Peter slumped on the earth in front of his barracks as he observed a dreadful-looking bunch of ragged men unloaded from the nearby train ramp. Actually, those were the lucky ones. They didn’t have to walk the five miles from the main train station in the town of Fallingbostel.
Hunger gnawing at his stomach, he somehow gathered the energy to stand up and trudge toward his table in the reception area, where the supervising German soldiers had already taken up residence. Most of them were more accommodating, but today one of the vicious guards, Müller, was on duty. Peter swallowed a groan as his stomach tightened.
The older guard, a so-called Landesschütze, had received a debilitating injury during the Russian campaign in 1942, which confined him to serving his country as a prison camp guar
