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

and jewels! They attempted to carry on a shadow play of Budapest high society in their mountain hut. They had cases and cases of fine Lake Balaton red wine with them and they had a hand-powered gramophone that they played Bartók, Lehár and Liszt on. It was quite wonderful to hear, although also quite surreal. What was more wonderful though is that they drank so much of that wine that they did not pay attention to their weapons, which they left lying about. So, given that our rifles were terrible, and knowing that the fighting was getting close, we stole as many as we could!

“Around this time something absurd and idiotic happened. Or I should say, something even more absurd and idiotic! A Hitler Youth commander came up to the camp and ordered us all, there were perhaps a hundred of us, to march into Neuhausen and see the barber there.”

“The barber?” Mama asked. We were all rapt. Even the little ones were listening to every word. Theodor took a long swallow of water (not blackberry wine!) before going on.

“Yes, the barber! Can you imagine? You see it was April 22, Hitler’s birthday, and this idiot, the Hitler Youth commander, deemed it essential that we get our hair cut so that we would look our best for the celebrations. The funny thing was that the Russians had already captured the power plant further down in the valley, so there was no electricity in Neuhausen. The barber had to cut all of our hair with scissors! But he did it. Haircuts for Herr Hitler! The absolute idiocy of it all! But we were still convinced we could win the war. See what happens when you give a bunch of teenage boys weapons and pump them full of propaganda? Most of us missed Neumeyer’s hints and thought we could take on anything and turn the war around.”

Mama snorted. “Those clowns. You poor boys.” The rest of us were wide-eyed. My experiences in camp had given me a taste of the absurdity and cruelty behind the pomp, but this was absurdity and cruelty on a whole other level.

“In any case, this bravado was soon dispelled. Within a couple days the camp came under air attack from the Russians. We were told to move down the road, carrying our rifles, our Panzerfausts, our kit and even our mattresses. Low-flying fighter planes strafed the road. Fortunately we could hear and see them coming, so we were able to jump into the ditch in time. The planes then turned around to take a second run from the other direction. As they were turning it gave us the chance to jump over to the opposite ditch unobserved. This worked well, nobody was killed! Our mattresses, which we had abandoned on the road, suffered tremendously though!

“After this attack we were told to return to the camp, as the Russians did not immediately follow up with the expected ground assault. A short while later an SS officer appeared in our camp, accompanied by an SS doctor and his assistant. The doctor and the assistant seemed nice enough, but the officer was a grim sort. He barked at Neumeyer that he was there to recruit soldiers for the Waffen SS. They were now taking sixteen-year-olds, he said. Neumeyer explained that his Volkssturm boys were fourteen and fifteen years old. The SS officer didn’t skip a beat and countered that they would be sixteen soon enough, so that was fine, they would also take ‘future sixteen-year-olds.’ However, the SS has a peculiar pride regarding size. They always had the tallest soldiers. The officer himself was at least 195.” That’s centimetres, which equals about six foot five inches.

“Their minimum had been 175, but they had dropped it to 160 in the latter days of the war. When the officer wasn’t looking, the doctor pressed the measuring bar down to make the boy’s height even lower. I didn’t think he’d have to bother with a dwarf like me, as I was comfortably under 160 regardless, but he was obviously concerned as I was among the tallest of the dwarves, so for good measure he also declared that I had a heart defect. This is not true. He really was trying to pass as few of us as possible. Those who he had to pass were asked to sign a document that stated that they voluntarily joined the SS. One bold comrade of mine looked at that and said that he couldn’t sign it because he was not joining voluntarily. He was told to strike out the word ‘voluntarily’ and sign it anyway!”

Theodor took another drink of water and smiled weakly at us. “Yes, it was a strange time up there, but it became even stranger. Before he took the few unfortunate taller boys back with him down the mountain, he gave us a short lecture. Apparently, the famous tank commander General Heinz Guderian had been put in charge of recruiting and training and had just issued a directive that he was honoured to share with us. The directive was that we were to read Karl May’s Winnetou and learn from him —”

I interrupted Theodor by laughing out loud, in both astonishment and delight. See, Karl May was important!

“Yes, Karl May. Should we find our weapons inadequate, we were to learn from the tactics of the wild Indians wherein one sneaks up behind an enemy soldier who has a desirable weapon, strikes him on the head with any handy object such as a rock or stout branch and then steals his weapon! Can you imagine? This is being passed on in all seriousness as tactical advice from General Guderian!”

Even I could see that this was perhaps not the smartest application of Winnetou. I thought that perhaps forest survival advice would be given.

“Needless to say, to the best of my knowledge nobody followed this directive. And in any case, it was tanks that we faced, not foot soldiers. Shortly after the SS man left, the