On Wings of Fire

by Frances Patton Statham

  For two weeks they had been herded together in the most unsanitary conditions, without benefits of soap or water. Coming out to inspect this new wave of prisoners, the commandant turned up his nose and backed away.

  “Bring out the hoses,” he ordered his subordinate and disappeared into his quarters to wait by the warm stove.

  As animals penned together are sluiced on their way to the slaughterhouse, so the prisoners were doused by the hoses under massive pressure, while the howling wind swept in from the mountains, signaling the beginning of winter.

  Heinrich von Freiker stared down at his foot as the doctor changed the dressing. Two of his toes were missing. He could never hope to walk again without a limp.

  He was going home to recuperate, for his hospital bed was needed for those being brought in daily.

  “I should have killed him, Horst,” Heinrich said to his aide waiting to take him to Berlin. “You see what he has done? He has maimed me for life.”

  “You are lucky, my Colonel—to be alive,” Horst reminded him.

  A week later, as Emil von Freiker drove past the rubble along the Wilhelmstrasse and headed toward the hall where the Berlin Philharmonic was tuning up for its evening performance, he was thinking not only of the fate of Heinrich, but also the entire Vaterland. They had both been lucky, for von Runstedt, with Bittrich, had turned the Holland invasion into a rout, buying a little more time for the Third Reich.

  The invasion had also bought a little more time for the final list of people waiting to be arrested because of the attempt on Hitler’s life, for the Führer had reinstated von Rundstedt as commander of OB West, thus taking him away from the purge, something the field marshal should never have been involved in to begin with.

  But now, with the invasion successfully defeated, the purge had begun again, and through von Sydow, Emil had received word that Frau Emma was to be arrested soon. Her only sin was in being related, by marriage, to a general suspected of having a part in the assassination attempt. But if Emil had his way, the voice of the great Frau Emma would be spared.

  The success of his elaborate preparations, which included a car waiting for Frau Emma the moment the concert was over that evening, depended on the mercy of the Allied bombers that had been pounding the city incessantly.

  It was a miracle that the Brandenburg Gates and the Reichstag were still standing, while all around them, other buildings, other artistic works had joined the rubble. Like Hamburg, like Köln, Berlin was now a ghostly skeleton of its former days of glory.

  But the music remained—the soul of Germany, recalling the days before the madman had taken over—and it was for this that Emil lived. He knew that, despite the victory in Holland, despite the propaganda put out by Goebbels of new weapons, new advances, the days of a warring Germany were limited. The Luftwaffe was gone; the Russian front a disaster. They had lost too many men. They could not survive much longer.

  Emil was getting old. Tired of war, not suited for peace, he asked only that the end might be an honorable one and that his son, so changed, could once more become the man he was before the war. And yet even as he wished it, Emil knew it was impossible. Heinrich had tasted power; he had destroyed entire villages with their people, and had boasted openly about it.

  There was a vast difference in being a soldier and in being a slaughterer of women and children. Emil longed for the old days when things were different, but it was too late, too late. The history of Germany was being written in the blood of its innocent victims. And Heinrich, with his sword, was part of it, relegated by Himmler to do a henchman’s work.

  The street became narrow through the rubble and Emil’s driver had difficulty getting past the other vehicles. If the bombers came back that night, Emil feared that the way of escape could easily be blocked for the woman.

  Recuperating from his wound, Heinrich had needed no persuasion from his father to attend the performance that night. Already he was in his seat, with his eyes carefully searching each section—orchestra, loge, balcony. He saw that the guards were already in position in strategic places near each exit.

  Because of his foot, Heinrich would never go back to the panzer division. But his vast anger could be forged into another instrument of death, for Himmler had allowed him, as an SS officer, to transfer to the Gestapo.

  Yes, he would enjoy the concert. Knowing that his father would be hearing Frau Emma for the last time heightened his anticipation of the evening.

  He had never liked the woman, and a firing squad was good enough for her. But Heinrich had planned something else for her daughter, Gretchen—arranging for her death certificate so Himmler would never know what he had done with her.

  “Good evening, Vater.”

  “Heinrich.”

  Emil took his seat beside his son. The lights lowered and the music began. For father and son, each unaware of the other’s plans, the music went unheard. Emil listened for the bombers in the sky, for air-raid sirens, while Heinrich watched the blonde Gretchen, seated in the shadows of the opera box on the far wall opposite him. Occasionally, when his father glanced in his direction, Heinrich put down his binoculars, faced the orchestra, and pretended to listen.

  In the opera box, Gretchen sat and gripped her handkerchief to keep her hands from trembling.

  She and her mother had gone over the plans again and again. After the intermission, Gretchen was to slip away as soon as her mother started singing, when all eyes would be on the stage, and the opera box enclosed in the darkness.

  The design of the box, with a staircase to the dressing rooms below, was a well-guarded secret, known to few people beyond the manager of the hall and certain members of the orchestra who slipped back and forth to listen, when their exotic instruments were not required for a portion of the program.

  The orchestra finished the first half of the program and the crowd began to file out for intermission. The audience gathered in small groups, drinking their schnapps and wine. Men in uniform were casually situated at each exit, no different from any other night, with the usual sprinkling of officers throughout the crowd.

  The bell sounded the end of intermission and Heinrich, watching the young woman as she walked toward the heavy draperies that enclosed the box, nodded to the SS officer to take his place directly beside the box. He would make certain that she did not escape after the program.

  The lights lowered; the manager, joining Gretchen in the box, applauded as the great Frau Emma von Erhard walked onto the stage with the conductor. During the noise of the applause, Gretchen, with a fleeting glance toward her mother, opened the small trap door, climbed through, and closed it after her.

  The manager, still applauding, pushed the rug over the telltale spot with his foot and slid his chair a few inches back.

  Down the stairs Gretchen went, her soft slippers making no noise. When she had reached the dressing room, she quickly gathered the small bundle from its hiding place in the wardrobe closet, stuffed it into the empty violin case, and hurried through the alley to the waiting Horch.

  A voice, low, disguised, inquired, “Is your violin a Stradivarius, Fräulein?”

  “Nein. It is an Amati.”

  With her correct answer, he said, “Get in.”

  Clutching the violin case holding her fake ID, her ration card, and a change of clothes, she did as she was told. The car started up, the purr of the engine making little noise in the night. As the car began to edge through the alley, Gretchen became alarmed.

  “Wait. We have to wait for my mother.”

  But the man,, pressing his foot on the accelerator, answered, “Your mother is not coming, Fräulein.”

  “Yes, she is. Stop. Oh, please stop. We must go back.”

  The driver paid no attention to Gretchen. When she attempted to open the door, the driver said, “Don’t be a fool, Fräulein. You will kill yourself if you try to jump.” And he locked all the doors to prevent such an occurrence.

  Inside the hall, the sound that Emil feared was heard. T
he lights went out; the music stopped. Shrill sirens took over, bombarding the nerves with their incessant noise, while the audience scurried to the bomb shelter directly beneath the hall.

  Outside, large artillery guns rumbled. Searchlights penetrated the heavens to pinpoint the offending bombers. But their underbellies, painted black, were camouflaged against the black of the sky, making it difficult, except by gambler’s chance, for the guns to shoot the marauders out of the sky.

  A sadness overtook Emil as a different emotion touched Heinrich—anger at the interruption of his triumph, cutting short the evening as he sat deliberately savoring the plans he had made for Gretchen von Erhard.

  In the darkness, Heinrich shouted to the guards. “Stop her! You must not let her escape.” But his voice was lost in the noise of the audience rushing to safety. “Give me the flashlight!” Heinrich ordered, grabbing one from a guard. And with its beam showing the way, he walked up the steps to the loge and the box where Gretchen was sitting.

  He thrust the draperies back and searched every corner, but the box was empty. “Fool! You let her get away,” he ranted at the young SS officer still stationed at his post outside the box.

  “It happened so suddenly, mein Oberturmbahnführer,” he apologized. “The people came out in such a rush. But surely, she is in the shelter with the others.”

  “For your sake, I hope she is.”

  Heinrich left a miserable young officer and hurried to the shelter where the entire audience hovered in groups of twos and threes. Like the klieg light in the heavens, the beam of light from Heinrich’s confiscated flashlight swept impatiently back and forth, up and down, searching out the blonde girl, Gretchen. Despite the havoc outside, the guards stood at each exit, following orders not to take shelter as the others had done.

  Aggravated by the pain in his foot, Heinrich became a madman, close kin with his supreme commander. As rage took over, he became his own victim, searching for the one who had disappeared in the darkness, as if she had been whisked away by gods determined to keep her from Heinrich’s grasp. But if the daughter had been lost, Heinrich was gratified that the mother had not flown, as well. At least something could be salvaged from the disaster of the evening.

  “Stop! No cars are allowed!”

  The gruff voice at the barricade at the end of the street brought the black Horch to a halt. But the driver, oblivious to the action around him, had only one mission—to get Gretchen out of the city.

  Showing the order signed with Hitler’s own High Command seal, he said, “I must get through immediately.”

  The man saw the small anonymous figure in the back seat and curled his lips in disgust. He had enough to do without being bothered with the mistresses of high-ranking officers.

  “I take no responsibility for her safety,” he said returning the papers to the chauffeur.

  “She is my responsibility,” the cold voice replied. “Yours is to let us through.”

  Resenting the arrogant voice of the driver, the man in the Home Guard grudgingly removed the barricade for the black car to edge through.

  As the car left the bombarded city, fires had already started and the sound of wailing ambulances joined the cacophony of terror.

  Finally the artillery guns stopped. And Berlin was left to cope with the same devastation that Hitler had meted out so unflinchingly over the cities of Europe and the British Isles. Once again, the victims were people unfortunate enough to be in the corridors of war, their nationalities of little consequence.

  Three days later, in a small castle hidden in the Bavarian Alps, Gretchen von Erhard awoke.

  A maid, several years younger than she, knocked on the bedroom door and, with a light curtsey, carried a breakfast tray to the fine old poster bed, carved with the story of Rumpelstiltskin upon its four posts—a German woodcutter’s whim designed to please the blonde daughter of the house, long dead.

  “Good morning, Fräulein. You are awake?” she asked the shadowy figure lifting her head from the soft down pillow.

  “Yes, I fear I have slept for a very long time.”

  “That is to be expected—coming as you did, so late in the night.”

  The maid walked to the draperies and opened them wide. Smiling, she turned to the bed, where the sunlight now revealed the Fräulein’s face.

  The buxom young country maid, with the same pink round cheeks as her six sisters, gave a start as the shadowed figure became visible in the late-morning sunlight.

  Hair, long and blonde and slightly tousled from a restless night, blue eyes the color of robin’s eggs, and a flawless, creamy complexion as perfect as the white lace of her gown greeted the maid in the figure of Gretchen. Her supple, slender body was now free from its bondage of formless schoolgirl’s uniform and ugly black stockings.

  Gretchen rose and, with the tray in her hands, walked toward the small table by the window.

  “I think I’ll have my breakfast here, in the sun,” she said, smiling at the dark-haired maid.

  “I brought you a newspaper also, Fräulein,” the maid informed Gretchen, finding her voice again.

  Quickly, she curtseyed as if in the presence of royalty. Suddenly remembering to introduce herself, she said, “My name is Heidi. When you’re ready for your bath, please pull the cord.” She pointed to the needlepoint bellpull near the door and then was gone.

  The newspaper lay forgotten on the tray where Heidi had place it, for Gretchen was reveling in the taste of coffee which she had not sampled in three years. Available only on the black market where it was beyond the budget of Gretchen and her mother, coffee was a forgotten luxury. Only when she had finished the cup did she remember the newspaper.

  She unfolded it carefully, and as she turned to the inside, the small headlines leaped out at her. With incredulous eyes, she read:

  THE GREAT FRAU EMMA VON ERHARD IS DEAD!”

  “No!” Gretchen cried out, pushing the newspaper from her. It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true. But the newspaper drew her as it repelled, and she began to read the article, detailing the circumstances of her mother’s death.

  “Mutter,” Gretchen said aloud, the anguish in her voice transforming itself into tears that trailed down flawless cheeks. The dampness marred her vision and made it impossible for her to read further. She should have stayed in Berlin. She should have waited for her mother before going to the car. And yet even as she thought this, she knew her mother had not planned it that way.

  She had found the letter hidden in the bundle of clothes, with her ID card.

  By the time you read this, my Liebchen, you will know that we have been separated for the first time in our lives. I am too well known to hide. Whatever happens, do not be sad for me. Death means little to me, if I know that you have survived. For as long as you are alive, I live too. Good-bye, my darling, and do not grieve for me.

  Frau Emma’s admonition went unheeded. Gretchen, brushing back the tears, struggled to read the newspaper account of what had happened.

  The great dramatic soprano, star of the Vienna Opera House, and, more recently, soloist with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, succumbed to injuries suffered in the air raid that took place in Berlin this past Wednesday evening. She died as she had lived—with a song in her heart.

  Frau Emma will be laid to rest in a state funeral, beside her late husband, General Gustav von Erhard, in the family plot at Götterung on Monday at three in the afternoon. There are no immediate survivors.

  The article ended:

  The singer was distantly related to General Max Bucher.

  With one sentence, the newspaper had refuted the Nazi propaganda. For in publishing the name of one of the generals in the conspiracy, the link was clear. Frau Emma von Erhard had been murdered by the Gestapo.

  For a long time, Gretchen sat by the window. Then she drew the draperies and, with the room as dark as her heart, she threw herself across the bed and wept.

  Much later in the afternoon, with her grief fully spent, Gretchen rose an
d dressed in the change of clothes she had brought with her in the violin case.

  As she dressed, she began to make plans to attend her mother’s funeral at Götterung, while Marsh Wexford, in Stalag XIII-A, began to make plans for his escape.

  Chapter 40

  “My son. My own son! How could Heinrich have done such a thing?”

  A haunted General Emil von Freiker, with his military briefcase at his side, rode toward the Reichstag, his route unvaried for the past three years.

  The despondency over Frau Emma’s un-warranted death gripped him, bringing an ache that refused any comfort. He would never be able to go to the symphony without remembering Heinrich’s deed—what had been, for Emil, an oasis of joy amid the madness.

  He walked up the steps of the Reichstag like an old man, with stooped shoulders and a heavy heart.

  “Emil,” a voice called out.

  He turned around to see his longtime friend von Sydow motioning to him.

  “I must talk with you, Emil. Privately.”

  Emil gave his briefcase to the guard inside the door and retraced his steps to the curb where von Sydow waited. If it were of a confidential nature, the street was safer than the military officers inside, where all conversations could be monitored.

  “Let’s walk together,” von Sydow suggested, taking Emil by the arm as he signaled his driver to follow in the car. “I’ve made an important discovery that I think you should know about.”

  “Not another attempt on the Führer’s life, I hope.”

  “No, nothing like that.”

  “Good. We cannot afford another purge.”

  “I’ve just returned from a visit to one of the prisoner-of-war camps, Emil. It was quite a shock to see a young paratrooper who could have passed for your double twenty-five years ago. Blond, blue-eyed, your same height. . .”

  “And what’s so surprising about that, Wilhelm? There must be many men in this world who resemble other men.”