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about the ‘what ifs’. What if they found out about me and Harry and that sentence that still had to be carried out. I told them I would like it better to stay with the group for another day. The General gave me a look but said nothing.
    After much thought I decided that come feeding time tomorrow I would try to stuff as much of the black bread as I could in the pockets of the German greatcoat I was wearing and await the chance to lose myself. Beyond that I had no plan.
Chapter Eight

Day Five
    Day five and we were back under the command of our General. There was no sign of the other two men and the boy. Today there were special orders: we were to try to gain entry into one of the main communal shelters on the edge of the Altstade. The General didn’t think it was possible because of the heat which was still very intense. However he had his orders to see if some progress could be made, and see he would.
    With the General leading the way, off we set in the direction of streets where sheets of flame were still shooting a hundred feet or so up into the sky. This time we were accompanied by a water truck with bags of wet rags and towels. The nearer we got, the hotter it got until the General called a halt and pointed to a still smouldering twenty foot high heap of rubble. The water-cart was still being manhandled over the piles of broken buildings, the path that had been cleared wasn’t wide enough and indeed the cart never did reach our position. The general ordered half of us back into the cooler air whilst the remainder set about the task of trying to clear a way through to the entrance door. He kept us working like this in twenty minute shifts and in this manner progress was made until we all retired some hundred yards back for a mid-day break.
    While were sitting and lounging about, another gang of around fifty men turned up and after a short conflab the General gets them into clearing the way to where it is thought the entrance to the shelter might be. The rest of us went on enjoying the break, but it came to an end when the General called over three of his German associates and signals to me, ‘Come Tommy’, then makes a sign for me to discard the shovel I’m carrying and hands over a long crowbar, about five feet of inch and a half thick metal with a claw at on end. The other gang had uncovered the entrance and marched off, leaving us, who were now considered as specialists. The General says to me, ‘In here very bad Tommy, very hot’.
    The door was a massive affair, it had been bolted from the outside which was the general practice to prevent overcrowding. This was OK in theory but if there’s nobody left on the outside to unbolt the door the people inside are in trouble.
    It took the whole of the afternoon wielding sledgehammers trying to prise an opening. It was so hot that, this time, the General changed us around at fifteen minute intervals. So finally there are two of us on the end of the crowbar when with a creak it moved. The door opened the first inch or so, there was a large hissing sound and the surrounding dust was sucked into the opening. As the gap widened, so a terrible smell hit us. Everyone moved back and the general gave us time to recover our wits. Then he signaled to his four chosen men, which included me, and we continued the job of opening the heavy metal door. Slowly the horror inside became visible. There were no real complete bodies, only bones and scorched articles of clothing matted together on the floor and stuck together by a sort of jelly substance. There was no flesh visible, what had once been a congregation of people sheltering from the horror above them was now a glutinous mass of solidified fat and bones swimming around, inches thick, on the floor. The General signaled us to get out and got the rest of the gang to close the door as best they could.
    Now we all understood what the cellars right in the centre of the city would reveal as there turn