Free A Possible Life by Sebastian Faulks

They needed to set an example to one another. ‘
Schnell!
’ they still shouted. ‘
Schnell!
’ No fire burned hot enough for them.
    Geoffrey had a water bottle tied to his waist with string, though feared to drink from it. The intensity of labour was so great that when they stopped for half an hour at midday their places were immediately taken by others on rotation. There were no ablutions, and the men, many of whom had typhus, used the tin dinner plate for two purposes, chucking the waste into the flames as best they could. Those who collapsed or rebelled at what they did were thrown straight into the furnace.
    At night, Geoffrey slept in the Special Unit block, outside the main camp, where his apparent composure meant that he was put on suicide prevention duty. The room was smaller than D block, and here the men were tortured not only by thirst and by the guards, but by the memory of what they had seen and done. Few were able to lie down in their wooden bunks to sleep. They had surprised a hunger in themselves for living, had found a will to survive so deep that it had taken them to madness. Some sat against the wall holding their heads in their hands, scratching themselves raw. Some rocked back and forth, wearing away the skin on their backs against the cold wall. Some jabbered and screamed, or ran up and down the freezing barrack room; the most agitated were tied up to the ends of the bunks by their friends.
    Geoffrey did what he could to calm them, though he lacked the languages needed, and most were in any case beyond words. He stuffed pieces of straw and paper into his ears to cut out the noises of Bedlam and turned to his memories of living. That night, nothing of England would come to him: no river, almshouse or cricket ground. It was these places that had now taken on the vague outlines of something he had dreamed.
    Trembath had been right, Geoffrey thought. Better to die as a fighter, whatever reprisals the Germans took. If a hundred innocent men were shot to punish his revolt, it would only hasten what was inevitably coming to them. He wondered if ‘Tiny’ had made any progress with his plans, if he had connected with his doubtful French and schoolboy German to some other prisoners or whether he would make his stand alone. The thought of Trembath grabbing an SS gun and creating havoc even for a few moments was life-sustaining.
    In the crematorium, Geoffrey met a Russian called Sergei who could speak a little English. He was a prisoner of war, not Jewish, and assured Geoffrey that all the Russians were determined to escape in order to get back to Moscow and help the Motherland repel the Fascist invader. As a result of two failed escapes, the SS had appointed Search Units from among the prisoners; these enthusiastic men were allowed to range over both camps to look for signs of planned escape. As well as personally searching their comrades and the barracks, they overturned stockpiled building materials, crawled into attic spaces, pipes and ducts – ostensibly to search, in fact to reconnoitre . A group of Russians had volunteered for search duty because it gave them so much freedom of movement; they had identified a weakness in the perimeter fencing where the Special Unit went in and out to tend the pyres in the forests.
    The signs were discouraging. At intervals along the wire lay what Geoffrey had at first thought were bundles of rags that no one had picked up, but which were in fact the bodies of would-be escapers, shot from the watchtowers and left as a warning. Sergei believed that an escape was nevertheless being planned by a group of Search Unit Russians on the anniversary of the Great October revolution which, for reasons Geoffrey did not probe, fell on 7 November. He had less than a week in which to have himself transferred from the crematorium, though the chances of his being accepted into a Search Unit were remote.
    Later that day the lorries from the gas chambers brought a consignment of dead