Things Change

(Source)

"Where are they taking them?" Soldat Maxime De Saint-Pierre asked as he watched the Germans separating the colonial troops from the men from cosmopolitan France. 

Caporal Guillaume Micheaux looked for a long moment at De Saint-Pierre, he was a very young soldier from a small village in the Vosges Mountains. He thought for a moment as he too watched the Germans pulling the black and Asian soldiers out of the group.

"Les Boches are probably going to kill them. The Nazis hate anything which is not like them, especially those whose skin is darker than theirs." Guillaume felt sick knowing the fate of the men being selected.

"But why? Why would they do such a thing?" De Saint-Pierre asked plaintively.

Before Guillaume could answer, one of the guards hit De Saint-Pierre in the back with the butt of his rifle, "Halt die Klappe du Schwein!!¹"

Les Boches had loaded them on another train, this one appeared to be heading west, at least it had been pointed west when they had been loaded aboard. Guillaume was so tired and hungry that he was almost beyond caring what les Boches had in mind for him and the thousand other French POWs aboard the train.

What Guillaume couldn't know is that the Germans were ill-prepared to take on so many POWs. During the battle for France and the aftermath, the Germans had taken well over a million and a half French soldiers prisoner. The plan was to hold some in prisoner-of-war camps, the majority would be put to work in the Reich as forced labor.

But France had collapsed far too quickly for the plans to be executed. Many of the trains carrying prisoners were being sent back to France, where the new plan was for the soldiers to be paroled back to their homes. Truth be told, in the Byzantine politics governing the Third Reich, very often local officials acted on their own, in their own interests and not in the interests of Berlin.

Guillaume didn't know it, but he was one of the lucky ones who would be heading home, to be released after swearing an oath of loyalty to the new French government in Vichy.

"Right, you lot, over here, line up!" The British sergeant was barking these orders in English to men who didn't speak the language. Fortunately, he had a translator who would repeat his commands in Polish to the men gathered at the entrance to the encampment where the various escapees and refugees from the battle of France were being held.

Podbielski nodded at his little group to obey the command. Jean-Yves Cahun, not wanting to be separated from his new comrades, followed the others.

As they queued up, Podbielski noticed that another man, a corporal, was counting off groups of ten, each group being directed to different areas outside of the camp. He had to make sure they all stayed together, though there were only six of them, he worried that they might be separated. Especially the Frenchman.

As they moved forward, Podbielski kept an eye on the count. As they drew closer, he could see that the count would split his group in half. So he pulled three men from behind his group and pushed them forward.

One of the men protested, "What the Hell do you think you're doing?"

Before Podbielski could say anything, Klaudiusz Mierzejewski has his knife out and growled, "Just move. If you know what's good for you."

The man blanched then quickly moved up.

"Klaudiusz, you scare me sometimes." Podbielski muttered.

Mierzejewski shrugged, "It worked didn't it?"

"Nächste!²" the middle-aged German sergeant barked at the line of Frenchmen, most of whom were so tired they could barely stand.

Guillaume shuffled forward, though he didn't speak a word of German, he knew enough to just do what all the others had done, take the papers the German shoved at them, sign the top one and give it back, then move on.

The German barked something at him and shoved a bundle of papers into his hand, Guillaume used the pen the German handed him to sign the top sheet, and handed it back. The German snatched the paper from Guillaume's hand then barked "Nächste!"

As Guillaume moved over to where the other men had received their papers, there were Germans pointing down the road and gesturing for the men to move along. A number of men, some looking very bewildered, were already walking down the road. They kept looking back, suspecting that les Boches were up to no good.

For once, they were not.

Guillaume stole a glance at the papers the German had given him, he was pleasantly surprised to find that the papers were in French and in German. As he studied them, he realized that these were travel papers, authorizing, in fact requiring, that he proceed to his home village and immediately report to the German authorities in that area.

There was no mention of authorization for transport, nor had anyone received any funds to pay for travel. Most of the men, upon capture, had been stripped of anything valuable they were carrying, including money.

Guillaume knew that he had a long walk ahead of him, but he was in France and not Germany. So there was hope. But hope of what, he wasn't sure.

"Where are we going sierżancie'?" Jean-Yves asked Podbielski.

"Scotland from what I understand. The English are forming a new Polish Army there. Where we go from there is a mystery. Hopefully wherever Germans are being killed." Podbielski answered as he watched the landscape slide past the train. He wondered if it ever stopped raining in this country.

The other men were all sleeping, content to let the British take care of them for now. They had been given new uniforms, they now looked like British soldiers, and, most importantly, they had been fed. So the men were content, for the moment.

Podbielski worried that the Brits would make the men go through a period of training with lots of square bashing and mindless drill. These men were already soldiers, they needed to exercise in the field in their new units, to get used to each other. God forbid that the Brits made them march and go through close order drill.

Podbielski was sure that he spoke for all of the men on this train, all they really wanted to do was kill Niemcy. 

The sooner, the better.

¹ Shut your mouth, you pig!!" (German)

² Next! (German)