War Girls Complete Collection Chapter 271

Chapter 18

T

he ill-fitting and old-fashioned garments pretending to be dresses might look ugly, but they gave Lotte and Gerlinde a sense of freedom and confidence they had missed clad in their Wehrmacht uniforms. Wearing headscarves, they looked like any of the country folk that swarmed the roads.

They walked along the main road and hoped to reach the border within two days. The scorching sun, though, made the walking arduous. When a horse-driven cart passed close by, Lotte wanted to stop it and beg a lift.

“But what should we say?” Gerlinde, the voice of caution, said. “We’ll never pass as Danes. We don’t even speak Danish!”

“We could say we’re German refugees on our way home.”

“Can’t wait to see all the goodwill that’s gonna bring us.” Gerlinde pursed her lips in a sarcastic smile.

They didn’t have to find out, because their hesitation had taken too long and the moment was lost, the carriage fading away into the distance. Their fatigue increased with each step as the day got hotter. It was so warm that they removed their scarves.

To distract herself from the oppressive heat, Lotte struck up a conversation with Gerlinde. “What do you want to do once we’re home?”

“I don’t have a home, remember?” Gerlinde was in no mood to converse, but that wouldn’t deter Lotte.

“Assuming you find your family, where would you like to settle down?”

“Any bloody place that’s not in ruins, has no bombs raining down and certainly no soldiers around.”

“That’ll be hard to find.” Lotte giggled, and finally Gerlinde stopped moping and smiled at her.

“Well, if we really can’t go back to East Prussia, I think I’d like to live in Hamburg. It’s a big city, close to the sea.”

Lotte shook her head. “Me, I’ll want to stay in Berlin.”

“What’s your obsession with Berlin, anyway?” Gerlinde wiped the sweat from her forehead. “Don’t you want to return to Cologne?”

“Too many bad memories.” Lotte quickly said. She had never been in Cologne, except for passing through to her basic training as radio operator. But Alexandra had supposedly lived there all her life.

“We haven't made much progress,” Gerlinde said. “At this rate it will take forever to cross over into Germany. Ingrid said the only checkpoint open to Germans is near Flensburg.”

Lotte groaned. That meant crossing the Danish peninsula from west to east, adding another forty miles to their journey. “We really need some kind of transport.”

An unladylike snort escaped Gerlinde’s lips. “And court danger just because you’re in a hurry? That’s a foolhardy plan.”

“Do we still have some food?” Lotte asked, mulling over the request for a plan.

“Not much.” Gerlinde distributed the rest of their bread. “That’s it.”

“See? We need to cross the border fast.”

“Because on the other side there’s milk and honey flowing?” Gerlinde rolled her eyes.

“No, but I guess we could work for food…”

“We can just as easily do that here.”

“Didn’t you just say yourself that nobody in this country likes the Germans, so why would they give us work?” Lotte kicked a pebble with her sturdy shoes. Brown, inelegant, a barbarous fashion sin, she had complained about the army-issue half-boots since she’d received them last year. But after walking for days, she actually thanked Oberführerin Littman for the graceless things.

“I know!” Lotte yelped. “We could pretend to be deported Jews returning home.”

“You can’t be serious.” Gerlinde stopped in her tracks, her mouth hanging agape. “I don’t want to pass as a Jew. How can you even suggest such a misbegotten thing?”

“Misbegotten? What are you talking about? They‘re people like you and me. In fact, I once had a friend—“

Gerlinde heaved in a breath. “You have Jewish friends?”

“Your jaw will dislocate if you don’t close it.” Lotte said dryly. “I had no idea you’re such a fervent Nazi.”

“I’m not a Nazi.” A flush crept up Gerlinde’s cheeks. “But Jews are just... greedy money makers… they keep all the best positions for themselves and control finances every chance they get. I didn’t like that they were putting them into the ghettos, but it was a necessity. The Jews were destroying our nation.”

“And they succeeded, right? Look what they did: they started the war, bombed our cities, killed millions of soldiers by sending them into a lost battle – oh, and don’t forget the casualties they caused with their SS and Gestapo thugs,” Lotte said in a derisive tone.

Gerlinde hunched her shoulders, looking outright miserable. “Of course not, but…”

“But what? What did they do to harm our country? Nothing… it was that bloody bastard Hitler who did all of this. I know, because I was…” Lotte didn’t finish her sentence, because her friend gave her

the look

.

“Shush. If someone hears you…”

“See what the Nazis did? We just lost the war and you’re still shushing me, looking over your shoulder, afraid a black-uniformed man with the skull on his lapels will jump out from the hedge and massacre us for what I said?” Lotte snorted.

“I’m sorry… it’s just…” Gerlinde didn’t have to explain, because they both knew all too well the realities they’d lived with for the past twelve years. She sighed. “I simply don’t like the Jews, and certainly can’t pretend to be one of them.”

Lotte shrugged. If she had ever believed that the end of the war would miraculously make everything better, now she had evidence it wouldn’t. If even a kind and gentle person like Gerlinde had been indoctrinated to harbor such deep-running hatred, how could forgiveness come to this fractured world?

In silence they walked along the road, each annoyed by the other’s remarks. With every step Lotte felt the tension between the two of them growing, and with it the certainty that the repercussions of the Nazi ideology would ravage her country for years, if not for decades to come.

Maybe Ingrid wasn’t a case for the mental asylum, but she appeared to know things others did not. The lost war was not the end, but only the beginning. The beginning of filling up the abyss that had swallowed Europe along with its humanity, culture, compassion, and worst of all, future.

For the future looked bleak.

Am I like that?

Lotte played football with a pebble.

Do I espouse prejudices that I am unaware of or hatred for something that is too deep-rooted to recognize?

After a while, Gerlinde turned around and put her arm around her friend’s waist in an effort to demolish the barrier growing between them. “Forgive me. I didn’t mean to upset you. You remember those Poles in Stavanger they had doing the hard construction labor? Maybe we could pretend to be displaced persons from Poland?”

Lotte leaned against Gerlinde. “But how? My Polish is abysmal, you know that.”

“Mine is fluent. Nobody will notice.” Gerlinde smiled. “In the unlikely event that we actually come across a Pole, you just keep your mouth shut.”

“Oh. So your proposal is just a ruse to keep me silent, while you chatter away all you want?” Lotte giggled with delight. She had hated the short time she was at odds with her best friend.

“Well, yes. So what do you say?”

“I say it’s a plan.”