to the research centre. It was locked.

“Damm!” Rex stuttered.

“Shield me!”

As he wielded his Cosmic Rod he needn’t have worried about the other inmates noticing its give away glow. While the Unknown Soldier’s group surreptitiously collected their weapons from the derelict laundry room the others sat , well basically anywhere and everywhere totally defeated.

There was a click and the door swung open.

A fetid smell greeted the two Mystery Men as they slipped inside and relocked the door.

Using the cosmic rod to augment the dull lightning they examined the landing they were standing on before quietly descending the stairs to the tunnel proper. The tunnel ran in a straight line for some three hundred yards before taking a shape left. There in front of them shackled to the wall was the reason of the rank smell. A grotesque sight met their eyes. Hanging there was a woman who had had her breasts surgically removed along with her lips, eye lids and numerous pieces of skin, lung and her entire liver. She had been harvested of all useful parts of her body then tied up there to die. One hand had been removed whilst the other had been chewed off by a rat. As they got closer the body seemed to convulse as if still alive before two rats shot out of the opening to her abdomen like bullets.

She had obviously been put there as a warning to the slave workers. Fifty yards behind her was another stair well leading up to a doorway.

They back pedalled a hundred yards or so and secreted themselves in a dark alcove and settled down to wait out the daylight hours.

When Charles’s retinue arrived it was a different kettle of fish. Their clipboard wielder couldn’t help enough and they were soon ushered in and directed to the centre.

The Clipboard wielder telephoned ahead so when they arrived and parked beside Wesley’s van the Commandant was waiting for them.

“Hello Doctor.” He said with a broad smile. “We have a sideward set aside for you and your team.”

“That will be perfect.” Charles replied.

As the Commandant led them into the research centre waving the guards away he asked a question that nearly caught Charles out.

“You have worked with Doctor Mendel I hear. How’s his experiments on the bodies reaction to extremes of temperature going?”

“When I was there with him he had just started doing experiments on twins. He used one as a control while he subjected the other to varying degrees of temperature. He sat one in an ice bath for hours to simulate conditions found on our borders with Russia. He then subjected the pair of them to a battery of tests before putting one in an oven to simulate the conditions in North Africa.” Charles realised it wasn’t him that the Commandant didn’t trust it was Mendel. “I wasn’t involved in that. I was working on sterilising the female Jews so they couldn’t breed. When I had done with them they were sent, if they were pleasant to the eye, to the military brothels certain they couldn’t have a half breed bastard.

I make it sound simple believe me it wasn’t but I had a steady stream of subjects to practice on.

Sterilising the men was simpler but not so satisfying.”

“I can believed that.” The Commandant shuddered. “When you have examined everyone and there is time I would love to show our work.”

“It’s eugenics I believe.” Terry said.

“Yes and far more, far more than that as you will see.” They climbed the stairs to the third floor which was laid out as a hospital ward. Numerous test subjects were laid in their beds or manacled to a chair.

All the four of them were sickened by what they saw but had to bury it deep. The patients, for a better name for them, were badly burnt but had flesh from an unaffected site grafted across. A woman’s skin from her arm was grafted to her nose, to her face which had been all but scrapped away of any features.

“Fascinating.” Charles remarked trying to hide his nausea. “I have heard naturally off course of the work being carried out in England by Duncan McEnroe. He is using similar methods on badly burnt fighter pilots. I have read his paper on his so called ‘Plastic Surgery’, totally absorbing.”

It wasn’t the methods being used that revolted him and made the bile sting the back of his throat. It was the shear callousness of it. They inflicted terrible wounds on people that couldn’t fight back just so they could practice.

“Our methods have far out stripped his work. Like most discoveries it only shows how resourceful we Germans are.

Did you know that evidence has been discovered that Shakespeare was Prussian?”

“Really?”

“Yes. Our beloved leader has had teams of experts out investigating the connection genius’s have with Germany. It is fantastic and only goes to prove the supremacy of the Teutonic Peoples.”

In the next ward slave workers lay and sat with bullet wounds being dressed.

A nurse looked up from one patient and shook her head. The doctor with her took out his pistol he was wearing in his belt at his back.

He pressed the pistol into the mans temple and fired killing his subject without a glimmer of emotion.

He turned to a pair of slave workers dressed as medical orderlies.

“Clean this mess up, and do it properly or you will take his place.”

The place of healing and hope had been turned into an slaughter house.

They were lead into the silence of a disused sideward.

“Her we are Doctor I hope it will be suitable?”

“It will be perfect. Start sending the senior staff to us in thirty minutes please?”

“I will set up the equipment sir.” Terry said whilst Salina took out a note book and pen ready to log the patients details.

Alan crossed to the wards door to guard the entrance and shepherd the workers through.

In a half hour the first scientists and Doctors arrived.

The first doctor was the one that had shot the poor soul in the main ward.

After he had left Charles whispered to the others.

“With what I’ve injected him with he’s going to get a very nasty rash in a very awkward place.”

“And good riddens” Alan said with a smirk. ” Next please!”

Whilst Charles and Terry were examining the population of the research centre Wesley was trying to save their souls.

The chapel was a relatively small room off the corridor that ran to the administrative section of the centre.

There was an altar with a wooden cross on it and on the walls were some frescos on religious subject. Obviously laid and created by someone in his congregation.

Marta carried and held the book of common prayer opened at the right place for Wesley to read from.

Father Pierre and Michelle swung censors around the room filling the air with its heavy scent.

Seat’s were put out in a semi circle that was three chairs deep.

Religious music was played over the battered record player giving the room a strange pensive feel.

Wesley knelt before the alter as if in prayer whilst Michelle opened up the doors. Wesley was gratified by the sound of chairs being scraped over the floor.

He crossed himself and stood up. He turned round to see a packed room made up of Scientists and guards. He was gratified to see that in the front was the Commandant and the Professor. The Professors eyes were twinkling with a sharp interest.

“Welcome my children into this chapel, this house of God. I does my soul good to see so many of you.” That wasn’t a lie. They had even some standing against the wall at the back.

When the service was done Wesley stood before them all once again.

“If you feel the need for God’s solace please come down and join the congregation in the village.

Now I am sure you are wondering what that strange affair is in the corner.” He pointed at a wooden screen that cut the right corner of the room off. “It is our makeshift confessional.

I or Father Pierre will be in there to hear your confessions over the next hour, hour and a half.

Now go in peace in the knowledge of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost.”

He blessed them and walked to the door to have a few words with them as they filed out.

“A lovely service Father Morpheus.” The Commandant told him before strangely loosing his confidence. “Well, um, that is could I ask if.”

Wesley came to his rescue with a gentle smile.

“You wish to confess your sins my son.”

“Yes.”

“Come behind the screen. Everything you tell me is sacrosanct.”

Behind the screen they made themselves comfortable the burning incense stinging at their eyes a little.

A capsule popped open with a green vapour that surrounded the officers head. Bleary eyed he thought the Catholic priest was wearing a gas mask before dropping into a deep narcotic slumber.

Wesley leaned forward and touched the Commandants temple and with a sigh entered his dreamscape.

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