by Dean Hughes
“We’ll die today,” Hans said.
It certainly did seem likely, but it had seemed likely for such a long time that Peter didn’t say anything.
“Tanks will be coming before long. And there’s not one thing we can do about it. We hardly have enough ammunition to shoot at their soldiers. What can we do against tanks?”
“My name isn’t Stutz. It’s Stoltz,” Peter told Hans. It was something he had wanted to say for a long time.
“What do you mean?”
“I lied. I told you a false name. I used this name for the army, too.”
“But why?”
“It doesn’t matter. But I want you to know my name.”
Hans was gray, the color of the whole world now. His eyes had lost their tint, like his faded uniform, and his freckles were gone. Everything was lost in the haze, the frozen air. Hans looked like an old man, with sunken eyes and bones for a face.
“You’ve always kept secrets, Peter. Why?”
“There were things that happened. Before all this. But it doesn’t matter now.”
“Of course it matters. We’re the only ones left. You and me. It matters.”
Peter understood Hans’s meaning, but he didn’t have the energy to explain. He knew that he had always possessed a secret that would make Hans hate him, and he couldn’t reveal that. But at least today, if it was going to be their last day, he had wanted Hans to know his name.
“You never wanted to fight in this war–not the way the rest of us did.”
“No. I didn’t.”
“Tell me why, Peter. Who are you?”
“Hans, I can’t.”
“You need to tell me something.”
“I don’t love the Führer. I never did.” And then Peter searched for some way to explain. “My family tried to help a Jewish family. There was a little boy. Benjamin. The Gestapo took him. Maybe they killed him. That was wrong, Hans. That was wrong.” Peter was gasping for air. The words had cost him in strength, in breath, and the memory was too much for him. It called to mind a self, a time, that no longer seemed real.
Hans was staring at Peter. But there was no hatred in his eyes. “You should have told me before,” was all he said. He didn’t seem to care about the rest.
They sat next to each other after that, their shoulders against each other. And Peter felt a little better. He was glad that Hans knew his name. When someone shouted, “Tanks!” he felt the old terror, the conditioned instinct, but at least his secret was out, and Hans was still his friend. He and Hans didn’t stand up. Peter knew that when his sergeant commanded him to do so, he would try, and he would shoot his rifle, if the thing would fire in this cold, but what he couldn’t do this time was run again. There was little room left for retreat anyway, the harbor not all that far behind them.
So the tanks would come. And that would be the end.
When artillery fire began again, Peter was vaguely surprised. Usually the fire ended when the tanks and the riflemen appeared. Then he heard Gottschall shouting, “Those are our guns. Look what’s happening. They’re hammering the Russian positions.”
That made no sense. The Germans didn’t have any guns. Hans got up and looked. “Ships!” he said. “Our ships.”
Peter had a hard time believing such a thing was possible. In his mind, all German forces were in disarray, on the verge of destruction. It was hard to imagine that from somewhere, battle ships could be dispatched to the Baltic, sent to defend the troops. Did someone–Hitler or some general–actually think that Germany could still win this war?
“They’re blasting those Russian tanks,” Hans said with life in his voice, as though he had returned from the dead. “The tanks are pulling back.”
But Peter knew the truth. The Russians still had massive forces out there waiting to attack–more than any pair of ships could stop for very long. This was not salvation; it was only prolonging the inevitable one more time. Peter felt the same relief Hans did, the release from the immediate horror that had lain beyond their trench, but he also knew he didn’t have the power to pull himself up many more times. So what had he gained? He tried to cough, tried to clear himself of some of the congestion within him, but his chest had turned to rock, and nothing was letting loose.
The men who were in better shape seemed to find new hope in this artillery fire, and they responded. German soldiers who had been hunkering down by the bay, hoping for a boat to take them away, returned to their outposts, to the trenches, and that day the fighting continued. Peter even got up and fired his rifle for a time. And the tanks held off, probably because the Russians didn’t want to bring them out to be fired on by the German ships.
That night Peter and his friends returned to their pillbox. Peter lay on the concrete floor, the cold penetrating him, and he wished for the blankness he had once associated with sleep. But then, sometime in the middle of the night, he heard, as though part of his confused dreams, a voice–his sergeant’s voice: “Up. Everyone up. There’s a boat in the harbor. If we can get there first, we can get out of this hellhole.”
Peter couldn’t do that. His sickness no longer had any symptoms, only the dead weight of his body and the rock in his chest. But he knew he couldn’t get up and run to the harbor. Hans was pulling on him, however, and then someone else, and he managed to keep his feet under him as they pulled him from the pillbox and down a cobblestone street. He hardly knew what was happening, but he was moving, and his body, under this exertion, seemed to be waking up a little, hurting more.
They were at the water’s edge with a wild crowd of shoving, frantic soldiers when the word began to spread. “They’re not taking soldiers. They’re only taking food.”
“What?” Peter couldn’t grasp this.
Apparently the German headquarters had been passing out cans of food slowly, hanging on to enough to continue rationing to the men. This food was needed somewhere south, where soldiers were starving. The next boats would pick up the men, but the food had to be gotten out while there was someone left to defend the position.
“That’s crazy!” Hans was screaming.
Peter slumped to the ground.
“They’re sacrificing us for someone else to live. Why? What makes them any more valuable than us?”
“Be quiet, Hans! That’s enough.” This was Gottschall, shouting into Hans’s face. “They sent us gunships today. They saved us. Now we can fight another day, and then they will pull us out.”
“Peter is dying!” Hans shouted. “Can’t you see that?”
The sergeant dropped down on his knees, and he grabbed Peter and shook him, sending waves of pain through his body. “No you aren’t,” he shouted into Peter’s face. “Don’t let anyone tell you that.”
Peter was relieved by Hans’s words. It was as though Hans had given him permission. He felt himself drift away.
When Peter awakened, he was back at the pillbox. He had obviously been carried there. “Peter, Peter,” Hans was yelling to him. And he was slapping him, rather sharply. “Don’t give up. Boats are coming. Maybe today. You have to eat something. And drink.”
Peter hardly knew what he wanted most–to live or to die–but at least something in him said he should try. And so he ate a few bites of something foul tasting–maybe a rotten potato. And he sipped at a warm drink, a tea of some kind. He could hear the rumble of artillery and mortar fire, but he was able to slip away from his fear now and return to the oblivion he longed for.
That night he awakened, and this time Hans was pulling him to his feet again. “We’ve got to move down to the water. We have to be ready if a boat comes for us.”
Outside the pillbox, the pounding of artillery was incessant, the shattering of buildings, the scattering of debris. The dark was full of dirt that filled up Peter’s lungs as he tried to get his breath. He couldn’t imagine going out into all that.
“It’s our only hope, Peter. If we don’t get out tonight, the Russians will overrun us in the morning. Even our ships won’t be abl
e to hold them off.”
That was certainly true. Peter found a little reserve in himself that he hadn’t thought was there. With Hans’s help, he got to his feet. But outside, try as he might, he couldn’t make a run for it. He could only stagger along with Hans’s support. The two walked straight down the street toward the harbor, and all around them the explosions were crashing, the concussions thumping through the town, off the walls, drawing away all the air.
“Just keep going. Keep going,” Hans kept saying.
Then a shell struck a building next to them. There was a tremendous flash, and a wall of bricks knocked both of them to the ground. Hans went down on top of Peter, and Peter heard him moan. He had taken the brunt of the blow.
Peter struggled, found some strength, and rolled Hans and some of the rubble off him. “Hans, can you hear me?” he shouted into his face. The explosions kept booming, lighting Hans’s face, but he was unconscious. His head was bleeding. “Hans! We’ve got to get up. Come on.”
Peter struggled to his feet, and he pulled Hans to a sitting position. But he couldn’t do more than that. He dropped to his knees. Another explosion rocked the area, the concussion slamming Peter down across his friend. Peter gasped for air, tried to think what else he could do. And finally he turned to a power he remembered. “Lord, please,” he said. “Help me get Hans out of here.”
He got up, pulled Hans to a sitting position again. “Can you hear me?” he yelled into Hans’s face.
Hans nodded. His eyes came open just a little.
“You’ve got to get up, if you can. I’ll help you.”
He pulled Hans by the arms, and Hans found enough strength, with the help, to get to his feet. Peter bent and let Hans fold over his shoulder, hefted him, got himself upright, and then staggered under the weight but began the walk to the harbor.
***
When Peter awoke, he didn’t recognize anything around him. He tried to sit up, but Sergeant Gottschall appeared. “Stay down,” he said.
By then Peter felt a strange motion, as though the earth had begun swaying under him. “Where are we?” he asked.
“On a ship. We’re safe.”
“Where’s Hans?”
“He’s on the ship too.”
“Is he all right then?”
“He’s alive. But he took a terrible blow to his head. He’s not well.”
“How did we get here?”
“You carried him. You got him to the dock. Then we helped you both get on board.”
“I don’t remember.”
“I know. Be thankful for anything you can’t remember.”
“Where are we going?”
“Pillau, they say. That’s in East Prussia, well ahead of the Russians for now.”
Peter felt the weight of a blanket on top of him, but he was very cold. Inside his chest was the familiar block of weight. Throughout his body he still felt the same weakness, death trying to work its way into his head. “I think it’s too late for me,” Peter said.
“You picked up your friend and carried him here. There’s still something left in you.”
Peter felt a tremor go through his body, and then a power, like heat. It was something he hadn’t felt for such a long time. He had prayed, he remembered, and afterward, he had carried Hans. That was real. Peter began to cry. The tears dribbled from the corners of his eyes and down his temples. Something seemed to be breaking loose inside him now, the return of hope changing everything. He began to cough.
Aboard ship there was no medicine. But the sergeant watched over Peter, kept him warm, fed him a little. By the end of the long day, the ship arrived in Pillau. Conditions were not much better there, but at least Peter was placed in a little hospital. And a nurse fed him a broth that heated him up inside. The coughing was wracking his body now, but the congestion was breaking. He felt more strength, and also more sickness, but he knew that was good.
In the same little hospital, with men crowded in everywhere, Hans lay still. His head was wrapped in bandages, and his right arm was held in a bloody sling. Peter could see him from across the room, but he was too weak to go to him. He kept watching, however, and on the third day Hans moved, and then he cried out. Peter responded immediately. He pulled himself off his cot and walked to Hans. He took hold of his hand. “It’s all right. You’re in a hospital,” he said.
Hans’s eyes looked wild. “I hurt,” he said, not naming the place of his pain.
“I know. We got a building blown onto us.”
“What?”
But Peter could see that nothing was clear to Hans now. And it was too much effort to go back and tell it all. “You need to rest.”
Hans kept staring, obviously working to understand. “You don’t love the Führer, Peter. But I do.”
There were men in the room who were awake and well enough to hear these words. But that didn’t frighten Peter. No one cared anymore. Or at least he couldn’t imagine that they did–not in this filthy old building, where the smell of gangrene and death filled the air. “I know you do,” Peter said.
“Peter, you must love the Führer. It’s the only reason for all this.”
“I know. It is the only reason.”
“We have to fight. We have to stop the Russians. For the Fatherland. Don’t you know this?”
“Yes.”
“Why else did we do this? Tell me that, Peter.”
“Just rest now. You’re getting better now. You’ll go home. Next year, at Christmas, you’ll be home.”
“No. I must continue to fight. We must drive the Russians back. Do you understand? We must make this sacrifice–for our people. Peter, you must join your heart to this cause. You have never done that.” Hans tried to push himself up, but the effort was too great, and he dropped back immediately, and then he groaned and his eyes rolled back.
Peter watched Hans slip back into unconsciousness, or sleep. But a woman–a nurse’s aide–finally came, and she told Peter to get back to his bed. “If you’re well enough to run around this way, we’ll send you back to the battle. We need the bed, you know.”
Peter returned to his cot and lay down, spent from the effort, but all that day and night he watched Hans, who was sometimes awake, screaming out in pain or talking wildly, demanding his uniform, his rifle, so he could return to the battle, and sometimes asleep and moaning.
A medic came through the room late in the day. Peter asked him, “Please, can you get something for my friend? He needs morphine.”
“We have nothing,” the man said without emotion.
“What can you do for him?”
“Nothing. We set his arm. We wrapped his head. But there’s nothing more to do. He’s injured inside his head and inside his body. He won’t last much longer.”
“No, no. He’s getting better. He’s much better than he was at first.”
But the man didn’t answer. He merely walked on to the next cot.
Ten days passed, and Hans continued to sink, never again returning to consciousness. Eventually his breathing was barely discernible, and Peter could see what was coming.
There was so much that Peter didn’t understand. Back in Memel, after Hans had been injured, Peter had finally turned to the Lord. But his prayer had been for Hans, and it was Peter’s life that was being saved. With so many dying, everywhere, Peter wondered, had the Lord actually taken an interest in him? Maybe not; maybe all this was pure chance. And yet, when he shut his eyes and tried to remember the renewal he had experienced back on the ship, he felt the warmth spread through him again. What came to mind was his father, his voice, and a distant memory. As a little boy, he had fallen down and hurt himself, and his father had picked him up and held him, had whispered in his ear, “Ich liebe Dich, Peter.” I love you, Peter.
He heard those words now, and he believed they were still true. He believed that in spite of everything, his father still loved him. He didn’t know why some were dying and some living, but he believed what he had stopped believing, that he could stil
l be loved.
Every day Peter became stronger. His body was fighting off the bronchitis, or whatever it was, and with no medicine, that did seem a miracle. He was far from well, but he knew he would soon be moved to a camp, and then he would be allowed to recover for a month or so–but no longer. Once he showed signs of strength, he would be trucked back to the front, or maybe the front would catch up with him before then.
But Peter was not going to fight again. He had run to the army to save his life, and he had almost lost it. Now he needed to get away. In all the chaos, he knew how to do it, too.
When Hans took his last breath, Peter was with him. He felt sorrow, seeing the end finally come, but anger also swelled in him. He cursed Hitler, whom Hans had loved to the end.
Peter also had a plan. He slipped the blood-stained sling off Hans’s arm. Then he straightened both arms at Hans’s sides before he pulled the blanket over his face. He took the sling back to his own cot, where he stuffed it under his blanket. Others in the room saw him do this, but they seemed not to wonder, or certainly not to care, why he had done so.
Peter walked to the door of the room and called out, “A man has died in here.”
A nurse came down the hall, walking resolutely, her eyes almost as empty as those of the patients she cared for. “It’s Rindelsbach. The one with the head injury.”
“Yes,” she said. “I knew it would happen today.”
“I’m ready to go back and fight,” Peter said. “I want to get back to the battle–to avenge my friend.”
“Yes, yes. But I need to get help to move this boy.” She turned and left.
When a medic came by, Peter told him that he was ready for battle.
“No. You need more time,” the man said. “But we can move you to the recovery camp, if you feel well enough.”
“I do.”
And now Peter had what he needed. The next morning, he received a shabby uniform, one that some poor soldier had probably died in. And he received a coat, which is what he wanted most. Before he left the room, he pulled the sling from his bed and stuffed it into his pocket. Then he walked to the door, where he stopped and looked around. “My friend Hans was just a boy,” he announced to the men in the room. Those who were awake enough to pay attention looked up. “He loved the Führer. He fought for him. And the Führer killed him. He was only a boy, and Hitler–that madman, Hitler–stole his life from him. He’s trying to do the same for all of you.”