deutsche-tapferkeit:

Blood-curdling screams that tore through the night, cold sweats that soaked the freshly ironed sheets, the violent fits of shaking that rattled his bones as his teeth clattered in a tightly clenched jaw. Midnight outbursts that he was powerless to remember the next morning, as though a demon had briefly taken up residence in his body, turning him into another creature entirely.

He was broken, a useless artifact of the Eastern Front, with scars on his body and etched across his mind. The hollow eyes of a dying man stared back at his wife when she awoke to find him in the throes of terror, pale blue irises clearly visible but unseeing. The baby would wail from down the hall, frightened by its father’s tortured screams, and sweet Ilse would wipe away her own tears, the only person who could help either of them, carefully pressing a damp washcloth to his forehead, struggling to hold him, to try and comfort and restrain her much larger, stronger husband.

She feared him in those moments, but understood that the man in her bed during those episodes wasn’t actually him at all. He had bitten her and tried to strike her when he was in these states, and she struggled to remind herself that Karl would never consciously harm her – he was simply in another place at times like this, unaware, unknowing, unreachable.

Who was to say what images flashed before his eyes? Who knew what he had seen, what he had endured, what he had done – she knew that she would never truly know, even when she was old and gray. The East was inconceivable to anyone who had not personally experienced it, and Karl was a testament to that. By day he would seem normal enough, but distant somehow – a thousand-yard stare coming across him suddenly while at the dinner table or during a game of Skat. His hands would tremble occasionally, when he would methodically light a cigarette as though it were a sort of ritual rather than a mundane and mindless task, repeating the actions over and over again as if in a trance.

She would never truly understand.

(Part 1 of 2)

deutsche-tapferkeit:

“He may not make you happy, but he’ll give you a family and a home of your own.”

The words were meant to comfort, calm and wise coming from the mouths of her married friends, those women who knew what it meant to take a man’s name and become a good German wife – the friends who spoke of children and soup recipes, of colic and absent husbands, of sleepless nights and exhausting, overworked days.

Their voices echoed in her mind as she stood in the bedroom in the small home he had provided, set in a forest by the lake, surrounded by dozens of other idyllic and identical little cottages, her white dress still as beautiful as it had been hours earlier when they had stood at the altar and taken their vows.

Her delicate hands trembled as she heard his boots behind her, echoing across the wooden floor, the smell of cigarettes and cologne stinging her nose, her heart pounding with anxiety as she heard the unmistakeable click of his belt, emblazoned with the motto that spoke of honor and loyalty, words that would now define her life.

Just lay back and think of the Fatherland, and all of the women who have come before you.