VECHTA, GERMANY | APRIL 1945
Audrey and Wen shuffled side by side in the small inner courtyard. It was their daily exercise hour, and the women all walked in the same direction like some sluggish human cyclone, heads bent against the relentlessly bitter wind.
Audrey was just thinking how she would rather have walked laps around her own cell when, out of nowhere, the air itself broke apart. Some unseen force shook the ground, and the women screamed. They instinctively ducked down with their hands covering their heads, as though that might help in the slightest. The guards shouted, and four more bombs fell nearby. Audrey remained on the frosted ground, thinking this might be the end, but Wen rose on unsteady legs, staring at the sky as a plane crossed over the prison compound.
“What are they doing?!” one of the inmates cried. “What is it?”
Audrey lifted a hand to shield her eyes from the glare as she looked up at Wen. A grin cracked across her friend’s cheeks the way it had that very first night in their cell, and she laughed aloud, a cloud of hot breath bursting in front of her mouth.
“It’s the Allies,” she said. Her amber eyes danced, watering with cold and relief. “They’re here.”
Audrey kept her eyes on the sky as Wen’s words sank in. She hardly dared believe that perhaps, after so long, this nightmare might be coming to an end.
Another week passed before the area surrounding the prison was shelled again. It was clear now that the airfield to the east of the prison was the Allies’ target. She and Wen lay in their bunks in the middle of the night, feeling the reverberation of the bombs falling as the air raid siren wailed in the distance.
“They’re so close, sometimes,” Wen said from the bunk above. “Does it frighten you?”
Audrey shook her head, though Wen couldn’t see her. “No. Surprisingly. Are you afraid?”
Wen snorted. “No. This kitty has already used her nine lives. You know I’m living on borrowed time now anyway.”
“I think we all are,” Audrey said.
Wen dangled one arm over the edge of the bunk, and Audrey took hold of it. They lay like that for a long while until Audrey felt her friend’s fingers start to grow heavy with sleep. Audrey gently released them, and she heard Wen turn over on the mattress, adjust the blanket.
“Hey, Audrey,” she said. “What—”
A roar unlike anything they had yet heard shattered the relative quiet of the prison. A second later, they felt the vibration of a blast so close that for a fleeting moment Audrey fully expected to die. A chunk of the wall above the cell door crashed to the floor. A chorus of screams issued from down the hall.
Audrey threw off the covers, springing from the bunk. “I think they’ve hit the prison!” she yelled, her mouth dry.
Another bomb ripped through the air and shook the earth as Wen leapt down from her bed. Chaos sounded outside the door. A shell whistled overhead and they both hit the floor.
When the walls stopped shuddering, they rose to their feet.
“Let us out!” Wen cried, hammering on the door. “For God’s sake, let us out!”
The other women were banging on their own doors, and guards continued to shout to one another beneath the constant air raid siren shrieking its warning call into the night.
Wen turned to Audrey. “This is it, isn’t? This might be it!”
Audrey swallowed. How many were already dead? She didn’t want to die in this prison, not like this. “They’re still after the airfield, but there’s a chance the bombs will miss us here.”
Wen looked confused. “I don’t mean to die. I mean to escape!”
“Escape?” Audrey said, breathing fast.
“Get your coat,” Wen said, grabbing her own.
Audrey pulled hers on and they both slid into their shoes.
There was a jangle of keys down the hall.
“Someone’s coming.” Wen pressed her cheek against the window, straining to see. “They’re unlocking the doors! Get ready.”
A guard was outside their door now. “Inmates, stand back!” he called.
They did, though Audrey could tell Wen was summoning all her available strength, readying for a fight.
The door opened and the ashen-faced guard beckoned them forward. “Move, move, single file, to the rear doors, go!”
They complied, scurrying down the hall. Audrey yelped as another bomb shook the building, but Wen practically ran ahead of her now, following the other women rushing out of the cellblock. They burst out into the cold air of the courtyard at the back of the prison. Most of the inmates were already assembled, watching the sky with frightened faces. Then Audrey smelled smoke. The sky was alight. The men’s wing of the prison, just to the east, was engulfed in flames.
Audrey spotted the prison director. She ordered everyone toward the gate and the guards began poking them into a herd. Audrey seized Wen’s arm, heart in her throat when she saw the rifle in the nearest guard’s hands.
They’re just going to shoot us, she thought, and abandon the prison.
The male prisoners were already burning to death just yards away…
The prison director shouted over the tumult. “Ladies!”
Another shell rent the air, and everyone crouched, screaming. When the shock subsided, they all rose on unsteady legs.
“Ladies!” she shouted again. “I’m opening the gates. You can stay here and take your chances with the bombs, or leave. But the surrounding fields are full of mines. The choice is yours.”
Audrey’s jaw dropped. Wen gasped beside her. The other women were yelling questions, crying. Two guards stepped forward and unlocked the iron gates, swung them open with an almighty creak, but no one moved.
Incredulous, Audrey glanced at the director. She shouted at one of the guards, something about assembling the Kubelwagens for the staff—the prison’s utility vehicles. She wasn’t even watching what the inmates were doing. Was this a trick? If they left, would the guards just pick them off from the watchtower and claim they tried to escape? Or was the end of the war really so close? If the Allies were here, then Nazi Germany’s days were over—and the director knew it. If they released all the prisoners, the staff could leave, too, and have a chance to flee home to their families.
