War Girls Complete Collection Chapter 277

Chapter 24

T

he piercing gaze of everyone in the room burned through her.

She couldn’t be sure they’d really be hanged, but she wasn’t willing to take the risk. The least she could do was to save Gerlinde.

“Please, sir, it’s true. It was all my fault. I begged her to come with me. She didn’t want to. Punish me, but let her go,” Lotte pleaded.

“Is this true?” the colonel asked Gerlinde.

Tears shot into her eyes and she nodded. “Yes, it was Fräulein Wagner’s idea. I tried to talk her out of it, but when I saw her determination I agreed to go with her. Couldn’t leave her all on her own in a foreign country, now could I?” She tried a crooked smile. “So that makes me as culpable as her and I insist on being tried together with her.”

“A pair of fiercely loyal Nazis who aren’t trying to save their necks at the expense of someone else. That’s a first for me,” the colonel said.

“We’re not Nazis…” Lotte stopped talking under the warning eyes of her friend, who hissed, “Don’t make things worse than they are.”

As if things could get any worse.

“I need to tie up a few loose ends, ladies.” Barber flipped through the file, penning notes on the pages. With bated breath, nobody else in the room moved, waiting for his verdict.

He’s hammering the final nails in our coffins.

Lotte snaked her hand around Gerlinde’s wrist, hoping to gain some strength from the nearness of her dearest friend.

“So you ran away from Gram, because you felt you weren’t treated according to the Geneva Convention?” The colonel raised his head, his dark blue eyes boring into them.

“Yes, sir,” Lotte answered.

“You know that fleeing was not the correct way to handle it? You should have reported whatever you felt was out of line. We have procedures in place.”

Lotte balled her fists. Procedures. Reporting. As if that would ever lead to any results. Not in her lifetime. “Yes, sir. And we’re sorry. We acted without careful consideration.”

“So you admit that it was wrong to escape captivity and defy our authority over all Wehrmacht personnel?”

“Yes, we do,” Gerlinde said. It was best to give the man what he wanted, in the feeble hope he might find it within himself to exercise mercy on them.

“And what about you?” Colonel Barber addressed Lotte.

A sudden gut feeling told her he appreciated a person who stood up to fight for what was right more than someone who merely obeyed orders. After all, hadn’t every captured Nazi so far told the new powers that they’d only been following orders?

She was taking a chance, but it was worth it, if it saved their lives. Returning the colonel’s gaze she nodded and took a deep, calming breath.

“Sir, yes, it was legally wrong to defy the British authority and escape, but sometimes a person must do what is morally right instead of following orders and rules.”

The colonel’s eyebrows shot up. “Explain.”

“Since this war started I have done too many things that were against the law. I was never good at taking orders and when what I was supposed to do interfered with my personal ethics, I simply wouldn’t do them.” She kept looking at him, seeing the spark of interest awakening. Perhaps she could talk her way out of this situation. “Because of this character weakness, as my mother liked to call it, the Nazis sent me to a concentration camp for reeducation. You know what this entails.” She let her gaze wander across the room, finding recognition in the faces of the soldiers present.

The colonel leaned back and tented his fingers. “Go on.”

“I don’t regret what I did; I just regret that I wasn’t more careful in hiding it.” She forced a chuckle. “After surviving this there wasn’t much left that could scare me. But what happened in Gram… it was so outrageously unjust. Can you imagine my disillusionment when the very soldiers I had awaited for so long to liberate us from Hitler’s reign, shredded to pieces my view of right and wrong? I couldn’t sit idly by and let it happen again.”

She paused for effect and then concluded her statement, “That is why I escaped, because your soldiers violated my sense of justice and I won’t let this happen ever again. I’m not sorry that I defied the authority, because if I have learned one thing from this war, it is that you always have to act according to your sense of ethics. No matter what your orders entail.”

The room plunged into stunned silence, barely a breath could be heard. Until Gerlinde broke the spell with a whisper, “You never told me you were in a concentration camp.”

There’s so much more I never told you about.

Lotte used

the opportunity of a bathroom break to wash her face, neck and arms and bring her stubborn red curls into a presentable hairdo. Her black dress with the big white and rose birds looked the worse for wear, but she managed to straighten some of the wrinkles and wipe off the dirt with water.

“How do I look?” she asked her friend.

“Like the clean version of someone I thought was my best friend,” Gerlinde pouted.

“Please, Gerlinde, I had my reasons for not telling you. It would have endangered your life, had you known.”

Gerlinde pursed her lips and turned away. “Let’s go. We shouldn’t leave the colonel waiting.”

Lotte sighed. Her friend’s reaction was understandable, but there was nothing she could do now. The threat of execution still loomed over their heads.

Half an hour later they sat in the officer’s mess with Colonel Barber, who’d – much to their surprise – invited them for lunch.

“Now, Miss Wagner, I admit, you surprised me with that enthusiastic speech in my office and I’d love to hear more.”

“There’s not really that much to say…” Lotte hedged.

He fixed his clear dark-blue eyes on her, a man who had seen everything and wouldn’t be fooled by a pretty face. “I do believe there’s a lot more to it. Or is this another badly fabricated backstory?”

“No, sir, it’s not.” Lotte shook her head to emphasize her words. “It’s just… I’m not sure how much I’m allowed to say.”

“Allowed to say? Now you really have my attention.” He rubbed his clean-shaven chin, studying her intently. “Why don’t you start with telling me how you came to be released from the camp – and why on earth did the Nazis later allow you to work in the Wehrmacht? That doesn’t make much sense, now does it?”

Lotte almost giggled at the sheer ridiculousness. “Put that way, it really doesn’t.” She looked at the colonel and decided to come clean. To hell with secretiveness and half-lies. She might as well start with a clean slate into her new life – if she had one.

“I wasn’t released; I escaped.”

“Seems to be a recurring pattern.” The colonel’s eye filled with mischief, encouraging her to continue with her story.

“Afterward, I changed my identity and became Alexandra Wagner.”

He nodded as if this was the most normal thing in the world to do. Gerlinde, though, let out a gasp and hissed, “You lied to me all this time?”

Lotte felt sorry for her friend, who had to find out in such a crude way, and whispered, “I’m sorry, but I couldn’t tell you.” Then she returned her attention to Colonel Barber. “One of the nuns in the convent where I’d taken refuge brought me into contact with a man who turned out to work for the SOE. He recruited me.”

“He recruited you?” Barber’s eyes snapped wide open and the fork filled with food in his hand stopped mid-air.

“Yes, sir. It was his idea that I join up as Wehrmachtshelferin. I trained as a radio operator and gave the secret codes to decipher our messages to my contact person. First to the Polish Home Army, and later to the Norwegian Milorg.”

“You were a spy for the enemy? A traitor to our country? How could you?” Gerlinde got up and stormed away. Two military police guarding the door to the mess caught her and, at a gesture from the colonel, took her away.

“What will happen to my friend?” Lotte asked, the food suddenly tasting bitter.

“Nothing. She’ll be brought to the cell to calm down,” he reassured her. “But I would ask the same question: What made you betray your Fatherland?”

“It stopped being my Fatherland when the Nazis deported my Jewish friend Rachel. I promised they would pay for it – one day.”

“You’re quite the rebellious lady,” he said. “Let me verify your story. If it’s true, I’ll properly discharge you and your friend and arrange for travel permits.”

“Thank you,” Lotte said.

The rest of their lunch was spent with small talk about weather, food and the wish to return to their respective families.

She returned to the cell – for lack of a more appropriate place – with a much lighter heart. The threat of execution was over, but she had to fight another and more important battle first: reconciliation with her best friend.

Gerlinde sat on the cot, arms around her knees, face dug inside the cocoon. Lotte slipped beside her and put an arm around her friend’s shoulders.

No reaction.

“Gerlinde, please.”

The other woman didn’t raise her head, but at least she spoke, albeit in a grave voice: “You lied to me all this time.”

“I’m sorry. It wasn’t really lying. It was withholding information for your own safety. A matter of life and death.”

“Why didn’t you trust me enough to confide in me? We are friends, aren’t we? We have been through the mill together, in Poland and here, and yet you continue to hide things from me.” Gerlinde finally looked at her, her expression laced with sadness.

Lotte’s heart wept at the raw agony she saw on her friend’s visage. “I didn’t want something horrific to happen to you because of

me

.”

“Ah, you lied save me?” Gerlinde shrugged, her tone disdainful. “You know something, Alex? Keep your secrets. Quite frankly I don’t want to know, nor do I want to remain in a so-called friendship based on lies and distrust.”

“My real name is Lotte. Charlotte Klausen.”

“I don’t care!”