After receiving their bowlful, they moved toward one of the tables under the roofed areas. No meat floated in the soup, and it was mostly potatoes, but Wilhelm had been lucky for he had two cuts of a carrot in his. As they looked past the camp and through the fence, there was nothing else in sight. They were well past the middle of nowhere with nothing but grass fields and a blue horizon.
The heat continued, and the sun did not set until nearly nine by which time Wilhelm and Torben were back in their bunks. The room was much larger than the truck but did not have the benefit of open air to help the smell. Some men had doused their white t-shirts in water and worn them on their heads like turbans to mitigate the heat.
During the day, Wilhelm was too busy to think of his situation. But at night, it flooded in. His greatest release of stress and emotion had been writing in his journal. The end of a long page was like the drag of a cigarette. But Wilhelm had no journal now, and the withdrawal kept him up. The release in the form of pencil to page was gone. The horrible thoughts in his head had no place to go. They were poison. Some nights, he only slept three hours. In a camp filled with snoring men, if you were not quick to fall asleep, the unsynchronized bass snores and soprano sleep whistles were as good at keeping someone up as pouring cold water on them.
In late June, the Soviets had left the doors of the quarters open to allow more airflow, but one night, a German prisoner had taken off. He had not made it to the fence before he was gunned down, yet his actions had cost the others. The door would remain shut no matter how stifling it was. It was always a few that ruined it for all.
By the time Wilhelm had fallen asleep, the bell rang as a wake-up call. A small hint of excitement spread during breakfast, and as Wilhelm and the others hopped onto the trucks, some even smiled. It was like waiting for a rollercoaster to begin. The moment the trucks pulled forward, the breeze washed over their faces. When Wilhelm closed his eyes, he imagined being on one of his drives with Hannah.
When they entered the factory, it appeared Old Uncle Joe hated the extreme heat more than any. His scowl melted, and his forehead dripped sweat.
“Fucking hot in here too,” Old Uncle Joe said.
He removed a flask and took a swig before offering it to Wilhelm and Torben.
“Sips, not gulps, you greedy assholes,” Old Uncle Joe said.
Wilhelm took a sip while Torben flirted between a sip and a gulp, figuring it was worth the risk. Old Uncle Joe snatched the flask from Torben and pocketed it.
That morning, Wilhelm and Torben were poked more times than they were in the last two months combined. They did not work fast enough for him, and Torben was ready to break the stick. It was impossible for Old Uncle Joe to poke the overwhelming thick heat, so he had to settle for the two Germans.
When the break whistle blew, Torben left to go to the bathroom. Old Uncle Joe sat with a glazed look in his eyes. The cigar in his mouth wafted out smoke, but it appeared he had forgotten it was even there.
“Something wrong, Joe?” Wilhelm asked.
It snapped Old Uncle Joe out of his trance, and he took a deep inhale of his cigar. The end of it lit up with red and orange as the embers reignited.
“I got married this day, forty-nine years ago,” Old Uncle Joe said.
Wilhelm did not know the date, but it had to be early August.
“Think of the good times,” Wilhelm said, trying to console him.
“Makes me miss my children,” Old Uncle Joe said.
“I didn’t know,” Wilhelm said.
“Of course, you didn’t. I never told you. I lost two sons in the Great War. My daughter died during childbirth a few years after the war ended. My wife and I raised her child. He died fighting you lot,” Old Uncle Joe said.
Did his grandson look like Joe? Wilhelm was too afraid to ask. What if he had killed him? What if the faces of the men he had killed that flashed in his head every night fit the description of Joe’s grandson? A braver man would have wanted to know.
The mystery behind Old Uncle Joe’s scowl had been solved. Being a man who had been cursed in losing so many loved ones, no one could blame him.
“Why do you not hate me?” Wilhelm asked.
Old Uncle Joe took a soothing puff from his cigar and sighed. “Because you are somebody’s grandson. Somebody’s boy. And if mine were in your position, I would hope they would be treated well.”
“You served, didn’t you? During the First War?” Wilhelm asked.
Old Uncle Joe nodded. “I did. I was a pilot. I fought in the Battle of Tannenberg. You Germans beat us to bits of shit and piss. I had fought in battles before. But what I saw while up in the air was something entirely different. I saw hundreds of men mowed down. The fields full of gas and smoke. A fucking mess.”
Old Uncle Joe pulled the cigar from his mouth, his hand quivering, and blew a fat cloud of smoke.
“If I hold you responsible for following your orders that means I can be condemned for mine. And if that’s true, we’re all going to hell,” Old Uncle Joe said.
He took quick puffs from his cigar, looking like a baby sucking a pacifier, and it was equally soothing.
“Break is almost over. Go get yourself a drink,” Old Uncle Joe said.
His shaking hands did not go unnoticed. Wilhelm’s father’s had done the same thing all of Wilhelm’s life. The distant stare in Old Uncle Joe’s eyes was a look every veteran of combat wore from time to time. He was back in that airplane flying over the fields of what was once East Prussia and now Poland, reliving the atrocities war forced young men to commit.
Old Uncle Joe spent the rest of the day slouched in his seat, taking swigs from his flask and puffs from his cigar. He seemed to blink once every hour.
Wilhelm was torn. A part of him wished he could see what Old Uncle Joe did while another part of him was thankful he could not, for the demons that descended upon him in the dark were all he could bear. To add any more risked him being dragged to hell by them.
Warfare had changed drastically from the Great War to the fighting erupting over Europe and the Pacific twenty odd years later. The trench and chemical warfare that had been staples in the Great War were gone. But there had been an even larger gap from fighting in the late 1800’s until the Great War during 1914–1918. It was hard to believe that in the American Civil War, during the years 1861–1865, swords and muskets had still been used. Two men alone with mounted MG42 machine guns would have been able to wipe out entire cavalry charges.
There were a handful of moments that shaped—that defined—a person’s life. But some moments shaped and defined the lives of others—sometimes, a dozen, others, a hundred, and sometimes, millions. 28 June 1914 before 11 a.m. was one such moment. In Sarajevo, a nineteen-year-old by the name of Gavrilo Princip drew his pistol and, from a distance of 1.5 meters, gunned down the Archduke of Austria, Franz Ferdinand, and his wife, Duchess Sophie Chotek. And from that event, the Great War broke out. The Treaty of Versailles, to end the Great War, only brought a stalemate, and in 1939, the Second World War started, which brought about its own series of events that brought Wilhelm to a factory somewhere in the Soviet Union. Could so many events be explained by anything but fate?
“Feels weird not being poked,” Torben said.
For the first time, they had gone the entire second half of the day without being poked. It was not for perfect work either. They had actually screwed up once and their daily total was two less than the day before. But Old Uncle Joe’s trance did not end that day.
The next month, Old Uncle Joe fell deeper into the mess of his mind. He must have done a fair share of drinking before he arrived, for he slurred his words even more than normal. It was now October, and the cool autumn was welcomed, especially by those who burned in the sun. They had lost ninety-three men to the heat, and had it not been for Old Uncle Joe sneaking Wilhelm and Torben sips from his water canteen, they may have fallen too.
It was a proud moment when Wilhelm and Torben saw the bombers completed. They ha
d built them, and as they drove out of the opened hanger, it was not hard to feel like they had accomplished something. It was the type of pride a hard day’s work brought—much the same feeling Wilhelm had when he had sold his first car. But as the engines roared to life, Wilhelm was reminded of the mission of the bombers. These were not planes for supply drops, travel or to see heavenly views. They were to drop hell on the cities below—German cities where his loved ones were.
It was November when Old Uncle Joe finally resumed his poking. He made up for the last few months by poking Wilhelm and Torben what felt like every thirty seconds.
“Pace yourself. You’ll cramp up,” Torben said to Old Uncle Joe after being poked all morning.
Both he and Wilhelm were fluent in Russian by now, and it was mostly because of Old Uncle Joe and the stories of nothing he told. While most prisoners worked in silence and the guards around them too, Old Uncle Joe did not mind a conversation as long as the work was done.
“You should have seen the women in Italy, Wilhelm. Tanned skin. Those accents. And the pasta…” Torben recounted.
They had two entirely different experiences. Yet, Wilhelm could appreciate that once the artillery fire and gunshots started flying through the air, battle was battle.
Torben had claimed to sample nearly every type of pasta during his weeks of inactivity. While he ate filling, delicious pastas with tomato-based or milk-based sauces, Wilhelm ate horse, nothing or something he would never tell a soul. There were also no beautiful women in Stalingrad because there were no women—not that it would have mattered. Even if he had not seen Hannah in nearly four years, she was still his wife, and he would remain faithful.
Torben had visited the Colosseum, St. Peter’s Basilica, and the Trevi Fountain. Everything Wilhelm, Höring, and Jonas had discussed doing, down to the pastas and gelato, Torben had done.
Torben had skinny-dipped in the Mediterranean with an Italian woman and, after, they had made love on the sand. They had spent two weeks together. He had written her address on a cocktail napkin from a small restaurant, but it had been taken during his capture.
“So you don’t remember it?” Wilhelm asked.
“Please. Think I would forget a woman like Francesca? That address is tattooed on my brain. When this thing is over, I’m going to marry her. All of this … this shit I’ve had to do will have been worth it. I can forget about it all. Bring Hannah. We’re getting married right on the Mediterranean. You will love it. Then you can go see all the sights,” Torben said.
Every day, Wilhelm and Torben would ask Old Uncle Joe for updates on the war. It was not that either was eager for Germany to lose, they were just eager for the war to be over. They would have to stay in the camp until the fighting was over. Otherwise, every released man would be put back into rotation. But Old Uncle Joe had little news, and when he did, it was safe to say the news itself was no news at all, as it was a month or two old.
Wilhelm and Torben finished another engine and used the hoist to lower it into the bomber. The break bell rang out through the factory loud enough to be heard over the equipment. Yet, this one wasn’t a break bell. It was a warning bell. Enemy (German) planes had been spotted, and Wilhelm and every other single person in the factory knew the building was the sort of target pilots drooled over. They crouched and waited for what may or may not come. Old Uncle Joe sat in his chair with his walking stick resting on his lap.
“Joe, what are you doing?” Torben whispered.
“If I am to die, I shall die comfortable,” Old Uncle Joe said.
Wilhelm could not find fault in the logic. If a bomb broke through the ceiling and crashed on the floor, the explosion would be vast enough to destroy everything inside. There would be no escaping it.
The warning bell would ring if enemy planes were within thirty kilometers and, sometimes, could last two or three hours. It was an awful feeling much like a tornado drill. Yet, tornados, even if they did touch down, did not have set targets or course adjustments. The bombers delivered catastrophes that were a natural disaster in scale but with the hunting prowess of lions, and the factory was one massive, weak, defenseless lamb.
The bombers sounded like swarms of bees but amplified and gave warning, but, luckily, no sound came. The bell rang once more, and the Soviets shouted to get back to work. Even the Germans who had not been able to pick up much Russian knew what those words meant.
“Bit of a different feeling than being the one who drops them, huh, Joe?” Torben asked.
“I was throwing grenades from my plane. Not dropping God’s fury,” Old Uncle Joe slurred.
Torben smirked before disappearing around the other side of the plane.
“Joe, I have wanted to ask you something,” Wilhelm said.
His voice was quiet. He had not fully committed to speaking.
“Going to need to speak up,” Old Uncle Joe said.
“I have wanted to ask you something,” Wilhelm said a little louder.
“Then ask. I’ll keep my stick at the ready,” Old Uncle Joe said.
“Do you know an Alexander Kozlovsky?” Wilhelm asked.
Old Uncle Joe sat in silence, trying to find an Alexander Kozlovsky in his memories.
“I don’t believe so. That’s not a German name.”
“No. He was Russian,” Wilhelm said.
“Who was he to you?”
“We were in the same building at Stalingrad. He saved my life—more than once.”
“Did you kill him?”
“No. But I didn’t save him either.”
When he was taken prisoner, the letter Alexander had given him was taken and burned. Unlike Torben, the address on the letter was not tattooed on his brain. He only knew Helen Kozlovsky lived in the Soviet Union, an expanse of over seven million square miles.
Old Uncle Joe took a deep puff of smoke that told Wilhelm he was preparing to speak for longer than normal and wanted to make up for the missed puffs with one long, drawn-out drag.
“You know when I was flying over the battlefield, I was reminded of Matthew 13:49–50. ‘This is how it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come and separate the wicked from the righteous and throw them in the blazing furnace where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ I realized I was looking down at hell itself—a view that makes angels cry. I can only hope that when I die, the view is equally profound,” Old Uncle Joe said.
“I hope it is,” Wilhelm said.
Old Uncle Joe poked Wilhelm, but it was much softer—more of an assuring poke—than any of the other hundreds he had received. Wilhelm and Torben never said it out loud, but they both knew they had been extremely fortunate to have been assigned to work for Old Uncle Joe. The Soviets hated the Germans and with good reason. Germany had betrayed Russia and attacked after a non-aggression pact had been signed. From what Wilhelm had been told, a large number of surrendering Soviet soldiers had been executed. And the war’s fiercest fighting—fighting from block to block, building to building in the namesake city of the Soviet Union’s leader—had cost a million Soviet men their lives. There was no shortage of reasons for the Soviets to loathe the Germans.
The hopes of the war ending by Christmas were spoiled. The war raged on. The camp grounds were covered in five inches of snow, and the sky had frozen. Wilhelm took the opportunity before curfew to stare up at it. He tried to let the camp buildings, the fences, and the watchtowers fade away so he could focus on nothing but the luminescent flashes of white and blue stars. And when everything beside him faded away, he was beside Hannah once again.
D-Day
The shores of Portsmouth were foggy and dreary. Even if Hannah knew to expect such weather, it was contradictory to the mood she should have been in. Somehow, she thought it should have been full of a bright, high sun, like somewhere on the coast of the Mediterranean. As she walked away from the docks, the clouds flashed with electricity, and a downpour fell like water bullets. A man holding a black umbrella and dressed in a long tan trench coat st
ood on the other side of the street. His head was dipped, and the brow of his face was covered by a fedora of the same color as his jacket. He looked up.
Hannah covered her eyes to prevent the torrential rain from falling into them.
“Ms. Smith?” the man asked.
“Yes,” Hannah answered tentatively.
The man extended the umbrella to cover Hannah. “My name is Otto Wesley. I am Radley Durand’s British contact.” He had a smile on his face, but a charming smile often hid the fangs of a snake.
“He never gave me your name,” Hannah said.
She had yet to step under the umbrella because it would bring her close enough to him for him to grab her. From the distance she stood, she could run if need be. Josephine had warned her of double agents.
He reached into his breast pocket, and Hannah instinctively took a step back. He brought his hands up quickly, realizing she had taken it for him reaching for a gun.
“Sorry. I am just going to remove my identification. Is that alright, Miss?” Otto asked.
Hannah nodded. But she turned her feet ever so slightly, in case she had to break out in a run. Otto reached into his breast pocket once again and removed a wallet. He opened it and showed Hannah the photograph and his name and rank beside it. But it meant little to Hannah. She herself had owned a forged passport and carried falsified papers on her as they spoke.
“I have a car across the street. I will take you to London,” Otto said.
Hannah had still yet to step under the umbrella and toiled over whether or not she should trust him.
“Durand said you would not be eager to trust. I understand. Would you like to get a cup of tea first?” Otto asked. Hannah nodded but still did not step under the umbrella. “Here, you take it, Miss. I am fine,” Otto said, handing the umbrella over as if it were a gun.
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