Excerpt From Scheisshaus Luck

I stabbed the earth with my spade, being careful of the heels of the Haeftling in front of me. Tossed the dirt, took a step, and stabbed where he had just dug. The man behind me did the same just as the man behind him did and the man behind him and the man behind him. I felt like an oarsman on a Roman galley. Ten of us in single file moving in unison; one full shovel, one step forward. We moved very smoothly, digging a narrow, shallow ditch for a single pipe. We were digging not far from our entrance into the plant. I wasn't sure but it seemed like our ditch was going to be part of a pipeline running to either our camp or the British P.O.W. camp.

The rest of the Kommando, ninety men and our Kapo, were excavating for a larger project. A red triangle Voribeiter followed us with half-hearted demands to put our backs into it. If his voice rose, it wasn't because we weren't working hard enough, but because there was an SS guard in earshot. When one of us had the urge for number one or number two the Voribeiter grabbed the shovel and joined our chorus line. We had no Scheisshaus just a Scheiss trench, a six foot pit with a wooden plank laid across it that you could hang your ass over.

The Voribeiter stepped in for the man in front of me. Lunch would be coming soon, I thought. A smart Haeftling made sure to empty his bowels before the Buna soup arrived, never after. You wanted to give you body enough time to absorb everything it could from the gruel before saying adieu. That's if your bowels were stout enough to have a say in the matter.

A shriek and a loud splash jammed a cog in our motion. The Voribieter stopped and looked over his shoulder. So did I. So did everyone in the work party. The Haeftling who should have been sitting over the shit trench wasn't there and neither was the plank. The Vorbieter went over and we all followed. The flimsy board had broken at a knothole. Our comrade was treading in the ooze. I didn't remember the stench being so offensive when my ass hung over the plank. His thrashing had churned the brown pond too well.

"Idiots! Don't stand there! Get him out of there!" the Voribieter ordered.

A couple of recent Haeftlinge lowered their shovels but the shit covered figure couldn't get a good grip. No matter how much the Voribieter screamed and threatened, none of us were going to reach our arm down to help pull him up. He tried to claw his way up the side of the pit, but it was just too slimy. Shovels were lowered again.

"Back to work, you dirtbags. The creep is not worth cleaning."

We were so engrossed and repulsed by our comrade's predicament that none of us had noticed the SS guard who had walked up. He stared at us with pistol in hand. We stepped back as one.

"You heard him!" the Voribieter yelled. "Back to work."

POP! One shot. We moved, fast. Some of the newcomers were flabbergasted. Old timers like myself weren't fazed. He could have just as well shot into the air instead of the trench. Maybe the Boch thought he was doing us a favor. Maybe he hadn't fired his pistol in a few days. Whatever his reason, he had just made our day shittier. Alive or dead, dripping in human waste or not, that man had to come back to camp with us to be counted.

When the Voribieter was confident the SS brute wouldn't be strolling back, he ordered two of the new arrivals to get pickaxes and retrieve the body. It was not an easy task. We must have dug for thirty minutes before the two men reported that they had snagged him. The Voribieter promised Nachschlag, an extra ladle of Buna soup, to whoever cleaned up the mess. My workmates were ready to throw up their meager breakfasts. I raised my arm. After my coronation as Roi du Chateau in Drancy no sight or smell fazed me.

There was no water faucet with a hose, but luckily for me there was an abundance of steam valves all over the plant. With some doing, I got the body into a wheelbarrow and pushed it over to a valve, which was to a steam pipe that provided heat to our camp. I draped the body over the wheelbarrow's handles, which were resting on the pipe. I turned the body as if roasting a side of beef. As I cleaned him, the steam warmed up the shit and the stench almost overwhelmed a Scheissmeister like me.

Trying to clean him with his pajamas on wasn't working, so I stripped them off. He was a yellow triangle. I was sure he was one of the recently arrived Hungarians. He was still in good shape for a Haeftling.

The Voribieter, a red triangle Prussian, looked over my shoulder.

"Throw his pajamas back into the pit," he said in German, then grinned. "Although, it would be fun to dump it at the doorstep of the SS barracks."

I chuckled in agreement. "What a waste. He was worth three Muselmanner."

"And now I've got to write an accident report." the Voribieter said as he left.

By the time I shoved the body into two cement bags it was bleached and well done.

When the Kommando arrived at the camp's gate that evening, the Kapo announced to the guards, "Ninety-nine and one dead." The man's body was on a warped plank shouldered by four Haeftlinge. I wasn't one of them. I had gotten my extra ladle of soup.