War Girls Complete Collection Chapter 216

Chapter 30: Stan

April 1945 in Berlin

S

tan had been transferred to the prison hospital and despite being depressed and surly he made an effort to practice walking with the wooden leg. After a while he got the hang of it and he finally saw light at the end of the tunnel.

He’d prove to the world that even with only one leg he was still a valuable member of society. A real man.

Taking a deep breath, Stan pushed away from the wall and forced himself to focus on just one thing: walking. The distance between the two opposite walls of the room looked huge. Terrifying. Insurmountable.

The first steps went fine, but then he staggered putting weight on the prosthetic. Swaying like a flag in the wind he raised his arms to recapture his balance, to no avail. The floor came rushing up and he flattened his face on the hard linoleum. The sharp odor of cleansing agent tickled his nose and he sneezed.

Frustrated, Stan rolled over and pushed himself into a sitting position, before he used his hands and his good leg to move to the bed and heave himself up again. One hand secured to the bed frame, he hobbled back to the wall.

Starting over

.

It took countless attempts until he reached the other side of the room without falling. Stan broke out into a huge grin, pumping his fist into the air, just to throw himself off balance again with the sudden movement. He bumped his behind into the wall for support and laughed out loud.

The door opened and a small person slid inside. Stan had never asked what kind of story Anna had spun to get a permit for Jan to visit him every day without fail. Perhaps nobody cared either way and the nurses were glad for every little bit of help they got tending to the prisoners.

“Hello, Jan, wanna see this? I think I finally got the hang of it.”

Jan watched with eyes wide as saucers as Stan walked the entire distance with only a minor wobble.

“Fabulous, Uncle Stan! You’re fabulous!” Jan rushed over to wrap his arms around Stan and if it weren’t for the steady support of the windowsill, they’d both have tumbled to the floor.

“Hold your horses!” Stan chuckled.

“You’re laughing…” Jan said, shaking his head in disbelief.

“What’s so…” …

strange about it?

Stan wanted to ask, but stopped mid-sentence, guilt over his self-loathing selfishness making him frown. “I’m sorry. From now on I’ll laugh more often, agreed?”

“Promise?”

“Promise!” They knocked fists to seal the deal.

With Jan’s help he managed to walk the whole length of the hallway without falling, but by that time, his stump was swollen and burning from the heavy exercise. As soon as he settled on his bed, he noticed the boy’s stony face.

“What’s wrong? Something happened at home?” he asked, once again feeling the guilt for his own selfishness. Jan’s face expressed his distress, and Stan hadn’t given a single thought to the boy for the past hour.

“Anna and Grandma are so tense, but they won’t tell me what’s wrong. They whisper and look afraid, but put on fake smiles when I come into the room. Do you think they are angry at me?” Jan’s eyes welled up with tears. Despite having to take on the responsibilities of an adult, he still was a child and it tore at Stan’s heart to see him so sad.

“I’m sure they aren’t angry at you.” Stan had a pretty good idea what Anna and her mother were worried about and it certainly had nothing to do with Jan.

“But what else could it be?”

Stan had to smile. “The war? The Red Army has been shelling Berlin for days without pause and it’s only a matter of time until the war is over.”

“But that’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Now go home, and don’t get caught in skirmishes.” Stan patted Jan’s shoulder and held in his thoughts. The end of the war wouldn’t be a good thing for everyone, and Anna and her mother had every reason to be afraid.

He’d seen firsthand what happened when the Red Army

liberated

a town. Vomit rose in his throat as he remembered the crimes against humanity he’d witnessed during his time as a forced conscript in the Red Army. Ruthless. Dedicated.

His own nation Poland had suffered – and continued to suffer – so direly under both occupiers. Between the Nazis and the Soviets, there really was no better choice.

For the Berlin females, though, being exposed to the capriciousness of a Soviet soldier would prove to be a thousand times worse than Hitler’s cronies. Any woman who was merely raped and then left alone could consider herself lucky. Hundreds of thousands of women across Eastern Europe would testify to this.

Stan hated the Nazis with every fiber of his soul, but no woman, Nazi or not, deserved to be treated in such a way. Well, maybe with the exception of Irma Grese, the sadistic guard in Auschwitz half the Home Army whispered about with repugnance.

More bile rose in his throat and he screamed with frustration, as he realized that even after his liberation, he wouldn’t be in a position to protect the women in his family. With only one leg to rely on, he needed a better plan.

In the following

days the Battle for Berlin intensified. Stan could hear the constant shelling, artillery fire, gunfire, yelling and screaming. The nurses told him about man-to-man fighting in the debris-ridden streets of Berlin.

One morning a troop of Russian soldiers stormed the prison hospital, chasing the nurses and doctors away and freeing Stan. But where should he go?

Thankfully, Jan ventured into the hospital later in the day during one of his increasingly infrequent visits. Confused at the lack of guards or medical staff he asked, “What happened here?”

“The Soviets freed us, and then left to fight somewhere else.”

“So why are you still here?”

Stan rubbed his chin, half amused and half dumbfounded at Jan’s naivety. “Because I have nowhere else to go.”

And I don’t dare venture on my own through the streets crawling across rubble and getting caught up in a skirmish

.

With one leg.

The boy tilted his head, saying, “You will come with me, Uncle Stan.”

“I can’t possibly impose…” Stan shrunk from the idea of having to beg Anna’s mother to host him.

“Off course you can, since you’re family. Now, come.” Jan held out his hand and Stan shrugged. It wasn’t like he had much of a choice. At the end of the hallway he peeked into the deserted nurse’s office. The Russians had raided it for everything of value, but miraculously the closet with bandage materials seemed intact. Stan had an idea.

“We don’t want to return empty-handed. Come and help me.” He opened the closed door and directed Jan to crouch down and rifle through the compartments at the bottom while he did the same at the top. They stuffed bandages and the meager remains of medicine into their pockets, and it didn’t take long for Stan to find what he was looking for.

He let out a low whistle. “Here you are, sweethearts.” With a grin he slid two bottles of pure alcohol for disinfection into the pockets of his jacket.

“What’s this?” Jan asked, holding up a glass bottle with a transparent liquid.

Stan opened it and sniffed. The strong, stinging smell on an empty stomach overwhelmed his senses for a moment. When the dizziness stopped, he took a good gulp and reveled in the slow burn all the way into his stomach. “

Korn

,” he answered. “It’s the German equivalent to vodka and this one is good stuff. Put it in your satchel.”

They left the nurse’s office, ready to take on the world. But they got only as far as the stairs.

“Holy shit!” Stan had forgotten he was on the second floor of this building and that to get out he had to brave these damn stairs. His prosthetic could bend at the knee, but Stan was still struggling to make it do exactly as he intended, and he’d never before tackled stairs.

“You can do this, Uncle Stan. I’ll hold you up.” Jan beamed with pride.

“If you say so.” Stan seriously doubted Jan could be of much help. Despite his malnourished condition he easily weighed more than double the young boy. “But I think I’ll try on my own first.”

He held onto the stair railing for dear life as he somehow managed to wobble, hop and slide down the stairs, supporting himself with his arms and his good leg. After what seemed like an hour he took one last stair to step on flat ground, panting and gasping. Stan wiped the sweat from his forehead, taking a few minutes to calm his thundering heart after the superhuman effort he’d just exerted.

“Let’s go,” he said to Jan. “We want to be at Anna’s place before dark.”

“It’s not far.” Jan soothed his unspoken worries. “I can get there in no time at all, but with you it might take a bit longer.”

Jan led him through hidden alleys, dodging the areas of open street fighting and always hiding in the shadows of the few remaining buildings. Everything went considerably well, until they reached a pile of debris scattered across the street, almost waist-high.

“We can’t go around, because there’s a crater bigger than two tanks,” Jan said, giving a shrug. “We have to clamber across.”

“We what?” Stan thought he hadn’t heard right. “What makes you think I can clamber?”

“Come on, you did the stairs just fine. See, I can go with one leg, too,” Jan said and hopped onto the debris, jumping a few times with on leg high in the air, until he lost his balance and quickly used his other leg to steady himself.

“Careful. We don’t want to break the bottle of

Korn

,” Stan called out with a chuckle. With a Herculean effort he somehow managed to cross the pile of rubble, more by creeping than walking, but he arrived on the other side, proud of himself.

It took them close to three hours until they finally arrived at the badly shelled building where the Klausen family lived. Stan was bathed in sweat, his heart pumping like crazy and he collapsed onto the stairs the moment Jan opened the door.

Jan rushed off to see if Anna was home and minutes later she appeared in front of him with an incredulous yet admiring expression on her face. “You walked all the way here on your own?”

Despite being utterly exhausted he managed a chuckle. “Didn’t think I’d make it, but Jan here forced me to.”

“Well done. Both of you,” she said. “Lean on me. I’ll help you downstairs.”

Downstairs?

“I thought Jan said you lived in a two-bedroom apartment on the fourth floor?” He was secretly relieved he wouldn’t have to tackle four flights of stairs.

“We used to,” Anna said, nodding. “Bombing damaged the building and it wasn’t safe to stay upstairs so I salvaged what I could and we moved into the basement.” She shrugged. “All the renters from the upper floors did…”

Frau Klausen was sitting in the basement preparing food on a tiny gas stove. She looked up at the incoming persons and shrank back, her eyes wide and glassy like a deer caught in the headlights of a vehicle. Not that there were deer or vehicles in Berlin. Or even electric lights.

“He’s a friend,” Anna said, calming her mother’s fear. “Mutter, this is Stan Zdanek, Peter’s brother. I told you about him.”

“Stan, this is my mother, Frau Klausen.”

“Thank you, Frau Klausen,” Stan said, feeling slightly out of place. “I don’t mean to impose on you but since the hospital was liberated and with no place to go, my nephew insisted…”

“Herr Zdanek—”

“Stan, please.”

“Stan, then.” Frau Klausen paused for a moment to point at the basement room with only a small metal-grilled window near the ceiling. “This is all we have, but you’re welcome to share it with us.”

“Thank you, Frau Klausen.” Stan followed the movement of her hand with his eyes. Frau Klausen and Anna had done their best to make the cold, dark basement into a cozy place with mattresses, a small cupboard, suitcases for clothing, a kitchen table and three chairs.

“I can go upstairs and get another mattress and a chair for you,” Anna offered.

“Didn’t you say it was unsafe?”

She shrugged. “There’s a huge hole in the kitchen wall and all the windows are broken, but I can still go in and out when I’m careful. We just can’t live and sleep there anymore. Since we neither have electricity nor running water it’s not much better in the apartment anyway than down here.”

Stan nodded, although he didn’t buy into her forced cheerfulness. A cold, musty basement was still a cold musty basement.