Almost a Great Escape Page 9
You see, I want to do a lot of reading. I hope you received the 10£ I sent you for the books, Alice. I shall write my unit & ask them to send you the necessary funds for the parcels, if you will be so kind & send them as often as possible. Well darling this wasn’t much of a letter I am afraid, & I promise the next ones shall have different contents. I love you more than ever Alice & I am thinking of you so much. My best to all of you, & don’t forget the photos! With all my love I remain,
Your Jens
P.S. Peanut butter.
P.S. Please acknowledge my letters.
A TYLER STORY
THE TIVOLI
My heart trembled for you My Goodbye Mum when I read Jens’s first letter from Stalag Luft III. I know now but of course you and Jens couldn’t know what was coming. Dare to escape! The Geneva Convention — 50 prisoner executions . . . Of course Jens would try. He has promised to return for you.
I wish I could have warned you. You had already lost then found Jens when he was shot down, now I am sure you will lose him forever at Stalag Luft III. The German high-security camp; 10,000 restless airmen inside barbed wire and gun towers.
The Great Escape starring Steve McQueen opens in 1963 at Calgary’s Tivoli Theatre. Grade Ten Jim phones want to go?
You drop us off at the door. Not a reveal. We pay. The film starts. He rattles Maltesers from his box. Inspecting them one at a time before pushing them one at a time between his lips. Lingering. Glancing up between wiping chocolate smears on his pants.
Suddenly I recognize this. The marching. The orders. The barracks. Boarding school. Stalag Luft III. I slouch down and stare cold at the familiarity of lives controlled.
I am a Prisoner of War. The moonless night of March 24, 1944. A tunnel named Harry: 30 feet deep and 330 feet long. Disguised. Forged papers. Go! Sand dripping onto my head through that shoulder-wide claustrophobic tunnel 30 feet below the wire. Climbing the ladder and seeing black trees 10 feet away. The guard box 90 feet away. The tug on the signal rope. I dash across wet snow. Some racing to railway stations. To freight yards. I imagine freedom.
The patrol is stopping me by the road. Here are my travel documents. A German pistol cold caresses my neck. Only three got away.
Jim buys another box of Maltesers as we leave and eats them one at a time as we wait for you. He talks on and on about Steve McQueen’s motorcycle ride.
I am shot in the back of the head and wordless spinning down into the fear of surviving two more years of school.
See you next term Jim is all I can say.
The Great Escape was the last film I saw at the Tivoli. I hated the theatre and I hated Maltesers. They were the seeing and the not knowing.
Somewhere in all our years I mentioned the film. You said you were in love with one of the pilots. You were drinking and I wasn’t paying attention.
I don’t know if I can read more letters from the Album knowing how this is going to end for you and Jens. “We regret to inform you . . .”
A GOODBYE MOTHER STORY
CHRISTMAS EVE
You were the most glimmering woman in every house we visited on Christmas Eve.
We dressed in white shirts, long pants with nothing allowed in the pockets, and I couldn’t wear my turquoise beaded belt. Lace-up polished shoes. Daddy splashed Vitalis Oil into his hands, smacked them together and rubbed our hair to make it shine. Then he held our chins and parted our hair with his brush, dragging the wiry bristles over our scalps. It was as if he thought our hair was fighting back, resisting him. I was glad I wasn’t his horse.
We sat on the edge of the living room chairs being good while you dressed and Daddy warmed up his black going to the office car. We could hear the taps running and the toilet flushing. Geoffrey itched to start something but didn’t dare.
We waited. What’s she doing we whispered. You spun out of the dark hall into the light. Shiny and swirly. An electric comet on high heels. A drink in one hand, a du Maurier in the other. It was Christmas. We were celebrating.
Daddy had his arm around your waist and you stretched up to kiss his cheek. He turned and kissed your lips. My best focused picture of my Mummy and Daddy. His Vitalis hair brushed straight back.
You in the car with baby Randolph in your arms his one-year-old smile permanently on. I sat by the window behind you. I watched your long hair sifting over the top of the seat as you wrapped your fur collar over your shoulders. Daddy turned and warned us. Sit still. Be quiet. No roughhousing. The roads are bad. He has chains and shovels and flares and green army boxes labelled emergency rations in the trunk. You are talking to Daddy who drives slowly along Elbow Drive. I don’t like these icy roads he says. That’s because you’re British you say. They are nothing to worry about. We drove all winter on roads like this in Montreal. I’ll drive.
Be serious, Alice.
Your hand reaches between the door and the seat and secretly tugs my leg. I love you too.
The first visit was always business. Best behaviour. Teddy carrying blankets with Randolph inside. Ring the doorbell. Shake hands. People Daddy works with. Two barking grey Scottie dogs instead of kids. You may sit here. Would you like a slice of cheese? My legs swing back and forth under the chair. Can’t touch anything. Fragile breakable don’t touch everywhere. Gold rimmed plates and cups balanced on tippy tables with white frilly doilies. Doilies. What a word. Scottie dogs glaring at me. A glass of ginger ale? No thank you. Daddy glaring at my legs.
More sherry? You are in a tall chair one leg crossed over your knee. Glass balanced. Your leg swings. I look into your blue eyes and you wink. Bored. The old lady passing around a gold edged plate with shiny white glazed slices of Christmas cake. A little plate for everyone. A little napkin for everyone. A little slice for everyone. Very nice Daddy tells her. Not dry at all. A Scottie jumps on the footstool and barks at my little slice. How cute. He wants some too the old man giggles. Here you go. No! The old lady shakes her finger at me.
Randolph stinks. Can’t you smell him? He’s squirming. Teddy is such a good boy changing him. Thank you Teddy. Yes, we should be going. Thank you. Shake hands. I slide across the ice to the car. First there. Let’s go. Teddy’s not enjoying his responsibilities. But he’s learning.
The Kellys will be waiting for us. This is going to be fun. We’re staying behind you but almost running on the driveway so you can ring the bell and give Mr. Howard Kelly a kiss. In your glimmering swirling shining you are an announcement. You have arrived. Come in Mr. Howard Kelly deep voiced lawyer walks you through the door ignoring us.
Leona Kelly. She likes kids. Shakes our hands in age order. Teddy. Me. She smiles as she shakes my hand. Young man she calls me. Geoffrey, Billy, and Randolph stinky again. What’s he been eating? Geoffrey holds his nose and blows a fart through his lips. Daddy slaps his hand.
We bump in the hall taking off our coats and then Leona has presents with our names on them. We can open them now and everybody has something to play with. We’re supposed to call her Mrs. Kelly but what a summer flower sound Leona is and she gives us a hug whenever she feels like it. I get hugged by everything good.
Downstairs. The best basement I’ve ever been in. Linoleum. Big leather chairs. No adults down here. Come up Leona calls and have something to eat if you want.
And on the wall Indian paintings. Not postcards from Banff. Real Indians. Indians on horses. Indians with feathers. Indians with big noses. Indians staring at me. People Indians. And real Indian bows and lances and shields. Geoffrey wants to take one down and try it.
They are just standing around having drinks upstairs. Why don’t they come down here and look at this stuff? Can I freshen that up for you? That’s what adults say.
We’re going now. A last look at the Indians. Get your coat on. Dad’s pushy. Always ordering us around. Sit here. Be quiet. Back in the car. The Kellys have Indian paintings downstairs I tell you. Indians! I bet you’d like to be one you say. Like my grandmother Eva. It slips vodka out and nobody notices. Except wondering
me.
We’re going to the Strachan’s for Christmas Dinner. They live in a summer leaf green England house with a veranda on a hill. Uncle Mike is our doctor. He brings his stethoscope when we are sick and looks very serious as he tells you Billy’s stomach ache is munkhouser disease. He makes you laugh. Munchausen I figure out later. He’s an everything possible person. He knows slender finger magic with coins and what makes music. He takes your pulse and barely touches you.
June has a green velvet dress this year that Daddy says is very nice. She rides horses and has pictures of red jacket foxriders jumping over hedges on the walls and placemats with long-legged horses arching their necks with villages far in the background. She’s got everything planned. Christmas crackers with toys and Chinese fortunes and paper hats that don’t fit sliding over our eyes.
Uncle Mike operates on his patient every year, sharpening the biggest scalpel in the kitchen drawer to amputate a leg. He always wears his paper Christmas hat and sometimes his glasses don’t sit right and he bumps them back with his wrist waving the scalpel around the table taking orders for body parts.
And everybody is laughing at Uncle Mike’s operations and June is calling it nonsense and can’t help laughing too and lucky Susan and Charlie cheer Uncle Mike their father. He plays the piano with taking your pulse careful hands after we eat. Nobody in our family can sing but the Strachans can. There are drinks and wine and desserts on fire and sherry and du Mauriers for you dazzling the night with your Venezuelan adventures. And later there is something for the road.
We drive through Mount Royal looking at decorations and Daddy says we can drive to the Country Club and see the lights. On the way home it is snowing and I’m beside the dark window.
Your mother’s had too much to drink he says. I scratch a hole in the frost and watch the snowflakes swoop by. I reach between the seat and door and let my hand tell you I am there.
The next morning is Christmas and Santa’s writing is just like yours so he must have woken you up to fill the stockings. I am very funny you say squeezing me hard against you until I am quiet. Geoff and I get skis with steel edges and boots and poles and we ski in our pyjamas on the living room carpet. After pancakes and bacon and the boys have done the dishes for Mum who is tired we’re going to the cabin at Canmore for the rest of the holidays and skiing at Sunshine and Norquay and Temple. Thank you Mum these are just what I wanted. Exactly like the ones we looked at in the store.
And because it is Christmas you and Daddy have a short one. Then freshen it up. Because it is Christmas morning and you’re feeling better.
AN ALICE AND JENS STORY
SECRET LIVES
You are now at McGill, supposedly looking for a husband. Jens is in Stalag Luft III, supposedly biding his time until the war is over. In fact, he is becoming part of the best organized prisoner escape of the war, and the one that ended most tragically.
A year to plan and dig 30 feet down, shoulder wide, 330 feet long, to free 200 airmen March 24/25 from a camp designed to be escape-proof. Big X: the Mastermind is Squadron Leader Roger Bushell RAF. Executed March 29, 1944.
Escape tunnels are a secret story within a secret life within a POW camp. Don’t know — can’t tell. Hide it from the goons. Hide it from each other. Keep the secret close. Only a few exceptional unflinching men can hide their thoughts. Poker faces. Blackmailers and forgers. Arm twisters. Tested men good with their hands. Minds that can see tools inside scraps of metal. Quick-witted men who can answer back in guttural German. We need you, Jens. But not a word to anybody. Not even that somebody of love letters. Say or write tunnel and we all die. We need men who can plan. We need men who have a purpose. We need you Jens. You have someone to escape to. She is waiting for you.
They whisper. The tunnel needs air. Can you build a bellows? Can you deliver air to men digging 30 feet below? Not a hint to anybody. Not a word to her. Not a whisper of hope until the war is over.
You, too, are a prisoner. Jens’s letters reveal love but conceal escape. Not a word. You conceal secret love between the McGill library stacks. Always reading. Trust no one with the secret. Term papers. Exams. Not a word about your love. Trapped in Big Marjorie’s internment camp of debutante balls and dinner dances. Meet Panzer-eyed Mother Commandant at the dinner table. Be poker-faced. Oh yes, Don is handsome. Give me time. Eligible and with prospects. A good Westmount family. Perhaps. Give me time. I have to study now.
Not a word to your best friend Betty. Not a smile to your father. Not a hint to your brother.
The Social Scene: This clipping features a photo of you, Miss Alice Tyler, in charge of the program for Modes for Morale being held at the Mount Royal Hotel. The proceeds of this doing your part evening will help provide entertainment for the troops. (And a night of fine dining for Montrealers. I bet the old boys loved you.)
You play your game of hidden heart. Flirt and fade. Postpone. Delay. Look the other way. Never commit. Wait for Jens. Wait.
September 25, 1942
Dear Alice,
Thank you very much for your last letters, it is good to hear from you! It certainly was a surprise to hear that Jens had been so long in a dinghy, he must have had a hell of a journey I gather. I haven’t heard anything from my brother Erik yet, but I am not giving up hope that he is all right and I shall still wait some time before I take steps to inform the family at home. I hope and think that Jens will be off all right as far as food and clothing is concerned. I have spoken to the Norwegian Red Cross and they send him parcels regularly every week and that, together with parcels from his friends should prove to be ample enough for living.
All the best!
Love, Ottar
Ottar does not know that brother Erik has been dead for two months, shot down over France, July 24, 1942. His hope does not change the truth.
The Royal Norwegian Consulate General delivers a brown envelope to 588 Lansdowne Avenue, sealed with red wax.
Dear Miss Tyler: — I am returning three letters and one cable addressed to 2 Ltn. Jens Müller and regret to inform you that 2 Ltn. Jens Müller is a prisoner of war in Germany.
Yours sincerely
Officer in Charge of Personnel
The brown envelope explains your returned telegram and letter in The Jens Album. I wonder what happened to the other two letters the consulate returned. Big Marjorie?
LETTERS
I HAVE GREAT FAITH IN OUR FUTURE
By the end of 1942, five months after Jens was locked into Stalag Luft III, you have written him 20 letters, almost 1 a week. He has written you only 3. This one probably arrived just before Christmas. It has the British tone of his mostly RAF fellow POWs and a little practical reflecting.
November 20, 1942
Dearest Alice,
It is a long time since I wrote you the last time, but there are so many to write to that it is difficult to make the allowed amount of letters do. — At this date I have received 20 letters from you since I became “un-stuck.”
Your picture arrived, as did a parcel of chocolate. Thanks very much Alice. You see at this place chocolate is the camp’s gold standard so to speak, because a bar costing 15¢ in Canada, POWs pay $25 for among themselves. So if you can send chocolate, sweets or anything eatable it will be most appreciated & welcome.
However, I know very well how difficult it must be for you in Canada to imagine the life of POW — With regards to books I trust your good taste & common sense so much in that direction that I am sure any book you find is good reading, will be worthwhile for me to read also. The trouble is that by the time I send a letter to you asking for a particular book, & till I receive it almost one year may elapse. — However, I suppose you know all this already so I’ll leave this boring subject. — As always Alice to hear from you brings back the memories vividly, although they always are clear in my mind. I have responded to your good advice & have started learning French. Although this language was quite an important subject the last two years of school in Norway, I was even mo
re lazy then & didn’t absorb anything after the syllabus, so here I have to start from scratch.
By now I have received a number of letters from my Mother & Brother, who are O.K., which is most encouraging, especially when I have not heard from them since Xmas 1940.
I have great faith in our future Alice, but it is sure it will take a lot of sacrifice & halfway meeting on both parts at start. Most certainly our life together will be very delightful & exciting, but I do not think for a moment it will resemble the time we spent together. You know very well what I have to my credit both materially & spiritually. I hope you will show the necessary patience with me, & realize how different we are in many ways our lives have been different, our thoughts, habits, customs, views, ambitions etc. all differ considerably. (Quite good, eh?)
Well Alice, for this time so long. My best to you all, & all my love to you dearest.
Jens
P.S. PLEASE SEND BY AIRMAIL.
AN ALICE STORY
DONNY
Why doesn’t Jens write more often?
You ask Ottar. He replies:
January 10, 1943
Dear Alice,
Thank you very much for your last letter. I am sorry that I haven’t written you before, but that is partly due to circumstances that Joan could tell you. I wrote and told her about an adventure I had in the middle of last month where I was lucky enough to escape.
You must not be impatient if you do not hear from Jens as often as you would like to, but the thing is that he is only allowed to send a very limited number of letters and cards each month. I got a card from him at Christmas and he is in good spirits. He has company from another Norwegian fellow now, a very nice boy that we lost during Dieppe in August. I only hope that the year of 1943 will bring Jens back to us again.