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

By that evening Theodor had perked up considerably. I did manage to trade the ladle for an especially nice cut of pork, as well as for some bread and old potatoes. This was the closest to a feast we had had in a long while. We let Theodor eat as much as he wanted, but he was cautious, knowing that it would be a mistake to overeat after so long a period of starvation. (An aside: there were many stories after the war of men returning from years of imprisonment in Siberia, being fed an enormous welcome home meal and then promptly falling dead. Perhaps this is apocryphal, but it is believable.)

While Mama was busy with the dishes, Theodor asked me quietly about Papa. I told him about the letter. He looked down at his lap for a long moment, and then looked up at me, his lips pursed and his jaw tight, but he did not say anything.

Mama went over to Herr Rittmann’s and came back with a half bottle of homemade blackberry wine. It was awful tasting, but it did feel good to celebrate something. After a sip and a grimace Theodor began to tell his story.

“After you last saw me at the camp, Ludwig, we were driven to Grimma where we boarded a train for Olbernhau in the Erzgebirge.” These are the Ore Mountains in English, on the Czech border. “Then we were marched up to a high ridge in the mountains near Neuhausen where there was an old camp and where the serious training began. Nobody told us where the front was at that point and nobody asked. I assumed the Russians were close, but as I couldn’t hear any artillery fire and there were no aircraft overhead, I decided that there was no immediate danger. Our commanding officer, Hauptfeldwebel Neumeyer, was fortunately a reasonably nice man with a good sense of humour. He had been a hairdresser in civilian life. He had been badly wounded on the eastern front and had no use of his right arm. This is why he had been taken off active service and put in charge of us. His deputy was an idiot though. He reminded me a bit of Kohl, but even dumber. In any case, Neumeyer would do things like get us to assemble and then shout, ‘Do you want to win the war?’ to which we would dutifully shout back, ‘Yes, sir!’ and then he would quietly reply with a wry chuckle, ‘You go do that then.’ It gave me the unsettling feeling that he thought that this was all pointless and he was just going through the motions of his job.”

“More wine, Theodor?” Mama offered.

“No, thank you. So, you might be wondering about my strange uniform. It’s from the Afrika Korps! That’s all they had for us. Desert uniforms in the winter in the mountains! Fortunately we also had some good woolen blankets to wrap around ourselves. And the boots were used Polish army boots!”

He glanced at the hateful footwear, which were set just inside the door to dry.

“They were warm enough and might have been fine if they fit properly, but as you can see, mine did not. After a couple months of building useless tank traps, digging useless ditches and firing useless nineteenth-century rifles we finally got our first taste of fighting about a month ago. I don’t recall the exact date. Incidentally they didn’t let us practise with the Panzerfausts as the ammunition was too precious. In any case, this happened when I was on kitchen duty. My Achilles were already beginning to seriously trouble me, so I was excused from training and marching for a couple days and was put in charge of making sure the giant soup pot didn’t boil over. Suddenly it was peng peng peng and bullets came flying through the kitchen! They knocked the soup pot over, but luckily I was not hit. I threw myself to the floor and waited. No more shots followed. Neumeyer said afterwards that it was actually the Americans in the valley below on the Czech side shooting up at us! But they were not interested in properly assaulting the ridge. They soon left and we never saw them again.”

“The Americans? Really?” I asked.

“Yes, away from the main battles and the main thrusts of the armies, the so-called front is not what I imagined it to be. Rather than being a clear line between opposing forces, it is a vague zone where groups of soldiers move between and around each other, occupying small areas in a constantly changing patchwork, often only vaguely aware of where the enemy is. In the Erzgebirge through late April and into early May we had numerous German, Russian and American units in this situation. Actually it was not just those three armies — we also had Hungarians and Croatians up there. The Croatians were our allies and occupied the next building over on the ridge. They were from the Handžaru Croatian SS Mountain division, which sounds intimidating, but it was made up of boys even younger than us! They were once an elite unit. Pavelic, Croatia’s little Hitler, was so proud that the Handžaru was the first non-German Waffen SS division. If that bastard could see them suffering up there in the Erzgebirge! Those boys were even sadder and even more scared than us, if you can imagine such a thing. After a few days they were sent down the mountain to the northeast to fight the Russians. I would be surprised if any survived.

“Funnier were the Hungarians! These were the crème de la crème of the Hungarian officer corps from the so-called Arrow Cross Movement, which remained loyal to Germany after Horthy, the fascist dictator of Hungary, decided to switch sides and join the Allies. These guys came up here with all kinds of luxuries, as well as with their wives who wore furs