War Girls Complete Collection Chapter 40

Chapter 14

M

orning came, and Lotte woke with a stiff body. Late in September, the days were still warm, but the nights had become chilly. She glanced at her side and found Uwe murmuring in his sleep.

She tried to stretch without waking him but wasn’t successful.

“Morning,” he greeted her with a yawn.

Her grumbling stomach drowned out her reply.

“Hungry?” He propped himself on his elbow and glanced at her as if this was the first time he’d seen her.

“Starving.” Lotte raised a hand to her curly hair, which refused to be tamed and probably looked like a wild mess atop her head. He chuckled, and Lotte felt self-consciousness rising. She’d never given a penny for her looks before.

“Good.” Uwe smiled. “Let’s see if we can find us some breakfast. Here, take this.” He handed her a bucket and took another one for himself. He led her to a nearby creek, where they quenched their thirst and took a quick once over, refreshing themselves. Then they carried the buckets of water back to the hut and went in search of edible plants. In autumn, the forest blossomed with berries, mushrooms, nuts, and edible plants. For a few more weeks they would find enough food to survive.

“Shush,” Uwe whispered. He froze. In the clearing ahead of them, several rabbits hopped around. Uwe produced a slingshot from his pocket and crouched down, one hand searching for a stone while his eyes stayed glued to the rabbits.

Whoooshhh. The stone flew through the air, and one of the rabbits fell to its side while the others scattered in panic.

“Gee. You’re a good shot,” Lotte said in awe.

A proud smile spread across Uwe’s face. “Once learned, never forgotten. That’s our dinner for tonight. Now we just need to find some dry wood. We’ll need to be careful with the smoke, though. You know how to cook this critter?”

“I’ve only ever cooked chickens,” she answered truthfully.

“Well, let’s hope it works the same.” He chuckled. “I can gut and skin it, but the cooking is above my pay grade.”

Lotte watched him gutting the still warm animal and making short work of skinning it. When finished, he picked up the skin and the rabbit, and they returned to the hut, where he started a fire in the pit. Everything he did looked so easy, so normal.

Meanwhile, she searched for something they could use as a pot, but apart from the two metal buckets, there wasn’t anything of use.

“I guess we’d better grill our dinner. Yeah, let’s have a barbeque.” Lotte giggled and went in search of some sticks. Uwe sharpened them with his pocketknife and handed them back to her.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“A slingshot, a pocketknife…what else do you have hidden in those pockets of yours?”

“Well, that’s one good thing we learned with the

Hitlerjugend

. Always be prepared.” He chuckled and watched her as she threaded the rabbit onto the sticks, and then rammed the sticks into the earth, leaving the animal hanging over the fire. Then they settled on the ground, side by side, watching their dinner roast, turning it every so often.

“I’m worried. I’ve never been on my own,” Lotte said into the silence.

“Me too. And I feel guilty for leaving my mom alone. She must be out of her mind.”

“Aunt Lydia will be crazy with sorrow as well. She must suspect something awful has happened, because I believe I saw her standing at the window when I was shoved into the police car.” Lotte stood up to turn the rabbit. “I never wanted to endanger her or my cousins.”

“What about your mother?” Uwe asked.

“Oh, goodness.” She had completely forgotten about her family. It wouldn’t take long before Aunt Lydia called Mutter and told her that Lotte was missing. She took a deep breath, swallowing the lump in her throat. “Mutter will be frantic.”

“Tell me about your family,” Uwe said as he stared into the fire.

A piece of her heart chipped off as she thought about them all. “You met my mother when she was here earlier this year, right?”

Uwe nodded.

“I’m the youngest. Baby, they like to call me.” She made a face, and he chuckled in response. “Vater and Richard are missing somewhere in Russia. My two sisters live in Berlin. Anna is a nurse.”

“I take it she hasn’t joined up?”

“God, no. Anna never wanted to become a nurse in the first place. Ever since I can remember, she’s been driven by ambition, has dreamed of becoming a biologist. But my parents opposed that. They said it was unheard of for a girl to be a scientist.” Lotte thought of the many times Anna had battled with her parents. Anna’s arguments that a woman had the right to choose her own destiny, and her mention of female scientists like Marie Curie or Lise Meitner, fell on deaf ears. After the outbreak of war, Anna had succumbed and given up her futile battle fighting both her conservative parents and the Nazis, who believed the place for a woman was her home and hearth.

“So, she became a nurse?” Uwe interrupted her thoughts.

“Yes. It seemed the logical thing to do. But my ambitious sister can’t fool me. I’m pretty sure she’ll bring up the topic of going to university again after the war.

“I can see a family pattern here. Two spitfire sisters. What about the third one?”

“Ursula. She’s the oldest. She’s totally different than Anna and me. You can’t imagine how

good

my sister is. She’s never once gotten into hot water. Not with our parents. Not at school. She has always followed the rules to a T. Ursula is obedient to a fault.”

“You sure she’s your sister?” Uwe teased.

“Well, some people do say she and Anna look like twins. So yes, there’s some family resemblance.” Lotte laughed and watched as Uwe got up to turn the rabbit. He cut off a chunk with his pocket knife and handed it to her. “Here, try it.”

The smell of the roasted meat reached her nostrils, and her mouth watered. Uwe’s eyes clung to her mouth as she chewed on the rabbit, causing her head to swirl and momentarily forget where she was.

“A few more minutes,” she said after swallowing.

“Is she a nurse, too?”

“Who?” After noticing his eyes, Lotte had all but forgotten their conversation.

“Your sister, Ursula.”

“Oh, no. She can’t stand the sight of blood. She’s a prison guard.” Lotte took a deep breath, inhaling the scent of roasted rabbit.

His eyes widened. “Baloney.”

“No, really, it’s true. She hates her job, but when the labor service bureau assigned her to become a prison guard, she raised no objection. As I said, she always does what she’s told.”

“Weren’t you at her wedding in January?” Uwe asked.

“You remember?” Lotte raised an eyebrow, and he cast his eyes downwards. “It was wacky. A marriage by proxy. Can you imagine? My sister actually married a steel helmet. Her fiancé couldn’t even come home for his own wedding.”

“Our food should be ready.” Uwe expertly pulled the rabbit off the spit and divided it into two halves. He gave Lotte the same size portion as he took, but she wasn’t having any of that.

“You’re bigger than I am and doing more of the heavy work. You need to eat more.”

Uwe argued, but in the end, he cut off a chunk from her portion. Then they ate the tasty animal with their fingers like barbarians and drank water from the bucket.

Being in the woods with Uwe was fun. It could have been carefree if it weren’t for the reason why they were there.

“Hans and his father are out for revenge. Do you think they can find us here?” Lotte asked in a shallow voice.

“I don’t know. We’re safe here for now.”

Lotte propped herself on her elbows and sighed. “I’m a fraud, I see that now.”

“Why do you say that? You’re anything but a fraud.”

“Look at me. I’ve been in Kleindorf almost three years, milking those damn cows. When, for the first time ever, I get the chance to do something really important, I mess it up and get caught.”

“You didn’t mess up, these things happen.”

“To me…yes. They wouldn’t happen to Ursula, or Anna, or anyone else.” She buried her head in her hands and continued in a grave voice, “I wish I’d listened to my mother and kept my mouth shut. See where being so impulsive got me?” Her voice dropped to a murmur: “Telling Hans he’s a coward was a horrible mistake.”

“You did that?” At the alarm in Uwe’s voice, she looked up and stared into his blue eyes, full of concern.

“Yes. I believe my exact words were, ‘You’re nothing more than a Nazi coward hiding behind your father’s coattails.’”

“No wonder he was livid,” Uwe said and cocked his head to the side. “Never tell a lad he’s a coward. That’s about the worst thing you can say.”

“I guess I learned that the hard way.” Lotte stood and gathered the remains of their meal to bury them in the earth.

Later, they walked to the creek and washed up, brushing their teeth with their fingers. Then Uwe carried another bucket of fresh water back to the hut.

Life over the next days carried on in a similar fashion, with Uwe killing some small animal for their dinner and Lotte finding wild lettuce, mushrooms, and berries to supplement their meals. For two glorious days, they pretended they were camping out, and then their situation changed.