Silver Wings, Iron Cross

by Tom Young

  Karl was too tired to argue. He felt for the pack he’d dropped. Tried to open it, but could not find the knot for the drawstring.

  “Gimme some light, will you?” Karl asked.

  The U-boat man clicked on his flashlight. The beam grew dimmer now; the batteries couldn’t last much longer.

  One crisis at a time, Karl told himself. With numbed, shivering fingers, he untied the pack and pulled out two rolls of parachute silk. Tossed one to the Kraut. Unrolled the other for himself. Sat on the cold ground, wrapped the silk around him, and lay with his back on the forest floor. Kept his distance from his traveling partner.

  The parachute blanket warmed Karl some, but not enough to make him comfortable. He gazed into an overcast sky, so black he might as well have lain in a grave. Exhaustion overtook him, and he fell asleep despite the cold. His last conscious thought of the night: Getting blown up in Hellstorm would have been so much easier.

  Karl awoke beneath clouds the color of dirty cotton. Light breeze in the evergreens. Dusting of frost on everything, including the parachute cloth. Distant crumps and thuds—bombs falling somewhere miles away, with flak guns pounding at the bombers. Touched a finger to his upper lip, which was still sore from getting smacked by the branch last night. He raised himself onto his elbows and saw the U-boat man already up, rolling his blanket of parachute silk.

  “Are you feeling better?” the German whispered.

  “Not really.”

  All Karl’s doubts came flooding back. It could only be a matter of time before they ran into German soldiers or police. What would the sailor do then?

  “The river cannot be much farther,” the Kraut said.

  Karl dug into a pocket and found his button compass. Threw it at the U-boat man.

  “You lead the way, if you think you know where we are.”

  The German caught the compass as it bounced off his chest. He gave Karl a puzzled look, but did not ask for explanation. The explanation would have been: I want you in front of me where I can see you. Yeah, you didn’t give me away when we saw those SS men on the first day. But I gotta size you up every day.

  With no breakfast except a handful of leaves, the two men resumed their trek. They kept to the woods for the better part of the day; their hunger, thirst, and cold worsened as the hours wore on. At a narrow forest stream, they stopped to refill their water containers. Karl drank deeply, and he felt some of the cold water run from the corners of his mouth and into his whiskers. He supposed he must look like one of the hobos he’d mentioned to the German. He needed a shower, a shave, and a hot meal. Especially a hot meal. The longings did nothing to help his frame of mind.

  In the late afternoon, as the German led the way among a tall stand of firs, he stopped to examine something on the ground. A path, barely discernible, ran among the leaves and underbrush. It looked a lot like the cow paths Karl had seen in Pennsylvania pastures, though not nearly as well beaten. Is a farm nearby? Or is this some kid’s path to Grandma’s house?

  “We should probably stay away from wherever that path goes,” Karl said.

  The U-boat officer kneeled, looked up and down the path.

  “I’m not so sure,” the German said. “I have never been much of a hunter or fisherman, but I know people who are. Germans like to build cabins up in the wilderness. I think you Americans would call them ‘fishing camps.’ ”

  “So?”

  “So maybe we can find a place to get out of the weather. Maybe even get provisions.”

  Stupid idea, Karl thought. When evading capture, he’d been taught, an individual should avoid any line of communication where locals travel. A road, a canal, a path. You want to be where people aren’t.

  “If this path leads to a fishing or hunting cabin,” Karl said, “it sounds like a good way to run into a pissed-off guy with a gun.”

  “But look at the path,” the sailor said. “It is not well traveled. Whoever uses it is probably riding a panzer these days. If he’s still alive.”

  “I don’t care. We need to stay hidden.”

  “We need to rest and eat.”

  A flush of anger burned in Karl’s chest. He was too exhausted and had too much on his mind for some Kraut sailor’s bright ideas.

  “Forget it. I don’t need the SS hooking my balls up to a car battery.”

  “Lieutenant Hagan,” the German said as he stood up again, “winter is coming. Even well-equipped soldiers have a tough time surviving winter in these latitudes. We have nothing. Do you know how many German troops have frozen to death on the Eastern Front?”

  Not enough, Karl thought. He started to say so out loud, just to get under the Kraut’s skin. But then another thought intruded through the fog of fatigue—one much more serious.

  “You want to lead me into a trap,” Karl said. “Now that you’ve gotten a little tired and hungry, you’ve had enough playing Davy Crockett. You think they’ll go easy on you if you hand them my ass on a platter.”

  “Who is . . . ,” the Kraut said. “Never mind. Just listen to me. I know my people and their habits. A cabin can stay closed up for months, even in peacetime. You are the one who is overly tired.”

  The sailor advanced toward Karl as if he was about to place his hand on Karl’s shoulder to give him a good shake. That was too much. Karl slapped away the German’s hand, grabbed him by his jacket lapels.

  “Get your damned hands off me, you goose-stepping bastard,” Karl said through gritted teeth. Shoved the Kraut against a tree hard enough that his head knocked against the trunk.

  The German responded with a left hook he must have learned at the naval college. Son of a bitch had never said a word about a boxing team, but the blow landed hard enough to knock Karl off his feet. Karl staggered backward and fell, but he stayed on the ground only for a second. Fueled by pure rage, he ran at the Kraut, grabbed him around the waist with both arms, and tackled him.

  On the forest floor, the U-boat man rolled hard and came up on top of Karl. Gripped Karl’s throat with his left hand. Drew his Luger with his right. Karl froze.

  The German breathed hard, with dirt and leaves in his whiskers. Despite the cold, a drop of sweat fell from his nose.

  “I could have killed you a hundred times by now if I’d wanted,” the sailor said. “I do not wish to take another life, or cause the SS to take yours.” He drew in a long, ragged breath before he continued his thought. “But unless you come to your senses, I will put a bullet in your forehead and leave you in these woods.”

  The Kraut took his hand off Karl’s throat, but kept the Luger’s muzzle to his skull. Karl coughed, turned his head, spat onto the ground. He let his heart slow down, let his anger cool.

  Maybe he’d been wrong. He looked up at the German—who looked angry, but very much in control of himself. A prickly burn of embarrassment replaced Karl’s white-hot rage.

  Of the two of us, he thought, I cracked first. Okay, so I screwed up. Can’t ever get that moment back. Nothing for it but to press on.

  “All right, Jack Dempsey,” Karl said. “Lead the way.”

  The sailor pushed himself off Karl’s torso, brushed dirt from his jacket. Held the pistol angled toward the ground. He still looked pissed off. He looked pained, too. The Kraut put a hand to his side and winced. Ribs still sore, evidently. He put away the weapon and pointed his finger at Karl’s nose as if lecturing an errant recruit.

  “I am sorry about the loss of your friends,” the German said. “Truly, I am. But find another way to mourn.”

  Karl shrugged. He couldn’t quite bring himself to apologize to a guy who’d devoted his career to serving the Third Reich. But Karl had to admit the guy’s point: He had been getting worn out from fatigue and stress and thinking about the rest of Hellstorm’s crew.

  “All right, then,” Karl said. “This cabin better have a freezer full of steaks.” He hoped his tone conveyed new confidence—which he really didn’t feel.

  A mother-of-pearl cloud layer drifted overhead as Karl and the Ge
rman made their way along the path. Occasional fissures in the overcast admitted rays from a setting sun and limned the cloud breaks with copper. Though the sky looked beautiful from this angle, Karl knew how much more spectacular this scene would appear from above the overcast, and he wanted very much to be there. What paradise to drone toward home base, planning the let-down through the cloud layer, anticipating coffee, sandwiches, and a shot of debrief whisky.

  Well, you could wish for anything.

  What was that song from the Pinocchio movie? “When You Wish Upon a Star.” Yeah, Karl thought, just keep wishing.

  As his fatigued mind wandered, it stumbled on an unpleasant thought. He voiced it immediately.

  “Hey,” Karl said, “how do you know we’re going toward your supposed cabin and not away from it?” His knapsack slid from his shoulders and he stopped to tug at the straps made from parachute cord.

  “I don’t.”

  Huh? We don’t know? Just like that? Flip of the coin, heads or tails. Fifty-fifty. Karl felt so tired, he didn’t care.

  He jogged a few steps to catch up with the German and found that the path ahead pitched downhill. The trail widened under a canopy of pines, and pine needles carpeted the path. Karl nearly slipped as a sheaf of pine needles shifted under his feet. When he regained his balance, he looked downhill and caught glimpses of pewter between the trees.

  Water.

  The German stopped, turned halfway back toward Karl, and motioned for him to stop, too. Eased himself down to a kneeling position. Gazed at something out in front, something in or near the water. After a couple minutes, he gestured for Karl to come forward.

  Karl padded ahead on spongy, decaying pine needles. Kneeled by the sailor’s side. The U-boat man hadn’t reached for one of his pistols, and Karl took that as a good sign.

  Wordlessly, the German pointed. From this vantage point, Karl could tell the water was a lake, not a river. The surface lay still and mirrored the illuminated overcast; the sight put Karl in mind of dross floating on molten steel. But the sailor wasn’t pointing to the lake. Peering through the trees, Karl needed a moment to find what the German had seen.

  There. An angled roof appeared among the trees. Observing from the wooded hillside above, Karl could see little else of the structure. But it appeared to be a two- or three-room shack situated on the lakeshore. It probably had been there awhile; moss covered most of the wooden shingles. A stone chimney stood cold; no smoke rose from the flue.

  “Shall we go see Hansel and Gretel?” Karl asked.

  27

  A Warning Branch

  Wilhelm and the Yank watched the cabin for an hour and saw no activity. For at least one night, Wilhelm decided, they had found safe anchorage. At dusk, they used the last of the day’s light to commit a breaking and entering.

  As they picked their way downhill through the pines, the cabin came into better view. Three rooms at most. A cracked four-pane window. No plumbing, apparently; a wooden outdoor privy stood several meters from the main cabin. Someone had stacked cords of firewood next to the cabin. The split wood had weathered to the color of well-done steak.

  Two large stones served as a doorstep. On the door, a dried, curved tree branch hung from a nail.

  Upon closer inspection, Wilhelm saw that someone had stripped most of the bark from the small branch, bent it into a loop, and tied the ends together with twine to hold that shape. Wilhelm had no idea what it meant—but strangely enough, the Yank did.

  “A warnbruch,” the American said.

  “Warning branch?”

  “Yes. My uncle Rainer told me about German hunting traditions. You guys use branches for signals, like ‘I shot the deer here.’ This one means ‘danger in the area,’ like poachers or a tree about to fall.”

  Wilhelm sighed. “Danger in the area”? Indeed.

  “In this case,” the Yank continued, “I’m guessing it means keep out.”

  “They’re serious about it, too,” Wilhelm said. He pointed to chains that held the door shut. The door had no knob, just a hole bored into the wood. From inside the cabin, a chain passed through the hole. Another length of chain hung from an angle iron nailed to the outside wall, and a padlock secured the two chains together.

  “I don’t got a key,” the bomber pilot said, “but I got a boot.”

  “You will never break that chain.”

  “Yeah, but I’ll break the wood.”

  The Yank put down his knapsack, untied the pistol lanyard from his wrist, and took off his jacket. Motioned for Wilhelm to step aside. Set himself in front of the door, raised his knee, and let fly with a hard kick.

  The door shuddered when the Yank’s boot made contact. The chains rattled, but everything held firm. The Yank flexed his knee and rubbed his shin as if it hurt, then poised with his other knee. Slammed his boot into the door again. Cracking noises came this time.

  Wilhelm inspected the hardware. The nails holding the angle iron in place had begun to tear loose.

  “Take a rest,” Wilhelm said. “Let me hit it once or twice.”

  Wilhelm gave the door an experimental shove with the toe of his boot, then stepped back two paces. With a running start, he rammed his heel into the door.

  His boot struck with a sound like a woodsman’s ax whacking into an oak. The angle iron tore loose in a shower of splinters. The door swung partly open and stopped when the padlock—still attached to the chain—lodged against the hole bored in the wood. The end of the chain affixed to the inside wall still held. Wilhelm’s effort reignited the pain in his ribs.

  “Probably another angle iron holding the chain on the inside,” the flier said.

  “Not for long.”

  Despite the pain, Wilhelm kicked once more. The door slapped open, chains swinging and creaking.

  A musty odor rolled from inside the cabin. Not an unpleasant smell: some combination of cooked onions, wood smoke, and mothballed bed linen. Pure darkness within. Wilhelm held his side for a moment, then dug for his flashlight, clicked on its weakening beam, and stepped inside.

  A wood-burning stove sat in the middle of the main room, with a kettle and empty pot on top of the cooking surface. An L-shaped stovepipe extended into the rock chimney. The furniture consisted of a rough-hewn pine table and four ladder-back wooden chairs. Two oil-burning lamps, both dark, sat on the table. Cobwebs sagged from the corners of the ceiling.

  “Are your matches still dry?” Wilhelm asked.

  “Yeah,” the Yank answered. The single syllable carried an edge, suggesting he was insulted at the suggestion he’d let his matches get wet. Wilhelm didn’t care. Letting your matches get wet was no more stupid than starting a fistfight.

  The aviator found his matches among his survival trinkets. Guided by the beam from Wilhelm’s flashlight, the American lifted the glass chimney from one of the oil lamps and turned the knob to raise the wick. Struck a match, touched fire to the wick, and replaced the glass. The room filled with a soft, golden glow.

  “You wanna just save the oil in the other lamp?” the Yank asked.

  “Ja. One is enough.”

  Lamplight revealed the room’s primitive décor. A set of antlers hung on one wall. The antlers had not been mounted on any sort of plaque; they’d simply been nailed to the log wall, complete with a section of deer skull. Another wall featured something of an icon: a framed painting of Saint Hubertus. In the moldering picture, Hubertus appeared next to a stag. Between the stag’s antlers gleamed a crucifix. At the bottom of the painting, these lines appeared in German Gothic script:

  This is the hunter’s badge of glory,

  That he protect and tend his quarry,

  Hunt with honor, as is due,

  And through the beast to God is true.

  Wilhelm told the American the story of Saint Hubertus. Sometime during the seventh century, the future saint’s wife died in childbirth, and in his grief he abandoned all responsibilities. He began spending his time afield, hunting with his dogs. One day, in the mid
st of a chase, a great stag stopped and faced him. An astonished Hubert saw the Holy Cross shining amid the stag’s magnificent rack. A voice said to him: “Hubert, thou must turn to the Lord, lest ye go down unto hell.” In the pious life that followed, Hubert became the patron saint of hunters, mathematicians, and metalworkers.

  “A good sign, no?” Wilhelm said. “Especially for you of the American steel industry.”

  “I don’t know,” the Yank said, “but I’ll take whatever luck I can get.”

  The aviator began looking in corners and opening doors. Two of the doors led to small bedrooms, each furnished with little but a cot. In one of the bedrooms, a wooden gun rack hung empty on the wall. Someone had taken care in its construction; the U-shaped brackets had been lined with felt to prevent scratching the guns. Quite different from the metal locker that contained firearms on the U-351.

  Wilhelm opened a narrow door to find a pantry filled with fishing tackle and nonperishable foodstuffs. Spinning rods and a fishnet leaned in a corner. A wicker basket set onto the pantry floor contained potatoes sprinkled with lime. Shelves held glass jars full of canned onions, tomatoes, and some sort of fruit—perhaps pears. A muslin sack contained dried beans. A cupboard stored stoneware plates and bowls, utensils, and a few canisters of seasonings.

  “Oh, my God,” the Yank said. “This looks as good to me right now as the dining room in the Waldorf Astoria. Score one for you, Popeye the Sailor Man.”

  “We should stay here only long enough to regain our strength,” Wilhelm said. “We get dried out and warmed up, and we eat our fill. Then we move on.”

  The temptation to get too comfortable presented additional danger. The men who had hunted and fished here might well be dead on the Eastern Front, Wilhelm believed, and that’s why he’d taken this calculated risk. But, on the other hand, some old pensioner could come along any day.

  “I’m sure you’re right,” the American said. “I’ll light the stove if you’ll wash some of those potatoes.”

  Perhaps the bomber pilot had returned to his senses. While the Yank brought in wood and kindling, Wilhelm took the pot from the stovetop and placed five potatoes in it. He carried the pot outside and shuffled through the darkness down to the water. Just enough lamplight shone through the window for him to see to go about his task. He dipped the pot into the lake and stood sloshing the potatoes with the fingers of his right hand. Poured out the water, careful not to spill the potatoes, dipped the pot again. He could not see how well he had removed the lime, so he swirled the potatoes a second time. Poured out the water once more, dipped the pot, and carried the water and potatoes back toward the cabin.