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

It was the lowest point he could ever imagine in his entire life. He was shaking involuntarily from the cold, physically exhausted and spiritually spent, and surrounded by his enemies. His bid for freedom and the attending short euphoria of success had been quickly replaced with a realistic appraisal of his current situation, and an overwhelming dread of what might come next.

Huddled miserably in a snow drift, Max knew he was close to the end of the line. His was a situation beyond hope and beyond any definition of futile, and he found himself drowning in an all-encompassing sea of absolute despair. When Max Grephardt told this story to others many years later, he confided that it was the one time in his life when he actually considered suicide. He found himself wishing for that small Walther PPK that was lost when he bailed out, so that he might bring a swift end to his overpowering suffering and pain.

Yet deep inside himself, something still stirred. Call it a need or a fixation or perhaps unfinished business in trying to make some things right, but Max knew he couldn’t let it all end here. He had to make it back to the banks of the Werra, to let a man better than himself know that he had been right all along. Vadi deserved that much and he deserved to hear it from his one surviving son. It wasn’t all that Max needed to do, not by a long shot. But it would be a start.

Max tried to get up again, yet didn’t have enough physical strength left to do even that. It was only then, in recognizing he had run out of the personal courage his father had so often used as an illustration, that he reached out in a way that was also a first in his young, eventful life. The once fearless and so prideful hero of the Fatherland cried out piteously in silent voice for help from a merciful God above.

With tears coursing down near frozen cheeks, he laid himself bare and begged forgiveness for all the years wasted upon things other than what had been truly important all along. He prayed for the strength that went beyond any of that found in the physical or mental, the kind that can only come through the blood of a crucified Savior who died for all of mankind’s sins. He appealed to a far mightier power than what was merely numbered by men, guns and fighter planes.

And in that instant, Max Grephardt was saved by Grace and was never the same man again. The old Max died there in that cheerless snow drift on a freezing January morning and a new Max Grephardt got up and walked away, not once looking behind.

CHAPTER NINE

For the next few days Max moved west through the Soviet lines, taking sustenance and shelter where he could find it. Filled with his new faith and its attending resolve, he somehow managed to make his way undetected by those who wanted him so badly. In the continuing violence and confusion of small unit attacks and counterattacks, he was finally found by a German reconnaissance patrol and hustled to a field hospital. From there he was moved twice more due to the rapid advancement of the Soviet Army. Finally, he was taken back to Germany itself and placed in a hospital ward for his burns and other physical infirmities.

Lying there in bed with the sounds of a war growing closer every day, Max rested to regain his strength. He was able to obtain a Bible, devouring the words contained within in the manner of a starving man with a virtual feast set before him. If he noticed the questioning looks or occasional hard stare as he studied the passages, he paid the rejective onlookers little attention. Max Grephardt was trying to make for lost time, and read with a rapturous inner joy what before had never really made much sense to him.

As soon as he was able to, he left the hospital without any real official orders and started making his way home. In the middle of all the turmoil and endless flow of casualties, he was most likely not even going to be missed for some time. His bed would be filled quickly enough and by someone who was in far greater need than he. There was so much he wanted to talk to his father about, so many things he wanted to say and so many questions that needed asking. The little church along the Werra beckoned to him with the promise of a new beginning.

Germany was now a country completely wrecked. Soldiers and civilians alike wandered around aimlessly with no clear direction or thought in purpose. Communications and modern transportation were mostly nonexistent, there was no fuel or power. Rumors ran rampant and wild talk was everywhere, which further added to the growing chaos that gripped the nation by its collective throat. A mass migration, usually by foot or by cart was streaming west away from the advancing Red Army. If the German war machine continued to fight with any real goal at all, it was to keep the hated Bolsheviks at bay long enough for the Western Allies to occupy their homeland.

Along the way Max saw entire cities and populations that had been completely obliterated. It was said that Dresden itself was nothing more now than a burned-out corpse of ashes, while large population centers such as Hamburg, Mainz and Bochum had basically ceased to exist. Devastation raised its ugly head most every mile along his route, and made its presence felt in ways only known to those who have actually experienced the barbaric reality of total war. The Third Reich, once proclaimed as being destined to last a thousand years, was nothing more than a smoldering funeral pyre.

Undeterred, Max pushed on toward