Spielberg may helm Brit WWII PoW’s tear-jerking love story

Horace thought the many weeks’ continuous marching across France and through Belgium and into Luxembourg was bad. He thought it a living, starving, leg-breaking, strength-sapping nightmare. He watched his comrades die in front of him without being able to lift a finger. That was the worst - the mental torture of being useless, being controlled, dominated, herded like animals. No choice of when to eat or when to piss and shit.
Nothing in life could be as bad again. Or so he thought.
The next three days on a train to Poland would make the march seem almost luxurious.
They didn’t climb aboard the train just inside the Luxembourg border at Clervaux. They were herded and kicked and punched. The end of a rifle once again came to be the German soldiers’ favourite assault weapon. Flapper Garwood took the full force of one of them as his skin split wide open under his uniform. Untreated and unstitched, the scar would be with him forever.
The platform of the station was strewn with about twenty dead bodies - the allied prisoners who’d been just a little slow in obeying the orders of their captors. They were made to run a gauntlet made up of about twenty Germans on each side. The allied prisoners were literally running onto the trucks of the train, herded like cattle. A quick sprint meant less chance of getting struck. Garwood took Horace by the sleeve.
“Are you ready for a run, Jim?”
“Ready as ever, Flapper. At least the fucking hike is over.”
Flapper smiled, “And at least they’ll have to feed us properly if they want some work out of us.”
“Right enough, Flapper. Let’s go.”
The two men ran as fast as they could, covering their heads with their hands. Horace took a glancing blow from a fist and Flapper another rifle butt in the back in exactly the same spot as his original wound. He winced with pain as he felt a sick, nauseous feeling welling up in his empty stomach. But others inside the truck fared much worse.
“Looks like we got off lightly,” said Flapper, pointing to one prisoner with blood pouring out of a head wound. Other unconscious bodies were dragged onto the train.
By the time the Germans bolted the door the men were packed in like sardines, perhaps three hundred to a wagon. Some men were panicking and screaming as claustrophobia kicked in. Horace couldn’t even manage to lift his hands above his head. His feet ached and all he wanted to do was sit or lie down, but it was impossible.
An hour into the journey Horace had to take a shit. He was luckier than most, he could control the moment, unlike those with dysentery.
“I need a shit, Flapper,” he said in a whisper that only his pal could hear.
“Awwww… Jesus Christ, you don’t, do you?”
“’Fraid so, mate.”
Flapper decided to attract the attention of the men discreetly, spare some dignity for his friend.
“Make some space… man here needs a shit,” he shouted.
A collective groan reverberated around the truck as men jostled and pushed Horace over into the far corner.
“Station approaching,” someone shouted, leaning from the open window of the truck, and suddenly Horace had an idea. He muscled his way over to where the man that had shouted stood. By this time the pain in his bowel was excruciating. He clutched at the cheeks of his arse.
“Any Germans on the platform?” he shouted up to the man leaning from the small opening.
“Dozens of the square headed cunts, mate.”
“Then get out the way quickly, will you?”
As the rest of the truck looked on in amazement Horace dropped his trousers and emptied his bowels into the open flap of his Glengarry hat. The smell was overbearing but Horace managed to scramble up to the opening, taking care not to spill any of the shit from the hat. He studied the motion of the train. It wasn’t slowing down, wasn’t stopping as it trundled along at about twenty miles an hour. A wide grin spread across his face as he spied a line of six German soldiers a mere foot or two from the platform edge. He positioned the Glengarry so he could hold it with the two flaps in one hand. By now the rest of the train realised what he was up to and whooped and howled messages of encouragement.
He timed the action to perfection. With a flick of the wrist he released one of the flaps two or three feet from the line of Germans. The shit sailed through the air at face level like a flock of disoriented starlings, the momentum of the train propelling it onwards. The first German managed to turn his head away as he realised what was happening but his five friends were not as quick as the foul-smelling excrement exploded onto their heads and shoulders.
It was a direct hit and Horace’s arm rose in triumph as the cheers of the carriage rang in his ears. He’d scored the winning goal in a cup final, the winning runs in a test match.
All too soon the moment of euphoria ended. But it was soon repeated over and over again. It was the only weapon they had to fight against the Germans but it mattered not. It was a small protest, a talking point, two fingers up to the enemy, and the sport continued. A corner of the truck was designated ‘crap corner’ and the prisoners would shuffle and twist and turn allowing the next poor unfortunate soul the space to drop his trousers and drop his ‘bomb’ into a helmet, a hat or a container ready to be flung at any Germans manning the next station. Occasionally they stepped over dead bodies, the heat and starvation and thirst having taken their toll.
They threw shit at Darmstadt and Hammelburg and Kronach. Each time a soldier bared his arse and the smell of shit rose from the floor of the carriage muffled cheers rang out from the tightly packed masses.
But still men died.