The Uvalde Raider by Ben English (great books for teens TXT) 📕

It was into this environment, at about the time that short-lived document was being finalized, that Maximillian Friedrich Grephardt was born. He was the middle son of five in the family, a situation making for ready playmates on hand to share his free time with. Together the five brothers would explore in and around the countryside, and all up and down the verdant banks of the nearby Werra.

But in their young minds the boys were high in the Himalayas or the Alps, or along the banks of the Congo or the Amazon. Each son in his own way yearned for adventure and Max possibly thirsted for it most of all. He would sometimes make up wild stories to fill the large gap between that constant thirst and the reality of their quiet existence, until Vadi would raise an eyebrow and wag his index finger. That would be all that it would take to gently remind young Max of the difference between fanciful dreams and factual circumstance.

His Mamma would come through the busy kitchen at such times, shaking her head and asking her husband where the middle son of a Lutheran minister could possibly come up with such thoughts.

Vadi would chuckle and reply, “Because he is a boy, Mamma! All boys think such thoughts, and certain boys like him just happen to give voice to what is imagined in their minds.”

His father would reach across and pat his middle son’s head affectionately, a joyful twinkle in his eye. “God has special plans for Max, but Max must first grow into a man to fulfill those plans. For now he is still a boy and boys need to fill their lives with adventure, imagined or otherwise.

“The time will come when he will be able to put such imagination into harness. All great men had great imagination, with which they were able to turn their dreams into reality.” He would then look at Max and smile, putting his own imagination to work in regards to the future of his precocious son.

That future involved the dream of Max becoming a doctor, a man who would save lives and make the world a better place for all to be. Max did not know then, but Vadi had been an Imperial German Army feld sanitater, or medic, during the Great War. It had never been something he talked about much to anyone save his wife, who had seen first-hand how it had changed her husband over those despoiled years.

Max’s two older brothers claimed to have seen a whole row of medals in a weather-stained trunk they were rummaging through one time, right before Mamma caught them and shooshed them away. They had stood their ground just long enough to find out the medals were Vadi’s, before Mamma backed up her shooshing with a kitchen broom.

And so the years went by and Max and his brothers grew. As they changed into young men, the outside world around them changed also. The short-lived Weimar Republic, headed by the aged statesman and military hero President von Hindenberg, had come to an ignominious end. The ancient field marshal, failing in physical health and slipping into senility had appointed Adolph Hitler, leader of the German Nationalist Socialist Party, as chancellor of Germany. After a long, bitter political struggle that often devolved into mob violence as well as outright murder, the Nazis had at long last taken control of the Vaterland.

It was the first time he had seen Vadi become angry. Even isolated as they were, the jovial Lutheran minister followed world events as closely as possible and was a voracious reader. Max’s father was respected in the surrounding area as an informed and passionate debater of history and religion, and oftentimes visitors would stop by just to have a conversation with him.

Upon first learning of the Nazi consolidation of power, the erstwhile composed minister had pounded his fist in exasperation upon the dinner table. As his startled family and visitors involuntarily jumped from the uncharacteristic outburst, he covered his face with both hands and shook his head from side to side. Massaging his forehead with the fingers of his right hand, he leaned back and said, “The Nazis and the Communists, two sides of the same sinful coin. God help us all, for they do not know what they have done.”

In the stunned silence that followed Max’s youngest brother, Paul, asked innocently, “Who, Vadi? Who does not know what they have done?”

His father slowly took his right hand from his face and looked at his youngest. The ignited flash that had burst from his outraged features had been replaced with an immensely sad look, a look that made him seem both worried and vulnerable. It was another emotion Max had never seen before in his father, and he did not know which of the two distressed him more.

Vadi sighed and replied, “My son, they are the people of Germany who do not know what they have set loose. They have sown the wind and we shall all pay in the reaping of it.”

Looking around the table and cognizant of the air of uneasiness among those seated, he added, “Please forgive me of my anger, the last thing we need at this time is more anger. But what we do need is prayer, earnest prayer for Germany, for her people and for our families. As I have already said, only God can help us now.”

From that day forward, most everything in their lives seemed to take on a different track. At first it appeared as if it was for the better, and many had questioned Vadi’s dark vision for their collective future. That questioning ultimately included even members of his own household, and Max himself.

Hitler talked of a great aspiration, of an immensely strong new Germany and of a Third Reich that would last for