89.


  End February.


A frog's chorus and then spawn in the ponds.
 

Monsieur le docteur Bourelle is a dark, small figure, twisted into a wheel chair at the age of 96. Once he was spry, brave and starving he tells me.

I have come to an aperitif; 7 oclock in the evening, dark already and the sky is a clear Prussian black backdrop.The star points are so numerous they sweep a silver  veil over it.

Mr. B. sits next to me and tells a story that is so staggering I am worried that by 8 he will not have finished and that we will have to part.

Captured in France in 194--, as an officer he spent time in a prisoner of war camp, twiddling his thumbs and wondering how it would go. With 3 other doctors, English, French and Belgian,  they volunteered to medically serve the soldier prisoners of a work camp. They found themselves moved with a troop to Auschwitz, Ozwieciem,  to work on the outside, on transports and warehousing. They lost their officer status because of their volunteering and had nothing to treat any ailing man with. Mr. le docteur B. experienced horrors beyond imagining; but while working on a new hardware transport that the Germans were sending through to the west,  he and the other doctors noticed that the work force were showing signs of blindness: it turned out that they  had been drinking the industrial alcohol within  some strange, bullet shaped containers passing through. He was convinced that these were the war heads of some new weapon..

After the war it became obvious that these had been the new V2 rockets

We nibble the hors d’oeuvres and sip our Muscat. Time to leave politely but I have been cordially invited to the doctor’s house for tea one day next week. We could talk some more , he says, since he likes the English. One of his best comrades in arms was an Englishman, sadly deceased. They had been friends ever since the war and often visited each other while their families were growing up.

I listen to the blackbird’s dusk song . He rings his kingdom with riffs of marvellous purity. He knows not that his early hopes may be ruined. Snows and winds might tear at his first nest. But they might not. This creeping spring might be gentle.