War Girls Complete Collection Chapter 236

Chapter 14

H

ours passed, and every muscle in Katrina’s body ached from perching on the crossbar. The rough surface of the road gave her bones a good shaking. She had long ago lost the feeling in her bum, and her upper legs burned from the effort of keeping them out of the way of Richard’s knees, which rhythmically went up and down.

The rucksack weighed heavily on her shoulders, but she held her tongue, resisting the temptation to ask Richard for a break. He must be hurting even more, since he was doing all the hard work, while she merely had to keep her balance on the hard pole.

They had decided to follow the winding road along the Oder until the river turned north. It was still a while to go, but they needed to cross the Oder to get to Görlitz, the southernmost town on the new border between Poland and Germany.

She turned her head slightly to catch a glimpse of his face. His usually attractive visage was distorted into a grim expression of determination and pain. His blond hair was matted and dirty, as was his unkempt stubble. Encrusted blood adorned his brow, cheek and lip. But to her he was still the most handsome man in the world. She longed to reach out her hand and caress his skin, but giggled at the thought, because the movement would only serve to upset their fragile balance and send them both tumbling to the ground.

“What’s so funny?” Richard asked through gritted teeth.

“Nothing. I giggled, because our situation really can’t get much worse.” They continued to ride in silence. Once in a while they passed other refugees walking the same road in their quest to reach the safety of Germany.

When Richard’s huffing and puffing became increasingly labored, she said, “Stop over there, you need a break.”

“Can’t… need to get away…”

“Richard, you’re no use to me when you collapse on the bicycle. See that patch of trees? We’ll rest right there.”

He didn’t protest any further and brought the vehicle to a halt. Katrina slid down from the crossbar with a sigh of relief, the soreness in her buttocks and upper thighs making her eyes water with pain. She discarded the rucksack and stretched her aching bones. When she turned around, she saw the bicycle and her man lying side by side in the grass beneath the trees. Richard’s eyes were closed, and his face showed a heated red color.

The cold hand of fear squeezed the breath from her lungs and she launched herself at him, ready to wake him from the dead. “Darling, please, are you alive?”

“Yes. Need water,” came his coarse reply and she took the bottle from the rucksack, opening it, before she remembered it was empty.

“You stay right here, I’ll go and get water from the river.” Drinking the Oder water wasn’t ideal, not when upstream in Wroclaw the corpses were piled up in the water, but she didn’t have another choice.

She hurried across the empty road and climbed the muddy bank down to the river, where she glanced at the water, making sure there weren’t any rotting cadavers nearby. Then she filled the bottle and drank it in one gulp, before she refilled it and attempted to climb up the bank again.

“Shoot,” she cursed as she slid down the slippery slope, delaying her from bringing back the precious liquid to her boyfriend. She should have taken the rucksack, because with the bottle in one hand she couldn’t pull herself up along the slope. A second attempt brought the same results. The loamy earth was too slippery. She’d need both of her hands to crawl up.

She stood and looked for a better place, but the bank was covered with mud and slick grass. Finally, she stuffed the bottle into her blouse and crawled up to the road. When she reached it and stood up, she looked down at her mud-caked skirt. Just a minor inconvenience in a string of major disasters.

She swiped her hands and shoes in the grass, fumbled the bottle from her blouse and hurried back to her boyfriend, who lay in the grass exactly the same way she’d left him.

“Here you go.”

Richard opened his eyes and sat up with some trouble. Then he emptied the bottle and handed it back to her. “Can I have some more, please?”

“I’ll bring more,” she said, reluctant to make the journey a second time. But whether she liked it or not, they needed more water. “Can you cut some of the bread and a bit of the ham for us? We have plenty of food, but we still need to ration it, because we don’t know how long we’ll be on the road.”

He nodded and reached for the backpack, while Katrina trotted off to the river. She eyed the dreadful mud bank and walked down the road, hoping to find a better place. About five minutes further along she saw a sandy patch in the river that might have been used as a passage. She followed a trail covered in pebbles down to the water and came to stand upon a small pebble beach.

The scenery would have been beautiful, if it weren’t for the destroyed remains of a bridge leading across the river. She took off her shoes and socks, gathered up her skirt and dipped her toes into the water. It was refreshing but not too cold. Maybe they could use the ford to cross over to the other bank. A few steps into the stream she was just over her knees in the water. During her next step, a strong current tugged at her leg and her foot stepped into the void. She stood one-legged with flailing arms, trying to regain her balance.

“Hey, lady, get out of there,” someone shouted at her and she saw an old man rushing over to grab her hand. Once she was safely at the shore again, she wondered where he’d suddenly come from.

“Thank you for your help,” she said.

“What you doing here?”

“Looking for a way to cross. I thought this might be a passage.”

“It was. But not since they destroyed the bridge. The detonation took out a piece of the riverbed and caused a treacherous undercurrent. No way to cross this time of the year. Maybe in summer.”

“You live nearby?” she asked.

The old man smiled, exposing a row of crooked, blackened teeth. “About ten miles from here. I come here because the fishing is still good.”

“Is there another bridge intact?”

“Don’t think so. But there’s a ferry a few days’ walk downstream. At least there was last week. But with all the bloody Germans running for their lives, who knows?” He spat on the ground.

“Thank you for your help. I’ll be on my way.” Katrina thought it prudent not to mention that she was travelling with one of those bloody Germans. The old man gave her a last glance before he trotted off around a bend to resume his fishing.

Katrina put on her shoes, tied the laces and then set off to bring Richard the water. As she approached the group of trees, she saw him leaning against a trunk, two slices of bread and two slices of ham lying neatly on a piece of cloth.

She smiled, remembering her youth. On Sundays, her parents would sometimes take the four children and go on a picnic with them. She had loved the carefree hours filled with her mother’s delicious food, laughter and endless play. A sigh escaped her. Those times were gone – for good.

But she hoped that one day, she and Richard would have children of their own, and the future would allow for a happy family far from the horrors of war. The war was over, but everywhere she looked, devastation prevailed, and living conditions had become worse instead of better.

Richard and she were caught in some special kind of hell, where they neither belonged, nor were safe, with one side or the other. She just hoped this would all get better once they reached Germany.

“Here’s more water,” she said, holding the bottle high in her hand, surprised at the look of horror in Richard’s eyes.

“What on earth has happened to you?”

“Nothing. I…” She looked down at her clothing, which was caked in mud from her first trip to the river, the hem of her skirt dripping with water from her near-encounter with having to swim. That he hadn’t noticed before showed how exhausted he’d been. “That happened when I had to crawl up the mud bank from the river on my first trip to get water.”

He cast her a sheepish grin. “Must have evaded my perception.”

She laughed out loud, and collapsed onto the grass beside him. Snorting, she said, ”You crack me up. I have no idea how you could even keep the bicycle moving in your condition. The moment we stopped, you plummeted to the ground.”

“It’s called the law of inertia. It was easier to keep going than changing my state of motion.” He cast her one of those full-on grins she loved so much, and she pressed a kiss on his chapped lips before she answered.

“I had no idea you devoured physics books with the same speed you read literature.”

“Back in school, I loved physics and chemistry almost as much as German literature.” He sighed heavily. “I do miss books. A lot.”

Katrina took a piece of bread and said, “I considered taking one of the books from the house when I left Barbara and Edmund.”

He looked at her with so much love in his eyes, she almost melted into a puddle. Then he took her hand and said, “Thanks for considering it. But I’m glad you had the good sense not to do so. It wouldn’t go over well if someone found a German book on us when we’re pretending to be Poles.”

“Are we still pretending to be Poles?”

He sighed again, a glint of fear taking up residence in his eyes. “They tore my papers to pieces, so I’m now officially an undocumented alien.”

“Without the papers to support the ruse there’s no chance anybody will believe your cover story.”

“Once we are across the new border, we won’t need the ruse anymore. But the problem is…” Richard said, finishing off his slice of ham. He wiped his mouth, smearing more dirt on his face in the process, and then took a gulp from the bottle.

“… crossing the border,” Katrina completed his sentence. “I don’t think being paperless will pose a problem. There must be thousands of refugees who’ve lost their papers.”

“Yes, but…” His bright blue eyes bored holes into her and she physically felt his anxiety.

She said, “None of the other refugees is a twenty-year-old Wehrmacht deserter. We need to find an excuse why you weren’t drafted.”

“I don’t want to fall into Russian hands. From what I’ve heard it’s similar to my experience in the camp in Wroclaw.” He shuddered as he spoke.

Katrina laid a hand on his, worried by the trace of defeat in his stare. The days in the camp must have been a horrific experience, and while she was glad to have him with her, she also worried about his condition. His bruised and battered face left her in fear about the rest of his body.

“I met an old man when I fetched water at the river. He told me there’s a ferry across the Oder a few days’ walk downstream. We should try to get there.”

“I agree. The faster we cross the border, the better.”

“Why don’t we pack up, and I’ll show you the gravel path down to the river so we can wash up, drink, and refill our bottle. Then we’re our way in a jiffy.”

Richard shouldered the rucksack and let out a short scream, but stubbornly refused to let her carry the bag. Katrina grabbed the bicycle and walked beside him, the bike rolling along between them until they reached the gravel path. She already feared the journey perched on the crossbar again, but it would have to be. They were traveling so much faster like this.

She took the bicycle with them down to the bank, always afraid someone might steal their only means of transport. When Richard took off his jacket and shirt to wash in the stream, she heard a ripping sound and a muttered curse. She looked up at him and gasped in horror. His back was full of seeping wounds, torn open by ripping off the encrusted cloth, and there were deep black bruises scattered across his ribs.

“Wait, let me,” she said and washed his shirt in the cool water, before she wrung it out and started to carefully clean his wounds. “I’m in awe that you could even pedal like this. You must have broken a few ribs as well.”

“I’m sure I did.” He tried a crooked grin, gritting his teeth when the damp cloth touched his skin. “It hurts with every breath.”

“Once we reach the ferry, I’ll be on the lookout for some medicinal herbs to help the healing.”

“You and your herbs,” he said with a teasing smile.

“Don’t mess with me or I’ll make you eat a handful of fennel seeds.”

Richard hated anything fennel and as she had intended, he made a disgusted face and protested, “No need to be cruel, I promise to behave.”

She finished cleaning his wounds and washed his shirt again, while he filled the bottle and poured it over his head, thus meagerly washing his hair and face.

“Much better,” she said as she handed him the considerably cleaner wrung-out shirt. “With the sunshine and the airflow it’ll dry in no time at all.”

Richard got dressed again and then stared at her, mischief twinkling in his eyes. “Aren’t you going to wash up, little mud pie?”

“What, here?”

“There’s nobody around.”

Katrina glanced suspiciously up and down the bank, and then back at Richard. “Someone could be walking down the road.”

“Nobody will come. If it’ll ease your mind, I’ll watch.” He said it with such a dirty smile that she felt her entire body flush with heat.

“No you won’t. You’ll turn around and watch the road.” She had to bite back a giggle at his disappointed face. Although she missed being intimate with him, it wouldn’t happen here, out in the open for everyone to see who happened to pass by.

When he dutifully turned around, she peeked around the bend in the river to make sure the old man was gone and then took off her blouse to wash her face, arms, and chest, before she washed and wrung out the blouse to put it back on. Only then did she call out to Richard, “Anyone in sight?”

He turned around, raising a brow at the sight of her wet blouse. “Nobody but the most beautiful woman on earth, and I missed the best part.”

“You keep watching out,” she answered and then slipped out of her skirt to wash off the mud. In a short while she told him, “Finished.”

“See, nobody passed by, and I could have helped you lather your back.”

Katrina giggled. “We don’t have soap to lather.”

“I could have used my bare hands to do the task.”

“You keep those thoughts to yourself – we have some cycling to do.”