He wasn’t sure whether to laugh or to scowl in disgust as the woman cowered before him, her wheat-colored hair tied up under a worker’s kerchief. Her fingernails were rimmed with dark Romanian soil, and her tear-filled eyes were surprisingly pale. Perhaps somewhere remote in her lineage was a trace of the Volga Germans, the ancient Wehrbauer who had settled the region.
She sobbed unintelligibly, her words foreign to his ears, mixed with pleas in broken, heavily accented German. Pleas for him to spare her life. That she wasn’t a partisan. That she didn’t want to die.
He kicked her hard in the ribs, and she yelped in pain, staring into the barrel of his service pistol. Her chest heaved, her dress torn, revealing her slender figure. She didn’t seem to care that she presented such an immodest appearance – survival was clearly the only thing that mattered to her.
She threw herself at his feet, crying over his boots, the falling tears washing tracks in the dusty leather as she begged for mercy.
Please, sir. I don’t want to die. Please!
He sighed, almost regretful at what he was about to do. “You’re prettier when you beg.” he admitted, his finger on the trigger. “Almost pretty enough to spare.”
If he had had the presence of mind, he would have wondered how the seas of the Arctic could be so warm in winter. But nonetheless, the layer of ice that had been creeping over his body seemed to crack, allowing shards of heat to penetrate it and warm his frozen, aching muscles. He was suddenly wrapped snugly in a thick blanket of heat which muffled the sounds of the waves crashing about their overflowing lifeboat, threatening to swallow them whole, and the shouts of the British and the screams of his comrades who would have given anything in that moment for the privilege of Hans’ place on an overcrowded lifeboat that was gradually filling with the Arctic water. The sight of their U-boat being devoured by the sea and men waving their arms in desperation faded into darkness. The heat suffocated the panic that had animated his frantic escape from their doomed U-boat, and he felt only a blissful sense that there was absolutely nothing that he needed to be doing at that moment except lie back and enjoy the blanket of heat that was wrapping around him.
Eventually, the darkness gave way to a clear blue sky, with birds singing overhead. The heat had dried out his soaked clothes, and he discovered that his weary body was supported by solid, dry land and that his head was resting on white cloth. He used the little energy he had left to turn his leaden body around and to look into the clear blue eyes of the golden-haired woman who was now cradling his head in her lap. This was the woman that he had been fighting for – this mother, wife and angel all rolled into one, who now looked at him with both maternal affection and romantic love.
“You have done well, my sweet. Now you must rest and let me take care of you.”
His heavy head collapsed into her lap and he rested, content in the knowledge that there was absolutely nothing else that he needed to be doing at that moment except let her take care of him.
She had never really known what Horst did out there in the East. His letters were frequent enough, but he never talked about the war. Perhaps he would mention the weather or the discomforts of life on the front, but nothing more than that. The most information he ever offered to anyone – his own wife included – was that he was assigned to an anti-partisan unit. Especially because she knew so little about his life as a soldier, she cherished having him home, even if it was just a week of leave.
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The earth yawned, exhaling fetid gases from its gaping maw, the swampy forest perfect for hiding the horrors buried within. Blood ran in streams, down the backs of children’s necks, women’s hysterical screaming echoing above the noise of the rifles and occasional machine gun. The deep pits were filled with innocent, naked corpses, covered with black soil by the tractors that they had liberated from the village just hours before.
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The tortured mumbling woke her with a start, realizing after a moment of confusion that it was Horst who was speaking, talking in his sleep. He jerked and flinched, his words barely decipherable.
Eingraben. Frauen. Kinder auch. Erschossen. Eintausend. Zwei.
The loose jumble of terms sent shivers down her spine. “It’s just a dream.” she whispered, trying to calm the still-unconscious young man. “Please,” she whispered, voice desperate as the horrifying reality dawned on her.
Max was laying in bed that night, knowing full well he’s supposed to be asleep by now in order to be up early the next morning, a lot of things to get done the next day, but he just couldn’t, he was missing her too much and while his sense of duty and work ethic is very strong, his love for his beloved is stronger. And this war won’t last forever, but his love for her will. And while theoretically he should be able to just fall asleep thinking then dreaming of her, missing her seemed to be keeping him awake… He just couldn’t wait for the next leave to be back with her and do everything together again. Next thing he knew, it was gently getting brighter in the room, the sun was rising, to beautiful colors. This should be a fun day, he thought.
She had always been the perfect girl: obedient to her parents, a quiet and talented student, an active member of the church choir. She was everything a nice, devout, middle-class family could ask for in a daughter. Perhaps she would become a teacher, or a nurse, or even a nun. She would doubtless make her family proud.
Doubtless, that was, until she met Günther .
Who would have imagined that the shy girl in the front of the classroom would sneak out of her parents’ home to visit an SS Junker, hiding in the forest, spending the weekend in a tent, flushed and gasping, discovering the pleasures that no woman was to know until she had made it to the altar? That the angel singing at Mass would find herself singing the Horst Wessel Lied with tears of ecstasy in her eyes as she watched her handsome Teutonic god marching with his comrades? That she would sign herself out of the church register, throwing away years of loyal attendance to declare herself not Catholic but gottgläubig?
But the seduction was more powerful than they realized. Her heart had given up all resistance the first time he had brought her a sheaf of wheat instead of roses, kissing her while she breathed in the Persil and cigarette scent of that uniform, telling her that her family’s bourgeois expectations didn’t matter one bit. The Reich needed her, the Volk needed her. Not as a nun or a nurse or a teacher, but as a woman, in the most basic and visceral sense of the term. She was needed where Nature had designed her to be placed: at his side, the gentleness to his harshness, the softness to his strength, the creator to his destroyer.
And create she did, beaming with barely-concealed pride as she walked down the Hauptstraße on Günther’s arm, a swastika pinned to her breast and evidence of those nights in the forest lodged in her indecently obvious womb.
At first Berta doesn’t understand the childish request and in the silence as she is staring at Ursel over the rim of her glasses the little nurse looks up at her with tears in her big brown eyes clutching the older woman’s hand with her stubby fingers.
“Yes, I suppose this one time we could”, Berta says after some hesitation, the words coming slowly over her dry tongue, leaving unspoken what for Ursel deserved such a favour and many other things she prefered not to say.
Very swiftly (comparisons to butter would be in bad taste) Berta cuts through the pretty soldier’s tendons. Snip, snip, the strings are cut. Despite the anaesthetics he moans, quietly like the dreamer in a nightmare. Goosebumps crawl down her back. The ugly little nurse holds his hand and Berta is close to tears at how beautiful a sight it is.
Reichblr Ficathon 