War Girls Complete Collection Chapter 268

Chapter 15

T

hey walked along the deserted road under a dark sky full of stars until they came upon a crossing.

“Which way to take?” Lotte asked, moving her head from left to right.

“I wouldn’t know, not until we can see the sun rising.” Gerlinde flopped down on a rock by the side of the street. Her stomach gave a peculiar sound much like a wolf howling to the moon.

“I guess we could take a break and eat.” Lotte carefully peered in all directions and especially from where they’d come. But the night was silent. Their absence wouldn’t be noticed until morning. Then they’d be marked as absconders, fugitive prisoners of war. She hoped the British wouldn’t put too much effort into searching for two missing women. The way they had treated them before, considering them a burden keeping the soldiers in charge from doing more important work, gave her the confidence to sit beside Gerlinde and open the kitbag.

She took out the butcher’s knife and cut off generous slices of cheese, ham and bread for the two of them. Chewing on the food, she pondered their choices. Due to the time of year, the dawn would arrive in no time at all and they might as well rest here before they decided which road to walk. On the other hand, every minute they kept waiting heightened the risk of being found.

“We need to get the hell out of Gram,” Lotte replied. “When they find out we’re missing, I want to be as far away from this place as possible.”

“It won’t matter where we are,” Gerlinde said, looking down her dirty Wehrmacht uniform. “In this attire, how long do you think it will take until someone notices we’re escaped prisoners of war on the run and turns us in?”

“That’s why we can’t risk anyone seeing us. I sure don’t want to get arrested.”

“Please,” Gerlinde chewed on her piece of ham. “Let’s turn ourselves in. It might not be so bad.”

“Yes, sure, you’ll be forgiven if you turn yourself in,” Lotte said sarcastically. “Hearts of gold, the British have. Have you enjoyed the little taste of their compassion last night?”

Gerlinde held her hands over her face and shook her head as if to erase the memory of the horrific assault. “Don’t be cruel.”

“It wasn’t me who was cruel. But you seem to have taken complete leave of your senses. What exactly do you think they’d do with us?”

“The firing squad?” Gerlinde whispered. “I don’t want to die now that the war is over. Have we made it through years of battle, even survived that bloodletting in Warsaw, just to be killed for desertion now?”

The desperation in her friend’s voice swept away the bitterness Lotte felt and she touched Gerlinde’s cheek. “I’m sorry. It’s just… I’m so angry. It’s like my blood is boiling with the thirst for revenge. I want to tear the entire world to pieces and hurt them a million times more than they hurt me.” She stopped talking, knowing full well that this mindset would only serve to get her into more trouble. Two calming breaths later she said, “I’m sorry, Gerlinde. I won’t take out my anger on you. You are my friend… it might have been better to stay in captivity, but we’ll never know. Because, now, we cannot return.”

“I know.”

They finished eating and waited in silence until the pale light of a dawning sun appeared on the horizon.

“Look,” Lotte said with excitement. “There’s east.”

“Then we take this road. It’ll lead us south.” Gerlinde smiled, the relief apparent. “From Gram to Flensburg, it’s less than sixty miles.”

“How do you know?” Lotte asked in wonder.

“It’s all in here.” Gerlinde tapped at her head. “Or what do you think I was doing while getting bored to death back home? I’d spend entire days poring over my atlas and imagining the places I could go.”

“Good for us. Now let’s walk.”

They didn’t have much time, because before morning broke and people left their houses they’d have to hide.

“I wish we’d taken our civvies.”

“Me, too, but our suitcases were in that truck.” Gerlinde stopped and turned to look at her friend. The agony in her beautiful eyes split Lotte’s heart in half.

“What’s wrong?”

“The photograph of my family. It’s in my suitcase. What if I never see them again and have now lost the only keepsake that keeps their memory alive?”

Lotte squeezed her hand. “You will see them again. I’m sure of that. Didn’t they flee East Prussia in time before the Red Army arrived?”

“They did, but I haven’t heard from them since. And the journey was dangerous…”

Words were inadequate comfort for Gerlinde’s pain, so Lotte only could hold on to her hand and hope for the best. Until she remembered that her own photographs of her family had stayed behind, too. Tears pooled in her eyes and she blinked them away. Crying now would be akin to admitting they were dead.

I’ll have plenty of opportunity to make new photographs together with them once I get to Berlin

. Instinctively, she felt for the one picture she kept with her at all times in the breast pocket of her blouse. Johann. Her fingers caressing the rigid paper, she suddenly had a clear image of him, carrying heavy logs to a lumber mill, feeding the gluttonous sawing machines.

His hands were raw and chapped, bleeding from the rough wood. His honey-colored eyes had lost their warm glow and taken on the empty look of desperation she knew so well from her time in Ravensbrück. It hit her square in the stomach and she doubled over, panting and spluttering.

“What’s wrong?” It was Gerlinde’s turn to speak these words, but Lotte only shook her head. Because… how could she explain a vision?

Hours later, before the morning fully broke, they ventured away from the road and came upon an empty shack leaning haphazardly against the remains of a tree that had been split in half.

“This is the perfect place to hide out and rest,” Lotte said. Long since deserted, the shack was well off the beaten track and provided a perfect sanctuary for the fugitives.

“I guess it’ll do.” Gerlinde was considerably less enthusiastic.

The lush green openness provided a feast for Lotte’s tired senses. The grass smelled fresh and tangy, the singing birds illuminated the mind and quieted the sorrows. “It’s such a lovely place,” she said, her face dreamy and her brain occupied absorbing all the beauty, stashing it deep inside her, ready to feed upon it again during the bleak night.

“Yes, it’s lovely,” Gerlinde agreed. “Nothing like it looked on our farm, but it still reminds me of the amazing wonders of nature.”

“You must miss it so much.”

“I do.” Gerlinde did her best to keep a straight face, but Lotte wasn’t fooled. Working day in, day out together, and sharing a room in the barracks hut, she knew her friend almost better than herself. She could tell with certainty the mood Gerlinde was in, knew her hidden fears, her deepest sorrows and her greatest joys.

In just a year’s time she’d come to connect with Gerlinde in a way that had been reserved for her siblings – before they’d been torn apart, scattered to the four winds. Richard had been the first one to leave the family home in Berlin.

Conscripted into the Wehrmacht at the tender age of sixteen. Thrust into the Eastern Front with so many other boys, raw recruits with no life experience to account for, a leaf in the wind of fate. His chances of surviving this war had decreased with every passing day, and yet, hope remained.

So far, out of thirty classmates, twenty had returned home in the form of a laconic telegram stating,

Your son has given the ultimate sacrifice for Führer and Fatherland. There’s no reason to grieve, only to be proud

.

Lotte involuntarily balled her hands into fists. Didn’t the authorities know how much misery one of these dreaded telegrams caused? Did they have to mock the mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, and girlfriends in such a spiteful way?

Even mourning wasn’t allowed anymore. Shedding tears for a fallen soldier was akin to high treason. Out-of-their-mind mothers who blamed Hitler and his cronies for the death of their sons were dragged to the Gestapo headquarters to be taught a lesson about defeatism.

Her blood boiled with rage. Twenty dead. Five in Russian captivity. Two, one of them her brother Richard, missing in action. Three still fighting. That had been the situation two months ago when she’d last heard from her sister Anna.

Anna

. Lotte sighed. She’d be forever indebted to her older sister for what Anna had sacrificed for her. A sacrifice that only now she could fully comprehend and that came nothing short of the

ultimate

one. Her heart tightened and the throbbing pain between her legs intensified. Anna had made it sound like it wasn’t a big deal, nothing really to speak of. But Lotte had seen the unspeakable pain in her sister’s beautiful blue eyes.

And Ursula, the oldest. The correct one. The good girl who never once was in trouble as a child, very much unlike tomboy Lotte, who never once was

not

in trouble. Ursula had surprised everyone, including Lotte, when she’d defied the Nazis in a way not many dared and had started working for a resistance cell, smuggling

undesirables

out of Germany.

“There’s a creek.” Gerlinde’s voice pulled her out of her thoughts and she peered at her surroundings. The rolling greenery ended against a forested area and a clear stream meandered through tree-lined banks.

Lotte looked at the clear water and yelped, “Oh my goodness. I can’t even remember the last time I properly bathed. I’m getting in.”

Gerlinde giggled, but followed suit. The friends stripped down to their underwear and walked into the clear, chilly water. It was such a blessed feeling to be in the thigh-deep stream, the water softly tugging at her legs.

“Brrrr…” Lotte scrunched up her face into a grimace and inhaled deeply before she immersed herself completely. At first the chill took her breath away, but after a few seconds it was refreshing. She emerged from beneath the surface and beckoned, “Come in. It’s heavenly.”

“Heavenly cold.” Gerlinde was bracing her arms around her shoulders, her lips quivering.

“Only for a moment. Come in and you’ll see.” Lotte dove in again and swam a few tentative strokes, before putting her feet down and glancing back at her friend. “Come on. What are you waiting for?”

Gerlinde theatrically pinched her nose and jumped into the deep waters. When she emerged moments later, a huge grin was spreading on her face. “You were right. It’s swell to feel clean again. Too bad we don’t have soap.”

The girls began to wash out their hair with nothing but clear water, vigorously scrubbing sweat and grime from their heads, disentangling greasy strands, combing them with their fingers.

“You know,” Gerlinde said with a pensive tone. “I never knew how much I would miss simple things like a hairbrush and soap. It’s true that we don’t appreciate what we have until we lose it.”

Lotte stopped in her efforts to straighten the vicious knots in her fiery red curls. Since joining the Wehrmacht auxiliaries, she’d cut her magnificent over-shoulder-length hair to a more easily manageable chin-length modern bob. Still, her curls didn’t take kindly to neglect and after days without a comb they were a tightly woven mess.

She glanced at her friend, whose honey-blond wet hair clung perfectly straight and without any visible entanglements, down to her shoulders. “Wow. I’m fighting an unwinnable battle against my knotted curls and you’re talking advanced philosophy. What’s wrong with me?”

Gerlinde giggled and splashed her with water. “Let me help you.” With expert fingers she managed to transform the red mass of stubborn strands into something akin to a haircut and licked her lips with a satisfied smile when she said, “Ready. You look like an actual human being again.”

“Thanks. Now I just need clean clothes to change into.”

“We could wash…although…”

“…I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

“We might attract less attention with dirty uniforms, should we be seen.”

Lotte nodded. As usual, they seemed to know the other one’s thoughts. They emerged from the water and lay on a grassy bank, letting their wet undergarments dry in the morning sun that blazed down on them.

“This is heaven,” Lotte said dreamily.

“We still should get dressed and get some shuteye in that shack over there.”

Lotte made a face but dutifully slipped into her dirty uniform and followed Gerlinde to the hut. It might have been the refuge of a forest warden in better times, or used by poachers during the war, but now it was an empty, dusted-over place full of cobwebs. An old mattress peeked out beneath dusty rubble and a three-legged chair perched against the wall.

They ate most of the provisions Lotte had taken from the British garrison, spiced up with forest strawberries and dandelion leaves Gerlinde had picked around the hut.

“We’ll take turns sleeping,” Lotte ordered, taking precautions even in a deserted area like this. Denmark was a small country and as such, nothing was far away from the next village. She didn’t want to get caught unawares in her sleep.