by Brian Bakos
But there are more sympathetic guards, too. Occasionally, one of them tosses us some cigarettes or bread. We devour these items without ceremony.
We receive mixed reactions from the settlements we pass through. Sometimes our guards must protect us from the wrath of the townsfolk, other times the civilians merely gaze at us quietly as we shuffle past. Powerful emotions confront us everywhere – anger, hate, pity, contempt.
Finally, we are loaded onto trains. My group occupies a flat car, not unlike the one I saw crammed with slobe prisoners on my way into this hellish country. We chug for added days through a landscape turning colder by the hour. Some of us don’t survive.
***
I spend the winter months in a prisoner of war camp, taking part in its crash reducing plan. Altogether I lose nearly 20 kilograms of body weight, and my skin takes on the texture of dry paper. My hair starts falling out. On the rare occasions when I actually get to wash it, many strands come away in my fingers. But I can’t complain – millions of others have suffered far worse.
I appear to be an animated dead man, beyond caring what happens to me. This isn’t the case, however. I’m still alive, but my humanity is buried deep out of harm’s way. I’ve given up all hope for the future, but perhaps this is the only way to preserve hope. I dare not think about those back home – Ket, Gyn, Bekar, Mama. So many dear to me have already died, and I can’t bear the thought of further losses. So I bury my affections away where they can slumber in peace.
Among us captives, faith in a POW swap withers as the months drag past, and talk turns to escape. Escape to where, I wonder? We’re in the middle of a frozen wilderness; besides, I know that I cannot avoid the fate I’ve worked out for myself. I must see things through, wherever the path leads.
Our captors know we are trapped and don’t bother themselves overmuch with guarding us. They even turn a blind eye toward the little shortwave radio somebody has managed to sneak in. A group of us huddles together in one of the freezing huts passing the headphones around. From the Homeland propaganda broadcasts and from other news sources, we learn the enormity of our nation’s defeat.
When the slobes found themselves embroiled in a two-front war, they sent peace feelers our direction. They stopped bombing the Homeland as a “goodwill gesture” and began redeploying troops away from our forces – or so we were led to believe. Bel was right, though; it was all deception, along with a willingness on our part to be fooled.
Peace delegations were meeting in neutral territory when the offensive began. Our forces, taken completely by surprise, cracked under the assault and fled for their lives. Their headlong retreat did not stop until they reached the river barrier a scant hundred kilometers from our old frontier.
There, our shattered army dug in its heels and put up an organized defense. The slobes then withdrew their main forces so as to deal with their new enemies in the east, and our war finally ended with an uneasy truce. The wretched strip of land we occupy is hardly the “living space” we were promised, but it is enough to guarantee another war, in my opinion.
Our propaganda heroes make much of the slobes’ “treachery” for attacking us in the midst of peace negotiations. As if our unprovoked invasion two years earlier had modeled the highest moral principles!
The slobe empire – which we’d been told was tottering toward extinction, which contained vast resources that should be ours by right of conquest – proved to be a ferocious and indomitable enemy. Its people, dismissed as nothing more than “a cesspool of mongrel races,” rallied to overcome our best efforts at subduing them. And now, we are paying the price for all this folly.
Piotra learned a lot from us. His lumbering, inefficient army was forged into an awesome fighting machine by the blows it received from our superior, if overmatched, military. It rallied from the edge of defeat to become masters of the situation.
We prisoners are all deeply depressed by these broadcasts. Maybe that’s why our captors let us keep the radio. Thank God the Homeland has been spared invasion – for now.
“You look very young,” one of my companions, a grizzled infantryman, says. “What unit did you serve with.”
“I was in the Children’s Crusade.”
He nods and says nothing further. It’s too cold to think about anything but surviving the next five minutes.
***
Then one day, just as the first signs of spring are emerging in the frozen wasteland, glorious news arrives: We are going home in the next prisoner exchange!
There is nothing of the wild joy that greeted the announcement of the second front, only resigned gratitude that we have managed to survive the ordeal thus far and apprehension that we still might not live long enough to see the Fatherland.
Many of us don’t believe the announcement, chalking it up as some enemy trick. Or else we’re convinced that everything will fall through at the last minute.
But the slobes increase our rations a few days before our announced departure. They scrub us up, and we are gone over by doctors and dentists. The dentist is a jovial type who can speak some of our language. He practices it as he pokes around in my mouth.
“So, how was your vacation with us, my friend?” he asks.
“Very enjoyable,” I say.
He chuckles, then sighs wistfully.
“Ah, if only I could go with you! There must be need for dentists in your country, right?”
“One would assume so,” I mumble around his probing fingers.
“Don’t you think it’s time we moved on from all this hatred?” the dentist asks.
“Absolutely,” I say.
With his little mirrors, he shows me serious cavities in two of my back teeth. He’ll be happy to yank them out for me, he says. Shouldn’t hurt too much, despite the lack of anesthetics.
“No thanks,” I tell him.
I’d rather see if a dentist back home can save the molars.
They pack us into railway cars and ship us westward. My previous trip across this sprawling landscape seems almost luxurious by comparison, but we are fed semi-adequately and let out now and then to stretch our limbs. Our constant grumbling seems unfounded. What did we expect, a private club car?
At the cease fire line, we are unceremoniously kicked out and herded onto another train – our train! The comfort level is scarcely better than on the slobe transport, but it seems as if I’m riding on a cloud. I experience the first stirrings of renewed life inside me, but I still dare not allow myself to believe that the long nightmare could be ending.
We arrive at the same town where I attended high school a century earlier. I flew airplanes back then and thought of myself as one hell of a fellow. Actually, it’s only been several months since I’ve last seen this place.
A wilderness of bomb craters greets our approach to the railway terminal. Our train groans and screeches over the patched up tracks.
66. Back Home
We jump down from the train and shamble off toward the station to be processed. The brick and mortar station has been eradicated, and a billowing white tent stands in its place, as if from a traveling circus. The rail yard is a gloomy landscape of cinders and uncleared debris.
It’s early morning, judging by the gray light and the chill in the air. We pull our tattered coats more tightly about ourselves.
The railway yard is a madhouse of confusion. As quickly as we vacate our train cars, other men are replacing us – slobe POWs taking the trip back home. A good many civilians are mixed in with them, our native slobes who are fleeing the Fatherland.
Who can blame them for that? They certainly have no future here. I’ve seen the empire they are escaping to, though, and the future doesn’t look so bright there either.
Our two columns unavoidably converge. We brush against men as ragged and emaciated as we are. I avert my eyes to avoid seeing a mirror image of myself. Something strikes my right cheek, a gob of spit. I turn to see a small woman glaring back at me from the slobe line – it’s Piotra’
s mother. She curses at me as she moves off into the distance.
I raise my hand to my face.
“Let me take care of that,” someone says.
A man reaches over from my left and daubs my face with a snow-white handkerchief. He looks impossibly healthy and well-fed, and he wears a News Service blazer.
“Thanks, friend,” I say.
“Don’t mention it.”
He folds the handkerchief and stuffs it into the pocket of his jacket. I recognize him now. He’s the same guy who ran the projector for Youth Answers the Call!
“How come I keep running into you?” I say.
The man laughs and pulls at my arm, removing me from the column.
“You don’t have to wait in line,” he says. “We can fast track you through.”
He leads me to a less congested area of the yard and toward a secondary entrance of the station tent.
“Any medical concerns?” the man asks.
“Just a couple of bad teeth that need work,” I say.
“No problem, we’ll take care of that right away,” the man says.
I look warily around for movie cameras. There aren’t any, thank God. Pictures of our defeated, half-starved troops returning home must not be considered the best newsreel footage.
“Ket’s going to be very pleased that you’re all right,” the man says. “You know, she waited here for days hoping you’d be on the next train. The boss finally pulled her off on an assignment.”
Ket! The name rings out to me like a clarion call from the lost world. I’ve scarcely given her a thought for months, so certain I was that I’d never look upon her again.
“When is she coming back?” I say.
The man grins at my obvious eagerness.
“Hard to say. It’s one of those drudge assignments out by the cease fire line. Could be quite a while.”
I nod. My disappointment is keen, but I am also relieved. I don’t want her to see me like this. In a few weeks, I might actually resemble a human being.
“You know,” the guy says, “she could twist the boss around her little finger if she’d be ‘nice’ to him, if you know what I mean.”
“Yes ... I know what you mean.”
“Ket won’t do it, though. She claims that she’s saving it for somebody very special. Wonder who that is, eh?”
He elbows my ribs. I don’t know whether to be complimented or take a swing at him for his cheekiness. I decide to let it pass. Anyway, I’m so worn down that he might mistake my best punch for a puff of wind.
Inside the railway station, military officials sit at long tables speaking with the returnees, filling out whatever documentation that needs to be handled. The News Service guy approaches the ranking officer and speaks a few words. The officer looks toward me a moment, then waves us on.
In front of the terminal, all is devastation – blasted buildings, piles of ruble, a faint scent of death in the air. The street has been cleared and patched, though.
A large black car awaits at the curb. To my exhausted brain, it appears to be a hearse. Then I notice a government flag attached to the fender and a badge on the door identifying it as a Propaganda Ministry vehicle.
“This will take you to the hotel where you can get cleaned up,” the News Service guy says. “Then the doctors will want to see you. I’ll make a dentist appointment for this afternoon.”
“Thanks,” I say.
Groups of bedraggled men are leaving the station now and piling into trucks. They’ll be going to an army barracks to recuperate. No limousine ride or fancy hotel for them. The News Service guy is just opening the car’s rear door when a familiar voice calls out:
“Dytran!”
I look over to see Bekar standing by one of the trucks. He’s leaning on a cane and waving joyously with his free hand. Sunshine seems to burst into the dreary morning.
“Bekar!”
I turn to the News Service guy. “Give me a few minutes, all right?”
“Sure thing.”
I make my way to Bekar as quickly as I can along the crowded sidewalk. As soon as I reach him, he throws an arm around me in a half bear hug.
“My God, there’s nothing left of you!” he cries.
We pull away but still hang on to each other’s arms.
“Thanks, Bekar, that really makes my day.”
“Sorry, it just slipped out,” he says. “Don’t worry. Those Propaganda Ministry boys will fatten you up quick.”
I look back toward the limo.
“Yes, they’ve got plans for me,” I say. “I think they want to turn me into a bloody hero.”
“Well, who deserves it more than you?”
Bekar is keeping up a sunny face, but I know it pains him to see my wretched condition.
“I heard at the base that you might be on this transport,” he says, “so I ran my butt here as fast as possible.”
“Not bad for a guy with a cane,” I say.
Bekar chuckles, then a note of melancholy enters his voice.
“I can see you’ve been through hell, Dye. You can talk to me about it when you feel the need.”
“Thanks.”
“Talking helps a lot ... I know.”
But I don’t want to think about all the horrors I’ve seen right now. I feel like a man climbing out of a grave – I want more of that feeling.
“How’s Gyn?” I ask.
There, I’ve uttered a magic word from the world I never expected to see again.
“Oh, she’s fine, but ...”
“But what?”
“It’s her hospital,” Bekar says, “all hospitals, really. The sick and wounded are just flooding in. She’s working brutal hours, every day.”
I can’t help feeling a twinge of conscience. With all this backlog to deal with, doctors will be making a house call for me today.
“She’s a strong girl, Dye. I think she’d make a good fighter pilot.”
I crack a smile. It feels good to smile again.
“I’m serious.” Bekar lowers his voice a bit. “The way things are now, we need all the help we can get.”
He looks off toward the limo.
“Well, I don’t want to keep your friends waiting.”
“Friends, eh?” I grip Bekar’s hand. “I know who my real friends are.”
On that note, our reunion draws to a close. Bekar watches me climb into the hearse and depart.
We drive through a city of the dead. Being so close to the eastern border, it was bombed many times. The old ‘student quarter’ with its myriad of cafes and pubs is obliterated. The downtown area is nothing more than towering hulks of gutted buildings. I avert my eyes from the debacle.
We arrive at a little resort hotel on a lake west of town. The pleasant surroundings provide a jarring contrast to everything I’ve grown accustomed to.
67. Hollow Celebration
After residing a few days at the resort, I am transferred to a luxurious hotel suite in the capital city. I’m gaining weight. My two teeth have beautiful gold crowns – a kind of souvenir of my war service – and my hair is thickening out. Looks like I’m going to live after all.
But the inactivity is not all good. Thoughts of the horrors I’ve experience haunt my waking hours, and a new nightmare is terrorizing my sleep. In it, I fire my rifle and bring down a fleeing slobe boy.
“Nice shot, Eagle-eye!” somebody yells.
Purpose is what can banish these horrors from my mind – progress toward worthwhile goals. If I don’t move, I will be overwhelmed. So, I begin to move. Although my body is temporarily restrained, my mind is beginning to make plans.
Clearly, I have been assigned a key role in the government’s propaganda effort. It is not a role I would have chosen for myself, but it seems to be part of the complex fate that has been working out for me ever since the slobe diving incident.
In any case, I plan to make the most of it for my own ends – and for the interests of my country.
I’m being groome
d for my public debut at the “Great Homecoming Celebration” to be held soon in the capital. Propaganda Ministry officials show me a speech manuscript and request my input. I add some introductory comments but leave the main text alone. Now is not the time for me to make waves.
“This speech is excellent as is,” I say. “It expresses my deepest sentiments.”
During my debriefing, I tell my handlers about the fate of the Raptor Aces squadron – eliminating any references to Omzbak and the pee cave. Nobody will ever hear that part of the story, except for Bekar, perhaps.
In this edited version of events, the Raptor Aces all perished while fighting partisans in open country. I alone survived to be discovered by an enemy national who held me at gunpoint until an army patrol came on the scene. I manufacture this last detail so as to help protect Trynka from retribution. My story is going to be made public and will surely be picked up by the slobes. It’s all I can do for her.
Throughout my narrative, I focus the spotlight on Beltran – the great hero from humble origins who rescued us during the airbase attack. A true leader and loyal comrade who died heroically serving the Fatherland, steadfast to the end. They’ll build a martyr legend around him; soon he’ll be as famous as the Magleiter himself. I’m sure Bel would like that.
And if he doesn’t ... well, consider it to be the last of our many disagreements.
Posters with my general likeness are appearing everywhere, trumpeting the admonition spoken to me by the Magleiter:
Stand fast young man! The Fatherland needs you.
It’s not too bad a resemblance, although a bit over dramatic. And the hair has been darkened to give the image a more “universal appeal,” according to Ket who helped supervise the poster’s design. The idea is that every patriotic young male can visualize himself in the picture carrying our banner to victory.
Blondes like me were never that common to begin with and are even rarer these days. The slobes frequently made a point of executing any ‘racial apex’ types that fell into their hands, thus thinning the ranks of the fair-haired and blue-eyed. My hair color would have been a ticket to an early death were it not for Trynka’s intervention.