A lot of Lockhart’s time was spent trying to control the unit. Much to his annoyance, two more men had joined, bringing the unit’s strength to eleven. Both Richard Simpkin and Andrew Smith had been members of the BUF, and had come to Hildesheim via Genshagen. Simpkin, who was a lance corporal in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, had been captured in Crete a month after the invasion, in June 1941. He looked very pasty, thought Lockhart, a complexion he soon discovered to be the result of repeated bouts of jaundice and malaria, both of which he had caught in North Africa. Smith, like Marston, had been in the Merchant Navy, and had also been imprisoned at the Milag near Bremen. Lockhart found Smith shifty and quiet, another of those pinch-faced little men who blamed the Jews for everything.

The arrival of these two meant that the BFC was becoming increasingly ideological. Lockhart found the simplicity of Hull and Andreae, both out to have as good a time as possible, refreshing compared to the hectoring natures of what he termed “The Bonsai Hitlers.” Not that Hull’s and Andreae’s actions were praiseworthy—far from it—but Lockhart felt that they were not real traitors. Neither of them seemed to have any intention of fighting, and were keener to spend the rest of the war abusing the Germans’ misplaced hospitality. Constant were the complaints from members such as Pugh and Maclaren, who were distressed that Hull and Andreae kept shouting them down when they gave their lectures on Nazism and the so-called “Jewish threat” to the world order. Lockhart was of course sympathetic to Hull and Andreae, and was in no mind to tell them to stop laying into the unit’s fascisti. So he told Pugh and Maclaren he would “have a word,” when of course he never did.

The heckling continued; swastikas were torn down and replaced in the common room every other day; arguments and fist-fights were commonplace. Butcher, who was the senior NCO, had his work cut out keeping some semblance of discipline, constantly complaining to Lockhart and Strasser that they had recruited a bunch of idiots, and for once, although silently, Lockhart agreed with his oberscharführer. Strasser told Lockhart that any further lapses in discipline would be his responsibility, which had caused Lockhart to complain that he was not responsible for the low caliber of recruits. How was it his fault that the unit consisted of such a potent brew of men with opposing motives? Give me the right tools, Lockhart had said, and I’ll do you a nice job. That had bought him some time and some space, although Lockhart knew that Strasser would not be stumped for long.

The letter annoyed him. Its tone suggested that he was being slack, lazy, when he was being nothing of the sort. Fucking Berger—he’d known this job was going to be thankless, but not as bad as this. It was an achievement in itself that the Corps numbered as many as eleven: Strasser reread the letter. He took a deep breath, and breathed out slowly.