Miss Silver – #14, 1948

A concentration camp in Germany – Christmas Day, 1944.

William Smith was dreaming his dream. Like his fellow prisoners, he had spent more than five hours of Christmas morning standing at attention on the square in his ragged underclothes exposed to a bitter north-east wind. Some of the men who had stood there with him would never stand again. They had dropped and died. William had stuck it out. He was strong and tough, and he was not racked as other men were racked by what might be happening to their families. Since he did not know who he was, he did not so much as know whether he had a family. When the Commandant had said, addressing them all, ‘If you have wives and children, forget them – you will never see them again,’ he was stirred to a just and impersonal anger, but not to any private feeling, because life as far as he was concerned had begun two years ago when he came out of hospital with an identity disc which said he was William Smith. There was a long number as well as the William Smith, but he was never able to feel that it belonged to him. They put him in a camp as William Smith, and after he had escaped and been caught the S.S. took him over and put him in a concentration camp. Since then he had been moved twice, and each camp was worse than the last. In this camp he was the only Englishman. He knew some French, and he had learned some German. An old Czech who had a knife which he had stolen at the risk of his life used to lend it to him sometimes. They carved animals. The Czech was better at the carving, but William had a lot of bright ideas. After a bit he got very good at the carving too.

Day followed day, and night followed night. There was always hunger and filth and cold, and cruelty, and a dense fog of human suffering. It was better for William than it was for the others, because he hadn’t anyone to worry about except himself, and he hadn’t got that sort of temperament, so he didn’t really worry at all. And sometimes at night he had his dream.