The Capture of Björte

When he woke up, his mouth was full of blood.

It wasn't someone else's blood; it was his own. Three or four teeth were loose, his tongue was bitten, and his lips were swollen like two sausages. But he didn't have time to think about any of that, because the first thing he realized was something else: he couldn't move his right leg.

Björg looked down. His leg was still there, but below the knee it was pinned down by a twisted steel plate, the kind that had been blown off a tank wreck. The edges were charred and curled up, sizzling as it pressed against his leg. He could smell the burning flesh.

The pain finally caught up, like a red-hot iron rod stabbing into his brain from the sole of his foot. He cried out, but only a hissing sound escaped his throat.

The surrounding area was engulfed in flames.

The "Earl" was burning behind him. His tank, his brother, his second home. The turret was blown off and flew away somewhere unknown, and a gash more than a meter long was torn open on the side of the hull, spewing fire out of it. He saw the name "Earl," which he had written himself on the turret, curling, turning black, and disappearing in the flames.

What about the rest of the crew? He couldn't remember. He only remembered that when the last shell hit, the loader, Leclerc—not the general, but another Leclerc—was squatting next to him, handing him the shell. Then there was a flash of white light, then a body flying through the air, and then he himself was thrown out of the hatch and crashed into the ruins.

He struggled to get up. Unable to move his leg, he used his hands to support himself and dragged the leg forward. After crawling five or six meters, he looked back.

Leclerc lay motionless beside the tank. His uniform was on fire, but he didn't move.

Björg closed his eyes and continued crawling forward.

When he opened his eyes again, he was strapped to the back of a truck.

There were a dozen or so other people in the carriage, all French prisoners of war. Some were wearing tank crew uniforms like his, some were wearing infantry khaki uniforms, and one was a civilian in a blood-stained suit, his origins unknown. Everyone had their heads down, and no one spoke.

The truck was bumping along. Through the gaps in the cargo bed, one could see the desert outside, with yellow sand swirling in the air and the sun making the metal scorching hot. Byot's leg had been hastily bandaged, but the pain still made him twitch every few minutes. A young man who looked like an infantryman handed him the last drop of water from his canteen, which he accepted without hesitation and drank.

"Where to?" he asked.

The young man shook his head.

The truck traveled for three days.

On the first night, they stopped in an unknown small town. German soldiers forced everyone off the vehicle, lined them up, and checked their documents. Byot's documents had been burned inside the tank; he was only wearing a uniform with several holes burned in it. A German sergeant walked up to him, stared at him for a few seconds, and then smashed him in the face with the butt of his rifle.

He fell down, was dragged up, and thrown into a dark room.

There were seven or eight people inside. Some were groaning, some were coughing, and some were huddled motionless in a corner. Björn sat against the wall, touching his broken nose, and thought: I have to run.

But how do I run?

The next day, he was taken out for interrogation.

The interrogation room was set up in a requisitioned civilian house. A portrait of Hitler hung on the wall, and a typewriter sat on the table. Behind the typewriter sat a bespectacled German officer who spoke fluent French.

"Name?"

Jean-Björgault.

"Military rank?"

"Captain."

"force?"

"1st Company, 41st Tank Battalion"

The officer tapped a few times on the typewriter, looked up, and stared at him.

"Stony?"

Björg didn't say anything.

The officer smiled. It was a very gentle smile, like a teacher praising a student who answered a question correctly.

"We know, Captain. Your tank destroyed thirteen of our Panzer IVs at Stoney. All by yourself. You know, there's a file on you in Berlin. They call you 'Stoney's Killer.'"

Björg remained silent.

The officer stood up, walked up to him, bent down, and got very close.

"Captain, we are not barbarians. You are a brave soldier, and we respect brave soldiers. Tell me, what are the Free French plans in Africa? How many men do they have in Chad? What equipment have the British given them? Tell me, and you will be treated very well. Hot meals, a clean bed, and the ability to write home."

Björg looked at him. His eyes were gentle and sincere, as if he were truly thinking of him.

"I don't know," Björn said.

The officer's smile vanished.

He straightened up, walked back to the table, and pressed the bell. The door opened, and two soldiers walked in, carrying rubber batons.

"Captain," the officer said without turning his head, "I gave you a chance."

That night, Björn had three teeth knocked out.

The prisoner-of-war camp was located deep in the desert, eighty kilometers south of the port of Brega. There was no barbed wire—no need for it; it was all desert, and running out meant certain death. There were only a few rows of wooden houses, a well, a mess hall, and a watchtower that was always filled with sentries.

Björg was locked in room 7 of block B. The room was twelve square meters, crammed with twenty people. There were no beds, only dry straw on the floor. There were no lights, and after dark, nothing could be seen. There was no water, only twice a day, morning and evening, with each person having an enamel cup.

He stayed here for five months.

In five months, he learned three things: how to catch lice in hay, how to live with minimal water, and how to wait.

Waiting for what? He himself didn't know. Waiting for the war to end? Waiting for a prisoner exchange? Waiting to die?

The man in the next bed was a British major named Trent, who had been captured on the outskirts of Tobruk. He had arrived three months earlier than Byot and had become mentally unstable, talking in his sleep every night, cursing Churchill, Montgomery, the Germans, and everyone else in English. But during the day he was perfectly normal, as normal as an English gentleman, nodding to Byot and saying "Good morning," and breaking half of his bread to give to someone who was sick.

One day, Trent suddenly leaned over and whispered, "I'm going to run away."

Björg looked at him.

"How do we run?"

Trent pulled a piece of paper from under his pillow. It was a hand-drawn map, crooked and uneven, but it clearly showed the layout of the prisoner-of-war camp. The location of the watchtower, the changing of the guard times, the dry riverbed behind the mess hall, and the gap in the low wall to the southeast were all marked.

“It took three months to draw,” Trent said. “Every night between one and two o’clock, the sentries on the watchtower would change shifts, with a five-minute break in between. Outside the low wall to the southeast was a dry riverbed, and twenty kilometers east along the riverbed was a Bedouin camp. They would take in escapees and help them cross the desert.”

Björg stared at the map for a long time.

How do you know the Bedouins will help?

Trent grinned. It was the first time Byot had ever seen the British major smile.

"I gave them three watches, two packs of cigarettes, and a Bible," he said. "They kept their word."

That night, Björn began to plan.

He didn't run immediately. He knew he couldn't run. His leg wasn't fully healed, and he still walked with a limp, let alone walk twenty kilometers in the desert. He needed to wait, wait for his leg to heal, wait for an opportunity, wait for a day when he could run again.

Trent didn't wait for him. Three nights later, he ran away.

The next morning during roll call, one person was missing. The German soldiers herded everyone onto the parade ground, where they stood for four hours under the scorching sun. They asked who knew where Trent was, but no one spoke. They picked five men, pulled them aside, and whipped them, but still no one spoke.

Three days later, Trent's body was returned.

The Bedouins didn't betray him; the desert did. He went the wrong way, wandered in the desert for three days, and finally died of dehydration. When the patrol found him, he was lying less than five kilometers from the Bedouin camp, his face turned in that direction.

Björg stared at the corpse, at the sun-dried, cracked face, for a long time.

That night, he took the map out from under Trent's pillow and hid it in the sole of his shoe.

Two more months passed.

Byot's leg is better. Not completely healed; he still walks with a slight limp, but running is no problem. Every night, he rehearses the route in his mind: from room 7 in Block B to the canteen, then over the low wall behind the canteen, and eastward along the dry riverbed outside the wall. Twenty kilometers, at his current pace, will take about five hours. After five hours, it should be dawn.

He still needs one more thing: an opportunity.

The opportunity came on the first day of the fifth month.

That afternoon, several new prisoners arrived at the camp. They were French, from the Foreign Legion, captured on the Chad border. They brought news that Free France was growing stronger in Africa, that the British had given them weapons, and that Colonel Leclerc was organizing an expeditionary force to cross the desert from Chad to reinforce North Africa.

Björg's hands trembled slightly as he listened to the news.

That night, he made his decision.

At one o'clock in the morning, the sentries on the watchtower changed shifts. Björn lay on the hay, counting the seconds. One minute, two minutes, three minutes, four minutes, five minutes.

He got up.

There were no sentries at the gate—at night, sentries were only on the watchtower, and there were only two patrols in the barracks, making a round every half hour. Björn waited ten minutes until the two patrols passed, then pushed open the door and slipped out.

It was pitch black outside. There was no moon, no stars, only the wind, blowing the sand and making a mournful sound. Björn crawled on the ground, close to the wall. He crawled past Section B, past Section C, and reached the back of the cafeteria.

The low wall was just ahead. It was two meters high, with barbed wire strung on top. Byot pulled out the piece of iron he had kept hidden for three months from the sole of his shoe—he had pried it off the bed board, sharpened it for more than two months, and it was barely usable as a knife.

He used a piece of iron to cut the barbed wire. One cut, two cuts, three cuts. The wire was cut, revealing a hole he could crawl through. He crawled through, jumped off the low wall, and landed in the dry riverbed.

The riverbed was deeper than depicted on the map, with steep sand walls on either side and hard, dry sand at the bottom. Byot ran eastward along the riverbed. Running, not walking. He knew he only had five hours. If he couldn't reach the Bedouin camp within five hours, there would be nowhere to hide in the desert at daybreak.

He ran for an hour, two hours, three hours.

His legs started to hurt. Not the kind of pain you could bear, but the kind that seemed to drill into your bones, like being stabbed with a knife with every step. He gritted his teeth and kept running.

After four hours, he stopped to catch his breath. Leaning against the sandy bank of the riverbed, he gasped for air. His lips were cracked, and his throat burned; he knew he was dehydrated. He looked up at the sky; the horizon was beginning to lighten.

It'll be there soon. The map says it's about 20 kilometers east along the riverbed, right ahead.

He kept running.

When it was fully light, he saw the tent.

These are not Bedouin tents; they belong to the French.

It was a campsite with a dozen jeeps, dozens of tents, and a tattered French flag fluttering in the morning breeze. People were moving about, cleaning their guns, and cooking breakfast. Smoke rose from the chimneys, mingling with the morning mist.

Björg stood on the riverbed, looking at the camp, motionless.

He didn't know how long he had been standing there. Maybe a few seconds, maybe a few minutes. Then he started walking, step by step, towards that direction.

When he reached the camp gate, a sentry stopped him.

"Halt! Who goes there?"

Björg opened his mouth, but no sound came out. He pointed to himself, then to the French flag.

The sentry looked at him. He looked at his tattered German uniform, which he had stripped from a dead German soldier to avoid being spotted by patrols on the road. He looked at his sunken cheeks and the bloodshot in his eyes.

The sentry turned and ran.

A few minutes later, a short man came out of the camp and stood in front of him.

Colonel Leclerc.

Björth first met Leclerc in Chad. At that time, Leclerc was the commander of the Free French North Africa forces, standing in front of a line of jeeps, addressing a group of soldiers. Björth stood in the crowd and listened as he said, "We are going to North Africa to fight the Germans. We will march 800 kilometers, five days and five nights without stopping."

At that time, he thought this person was crazy.

Now this madman is standing in front of him, looking at him.

Leclerc had lost weight. He'd lost a lot of weight. His face was covered in dust, his eyes were sunken, his cheekbones were prominent, and his lips were cracked and bleeding. But the light in his eyes was brighter than ever before.

"Who are you?" Leclerc asked.

Björg opened his mouth and finally made a sound.

"Jean-Biout. 41st Tank Battalion, 1st Company. Stoney."

Leclerc's eyes lit up.

"That Björn from Stoney? The one who took on thirteen tanks by himself?"

Björn's head.

Leclerc looked at him for a long time. Then he reached out and took Björn's hand. The hand was thin, all bone, but very strong.

How did you survive?

"He was captured. Five months ago. He escaped last night."

Leclerc nodded. He glanced back at the camp, then turned back to look at Byot.

"We're on our way. Eight hundred kilometers from Chad, to reinforce North Africa. Five days and five nights without stopping. Seventeen people have died on the road."

He paused.

"You've come at the right time. We need someone who can drive a tank."

When Leclerc set out from Chad, he had only two hundred and thirty men with him.

It's not that he doesn't want more. It's just that this is all he has.

In April 1941, in French Equatorial Africa, Free France could only muster a handful of troops. Chad needed to be guarded; not all of them could be withdrawn. The ports of Cameroon needed to be secured, in case the Vichy forces attacked from the sea. The Congo had only recently stabilized, and some troops were needed to maintain order. The garrison at Pointe-Noire couldn't be moved; it was the gateway to the sea. Douala also needed to be defended; it was where British reinforcements would land.

The only people who could be mobilized, pieced together from various sources, were these 230 individuals.

It was April 20, 1941. The sun had just risen over the eastern Sahara, turning the dunes golden. Two hundred and thirty men stood atop more than twenty modified jeeps and trucks, waiting for him to speak.

Leclerc stood on the hood of the lead jeep, watching the men. They came from all walks of life: Foreign Legion veterans, Black soldiers from the colonial forces, deserters from the mainland, and a few volunteers who barely spoke French. They varied in height, build, skin color, and language, but all shared the same thing in their eyes: the light that only those willing to die could possess.

"We're going to North Africa," Leclerc said, his voice not loud, but everyone could hear. "Eight hundred kilometers. Desert. No roads. No supplies. Five days and five nights, non-stop."

He looked at those people.

"Set off."