War Girls Complete Collection Chapter 146

Chapter 1

Warsaw, May 1944

L

otte stepped off the train, excitement about her new life burning in her chest. Holding the paper with instructions in her hand, she made her way to the

Wehrmachtheim für Helferinnen

, the dormitory for the female Wehrmacht auxiliaries in Warsaw, Poland.

She walked the three blocks from the central train station with her small suitcase in hand. The spring sun shone down on her, casting the city in a magnificent glimmer while warming the air. Lotte took the bright sunshine as a good omen for the future.

Warsaw was more beautiful than she’d imagined. Certainly in a better state than her beloved hometown, Berlin, reduced to rubble by the constant Allied bombing. Fifteen minutes later she arrived at the building and opened the wooden door.

“Can I help you?” a young woman greeted her in German. The woman was clad in the

Helferinnen

uniform, consisting of a gray jacket and garrison cap with the Imperial Eagle carrying the swastika. A matching gray skirt, a white blouse with a black tie and black shoes completed the look. Her right sleeve bore the lightning-flash badge identifying her as a signals assistant.

“I was told to come here after I got off the train,” Lotte said and added, “My name is Alexandra Wagner and I’m a

Wehrmachthelferin

.” She offered the woman the paper containing her orders and tried not to let her nerves get the best of her. So much had happened in the past few months, including having to fake her own death and assume a new identity, but this was a chance to put all of that behind her and make a difference.

“Very good, Alexandra. I’m Karin. We’ve been waiting for your arrival already. Please follow me.”

Lotte followed Karin through the front office, along a long hallway with doors to both sides. They stopped in front of a door with the sign “Office”.

“Oberführerin Kaiser will get you all set up. She’s the boarding master and our superior for all things apart from our actual working position.” Karin lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “It’s best not to get her upset.” Then she knocked on the door and moments later a voice from the inside said, “

Herein

.”

“Oberführerin, here’s the new arrival,” Karin said and dashed off to return to her previous post.

Behind a huge desk sat another uniformed woman, about forty years of age. She stood and stretched out her hand. “Welcome, Helferin Wagner. May I see your orders please?”

Lotte handed them over, slightly confused at being addressed with her new title, instead of the more informal Fräulein. In that moment, her mission suddenly became real to her. It wasn’t a game anymore.

The older woman nodded and then stood. “I’ll take you to the supply room for outfitting and then have someone show you to the dormitory. While you’re not a soldier, you are an official employee of the Wehrmacht and will be expected to act and dress as such at all times.”

Lotte followed Frau Kaiser through the maze of hallways, trying not to show her nerves. For now, she’d focus on getting her uniform and figuring out where she was to sleep.

Inside the supply room Oberführerin Kaiser began pulling articles of clothing from shelves and laid several garments on a counter, marking them on her list. Soon one gray dress suit, two white blouses, a black tie, three pairs of ugly woolen socks, a light coat, and a garrison cap lay in front of Lotte.

“You will also be issued a pair of shoes. What size?”

“Thirty-nine,” Lotte said.

The Oberführerin retrieved a pair of sturdy black shoes and added them to the pile. “There you go. Please put the uniform on in the changing room over there. I’ll wait for you in my office. Will you find the way back?”

“Yes, Oberführerin. Thank you,” Lotte said and took her new garments to the small changing room that was more like an oversized closet and slipped them on. She looked at herself in the mirror hanging on the back of the door and stuck out her tongue at the Imperial Eagle adorning her breast pocket.

While she hated the insignia of the Reich, she couldn’t help but give a twirl and admire herself in the nifty uniform. Hers didn’t have the single-flash badge on the sleeve like Karin’s, but a badge with six flashes organized in a circle, identifying her as radio operating personnel.

The skirt hung a bit loose on her bony hips, but with needle and thread, she’d make it fit properly. Returning to glance at herself in the mirror, she donned the garrison cap, adjusting it to the side of her head the way the women on the propaganda posters wore their caps.

Perfect

, she thought and for a tiny moment she forgot that she wasn’t here to serve the German war effort. Several minutes later she exited the small room and returned to Oberführerin Kaiser’s office.

“Everything fits fine,” Lotte said after being asked inside.

The other woman looked her up and down and then nodded once. “Very well, Helferin. Go straight through to the door at the end of the hallway. I have assigned you a bunk in dormitory three. I trust you will have no problem finding your way there?”

“I will be able to find my own way. Thank you for your help, Oberführerin.”

The woman turned away and Lotte realized she’d been dismissed. She exited the office as quietly as possible and walked down the hallway until she came to the door with the number three on it.

She stepped into a room with four beds, two against each of the side walls, four lockers, one table with two chairs beneath the window, and a washbasin in the corner. Her new quarters were Spartan to say the least, but a huge improvement on the barracks at the concentration camp in Ravensbrück.

Lotte was still contemplating which one of the meticulously made beds belonged to her when the door burst open and two chatting girls stepped inside. They stopped in their tracks when they saw Lotte standing in the middle of the room. From their sleeve badges she could identify one as a signals assistant and the other one as a radio operator like herself.

“Hello, I’m Alexandra Wagner. Oberführerin Kaiser assigned me this room,” Lotte said stretching out her hand.

One of the girls, a beautiful brunette, straightened her skirt and giggled, shaking Lotte’s hand. “We call her

the Dragon

when she can’t hear. You’ll soon find out that she lives up to her nickname. I’m Heidi by the way.”

The other girl, not older than twenty, with long dark-blonde hair carefully combed into fashionable waves, stepped forward next. “I’m Gerlinde. Nice to meet you.” Following Lotte’s bewildered glance across the room, she added, “The bunk over there is yours, next to mine. On the other side are Heidi and Karin. You probably met her since she has door duty today.”

Heidi pouted, “Another one of the Dragon’s inventions. She keeps a list of the times when everyone leaves and returns. A minute late and you’re due for kitchen duty or some other nasty task.

“Thanks for the warning,” Lotte said and glanced at the two smartly turned out girls, who looked like their biggest sorrow was whether their hairstyle matched the one on the newest fashion magazine.

Lotte herself had never cared much about looking ladylike, preferring plimsolls to pumps. Her own fiery red hair was as untamable as a hurricane and, since joining up, she’d resigned herself to wearing it in one or two plaits to make it look decent.

Discipline, though, wasn’t a problem for Lotte. Not anymore. She’d learned it the hard way. The hardest way, actually. In Ravensbrück a woman could get beaten to death for being late or otherwise disobedient. No, Lotte would be the poster child of a

Wehrmachthelferin

.

She stowed her belongings in the locker, while Heidi and Gerlinde tossed questions at her. Lotte carefully navigated the inquiries, sticking to her cover story. “I’m an only child and my parents died a few years back. When I turned eighteen in February, I decided to do my bit for the war effort and joined up. I trained almost three months near Cologne and now I’m here.”

“Cologne? That must be so exciting. Tell us how it was. Did you go to dances? Motion pictures? Did you have many suitors?” Gerlinde asked with big, dreamy eyes.

“We weren’t actually in Cologne, but a few dozen miles away. And there were no dances.” Lotte could only wonder about Gerlinde’s naivety. Didn’t she have the slightest idea about the desolate state of the city after being the target of hundreds of air raids?

“Have you been here for long?” Lotte asked her new roommates.

“We arrived last week,” Heidi said.

“It’s incredibly exciting here,” Gerlinde added.

“All the dashing soldiers…”

“And the leisure activities…”

“And the dapper uniform…”

“If it weren’t for the Dragon, it would be like paradise.”

“Paradise?” Lotte inwardly laughed at her overzealous roommates. “And here I thought there was a war going on.”

“Pah…the war…the front line is far away and it’s so much better here than back home.” Heidi sat down on her bed, took lipstick and a hand mirror from her purse and carefully retraced her lips.

“Where are you from?” Lotte asked.

Since Heidi was occupied painting her lips, Gerlinde answered for both of them. “We’re from the same village in East Prussia. Our parents are the biggest land owners around there, but instead of letting us go to school in the city of Königsberg, they insisted we stay in the village with private tutors.”

Heidi stashed the utensils in her purse, gave an air-kiss and added, “Boring…You have no idea how boring it was. Especially since all the eligible men left to become soldiers. What’s a girl got to do without any men about? We couldn’t sit around talking to cows, now could we?”

“I guess not,” Lotte said, not really paying attention to Heidi’s complaints. Despite the fact that Lotte’s family wasn’t rich, her two roommates reminded her of herself less than a year ago.

Sheltered. Bored. Unaware of what was really going on in this country. One rash decision had sent Lotte’s entire world tumbling and almost killed her. She didn’t regret her actions, but she regretted not having taken the time to properly think them through – and the fact that her best friend Irmhild had died because of it. Because of her. The feeling of residual guilt threatened to choke her, and she tried to swallow it down.

No. Lotte would never take freedom or life for granted again. Thanks to her sisters, she’d been given a second chance at life and she intended to use it to help end the madness of this war.

“So we joined the Wehrmacht. Why are you here?”

To spy for the Allies.

Lotte bit her lip. In her former life as a sheltered adolescent she might have blurted out what was on her mind, but since she’d assumed a fake identity, she weighed every word before she spoke. “Why am I here? To help the war effort of course.” The answer didn’t seem to satisfy her two new friends and she added, “And for the dapper uniform, too. Don’t you think it makes me look like Marika Rökk?”

“Marika Rökk,” Heidi squealed. “She must be the best-looking actress in all of the Reich. Even the Führer admires her greatly.”

“The uniform does make you look preppy, and all the men will turn their heads after you, you’ll see,” Gerlinde said, glancing at her elegant wristwatch.

“Let’s go and show you around Warsaw, then we can have dinner in the mess with the boys.” Heidi straightened her skirt and stepped in front of the small mirror over the washbasin to adjust her cap.

“Don’t you have to work?” Lotte asked.

“No, we finished for today,” Gerlinde answered and took her hand. “Come on. We’re here to have fun, right?”

“Right.” Lotte plastered an enthusiastic smile on her face, even though having fun was the last of her reasons to be here.

The three of them walked along Nowy Świat, New World Street, until Gerlinde stopped in front of a huge and beautiful building and said, “That’s the theater. They give performances on the weekend.”

Lotte nodded. Apparently this

Wehrmachthelferinnen

job provided one big adventure for the girls, desperate to flee their boring homes or their bombed-out hometowns.

After fifteen minutes of walking they reached the building that served as mess for all German military personnel, including the female staff.

Gerlinde and Heidi greeted a few of the other girls streaming inside and introduced them to Lotte. “Hey, this is Alexandra, our new roommate. She’s a radio operator and will start work tomorrow.”

The other girls were mostly signals assistants, nurses, and a few radio operators like herself. Everyone talked and laughed, eating amounts of food Lotte hadn’t seen for a long time in a country of rations. They searched for an empty table and sat down.

Gerlinde pointed out the abundance of handsome men, all flirtatious and intent on charming the women present. She couldn’t stop gushing about how dashing they looked in their uniforms, and drew her fair share of attention and inviting glances from across the room.

Lotte watched with a jaded eye, caring not for how cocky these men behaved, nor the reactions of the women. At home she had heard wild stories about the loose morals of the Helferinnen, who were often nicknamed

Blitzmädel

, flash girls, not only for the flash badges on their sleeves, but also for the speed some of them ended up in bed with one of the officers.

Lotte, for one, didn’t have any intention of living up to that image; she had more important things on her mind. Oberführerin Kaiser had instructed them that walking out with one of the soldiers wasn’t well received. She wouldn’t give her superiors the slightest reason to be dissatisfied with her work or her person.

“The men here are so good-looking,” Gerlinde gushed on the way home.

“I didn’t really notice,” Lotte said.

Gerlinde shook her head at her and asked, “You didn’t notice? Were your eyes closed?”

“No, I guess I’m just excited to get to work,” Lotte answered, fighting a wave of nostalgia. After last year’s events, she would never be so jaunty again.

“Well, that’s what tomorrow is for,” Heidi said and opened the wooden door of the dormitory building for them. Oberführerin Kaiser was already waiting near the entrance, taking note of who returned home at what time.

About an hour later, the four girls crawled between the sheets. Lotte doused the light, but even though her roommates fell into a deep sleep minutes later, she lay awake for several hours, thinking about the future. She was excited to get started on her new life, but also scared.

Very scared.