The Last Green Valley by Mark Sullivan (best manga ereader txt) 📕

in terrible conditions, a tank could cover seventy-five kilometers in a day, maybe less. He considered putting the shortwave in its protective case and walking off with it. The Nazis were losing, but having a radio transmitter was probably still reason enough to be shot if you were caught with it. He reluctantly decided to leave the radio where it was, along with a note to Sergeant Wahl, thanking him for his kindness. Outside, he sneaked around the cottage onto the road that led to his home. A match lit a cigarette on the other side of the road.

Nikolas stepped out and said, “I live up the street, Martel, and I don’t think the VoMi would take kindly to a thief breaking into one of their cottages.”

“I’m not a thief,” Emil said.

“That’s what it looks like,” Nikolas said. “Hungry people have been wondering where the sudden money and food came from, and I decided to follow you, and now we know.”

Emil understood that once again he was in direct conflict with this man. Is he still in touch with Major Haussmann? Does he have the Nazis’ ear here in Wielun? Does it matter with the Germans on the run?

“You know nothing,” Emil said at last, and started walking. “I’m no thief, Nikolas, just checking on my boss’s house as he asked me to.”

“I doubt that!” Nikolas shouted after him.

“I don’t care about your doubt,” Emil said, and turned the corner, out of sight.

When he reached home, their apartment was more than warm, and Adeline had fresh bread already out of the oven and was ladling soup into bowls.

Emil shut the door and said, “We have to pack and leave as soon as possible.”

She looked up. “I know. They just told us.”

“What? Who?”

Adeline set the ladle back in the pot. “SS soldiers. We’re being moved closer to Germany the day after tomorrow.”

German military trucks came to Camp Wielun at dawn on January 19, 1945. As before, they were able to take only what they could load in the little wagons. Luckily, with Marie’s wagon and one that had been gifted to them by another refugee family, the greater Martel clan now had four little wagons among them, and they were able to bring along most of the staples Adeline had bought for them in Lodz.

Adeline sat with her cousin Marie and her twin boys on the bumpy ride.

“They’re getting nice and chubby,” she said, holding Rutger, the bigger twin.

“Thanks to your food and kindness,” Marie said, holding smaller Hans. “I think they’ll crawl any day now.”

“Sometimes that’s all we really need to get up and go. Food and kindness.”

Driving through Breslau—a vital stop on the road to Germany, and a strategic position with bridges over the Oder River—they saw Wehrmacht troops and the slaves of the Organization Todt, gaunt, weary men dressed in gray with the letter E sewn on their left breasts, acting on Hitler’s recent order to turn the city into an armed fortress. Two hours later, they rolled into Legnica, a city far more populated and beautiful than Wielun. And yet their quarters were in some ways worse. But they had money, and money always talks. While winter continued to throw ice and snow at them, Emil was able to buy enough black-market coal to keep the entire family warm.

Emil also did everything he could to get news of the Soviets and the western Allies. He struck gold because refugees were often targeted by hustlers and black marketeers. Soon after they arrived in Legnica, while out walking, he met a teenager who offered to sell him contraband cigarettes.

“Captured American,” the kid whispered. “Camel. Lucky Strike.”

Emil told him he was more interested in a small shortwave receiver.

“Not a transmitter,” Emil said. “Nothing illegal. Just a receiver.”

“That could still get me shot,” the kid said. “It will definitely cost you.”

A few days later, he handed Emil a bag in return for half the Reichsmarks the Martels had left. Inside the bag was a beat-up, khaki-green Radione R3 shortwave receiver stolen from a Wehrmacht supply depot.

“Be careful,” the kid said. “My friend said there are fuses, but no spare crystals or radio tubes. What you see is what you get.”

Emil waited until late that night to turn the radio on and tune it to the BBC German Service. He heard about the latest developments at the Yalta Conference between American president Roosevelt, British prime minister Churchill, and Stalin. He learned that the Soviets had crossed the Oder River to the north and that they were now less than eighty kilometers from Berlin. The Americans and the British were still battling for western Germany and facing stiff resistance. He also heard a word he’d only heard once before, in the cemetery in Budapest: Auschwitz. The announcer described the scene when the Soviets liberated the concentration camp on January 27. Emil closed his eyes, completely overwhelmed at the scope of what the Nazis had done.

He didn’t want to, but his thoughts inevitably returned to that night in Dubossary, when Captain Haussmann had put a gun to his head and told him he’d die if he didn’t kill the three Jews. He heard himself say, Okay, I’ll do it. He heard Haussmann reply, A wise choice.

Emil fell asleep that night, feeling sick and fearful and wondering if he was doomed to be haunted the rest of his life by that choice.

In the weeks that followed, up late at night, listening to the shortwave, Emil knew when the Soviets took Lodz and when they won Budapest and when the western Allies firebombed Dresden and when the Red Army laid siege to Breslau, only to pause along the western banks of the Oder River, resupplying and preparing to invade eastern Germany. On the night of February 24, he heard about the Allies launching nine thousand bombers over the Fatherland.

Wahl was right, Emil thought, yawning and shutting off the radio. The Nazis are beaten even if they don’t know it.

He stood and crossed