A few days later, Prince was part of a smaller group sent to work in Travemünde, the busiest part of the port, the area closest to the Baltic. A particularly heavy bombing raid had destroyed the main road into the docks, and his group were helping to clear it. There were about twenty of them, and when they finished work, the guards announced that they’d be staying in Travemünde rather than travelling back to Lübeck each night.

On that first night, Prince realised that the guards – there were only three of them – hadn’t taken a roll call. It was an uncharacteristic mistake, and he guessed the decision to send them to the docks had been a last-minute one, which meant there was probably no list of prisoners. They slept on the ground floor of the customs building, and the following morning were divided into smaller groups and sent back to work. Prince and August were ordered by a port police officer to help load a ship further along the quay.

‘That’s not what these prisoners are meant to be doing. They’re supposed to be clearing the bomb damage; we can’t allow them onto the boats.’ It was the same guard who’d shot Henk.

‘I don’t care,’ said the police officer, a tall, harassed-looking man who clearly outranked the guard. ‘There are fifteen ships in Lübeck Bay waiting to come into port and another dozen waiting to leave. Unless we can get this mess sorted, we’ll have the best part of thirty ships conveniently presented as sitting ducks for when the bastards return to bomb us.’

‘That’s defeatist talk, I’ll—’

‘Oh, is it? Well, how about I report you to the port commander for sabotaging trade, eh?’

A tense compromise of sorts was reached: Prince and August, together with a few other prisoners, would help to load the ship but wouldn’t be allowed on it. Their job was to unload crates from a waiting lorry and carry them to the gangplank.

As they headed down the quay, they passed a number of other ships. One of them was clearly preparing to set sail, and as they walked past it, there was a loud blast from its horn. The vessel had been mostly obscured behind cranes; it was only as they came close to it that Prince looked at it properly. A shudder ran down his spine, his senses now heightened. He was so taken aback he stopped for a moment, and August had to prod him in the back to keep him moving.

When they reached the lorry they were meant to be unloading, the tense stand-off between the port police and the guards restarted, the guards arguing that it would take all morning to unload the lorry and their instructions were for the prisoners to repair the bomb damage.