The prisoners saw the camp. It looked like the end of the world

Here, in an extract from Black Camp 21 by Bill Jones, published by Polygon, the German prisoners arrive in Perthshire

Since London, they’d been recycling their own stinking breath and the air tasted sweet.

Among the crowd of tired faces, beneath their ragged assortment of hats, Max Hartmann sensed a kind of happiness.

When the order came to march, everyone was glad to stretch their legs.

They turned left out of the tiny station on to a single street, smothered in snow.

On each side, sturdy stone houses and shops ran away towards a church topped by the elegant taper of a grey steeple, and every door was jammed with spectators.

Suddenly, without instruction, the prisoners straightened their backs and dropped into formation, two abreast, legs kicked high they strode down the centre of the road.

Alongside them, gangs of children ran whooping in an accent Hartmann couldn’t comprehend, and everywhere he turned, the locals seemed curious but unintimidated. Not even the goose step seemed to trouble them.

Nothing provoked a reaction more alarming than the occasional snowball.

Either they’d seen it before or they knew exactly where the Germans were heading.

A short while later, the prisoners caught their first glimpse of the camp.

In the last twitch of daylight it looked like the end of the world. Black woods and mountains were their only company and high overhead, squabbling rooks were heading back to roost.

Even the birds appeared desperate to leave.