War Girls Complete Collection Chapter 125

Chapter 9

K

arl had decided to request a transfer as well and accompany Richard on the new mission. Their belongings packed, there was nothing left to do but wait for the troop transport destined to replenish the divisions of the

Heeresgruppe Mitte

, the Army Group Center.

Richard fetched paper and pencils and wrote a letter to his mother.

Dearest Mutter,

You may not understand my reasons, but let me assure you I’m not acting in a rash or unconsidered manner. In fact, I have given this decision my utmost thought and I am convinced that I am better suited to defend our country on active duty.

It may or may not be possible to communicate from where I go next, but please continue writing, and keep me in your thoughts and prayers. Tell me how you are holding on, how the situation is in Berlin, and how my sisters are.

I have the photograph of my sisters on Ursula’s wedding day with me at all times. It gives me comfort and brings me near to my family. May I please ask you to send me a picture of yourself as well?

Your loving son,

Richard.

He’d just folded

the letter and carefully slid the photograph into his breast pocket when Johann came into the quarters.

“You’re leaving,” Johann said, stalling.

“Yes, I am. Thank you for everything. You have been a good friend to me. Will you please post this letter for me?”

“Sure.” Johann took the envelope. “We will see each other again.”

“I count on that,” Richard answered with a grin, swallowing down any more serious emotion. Now wasn’t the time to get sentimental. On an impulse, he took out a faded photograph, scribbled a note onto the back side, and handed it to Johann. It showed a blond teenage boy with a huge grin, oblivious to the coming dangers of war, holding a fiery, not-too-happy-looking redhead about the same age.

“That’s you and your youngest sister, right?”

Richard nodded. “In case…you know…will you send this to my family? Let them know how much I loved them?” He bit down on his lip and blinked to keep the tears from springing into his eyes.

Johann apparently fought the same battle against tears and rasped a short “Yes” before rushing out of the room, leaving Richard alone with his thoughts. Sadness swept over him, but no fear. Once the decision was made, his fear had diminished.

With a heaviness in his heart, off he went to the station. Karl and Richard boarded the last wagon of the train for their long trek back to the Russian taiga, about 500 miles from Lodz.

“At least we hibernated in the barracks,” Richard joked as he glanced into the faces of his fellow soldiers. Young boys. Old men. Faces that lacked the hardness etched into them from having experienced too much. Some expressions remained enthusiastic, but most radiated anxiety and fear. A few patched-up wounded were sprinkled in between with a knowing glance in their otherwise fatalistic mien. Fresh troops, he thought, always had a different air about them.

The train gained speed and rattled along, passing miserable images of destruction, charred rubble haunted by the ghosts of their former occupants.

“Look,” Karl said and pointed to a gaping black hole in the mountain ahead. The locomotive driving into the long tunnel soon filled it. Wagon after wagon had disappeared into the darkness when suddenly the mountain exploded with great force and buried the train inside the tunnel. Giant pieces of rock and earth were hurled high up into the air. Dust and debris rained on the surrounding area.

Richard felt the earth shaking violently, as the last few wagons derailed from the impact. Tumbling, rolling, jolting, skidding, they finally came to a halt.

Dumbfounded, his head aching from the bump, Richard took inventory of his battered body and decided he was still alive. Karl crawled over to check on him.

“That’s it? We die in a train crash?” Richard groaned.

“You’re not dead yet, but you will be if you don’t move your ass out of here.”

Richard shook his head. His eyes fluttered closed, as he struggled against the urge to curl up in a ball and fade away. Rest. But his stubborn friend shook him awake and commanded, “Out of here now!”

With Karl’s help, he managed to crawl to the broken window and squeeze through. Two wagons lay scattered about the tunnel entrance that was nothing more than a muddy hill now.

Buried alive

. Mourning for his fellow soldiers had to wait. It didn’t help anyone right now.

A few dozen men crawled about, each one more battered than the next. At least Karl seemed to have the situation under control. He pushed Richard forward. “We have to hide.”

Hide? From whom?

Richard’s brain scrambled to form a coherent thought, but the searing pain in his side killed every attempt to focus. He couldn’t get up, so he crawled, following Karl and about half a dozen other men to the thick underbrush.

Karl urged them forward, despite the pain, the dizziness, and the confusion. About fifteen minutes later, they heard voices shouting Polish words. Richard had always liked literature. His love for the written word had instilled a love of the language and thus he’d picked up quite a few Russian and Polish sentences during his time in the Wehrmacht.

“Search for survivors,” the deep voice said.

“Why can’t we kill them?

“Not yet. They might prove a good bounty.”

Richard’s stomach clenched and he sent a prayer to the sky for the fact that Karl had ruthlessly pushed them deep into the woods. Hopefully, a German unit would patrol the area soon and find them. Until then, they needed to stay out of harm’s way.

It was only a short distance back to Lodz. On a good day they could have walked over in five or six hours; less if they sprinted. But this wasn’t a good day. Most of the men nursed broken legs or deep cuts. Even Karl proved to be in a severe condition. Now that the adrenaline had left his body, he groaned in pain from his shattered arm. Richard himself had ripped open his side and possibly broken a few ribs, which made breathing painful and difficult. His whole body was one mass of throbbing pain.

The lack of proper care combined with the loss of blood slowly sucked the fight out of him. He lay on his back, slipping in and out of a disturbed sleep, and listened to the idle conversation of his comrades.

“I want to go home,” one of the young recruits said with a voice near to tears. “In my home town, we all lived together in peace; got along very well, we all did. We had Jewish teachers and doctors. There was never a problem.”

“True. Some of them didn’t even know they were Jews until the whole Aryan certificate thing,” Joseph said. “How did we ever get into such a senseless situation?”

“Who knew things would reach this level of insanity? Hitler promised to make Germany great again, and see where we are now,” a man about forty years old said. “Personally, I think this war is a lost cause and the sooner it ends the better for everyone.”

“Stop saying these defeatist things!” a young lad called Alex said. ”Victory is ours. Our Führer has said so. And I for my part am proud to serve my Fatherland. I begged my mom to let me enlist, but she wouldn’t let me until I turned seventeen.

Totaler Sieg!

”

Richard and Karl exchanged glances. The enthusiastic lad would soon have a conversation with reality. She tended to change one’s view rather quickly.

“Total victory, my ass,” Karl said. “You’re a numbskull if you still believe that propaganda shit.”

But Alex continued on like a dog with a bone. “The Slavs are an inferior race. I, for my part, am not toiling under the occupation of an inferior race for the rest of eternity.”

Richard slipped back into a feverish dream. On the second day, he dreamed of a patrol coming for them and woke with a start. Judging by the excited look on the other men’s faces it wasn’t a dream. He primed his ears to pick up any sound the patrol made.

“

Tam

,” someone shouted.

Enemy patrol.

Richard’s mouth went dry and his muscles tightened as his brain captured the Polish expression for

Over there

and his breathing all but stopped when a group of men came straight in their direction. Habit overtook exhaustion and fever, as he aimed his trusted MP40 at the oncoming group.

He couldn’t confirm a hit, but within seconds a tumultuous shooting ensued on both sides. It stopped as quickly as it had started when the Germans ran out of bullets.