Breadcrumbs and Bombs

by Susan Finlay

  Ron packed his few belongings into his pack and set it near the door, ready to leave at a moment’s notice. Then he walked over and pulled Ilse into an embrace. “I will miss you more than you could possibly imagine,” he whispered in her ear. “When I fell from an airplane, I fell into a dream and met the most beautiful princess I have ever seen. Have I told you that before?”

  “You have.”

  “It’s true. You saved my life and showed that people can be good and kind, regardless of their faith or their nationality. We come from different cultures, but we are people, all the same. I love you.”

  “I love you, too.” She had never said those words out loud to anyone, not even her parents.

  “You should get home soon. Your family will be expecting you and will worry if you don’t come home by dinner time.”

  She shook her head and looked up into his eyes. “This is our last day together. I am going to make it last as long as possible and make it the best day we have ever shared so you will not forget me.”

  “Ilse, no. You must go.”

  “You cannot send me away like that. Come. Let us lie down and cuddle and talk. I am staying the night, or at least until almost dark. Mutter will be angry, but also relieved when I get home. She will not punish me.”

  “But I can’t guarantee I won’t . . . .”

  “Won’t what? Kiss me? Make love to me? I am counting on it.”

  Hours later, when she finally pulled herself away from his arms and dressed to leave, Ron pulled her back and held her, whispering, “I will find you again when the war is over. We’ll be together. I promise.”

  “I will wait for you.” With that, she gave him one last kiss and slipped out the door.

  The next morning, early, she left the house while the family was still sleeping. As she’d suspected, Mutter had reprimanded her when she got home, but soon let it drop. Mutter probably suspected Ilse was seeing someone, but she didn’t ask and Ilse was not going to volunteer any information.

  She’d make up her mind before she fell asleep last night, that she had to see Ron one more time before it was too late. She walked in the semi-darkness through town and then into the woods, past a meadow, and was in sight of the dilapidated house.

  But others were there. She froze in the moonlight. Her heart raced with anxiety. Who were those men? Over her initial shock, she crept closer, careful to stay behind tall bushes.

  She stopped within hearing distance, and peeked out. Johann. And two other men in German army uniforms. His commanding officers?

  They had hold of Ron and were shoving him and then they forced him to stand up straight.

  Johann held up his rifle and pointed it at Ron. Before Ilse had a chance to react and try to stop him, Johann shot Ron in the chest. Ron keeled over, still as a rock.

  Ilse gasped, falling to her knees in shock. She put her hand over her mouth to keep from screaming and drawing attention to herself. She would have called out to make Johann stop, if she’d had the chance. Screaming now would be futile and would only get her killed, too. Johann didn’t care. He would kill her himself and not bat an eye.

  Johann had promised he wouldn’t turn Ron in. He had told him he had three days. Only a half day, a single night, had passed. Could his commanding officers have found out and left Johann no choice? She wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt.

  Watching him smiling and helping the officers drag Ron’s body back across the meadow, towards the trees and, probably to town, she couldn’t believe what had happened. She stared at the trail in the snow, filled with blotches of red staining the snow, like breadcrumbs dropped along a trail to lead someone to some hideous rendezvous.

  She buried her face in her hands, sobbing silently. Ron was gone. She would never see him again. He’d promised her they would be together when this horrid war was over. Johann had ruined everything.

  Later—she didn’t know how long she’d sat in the snow—she pulled herself upright and willed her legs to carry her back home.

  On the walk that seemed to take forever, all she could think about was the fact that her brother had betrayed her. He was as dead to her as Ron was.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Lucas Landry, August 2017, Sacramento, California—

  LUCAS READ THE translated Slavic Diary, making notes to add to his other notes on his computer. While interesting, it didn’t fit with the prior information he’d collected. Who was this person and why was his diary stored in a box in his family’s attic? It didn’t make any sense. Unless it wasn’t really a diary. Perhaps it was part of some would-be writer’s novel. Or maybe it was a diary that an ancestor had found and kept. Hmm, maybe confiscated? What if the guy, a resistance fighter, according to the diary, was captured by the Nazis and tortured or put into a concentration camp. If that was the case, did it mean one of his ancestors was a Nazi?

  Lucas puzzled over the mystery, but decided it was late and this was not about to be solved right now. He rubbed his temples, saved the notes he’d made on his computer, and closed the file. After switching off the lamp, he climbed the stairs and carefully opened the bedroom door. Tawny was sound asleep, snoring softly. She’d gone to bed an hour ago, complaining of fatigue, which was to be expected in her sixth month of pregnancy.

  He kicked off his slippers and slipped into bed, careful not to disturb her. He wanted to sleep, but it seemed his made had a difference of opinion. After time, he glanced at his bedside clock, glowing green on his nightstand. Almost midnight. He’d been in bed for nearly an hour and was still wide awake. Big mistake working on family history stuff right before bed. He should have known better by now.

  He rolled over, now face to face with his wife. She made little gurgle sounds, which normally wouldn’t bother him, but tonight made him edgy. He rolled back over. What seemed like ten minutes more passed, but his clock showed it had been three minutes. Good thing tomorrow was Saturday and he didn’t have to get up early and go to work.

  Silently, Lucas pulled back his covers and slipped out of bed, donned his slippers, and padded back down the stairs.

  After pouring himself a glass of cold water from the faucet, he walked over, sat down at his desk, and turned his computer back on and rubbed the stubble on his chin, waiting for the computer to boot up. He opened three files, minimized them, then opened a blank document and stared at the screen. Somehow he needed to create a family tree, pulling together all the information collected so far, including pieces from the Ahnenpaβ forms, or identity cards as he called them, that which he’d gleaned from his aunts and cousins, from the various diaries and from the papers and photos he’d found in the filing cabinets. That was all good stuff. Problem was he didn’t know where the people in those fit into the family tree, assuming they were even connected to his family. Not an easy task.

  Okay, start with the identity cards.

  He picked up the folder that held copies of identity cards and their translations, and began listing them. As he typed, he realized one of the maiden names was Slavic. She came from Moravia. Ah hah! Maybe that was how the young man who wrote the Slavic diary fit into the puzzle. He put an asterisk next to her name to remind him to look into it further.

  He recorded birthdates and locations beside the names.

  His list grew, but didn’t visualize how they connected. Okay, this isn’t working.

  He leaned back to think, hands clasped behind his head. What could he do to make the links clearer?

  Okay, what about drawing them onto a piece of paper, the way family trees were usually drawn? A bit old school, he thought, but it doesn’t really need to be on the computer, at least not for now. That might work.

  Lucas began writing a man’s name & birthdate. Below that he filled in the man’s wife’s name, then her maiden name, and birthdate. He made a short vertical line below that and then entered their children’s names and birthdates. It spread out from there.

  Okay, he could do this.

  An hour and a half later, with sev
eral do-overs laying in a pile on the floor, and three pieces of paper taped together, he had a sloppy but visual family tree. He wasn’t entirely sure about the spelling of some of the names, because they had been handwritten in old-German style, but it was good enough, he’d done the best he could.

  The birthdates actually went much further back than he’d realized—the earliest being in the year 1801. How cool is that! Furthermore, it looked like he had both sides of . . . well, probably his great-grandparents’ trees, he guessed, for a couple generations. Wow. Now I’m getting somewhere.

  But as he studied the list, his enthusiasm for his endeavor quickly waned. The tree, as drawn, ended abruptly. If the latest generation listed was his great-grandparents, what about his parents—Tom and Emelie Landry. And what about the Nagel family and the Seidel family he’d read about? Where were their records and how did they fit together with the others?

  Argh! He stuck his drawing into the folder with the identity card copies, then closed the computer files and shut down his computer.

  Tomorrow. He’d go back to the house and finish looking through the boxes. If that didn’t get him the answers he needed, he’d . . . he’d what? Go to Germany and talk to his German relatives? Right, assuming they were really related. For all he knew right now, his father and aunts might not even be related to any of these folks. The attic history might precede his family ownership of the house. Lucas knew from talking to his aunt Elsa and Anna that his ancestors were from Germany, but precious little more.

  His shoulders slumped as he climbed the stairs. This damned research was like trying to herd ducks! It was like Hansel and Gretel’s dropping breadcrumbs through a forest, with birds picking up pieces and leaving big gaps in the trail.

  Crap!

  The next morning, Saturday, Tawny took Bianca to a swimming class at the recreation center, after which they would go shopping for baby things with Tawny’s mother, Lani. That left Lucas free to go to the house and sift through more junk in the attic.

  On his knees, Lucas reached out and opened one of the few unopened boxes and started poking around. Good grief, more stuff from Germany. Including more diaries, a small box with handwritten poems, and . . . eureka, letters from Franz Nagel. That would be . . . he scratched his head trying to remember where he’d heard the name. Yes!

  Vati. Christa’s father. The paper was old and wrinkled and the ink faded. God, this was a letter he’d sent to his family while he was in the army.

  Lucas sat down hard on his butt, preparing to translate the letter. How cool was this? He’d read in Christa’s diary about the letter, and now he was holding it in his hand.

  He thought about the incomplete family tree diagram he’d made last night and thumped his own forehead. Dummy! Why didn’t I list the Nagel family, the Seidel family, and the Landry family on separate pages? If I have the names and relationships and approximate dates listed, won’t it be easier to fill in the missing links when I get them? Now I have to do the tree yet again, he fumed.

  Reluctantly, he set aside the letter and the other diaries he’d just now found and continued digging through the box. Each of the last three boxes he rummaged through had produced some interesting clues that might help. When he finished looking through the last box, he felt an immediate emptiness inside, as if he’d lost a good friend.

  After a few moments, it subsided. It was like watching a treasured TV series’ finale and you knew that was it. The feeling of enjoying every show, but suddenly knowing it was over and you would never again have the joy of watching a brand new episode unfold before your eyes.

  Lucas pulled himself up off the floor, which was a challenge, considering how long he’d been sitting like a pretzel. He re-stacked the boxes, still feeling slightly depressed.

  Lucas stretched and yawned, then looked at his watch. Lunch time. He looked around for a bag or small box he could use to house his new stack of research material. Ah, there in the corner, a box we emptied last week. It was one of those metal chest kinds of boxes that had held some old tools—the kinds that might have been used for building the cabinets in the house. Not great, but it would do. He and Tawny had moved others into the garage, where they might set up a workshop of sorts, if they kept the house. He hated to admit it, but he was warming to the idea.

  He placed the documents, books, etc. into the metal box, latched it closed, and then carried it down the stairs, closing the door to the attic behind him.

  No sense making it easier to find the attic should anyone break into the house, right? He’d heard from a couple neighbors that there had been a few burglaries in the neighborhood over the past month, and an empty house was always a good target. That’s another reason he and Tawny tried to come here almost every day, if possible, giving the impression that the house wasn’t abandoned.

  In the kitchen he opened the refrigerator and took out the lunch he’d packed, along with a can of soda, and set his food, drink, and the metal box on the kitchen table.

  Time to get to work. His stomach growled loudly. Nah, eat first, then work. After eating his turkey sandwich and guzzling the last of his soda, Lucas opened the lid of the box and looked inside. What to tackle first?

  Hmm. How about the handwritten poetry? He pulled out the envelope containing the poetry and skimmed through them, reading bits and pieces. Love poems. Poems about family. Poems about the war, written from the point of view of a soldier. Having a sudden thought, he dug around in the box, looking for the letter from Vati, pulled it out, and compared the handwriting. Huh, Vati wrote poetry. Okay. Now we’re getting somewhere.

  He wrote poems during the war and the poems were here in America, meaning Vati either survived, and brought the poems back to his family, or he didn’t survive, and the poems were found among his belongings and returned to them at the end of the war. Hmm, not much help.

  Okay. Let’s try one of the diaries. He sure hoped these were continuations of the diaries he’d already read. He started reading a diary written by Christa.

  Half an hour into it, his face was wet with tears. He’d known about the Red Army incursion and the wild expulsions of ethnic Germans, but this . . . Christa’s description of atrocities committed was beyond comprehension. He set the diary aside to finish later, needing to calm himself. Rummaging through the other diaries, he found more from Christa and again placed them into what he surmised was chronological order. Planning to take them home to read tomorrow, he rubber-banded them together.

  He found more diaries from Ilse, that he’d set aside earlier. He gathered them up, too, again placed them in chronological order, and started reading the first one.

  Forty minutes later, he practically fell off his chair. A Landry. Ron Landry was an American airman shot down in Memmingen, Germany. Ilse and Ron. Oh, my God! Finally a connection.

  He set the diary down, open, and leaned back in his chair. Anna and Elsa had told him his grandparents’ names were Tom and Emelie. How the hell were they related? Did Ilse and Ron have a baby? Could that be Tom? He quickly did the math in his head. No, the dates didn’t add up.

  Okay, he rubbed his forehead. Gonna have to talk to Aunt Anna and Aunt Elsa. Maybe they can explain.

  He sat quietly, thinking again about Christa’s diary. He felt a chill run down his spine. The expulsion of the Germans from their homes was too similar to what was currently happening in various parts of the world. Guess people just don’t learn from the mistakes of the past.

  Glancing at the clock, he saw that it was late enough for Tawny and Bianca to be home. He stuffed everything back into the metal box, locked up the house, turning on the porch light to make the house lived in, and headed back home.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Christa Nagel, March, 1945, Altstadt, Sudetenland—

  “I AM SCARED, Mutti,” Christa said. “The soldiers—the fighting—it is getting too close to our town. What happens when they get here?” Two weeks ago, a few families with cars had packed their belongings, filled extra petrol tanks, and le
ft town. Most of the remaining cars in town now, parked on the streets or in garages, were unable to go anywhere because petrol was no longer available. That made leaving almost impossible, except for those wealthy enough to afford train tickets and bribes for their families. Walking was out of the question, being unsafe; not to mention being much too far. A while back Mutti had confided in Christa that she kept money hidden in the house and said she thought she had enough to buy them transportation. Current rumor, however, now claimed trains were no long an option—at least not for Germans in the Sudetenland. There was supposedly a new forbidding Germans from public transportation. No one seemed to know what would happen to a German who tried to leave by train. That’s why Mutti had wanted to go to the train station to check it out. Yesterday, a neighbor from a few houses away had confided in Mutti that she planned to take her kids south to where her sister lived and would take the train in the morning.

  Mutti had stood at the front window, lifting the blackout curtain and peeking out so she could see when Irmgard and her children walked past. When she saw them carrying their suitcases, she and Christa had left their house and joined the small family on their walk.

  Mutti and Christa stood now in front of the train station, watching, waiting to see if anyone was actually getting on the train, or if they might get arrested. Mutti was wringing her hands together. This was the make or break moment. They would find out if their family, too, could leave Altstadt by passenger train. There was no other way.

  A train whistle blew, and everyone held their breaths. The train pulled into the station, black smoke puffing from the engine, brakes screeching, boiler hissing, and a bell clanging.

  Irmgard went up to the conductor and spoke. Christa and Mutti saw them, but were too far away to hear their conversation, especially with the hissing of the train.

  When Irmgard raised her voice, Christa’s ears picked up a few words: soldiers, wrong, stuck. Irmgard swung around suddenly, gathered her four children together, then walked back toward Mutti and Christa.