War Girls Complete Collection Chapter 358

Chapter 25

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nother year passed. Johann had resigned himself to his life north of the Arctic Circle. Nutrition had improved since his arrival, especially due to the care packages the prisoners were now allowed to receive.

In-demand things from Western Germany like shampoo, chocolate, or oranges could be traded very profitably with the townsfolk.

Some of the barracks had arranged for their own patch of vegetable garden, spending countless hours raking, sowing, watering, and weeding during the short arctic summer. The men took turns hauling water from the nearby river on their walk home from work.

Today was Johann’s day off and together with two fellow prisoners it was his turn to watch over the potato plants. It was a boring thing to do, but with the promise of potatoes to add to his soup during the long winter ahead, he didn’t complain.

Johann actually enjoyed the watch duty, except for the inevitable scuffle with would-be thieves from other barracks, sneaking up to the vegetable patch alone or in groups, trying to steal the produce.

He was sitting in the sun when Kurt brought a piece of cardboard painted on both sides. “Wanna play a game?”

“Sure? Nine men’s morris or checkers?” The men had collected light and dark pebbles to use as pieces. Another group of prisoners, who worked felling trees, had brought home scraps of wood and carved them into chessmen. Unfortunately, only half of the men were done, and Johann hoped they could complete the set before winter set in.

“Let’s start with checkers. I’m white,” Kurt said.

“Fine with me,” Johann said, when a chilly breeze made him shiver. “Winter is coming.”

“Still several weeks until it starts snowing.”

“Yes, but do you think we should harvest the potatoes already?” The tubers had grown into two-foot-tall plants with an abundance of dark green leaves. His hands itched to dig up the ground and have a look.

“No way. The townsfolk have cautioned us to wait until the leaves turn brown.”

“But what if the plants freeze?” Johann’s gut twisted at the thought of the hard labor going to waste.

“It doesn’t matter. The potatoes are protected in the earth and the moment we have the first night frost, we can dig them up.”

Johann sighed. The nearer the time of harvest came, the bolder the attempts of other prisoners to steal the potatoes. Since they were locked into the barracks at night, they had installed an alarm system with tripwires and tin cans.

It had gone off twice already. So far, the perpetrator had always escaped empty-handed, but it was only a matter of time until someone was successful.

“We might have to bribe the guards into letting us put a watch post on the patch,” Johann said.

“That’ll be expensive,” Heinz answered.

“I know… but do you want to lose our harvest?”

“Of course not, we’ll have to ask the others over dinner. Maybe someone has an idea.”

Deep

in the arctic winter a sudden busyness broke out at the Vorkuta camp. For some reason nobody cared to explain, Johann was one of several hundred prisoners transferred to another camp.

They were marched off in such a hurry that Johann didn’t have time to say goodbye to his friends Alfred and Igor. He left a note on Igor’s bunk, wishing him the best of luck, but he couldn’t get to the other side of the camp to find Alfred.

The boxer had become a celebrity in the camp and seemed to enjoy his prison life as much as possible. Johann didn’t hold a grudge against the man, even though he’d never condone Alfred’s decision.

In many hours of talking about philosophy, religion and the core of humanity with Igor, he’d come to the conclusion that choice was what mattered most. Choice equaled freedom. Freedom was not only a human right, but also the one thing everyone yearned to possess. During his entire adulthood he had not once encountered a man or woman who didn’t want to live in freedom.

Even the staunchest Nazis, the ones who advocated the oppression of entire nations, naturally wanted freedom for themselves. The

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lived for the tiniest liberty granted, such as leisure time after dinner. One hour per day when they could do what they wanted – within the limits of the camp – instead of following orders.

Choice. Be one’s own master. Make one’s own decisions. The physical hardships aside, he and his fellows missed that most. It was dreadful to have other people decide what or when he was allowed to eat, drink, work, do, sleep or speak.

Hell, they even tried to regulate his private thoughts. The only thing the despicable Soviets hadn’t regulated yet were his bodily functions, but he had no doubt they’d do so if they found it useful to get inside his body.

“Stop dreaming.” Kurt elbowed him and Johann noticed that the column of prisoners was moving toward the gate of the camp.

A ferocious shiver ran down his spine. He’d hated the camp in Vorkuta with all his heart, but now that he would walk through its gate for the last time, he felt nostalgic.

Who knew what lay ahead? It could be worse – although Johann’s imagination wasn’t vivid enough to come up with a worse scenario than the one he was leaving behind. He shrugged, deciding to take each moment one at a time. He didn’t have a choice anyway, since other people made the decisions for him.

The men boarded train wagons and for the next ten days they rattled southward through the Russian countryside. With every passing day the grim cold decreased and when the journey finally ended, the temperature hovered above freezing.

“Where are we?” Johann asked, rubbing his eyes and shielding them against the blinding sunlight.

“No idea.”

“At least it’s warm.” Under normal circumstances Johann wouldn’t have considered temperatures around the freezing point warm, but compared to the deep-freeze in Vorkuta, it felt like summer.

They soon found out they’d crossed the Soviet Union from north to south and had landed in Kazakhstan. The camp was like any other camp he’d seen so far: ugly, desolate, drab and dirty. But much to Johann’s delight, the men living here looked much healthier than in Vorkuta.

Johann staked his claim on a bottom bunk right next to Kurt. “What kind of work do you think they’ll have us doing this time?”

“No idea.”

“Railway tracks,” one of the resident prisoners said.

“What?”

“There’s only one kind of work in this godforsaken place and that’s making steel railroad tracks. I’m Martin, by the way.” Martin extended his hand.

Johann and the other newcomers introduced themselves and Martin cast them a scrutinizing glance. “You look pretty bad, even for

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. Where have you come from?”

“The Devil’s Home,” Johann said.

“What?”

“A place called Vorkuta north of the Arctic Circle. A gulag where all the atrocious criminals and the German

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with twenty-five-year sentences are sent.”

“Oh.” Martin seemed uncertain whether to believe the explanation or not. “Anyhow, this place is the nicest camp I’ve been to. The Kazakhs are laid-back people and they hate Moscow almost as much as we do.”

“Sounds promising,” Kurt said.

“You’ll find out in the morning.”

The next day, Johann and the other men walked out of the prison camp and three blocks down to the rail-making factory. He didn’t expect much and was surprised when he was given gloves and a helmet before manning his assigned workstation.

Apparently, the Kazakhs were determined to treat the POWs like actual human beings. The work was still tedious, awful and back-breaking. Eight hours a day he manned the tempering station. Superheated liquid metal poured into earthen molds, where it cooled enough to be handled. His job was to remove the heavy tracks together with a comrade and heave them over to another workstation, where the tracks were stamped and stacked onto flat rail cars for transport to other areas of the Soviet Union.

The factory reminded him of the Nazi slogan

Räder müssen rollen für den Sieg

. Wheels have to roll for victory. Nowadays, wheels had to roll for the good of the Soviet nation on railroads built by German slaves.

Martin hadn’t overpromised. Life in the camp near Almaty was a breeze compared to Vorkuta or even to Voronezh. As long as the prisoners showed up for work on time and fulfilled their quota, they were very much left alone the rest of the day.

Johann couldn’t believe his own eyes when he discovered the barracks weren’t locked at night and everyone was allowed to move freely about the camp at all times. They earned a tiny wage for their labor that could be spent in the village for extra food and amenities.

Some of the resident prisoners had the privilege of walking to the village unsupervised. Johann smiled. It almost felt like being a free man again. A man of choices.

“Why don’t they lock us up? Aren’t they afraid we’ll escape?” he asked one day.

Martin scoffed. “Escape? Have you had a look around? We’re in an isolated place with deadly swamps on all sides.”

“Hasn’t anyone ever tried?” Johann asked. Chances of a successful flight had been considerably lower in Vorkuta, but that hadn’t hindered the Soviets from putting up barbed wire fences, guards with rifles, and other means of security.

“A few did. They all died in agony, if they weren’t found first – and beaten to a pulp.”

Having left behind the arctic wastelands he was grateful for every little betterment in his life. Food had been his main issue for the past six years; now he could eat until he was full. It still wasn’t sufficient to grow fat, but at least his body recovered from the years of ruthless exploitation, and by the end of the first year in Kazakhstan he’d put on twenty pounds of pure muscle.

The only drop of bitterness coloring his contentment was that he didn’t receive news from Lotte. He’d been allowed to send her a postcard, but so far, no answer. Instead of dwelling on what he couldn’t have, Johann began to look around him and enjoy what he could.

The fabrication plant employed not only prisoners but many of the townsfolk as well. After months of working side by side, the villagers, and especially the women, couldn’t hold their curiosity at bay and started asking question after question.

Where do you come from? What does it look like? How is life over there? Do you have a wife? And children?

Some would even go as far as to flirt with the

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and soon enough clandestine relationships formed between the Kazakh women and the German men. Even some children resulted from these secret affairs.

While Johann appreciated the beauty of the women, his heart remained with Lotte. Smiling, he remembered her letter, her pert words giving him a piece of her mind. It had been rational to set her free from the promises made, but since she refused to move on, he’d happily cling to the silver lining her unwavering love presented.

Kurt rushed into the barracks, a nervous gleam on his scrubbed and shaven face. “How do I look?”

“Like a scarecrow,” Johann said, oblivious to his friend’s emotional turmoil.

Kurt’s face fell. “Really? I thought…”

“You look just fine,” Martin said, sending a scathing stare in Johann’s direction.

Johann didn’t get what the fuss was all about. Since when did a man in the camp care about his looks? Normally, they were happy to be alive, not hungry, and dressed in clothes instead of rags.

“I haven’t been with a woman in…” Kurt scratched his shaved chin and counted on his fingers, “…seven years.”

“How on earth?” Johann’s eyes almost popped out. Not because of the time span mentioned, but because it dawned on him that Kurt was set to end the drought tonight.

Kurt grinned like a fool. “Katinka and I are going out tonight and I’m pretty sure she’ll let me bang her.”

“Just be back before curfew, or you’ll get us all into hot water,” Martin warned him.

“No need to worry. If he even still knows how to do it after such a long time, he’ll shoot off within seconds,” another prisoner chuckled.

Kurt cast him a dark stare and the man raised his hands with a dirty grin. “What? I know what I’m talking about.”