On Wings of Fire

by Frances Patton Statham

  “Which one of you is staying to guard the grave?” Marsh inquired, for he had no way of knowing which was the driver.

  “Herr Mueller said nothing about staying. Our work is finished.”

  “Colonel von Freiker has changed that order. One of you will remain until the guard comes to relieve you. Which will it be?”

  Two of the men looked at each other. “Hermann, you live closest,” the older man volunteered.

  “Then Hermann, you stay,” Marsh ordered.

  An unhappy Hermann watched the truck leave the cemetery and start up the winding road around the Schloss. Sitting in the back of the truck, Marsh pulled the cap farther down on his face as the vehicle stopped at the barricade.

  The guards, thinking that Gretchen had already escaped, paid little attention to the men in the truck. After a cursory glance, they removed the barricade and the driver left the Schloss behind.

  The village lay below the Schloss, and the truck headed east in that direction. Shortly before they reached the town with its tall spire in the center and its houses lying in squares around it, Marsh tapped on the coffin. “Climb out,” he whispered, “but stay under the tarpaulin.”

  Hidden under Marsh’s jacket was the tweed cap Gretchen had left in the herdsman’s cottage, for he knew she would need it once she had disposed of the veiled black hat. He pulled it out and pushed it under the tarpaulin that flapped in the sturdy breeze.

  With only the canvas separating them, Gretchen could feel Marsh’s heavy jacket against her as he kept the tarpaulin from flying off the truck and exposing the coffin.

  “Who are you?” Gretchen suddenly asked.

  He looked toward the closed windows of the cab of the truck. “An American.”

  So he was in just as much danger as she, or perhaps even more.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Switzerland,” he replied in a low voice.

  “You’re headed in the wrong direction.”

  He pressed his hand against the tarpaulin to warn her. The truck began slowing down and then came to a stop to allow a farmer with his cow to cross the road.

  When it started up again, Gretchen whispered, “I can help you, if you like.”

  “How?”

  “I know this country well. I could be your guide.”

  Marsh was not certain that he wanted a guide who was being hunted by the Gestapo. Yet he had gotten hopelessly lost by himself.

  Taking his silence for acquiescence, she said, “Where are we now?”

  “Just coming to a long bridge. I’ll have to get you out of the truck soon.”

  “I’ll meet you in the alley behind the Biergarten at eight o’clock.”

  The next time the truck slowed, Marsh pressed the tarpaulin. “There’s no one in sight. Just slide to the end of the truck, and I’ll keep you covered.”

  Gretchen edged her way to the edge of the truck as Marsh held down the canvas. He looked toward the two men inside the truck, but they were more interested in a woman sitting in the window of a house. With their attention riveted on the window, Gretchen jumped down, remaining in a crouched position at the curbing until the truck picked up speed and disappeared.

  Another block and Marsh tapped on the window to stop the truck. “You can let me off here,” he mimed, since they were unable to hear him with the glass rolled up.

  The driver nodded and stopped. He rolled down his window and inquired, “What shall I do with the pine box?”

  “You may sell it,” Marsh stated. “The colonel does not mind.”

  The two men grinned. Coffins brought a good price. The money would buy many a stein of beer during the winter. “Danke,” the driver said.

  “Bitte.” Marsh waited for the men to drive off. Then he retrieved his black armband, signaling a recent bereavement, making it easier for him, as a stranger, to use his food card.

  The rucksack. He had forgotten and left the rucksack in the coffin. Nervously, Marsh felt for his ID and ration card. They were still in the pocket of his jacket. But his combat boots were in the rucksack, with the map and trench knife.

  How could he have been so careless? What could he do about it? Absolutely nothing. By now, the guards would have discovered the gravedigger at the cemetery. And the search for the fourth man would be on. The only thing he could do was to stay out of sight until dark and meet Gretchen in the alley behind the Biergarten. He didn’t dare use his ration card in the meantime, for any stranger would be remembered when the Gestapo began to question the storekeepers.

  Chapter 43

  By the next day, Heinrich’s anger had spawned into a murderous obsession. He sat at a desk in the Schloss, with the contents of Marsh’s rucksack laid out on the table, while the tower clock in the nearby town clanged its chimes over the countryside—three times, like the cock’s crow, announcing betrayal.

  He stared at the guard standing before him. But the only sound in the room, besides the steady crackle of a fire, was the nervous tapping of Heinrich’s baton against the side of the desk.

  “And the three gravediggers have also vanished?” Heinrich inquired in a deceptively benign voice.

  “Ja, Herr Colonel.”

  Gretchen von Erhard was already listed as dead. He could not issue a warrant for her arrest, or else he would be called upon to explain to Himmler. But the escaped prisoner who had, in turn, helped Gretchen to escape, was another matter. He knew they were together. And if he captured one, he would capture the other.

  “Horst, bring me the dossier on the escaped prisoner from Stalag XIII-A.”

  Heinrich stared down at the information before him. His eyes narrowed at the man’s picture. Captain Daniel “Marsh” Wexford. Atlanta, Georgia. 82nd Airborne Division. Was he destined to be plagued by the same American over and over, like a bad dream that kept recurring night after night? And the worst nightmare of all was that his own father might have had a hand in the escape.

  There was one way to find out. “Horst, get Dräger on the field telephone,” Heinrich ordered, closing the folder with a snap.

  Horst, obeying, went outside to the caravan, the mobile unit containing the communications equipment.

  An hour later, an exhausted Gretchen lay asleep in a barn while Marsh heated water over a hastily made fire.

  He almost hated to waken her, for it had been an extremely long, hazardous day. But they would have to press on after they had eaten. It was too dangerous to remain in the same province with Heinrich, for Marsh felt certain that he would be after them both.

  Sitting by the small fire pit he had dug in the earthen floor of the deserted barn, Marsh turned his hand palm up and stared at it., as if the cross Paulina di Resa had drawn in it were still visible.

  Emil von Freiker. Heinrich von Freiker. Marsh had no doubt now that the general had arranged his escape. All this time, he wondered about his father. Now he knew. But seeing him was not as he’d imagined it would be. There was no instant emotion, only curiosity and a tacit acknowledgement between two men who could never be more than enemies, for Marsh could not forget his mother, Ailly, and what the war had done to her.

  He gazed at the sleeping Gretchen, so vulnerable. A pawn of war, too. And perhaps it was because of his mother, Ailly, that he had not remained in hiding until Gretchen had been caught, but instead helped her to escape from Heinrich.

  “Gretchen,” he called softly. “Wake up.”

  When there was no response, he walked over to the pile of straw where she lay and placed a hand on her arm to give her a gentle shake.

  Her blue eyes opened instantly—large, alarmed, but with the softness that comes from sleep.

  “What is it?” she asked, sitting up. Her long blonde hair had come loose as she slept. It framed her small face until she quickly twisted it into a knot on the top of her head and hid it under the tweed cap.

  “The food is ready. That’s all.”

  She walked to the fire, stiffly at first, like a young colt not yet certain of its legs.

/>   “What time is it?”

  Marsh looked down at his watch. “Four-thirty.”

  Gretchen took a cup of tea. After holding it for a moment to warm her hands, she lifted it to her lips. “We still have over an hour of daylight,” she commented.

  From her remark, Marsh knew that Gretchen was also thinking of Heinrich and the Gestapo.

  Dividing the brown bread, Marsh said, “I still cannot fathom a country destroying its own people. What did you do wrong, Gretchen—or your mother, for that matter?”

  Gretchen took a bite before answering. “Germany was never my country. I am Austrian, as my father was. He refused a commission offered by Hitler. And he was executed for it.”

  “But your mother had no part in that.”

  “All my mother ever wanted to do was to sing—and to protect me from the Nazis.” Gretchen looked up at Marsh. “She was an American, you know.”

  “No, I didn’t know.”

  “But she became an Austrian when she married my father. It was after the Great War. She went to Vienna to study with Professor Hartzig. And a year later, on the night of her debut at the Vienna Opera House, she met my father.” Gretchen suddenly smiled.

  “My father always enjoyed telling the story of how she turned him down the first time he proposed. She was afraid he would make her give up her singing to become a Hausfrau.”

  “Evidently, he convinced her otherwise,” Marsh replied.

  Gretchen nodded and continued with her eating. “He was so proud of her. I remember sitting as a child in the opera box with him, and watching my mother on stage. But then—things changed. . .”

  A forlorn look replaced the brief happiness that her memories had dredged up. “Finally, even her voice couldn’t save her from the Nazis.”

  “Where will you go, Gretchen?”

  “I don’t know. But that isn’t important for the moment. Where will you go, once you have escaped?” she asked in return.

  “Rejoin my division.”

  Marsh began to put out the fire and erase the telltale sign of their use of the barn. He wanted no farmer shot for harboring them. “Have you finished?”

  She hurriedly drank the last of the liquid. “Yes,” she responded and handed the cup to Marsh to put back into the tattered bag that had replaced the sturdy rucksack.

  The two walked to the barn door and as Marsh left, and Gretchen waited until he had given her the all-clear sign, then she too exited the barn.

  Small snowflakes drifted down and landed on Gretchen’s face. The mountains in the distance were completely covered with snow, and a filmy haze stretched over the valleys where smoke drifted upward to meet the clouds. The fall had been cold and rainy. Now winter had come early, making it difficult for people without homes and a warm fireside.

  Gretchen was cold, but she did not complain. She was sorry, though, that she had been unable to keep the black cape. She could have put it to good use.

  At the same time, Marsh lamented the loss of his trench knife and the blanket. But he had been lucky to acquire a pocketknife in the town before he’d met Gretchen in the alley behind the Biergarten.

  A drone of planes overhead prompted Marsh to dive for cover. He forced Gretchen down into the narrow ditch with him. The earth shook while the sky behind them lit up with smoke and flames, as the incendiaries found their mark. Marsh, seeing the fire so close, was sorry they had left the barn.

  A sudden strafing along the ditch plowed up the ground near them and made Marsh seek other shelter.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he said, crawling down the open ditch toward the group of trees ahead. Directly after him came Gretchen, determined to keep up.

  Once Marsh deemed it safe to move, the two began walking again. Flakes of snow multiplied, hiding the ground before them.

  As he looked at Gretchen, Marsh saw that her lips were almost blue. “Here, take my jacket,” he said, removing it.

  “No. I’m all right. You keep it,” she said , refusing his offer.

  He began to walk faster, urging her on to shelter. What a pity they had not been able to keep the horse. It would have made the journey much easier for the girl.

  In the twilight, a tall tower rose from the next village, and Gretchen stopped for a moment to listen to the bells. They were a replica of the bells of the previous village, but they echoed over the mountains and the valley far more urgently.

  Covered by the first snow of the season, the town took on a special quality, as if it might have been designed by an artist for a picture postcard. If there were any signs of war and rubble, they were hidden under the blanket of white.

  Mesmerized by the sight, Gretchen said, “Its beautiful, isn’t it, Marsh?”

  He smiled at the shy manner in which she said his name. “Yes—beautiful, but treacherous. We can’t go down. We’ll have to find shelter somewhere else.”

  Gretchen knew the wisdom of his decision, and yet she was disappointed, for she remembered the village from her childhood when she had gone there as a child with her father to buy a present for her mother’s birthday.

  It was precisely this familiarity with the village that made her remember the shepherd’s hut on its other side. The shepherd had carved exquisite animals from wood, and she had begged her father to take her to his hut after they had bought a crystal piece in a shop in town.

  If the old shepherd were still alive, she knew they would be safe for the night.

  “I know a shelter—if you don’t mind walking a little farther.”

  Gretchen said it almost casually. She had not complained of the fast pace or the cold that had penetrated her bones and was making her feel slightly numb and sleepy. “It’s on the hillside beyond. We’ll have to walk around the village to get there.”

  “Can you make it that far?”

  “I have no other choice.”

  Gretchen took the stick that Marsh had fashioned for her, dug it into the steep hillside, and began the climb downward, to skirt the village in the valley and to gain the higher elevation on the other side.

  All at once, the world became silent. The bells in the village ceased ringing. Even Gretchen’s footsteps were silent, carpeted by the snow. It was as if the village had been put to sleep for a hundred years. At that moment, Gretchen felt that she, too, could sleep for a hundred years.

  The meager sun that had lain on the crest of the mountain suddenly fell behind it, plunging the earth into layers of purple—magenta, violet, and aubergine. Like glasses of wine staining a cloth of linen, the colors gradually spread over the snow, changing its appearance to a darker hue.

  An animal howled in its lair and a night bird flapped its wings as Marsh and Gretchen passed by. No one else disturbed the winter scene.

  About the time that Gretchen despaired of ever finding the shepherd’s hut, its dim outline appeared out of the darkness.

  “There it is,” Gretchen said, pointing to the rude structure that offered no welcoming light. “I’ll go ahead and see if Reiner still lives there.”

  Her timid knock, her soft calling of his name brought no response from within. Gretchen tried the door, but it was locked. Seeing her lack of progress, Marsh stepped forward, put his shoulder against the wood, and forced the door open.

  Once Marsh had lit a match and looked around the room, he saw that it had been unoccupied for a long time. He set down the tattered bag, closed the door, and lit the old wax candle that still sat in the middle of the rustic table. He ignored Gretchen as he settled into the hut and investigated the corners for any unwanted guests.

  By the time he turned back to Gretchen, she was slumped against the empty hearth with her eyes closed.

  “Gretchen!” Marsh said, walking to her and bending over, “You mustn’t go to sleep, yet.”

  He reached out to touch her. Her skin was icy cold. “Gretchen, wake up,” he urged, for she was chilled far beyond what was safe. He began to rub her hands vigorously. He removed her wet shoes and stockings and placed her small feet into
his hands to warm them, too.

  Removing the bedcover, he shook it out and wrapped it around her and held her close to him, to absorb his own body warmth.

  Her teeth began to chatter and she protested the intimate touch of his body against hers.

  “Don’t be afraid, Gretchen,” he said. But he didn’t mind her struggle against him, for it served to awaken her. He was afraid that if she went to sleep in her state, she might never waken again.

  As she opened her eyes, she pushed against him to free herself and Marsh let her go.

  Standing up, he left her. He had not planned to build a fire, but Gretchen had made him change his mind. And he would take the opportunity to dry their shoes and socks before the fire, as they warmed themselves.

  After a few false starts with the damp wood, the fire finally caught. Gretchen, realizing what Marsh had done, looked at him in the glow of the fire.

  “Thank you, Marsh, for making me stay awake.”

  He smiled. “I didn’t want to lose my guide.”

  They sat, toasting their feet on the hearth, with socks and stockings hung to dry and shoes propped to one side of the hearth. They drank the hot tea he made from melted snow, but saved the rest of the bread for morning.

  As the flame began to die, Marsh said, “You realize we cannot keep the fire going all night? We don’t have enough wood. And it’s too dangerous.”

  Her sober mood matched his. “I was afraid of that. But it felt wonderful to be warm again. Even for a little while.”

  Marsh looked at Gretchen, so ill-clad for the winter weather. And he decided he would go into the village the next day to purchase warmer clothes for her. If that left little money for food, so be it.

  When the fire went out, Marsh wrapped Gretchen in the bedclothes and cradled her in his arms. She did not protest this time. It was necessary for survival.

  For one brief night, Gretchen von Erhard felt safe in the midst of the nightmare.