They say that in love and in war anything goes, because this is a love story in the middle of a war:that of the British Horace Greasley and the German Rosa Rauchbach during World War II.
On Christmas 1918, two twins were born in a small English country town, Ibstock (in the county of Leicestershire, United Kingdom). Harold and Horace , which was their name, decided to stay in their hometown to help their parents on the family farm. Horace, when he could, also worked a few hours in the town's barbershop and there he found out that Germany had invaded Czechoslovakia... Everything in his life changed. In the face of subsequent moves by Germany, the British Parliament in 1939 passed the Military Training Act which required all men between the ages of eighteen and forty - the brothers were twenty-one - to undergo basic military training for six months in order to then move to active reserve. They didn't even have time to finish the training, after seven weeks they were assigned to the 2nd Company of the 5th Leicestershire Battalion and sent to France as part of the British Expeditionary Force or BEF (British Expeditionary Force) to stop the German offensive. Although initially the BEF had some success, they could do nothing against the might of the German panzers. In May 1940, the commanding officer, Lord Gord , ordered a retreat to Dunkirk to evacuate what was left of the BEF. Nothing more was heard of Harold and Horace… his adventure begins here .
Horace Greasley
On May 25, Horace was captured at Carvin, south of Lille. He and the rest of the prisoners had to walk for ten weeks at forced marches through France and Belgium until they reached Clervaux (Luxembourg). Those who survived were put on a train, and after a journey of several days in subhuman conditions they arrived at the Stalag XXI-D prison camp. in Silesia (Poland). They were days of work from sunrise to sunset, accompanied by some beatings, little food and having to share a bed with lice and rats. When the winter of 1941 ended, the survivors were transferred to another camp in Lamsdorf (Poland), which had nothing to do with the previous one. Although they had to work for ten hours in a marble quarry, they could take hot showers, receive several meals a day, and sleep on what could be called a bed. Herr Rauchbach , the owner of the business, knew that work in the quarry depended on the physical condition of the prisoners being acceptable, so he tried to ensure a minimum of conditions. Pink , her seventeen-year-old daughter, worked in the fields as an interpreter. Horace fell in love with her as soon as he saw her, but, logically, in her state he knew that she would never notice him. From that moment on, he set out, to the best of his ability, to recover the image of what he was:a twenty-three-year-old young man. After several weeks, and already looking better, they began to fool around… and from fooling around to furtive encounters. When they had been in a relationship for a year and the meetings were already daily, Horace was transferred to a camp in Freiwaldau, near Auschwitz, about forty kilometers away from his beloved. That seemed like the end... but no.
Horace and Rosa
The field conditions were very similar to the one in Lamsdorf, but without Rosa . Horace had to see her again. Exercising his old profession as a hairdresser, he gained the trust of the Germans and had a certain freedom of movement that allowed him to know the security of the camp in detail. When he had prepared an escape plan, and thanks to other prisoners working outside, he was able to contact Rosa de la Rosa to meet her in the woods behind the quarry. When the day of the escape arrived, and with the complicity of his companions in the field and those who transported the merchandise, he fled and managed to reunite with Rosa. After the corresponding hugs, kisses, tears... and whatever else happened, Rosa told her that she had to escape, but where? The closest place he could feel safe was Sweden—a neutral country—four hundred and twenty kilometers away. They forgot about that subject and decided that Horace would run away from her when he could to go see her… and so they did. In the following appointments, and to the joy of the companions who helped her escape every night, Rosa brought fruits, vegetables and even a radio that allowed them to know the course of the war day by day. For two and a half years they maintained more than two hundred citations .
On May 24, 1945, the camp prisoners were released and Horace, unable to meet Rosa, repatriated to the United Kingdom. He returned to Leicestershire and for a time they continued to correspond and prepare for their reunion until Rosa stopped writing... she passed away while she was giving birth to Horace's stillborn child . Horace remade his life and set up a hairdressing salon, a little later a transport company in which he met what would be his wife. They got married and in 1988 they moved to Alicante (Spain).
Horace in Alicante
In 2008 the book Do the birds still sing in Hell? was published. (Are the birds still singing in hell?) Where Horace recounts his hardships and his love story. What Horace won't be able to see—he passed away in 2009 at the age of ninety-one—is the movie… Silverline Productions bought the rights to the book to adapt it to the cinema and the producer Stratton Leopold is already with the preparations. It is rumored that the role of Horace could be played by Robert Pattinson.
