War Girls Complete Collection Chapter 335

Chapter 2

J

ohann had already spent two weeks on the farmstead and each day more prisoners arrived. According to the Soviets, this was only a temporary camp to collect prisoners and then send them onward to a real camp.

But since the Red Army was still fighting their way to Berlin, they understandably had more pressing issues than a bunch of bedraggled enemy combatants. The guards inhabited the ruins of the bombed-out buildings while the POWs had to stay out in the open, exposed to wind and weather.

A bone-numbing cold seeped into every cell in Johann’s body ever since the day he was taken captive. The frozen limbs and deep-frozen bones served as constant companion, along with the nagging hunger. Their captors provided them with a thin soup and bread once a day, but it was never enough. Especially because more and more soldiers poured into the small area, competing for space and food. At least the drizzling snow could be used to quench the maddening thirst.

Another problem was the boredom – and the worrisome thoughts that came with it. With nothing else to occupy his hands or his mind, Johann constantly worried.

About himself and his future. About his parents. About his friends. But mostly about Lotte. The last time he’d seen her was half a year earlier in Warsaw, when he’d put her on a train to Berlin together with her friend, Gerlinde, and her nephew, Jan.

Lotte worked as a radio operator for the Wehrmacht and had been posted to Stavanger in Norway. He should be pleased, because he’d personally had a hand in her latest posting. Stavanger was by far one of the safest places to stay during this war. Sure, the fighting after the invasion had been fierce – for a month. Since then, nothing much had happened in Norway, unlike in the more violent theaters like Poland, where he’d met her.

He touched her letter in his breast pocket, but his fingers were too nearly frozen stiff to take it out. It didn’t matter, because he knew its contents by heart from reading it several dozen times.

His mind drifted away to last summer in Warsaw, and the oppressive heat he’d welcome with open arms right now. He’d fancied the fierce and spunky redhead at first sight, because she was so different from everyone else.

Much later he’d found out just how different she really was… but by then he’d fallen head over heels for her already and would have given his right arm to protect her. Thankfully, it hadn’t come to that extreme. Although he’d had to lie, steal, and deceive to keep her alive.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever feel warm again,” his neighbor’s voice broke into his musings. The prisoners huddled in a tight circle, their backs to the icy breeze coming from the east.

Johann lifted his hands to his chapped lips and blew into them. “How much longer are they going to keep us out here? I wish they’d just send us to wherever our destination is.”

Helmut gave a sarcastic laugh. “Be careful what you wish for.”

“It can’t really get much worse.”

“You have no idea. If only one tenth of the rumors are true, we’re in for an awful surprise.”

“We should try to escape,” another soldier, called Heinz, said.

“Escape? And where would you go?” asked Johann.

“Somewhere. Anywhere but here.” Heinz rubbed the icicles from his nose.

“He’s right. They don’t have many guards and there’s not even a fence around this place,” another man chimed in.

Glancing around, Johann admitted the truth in the man’s words. The Soviets used only about a dozen armed soldiers to guard a thousand prisoners. But they didn’t hesitate to shoot anyone trying to escape. With nowhere to hide, a fleeing man in his

feldgrau

uniform could be seen for miles against the white landscape.

Even if a prisoner made it, where would he go? The Polish population wasn’t exactly fond of the former oppressors and would rather lynch a Wehrmacht soldier than help him escape the Russians.

“Be my guest. Make your move,” Johann said and gazed across the sorry bunch of huddled men. Most were too injured, too sick, or too malnourished to even think of running. For a week now dysentery had been ravaging the camp, depleting the men’s ability to withstand the harsh conditions.

Every morning the prisoners dragged more corpses to the far side of the field and tossed them into deep open pits. With each passing day the pits filled faster, soon outpacing the speed with which the prisoners could dig out new ones in the frozen earth.

A murmur went through the crowd as several trucks with Red Army soldiers arrived.

“What’s happening?” Heinz asked.

“No idea,” Johann said. They’d find out soon enough.

“Everyone line up!” The barked order caused the bedraggled crowd of men to stumble into something akin to a line.

Another search?

Johann inwardly groaned. He kept close to Helmut, even reached for his arm to prevent them from being separated. Whatever was happening he didn’t want to face it without his only friend. Heinz clung to them, as did Karl, and the four of them managed to stay together.

The Soviets counted batches of five hundred prisoners and one batch after another was marched out of the camp. When it was their turn to leave, a wave of nostalgia swept over Johann. As bad as conditions had been, at least the camp was familiar by now.

Anything else was uncertain. He knew neither where they were headed nor what awaited them there. And the Russians weren’t inclined to explain. Only after marching half a day, someone snapped up a conversation between two guards and the news spread like wildfire through the column. “We’re being transferred to Plonsk.”

“That’s about fifty miles northwest. Does that mean they plan on sending us home?” Helmut asked.

“That would be outright stupid of them, because the war’s still on.” Johann shook his head. The more probable explanation was they had liberated Soviet POWs from a Wehrmacht camp and were now reusing the same facilities to hold their own prisoners.

What concerned him more was the fact that Plonsk was a good three-day march away. The Russians didn’t genuinely expect the debilitated men to walk the entire distance?

He soon found out that they did.

Johann, Helmut, Heinz and Karl walked side by side from sunup to sundown, with little to no food, no water, and unpredictable winter weather upon them. When one of them stumbled, the others would drag that man up again, for the Russian guards didn’t exercise much patience with those who couldn’t keep up the pace.

Johann soon saw the futility of worrying about hunger, cold and pain, and exclusively focused on setting one foot in front of the other. Step by step inching in the direction of Plonsk. But not even the prospect of returning to Germany one day could raise his spirits.

He succumbed to his delirious pains, until the sight of a comrade lying in the snow shook him from his apathy. The man’s pale face blended into the snow and for a moment Johann thought the dreadful march might be a blessing in disguise. If their guards didn’t force them to keep walking, the prisoners would rest in the snow and ultimately end up frozen into eternity.

The squishing sound of his soaked leather boots formed a melody and Johann steadied the rhythm of his steps. Short squish with the left foot, longer one with the right foot. His feet were frozen solid in the shoes, so he didn’t feel the pain of the forming blisters that undoubtedly would tear open to form ghastly wounds.

On the second day he could no longer summon the will to care. During his few lucid moments Johann wondered whether he was even alive or if this was some kind of purgatory where he had to atone for his sins.

The temperature had fallen constantly during the past days, and after a night huddled together in the snow, dozens of men simply wouldn’t wake up anymore. He cast a glance at their angelical faces, peaceful at last, devoid of hunger and pain. And for a fleeting moment he wished to follow them to wherever they were. Only the thought of soft and warm Lotte wrapped in his arms, pressing a passionate kiss on his lips, sent some much-needed heat into his bones and kept a tiny flicker of life burning inside him.

He slipped. The earth welcomed him, beckoned at him to lie down and relax. A ray of sunshine hit his face, making him smile. Everything would be alright. There was no pain. No sorrow.

Nothing.

“Get up,” one of the guards shouted.

Helmut slapped Johann’s cheek and somehow shoved him upward. For a moment, Johann wanted to yell at his friend for making him leave the peaceful place. But then he glimpsed reality and struggled to a stand, staggering forward with Helmut’s help.

Hours later he was still marching, unsure whether to thank his friend or curse him for not letting him die back there. It would have been so easy. Close his eyes and succumb to a peaceful sleep, never to wake up again.

The crowd of men trudging along continued to dwindle. By noon the sun stood high enough for Johann to feel her warming rays – not enough to heat up the air, but at least melting the ice on his uniform.

Over time the march became even more tedious and he couldn’t explain why, not until he raised his head and saw they were walking up a hill. The pace of the weakened prisoners slowed down. He continued to struggle on. Minute after minute. Yard after yard. Step after step.

God, I wish this horrific ordeal would just end

.

Two men in front of him slipped on the treacherous slope and fell, tumbling a short distance off the pathway. The guards rushed toward them with raised rifles, yelling at them to get up.

“My ankle… I think it’s broken,” one of the men gasped, even as his comrade somehow stumbled to his feet, shoved forward by the guard.

Johann watched helplessly how the injured man struggled to get to his feet, but instantly fell down again. After two attempts, one of the guards took a step back, and discharged a bullet into the head of the fallen man.

Anger rose in Johann’s chest, pushing the apathy aside, and he clenched his fists as hatred for the Russian guards filled his soul. His muscles tightened and he vibrated with the need to seek justice for the now dead man.

“It’s not worth your life.” Helmut held his arm.

Johann swallowed hard as emotions flooded his body, but under Helmut’s unforgiving grip he couldn’t do anything other than continue on his march. Only his mind stayed behind with the dead prisoner left to rot alongside the trail. Images of the young man’s family back home, a sweetheart desperately waiting for news of her man attacked him, clawing at his heart and soul and he wished he’d at least known the soldier’s name to somehow inform them of his fate.

For the next few hours, Johann’s anger fueled his march, heated his body, and at the end of the day he was even more exhausted than usual. The emotional turmoil roiling within him had taken its toll.

“You need to calm down,” Helmut said.

“I’m calm.”

“No, you’re not. And it will do you no good.” Helmut managed a smile. “If you want to do something, let us say a prayer for the dead men.”

“A prayer? How will that help?”

“Everything.” Helmut never let anyone ridicule his strong faith in God. He took out a tiny pocket Bible to read the word of the day.

Johann listened begrudgingly to the sermon that followed, but didn’t dare to interrupt. Secretly, he wished he had the same faith as Helmut. Whatever hardships were thrown at him, Helmut never fought against them, but accepted their existence and tried to find a way to live with them.

Tolerance was a new experience for Johann, who’d been full of anger throughout most of his life. Anger for the Allies who strangled Germany after the Great War. Anger for the Jews who dealt the fatal blow to his beloved country. Anger for the British bastards who’d framed him in Shanghai and used him as a convenient scapegoat. Anger for the Wehrmacht who had kept him waiting for a promotion after this incident… and now anger for the Soviets who treated him with such deplorable cruelty.

Three horrendous days after leaving the farmstead, half of the sorry group of bedraggled men arrived at Plonsk. As Johann had suspected it was a former Wehrmacht POW camp that now held tens of thousands of the former masters.

At least there were barracks to shield them from wind and weather, and daily meals. But first, they had to register – again.

The Russians asked him the same question as in Warsaw. His answers were recorded into the same type of lists, and Johann began to suspect that those lists from Warsaw had never made it here.