635798

April 15, 1945.

British troops had entered the camp of Bergen-Belsen. While some held Nazis prisoner, others went to look for survivors. They trudged through the dirty camp, their boots sinking and getting stuck in the mud. All had to walk over corpses that weren’t buried.

Corpses were sprawled across the camp, many naked due to survivors stealing their clothes. Most were rotting and therefore couldn’t be identified. Others were fresh. Soldiers collected them and wrote down the numbers found on their arms. There was also the walking dead. Thousands of survivors ran towards the British, embracing them. The freed survivors wept and laughed despite their weak state. The British could feel every bone in each body they hugged. They could see the ribs of the shirtless, bed sores, scabs, infected mosquito bites, and traces of typhus. Not a single survivor looked as if they ate recently. They all reeked. The British could smell rotting bodies in the gas chambers they did not yet know about. All that mattered to them at the moment was getting the ill survivors out of the diseased camp and to safety.

Bobby Blackery was one of the many soldiers roaming the camp, looking for survivors who were too weak to get out of their tents. A friend, Hadley, followed him. The two of them – Bobby new to war and Hadley not – had already found about 100 people. Some were too ill with typhus so they had to stay behind and unfortunately die. The others who were deemed healthy enough were sent to the camp exit where British troops awaited them.

One woman sat in her tent and watched them. All she wanted to do was run towards them like the others had, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t walk and she was too sick to stand up. Instead, she was stuck in the tiny tent with four horrendous, rotting corpses.

The woman pulled her knees to her chest as she listened to the two men speak their unusual language. The blanket she had wrapped around herself – she didn’t have a uniform – was scratchy and made every position uncomfortable. It was full of lice that originally found solace in her brunette hair that was slowly growing back (maybe it would be touching her ears right now if it wasn’t so spiky from the oil). The more she fidgeted in the blanket, the more dirt it spread on her body. Mud and dirt climbed up her arms, legs, and across her chest and face. Her feet were black from walking shoeless in the mud. She wasn’t given shoes when she arrived here. She did have a uniform, though, but that was taken away when the Nazis started sneaking inside her tent at night and do things to her she didn’t want them to do.

Her eyes quickly moved to the front of the tent as the two British soldiers walked in. The copper haired one scanned around but it only took a second for the black haired man to find her in the far back corner. He had a boyish face – wide brown eyes, pudgy baby cheeks – and he seemed nervous compared to the other soldier. His pale face had red spots, but the woman couldn’t tell if it was from blushing or being in the sun for too long.

The soldier nudged the copper haired one and pointed to her. “Hadley-” and then he said something in English that the woman didn’t understand.

The woman constantly heard the two men say “Bobby” and “Hadley” outside. She knew those had to be their names.

Hadley walked up and knelt at her side. He put his hand to her face, making her flinch. The woman let him feel her face for sickness, which she knew she had strong signs of.

Hadley turned to Bobby with a solemn look, shaking his head. Bobby’s face drooped, his eyes widening even more. The woman knew this couldn’t be good. Before getting up, Hadley patted the woman’s head. He turned to leave and Bobby followed him. The woman felt her stomach empty with fear, and she jumped up and grabbed Bobby’s hand, stopping him. He gasped and faced her.

“Please,” she wheezed, tears welling up.

Bobby looked dumbfounded, a sign he didn’t understand her.

Hadley sighed and said something in English. The woman prayed he was translating what she said.

When Bobby did a little shake of the head, the woman squeezed his hand and whimpered out her beg some more. Tears streamed down her face, creating clean paths on her cheeks. Bobby bent his knees a little, as if getting ready to pick her up, but Hadley stopped him.

“Bobby.” He put a hand on Bobby’s shoulder. When the two made eye contact, Hadley shook his head. Then he looked at the woman. In broken German, he said, “We’re sorry, but you’re too sick to come with us.”

The two soldiers turned and left the tent, Bobby looking back one last time before disappearing. The woman collapsed on her side and curled in a ball. She choked out a cry. She was so close. She kept herself alive until liberation day. She thought she was going to make it. But she wasn’t. She was too sick and was going to die. She was going to die alone in a disease infested camp.

The woman began to shake as the cries became more violent. She fought so hard to see this day just to have it thrown back in her face. Just for two soldiers to leave her here. The last thing she wanted to do was become one of the millions of casualties and yet, that was going to happen.

Suddenly the woman heard the tent flap open. She stopped in mid-cry and sat up, alerted. Bobby was in the tent again. He ran over, jumping over a corpse, and before she could say anything, gathered the woman in his arms. The woman wrapped her boney arms around him as tightly as she could. She buried her face in his neck and began to weep. This time, they weren’t tears of defeat. Instead, they were tears of happiness, victory. Bobby put a hand to her head, toying with her hair as he exited the tent.

Bobby made sure to hold the nameless woman tight but not too tight. He didn’t want her tiny, thin body to slip through his arms but he was also frightened of breaking any fragile bones. Earlier Bobby noticed the woman’s right leg was crooked as if it had once been broken and never healed correctly. The woman’s left wrist was the same. On her skin that was showing, Bobby could see red blotches that had formed, leading to the conclusion that she was burned with something. Then there were the multiple scars Bobby could feel through the blanket.

The woman kept her head on Bobby’s shoulder, looking at the scenery from behind. There was no such thing as grass in Bergen-Belsen. One either saw snow in the winter or mud in the summer. Footprints were everywhere, smashed together and sometimes standing alone. Most of them showed toes because people had to be very lucky to have socks or shoes here. The tents were dirty, and now that the British were here they were being taken down. For the first time since the woman got here, she saw the barbed-wire fence at the other side of the camp instead of the tents. The beige sky was becoming stained with black smoke. The woman could smell a fire and something burning, but for once it didn’t reek of flesh. This time it seemed to be wood.

The woman made her grip around Bobby tighter. She didn’t make any friends at Bergen-Belsen like she did at Auschwitz. Everyone she met here died only a day after it seemed. It was nice to actually hug someone for once instead of being groped. There was only one Nazi – a father of a friend – here that helped her just like at Auschwitz, but this one rarely came to see her. He had a higher rank than the last one so that meant more duties. The woman couldn’t help but wonder where he was at the moment. He was either hiding or held at gunpoint like the others.

Bobby grabbed the woman tighter as he tripped. Unlike Bobby, the woman wasn’t fazed when she saw that the object was a corpse. She was used to it by now, walking to and from the kitchen – if one could call it that – every day. At Auschwitz, every killing she saw frightened her, but after watching the hanging of someone she cared about she became numb. The woman no longer cried when the Nazis picked on her. She no longer cried when a person dropped dead in front of her. She couldn’t feel anything when she watched hangings or other sources of massacre. She hid her face whenever someone told her about a gassing that contained a number of children; she didn’t want people to see she lacked emotion now.

The two reached Hadley who was moving around wood from what seemed to be a recently burnt down barrack. When Hadley noticed who was in Bobby’s arms, he exclaimed Bobby’s name angrily. Bobby replied in English, and Hadley pointed to the woman. She became lost in their conversation, but she could tell they were fighting. Their voices echoed, and the soldiers who walked by would stare. It took a few minutes for Bobby to say something that made Hadley silence himself. He made eye contact with the woman. Her eyes – the right chocolate brown and the left with a green tint – were wide, pleading. Hadley bit his bottom lip, sighed heavily, turned around, and flicked his wrist in a fast wave. Bobby chuckled, and the woman felt herself being squeezed to his chest. She smiled too, knowing that was a sign she was going to be okay.

It took another five minutes to finally be out of the camp. The woman let Bobby set her down in the seat of a car and then he climbed in on the other side. She pulled her legs to her chest as Hadley climbed into the front seat. The woman could see papers with what seemed to be meaningless numbers in his hand. He flipped through them once, then reached over and put a hand on her face. Bobby studied them, intrigued yet confused. He was only a new soldier and still had to learn about everything there was to everything.

Hadley pulled away and asked the woman, “Age?”

“Twent-Twenty thr-three.”

Hadley raised an eyebrow. “Nervous or cold?”

“I-I always. T-Talk. Like this.”

The soldier wrote something on a paper. From the corner of her eye, the woman could see the camp turning orange. She realized it was flames, and they were quickly devouring the camp. Soldiers were spilling oil on the entrance gate and the flames exploded into view within seconds.

“Wh-What are th-they doing?” the woman asked.

“Burning the camp down. We can’t have the typhus spreading.”

Bobby said something in English, making Hadley shake his head.

“Can I see your arm?” Hadley asked.

The woman stuck it out. The soldier only examined it for a second.

“Six-three-five-seven-nine-eight,” he said while writing it down. Then he looked at her. “Do you have any clothes?”

The woman shook her head.

Hadley turned around and started the car. “We’ll give you some when we get back to our base.”

The car began to move. The woman swirled around in her seat, watching the camp getting smaller through the back window. She spotted other survivors dancing with soldiers and she could even hear some singing. They began to follow the car. Everyone in unison went in the brighter direction and away from the miserable land. Tears welled up in the woman’s eyes.

She was finally going home.