The Willow Wren by Philipp Schott (free ebook reader for iphone txt) 📕

stand out. All the chatting, transgressive and otherwise, was brought to a stop when Felix began singing the first lines of the “Horst Wessel Song” and we knew we all had to sing along with him. It was the Nazi anthem. It celebrated an early martyr to their cause who had been killed by the communists in 1930.

Raise the flag! The ranks tightly closed!

The stormtroopers march with calm, firm step!

Comrades shot by the Red Front and reactionaries.

March in spirit within our ranks.

And on it went for several stanzas. Thankfully I do not remember the rest, even though I must have sung it a hundred times.

“Forward! Forward! Blare the Bright Fanfares” was another favourite, as was “We Are the Army of the Swastika!”

We sang a few rounds of these grim Party favourites and then, as we crossed the Mulde and started heading into the dense Thuemmlitz woods, a brave lad near the front began to belt out “Hiking Is the Miller’s Delight!” I joined in immediately as it was, and still is, my favourite walking song. It is decidedly non-military but also decidedly more fun. Happily, Felix did not object. Perhaps he noticed that our step became livelier with it and decided to put practicality before principle for a change.

After this song the troop was quiet as we entered deeper into the woods, leaving the small farm fields and meadows behind. Now there was a chorus of scattered birdsong with various species intermingling. You could also hear the wind in the treetops and the crunch of boots on the gravel path. Everyone remained silent, enjoying, I presumed, the birds and the vibrancy of nature in the springtime. After ten or fifteen minutes of this I thought the mood was right to begin to point out which species of bird was responsible for which song. I decided to start with a simple one so that they would not think I was showing off.

“Boys!” I called out. “Did you hear that just now? And here it is again! That is the famous robin redbreast! He stays all winter, but only sings like that in the spring and summer!”

There was silence for a moment, and then one of Felix’s henchmen bringing up the rear of the troop shouted, “Schott! Can you eat this bird?” This was followed by snickering, which confused me.

“I suppose, but he would be hard to catch and there would be very little meat . . .”

“So no, you cannot really eat this bird. Then shut your foolish donkey mouth, you little know-it-all! This is a Hitler Youth march, not a BDM stroll or a Wandervogel outing!” The BDM, or Bund Deutscher Mädel (Federation of German Maidens), was the girl’s equivalent of the Hitler Youth. The comparison to girlishness made my stomach lurch and tighten. I involuntarily glanced at Ernst, who was ahead of me a little. He was looking at the ground. And the Wandervogel (“wandering birds”) was a nature hiking movement in the 1920s and early ’30s that the Nazis condemned as elitist and stupidly romantic. The henchman went on, “What good does it do the Hitler Youth to know what bird sings what song unless that bird can be trained to kill Bolsheviks or trained to make itself fat and jump into our pots!” This got almost everyone laughing. One of the boys behind me slapped me on the shoulder in a way that seemed good-natured but at the same time unnecessarily rough.

“You’re funny, Schott! A real comedian! Robin’s songs indeed.” The boy chuckled and slapped me again, making me stumble a little.

Felix did not look back during any of this but just started loudly singing the “Horst Wessel Song” again.

We walked on until midday, having covered perhaps a third of the distance. Our packs were becoming heavy and the pace was flagging. Felix called a halt in a meadow that had a stream running through it. He gave us twenty minutes for lunch, which does not sound like very much, but given that lunch consisted of a piece of smelly cheese and a single, albeit thick, slice of stale potato starch bread, it was enough. We dipped our tin cups in the stream to drink from and to soak the bread in. Some boys put their sore feet in the stream too and were quickly yelled at by the rest of us to move to the downstream end. It was nice to sit in the soft grass and not be walking, even for a few minutes. At this point I noticed that the sky was darkening in the southeast. Blue-black clouds were rapidly piling up, one on top of the other, reaching towards the sun. Other boys glanced at this and looked at each other. Felix did not seem to notice or care. When the twenty minutes were up, he shouted for the troop to reassemble and begin the march onwards, directly into the weather. Nobody, least of all me, dared to suggest turning back or at least taking a shortcut to the nearest village where there would be shelter.

As I had feared, within half an hour of our lunch stop it began to rain. At first the rain was in the form of a series of light showers, but then the clouds lowered themselves onto us and began to empty out in earnest. As the morning had warmed, we stowed our coats in our rucksacks, so now we pulled these out again as quickly as we could. They were wool and not in good condition, so the protection was limited, but it was better than nothing. Felix seemed to be making a point of not putting on his coat. Thinking perhaps that he would inspire us, he also grabbed the flag from the boy behind him who had been in charge of carrying it. Yes, we marched with a flag like a proper little old-fashioned army. The Hitler Youth flag was a decidedly unimaginative derivative of the national flag — a swastika on a