“Harald! What on earth happened?”
“Nothing.” He stood, beaming and clear-eyed, in the middle of the devastation, among the remnants of one’s past life. “Everything is fine. Everything is just as it’s supposed to be. I think we’re both safe now.”
Her hand still trembled in his when the first tanks rolled through the street just where they decided to stay. She still cowered behind Harald’s back when the first infantrymen burst through the door with their rifles trained before them.
“Kapitulieren.” Harald held a napkin for them both, despite the white flag that was already hanging outside.
Then there was the already familiar talk.
“Where from?”
“Locals.”
“Your house?”
“No.”
“Where are your parents?”
“Dead.”
“Your comrade?”
“My brother.”
The “boys” were allowed to stay in the cellar and even received some potatoes to add to their canned preserves.
Germany, May 1945
When a call came through on the R/T, from the neighboring airbase, to see if the nearest city had been occupied yet, Johann took off from the runway alone, with a sinking feeling in his stomach. When, after flying for barely ten minutes, he saw columns of smoke rising from the ground underneath, he knew it was all over for him; for them all. He landed, taxied back to his usual spot and shook his head at his loyal crew chief Lutter when the latter asked him if he should refuel his bird. With the reluctance of a lover abandoning his beloved, Johann climbed out of the cockpit and patted the fuselage with infinite fondness. This bird would never fly again.
The airbase had long ago turned into a sort of gypsy town, with the wing’s families, relatives, and other civilian refugees camping nearby, for there was nowhere else for them to head. As a Gruppe Commander, Johann ordered his men to herd them all as far away as possible.
“We’ll burn everything here to the ground.”
By noon, they brought their battered fighters as close to each other as possible and thoroughly pretended not to wipe annoying tears as they doused everything in gasoline. The ammunition was piled not too far away; the fire would take care of it once it spread on the petroleum-soaked ground. They only took their log books and photo albums with them. By dusk, they were heading westward, a veritable pyre bursting into the sky behind them. Johann didn’t look back at his bird. He marched amid his own men and civilians, tears streaming down his face which otherwise remained utterly impassive.
At night, the Russians came and overtook their little camp that they’d set up in the middle of a meadow. They came with tanks and trucks, drunk like pigs and instantly got to sorting their trophies; first the German wristwatches and later, the German women◦– in that exact order.
Johann stood as still as a statue, stunned and uncomprehending, as some Ivan was stripping him of his personal belongings. The wristwatch, the Knight’s Cross, the Diamonds◦– all found their way into the Ivan’s pocket. Johann remained where he was, hugging his logbook to his chest when the Ivan pulled one of the wing crew members’ wife and daughter out of her husband’s hands, whom he had just as promptly relieved of his personal items. That’s when the madness started, the real one, which he had never seen or could imagine in his worst nightmare during all of the years of his service. The men threw themselves on the Russians and were immediately gunned down or beaten in front of their weeping wives and daughters. The women were then thrown on the ground right where their dead husbands lay and raped◦– mothers, daughters, and old women alike.
Junior Leutnant Renke flew as his wingman just a few months ago. Johann watched as he collapsed on the ground when his wife’s turn came and she fell on her knees before Herr Commissar and begged him to take her but spare her daughter. There she was, little Lisl. Why would Renke bring them here? Thought he could protect them, no doubt… In a perturbed spasm of grief, Johann fell to the ground as well and wept, together with them all, the husbands and fathers, who turned from brave aces into victims of the war overnight. He wished the Russians would just shoot them all and be done with it. It was an easier death, surely. Anything but this living hell into which they had been thrown for all their sins. Holding his logbook as a shield in front of himself, Johann begged God for one thing only; take him, along with them all but spare his Mina from this.
The morning came and with that, the death. They lay next to each other, the families, content and already gray-blue, just like the sky above them. Carrying them to a nearby ditch under a commissar’s black muzzle, he wondered with some numb curiosity how they did it so quietly; how did the men strangle their wives and daughters so softly that no one heard a thing; how did they manage to slash their throats and not awaken anyone before slicing into their own necks with a rusty nail… how did those women keep so quiet, after they’d screamed so loudly, the night before?
THIRTY
The Soviet Union. The Gulag, Summer 1945
You’re being transferred soon. The Commandant’s order.
Johann looked intently at the swamp. He stared at it long and hard, for the first time pondering the idea of walking into its silent murkiness and surrendering to it and to hell with it all. If he weren’t so delirious from hunger, he would have indeed found it fascinating, how a few short weeks of the infamous NKVD captivity could break any man’s spirit and he had always considered himself the most resilient of them all.
He was the one who was cheering the men up when it became clear that they were not going to Vienna like the Soviet commissar in charge had initially promised, luring them, the fresh POWs, onto the train. He was the one that kept their spirits up when they were advancing into the Russian steppes, further and further into the alien vastness, only not as conquerors this time but as slaves, with whom their new masters could do as they pleased. It was he, who organized the sleeping schedule on the train, where there were so many of them that only a third could lie down and rest for two hours and then stand for four. It was he who, by his own example, showed them that ranks and distinctions didn’t mean anything any longer if they wanted to survive. Now, they were not company commanders and former privates; they were the strong ones and the weak ones and the strong ones picked up the hardest work to look out for the weak, for it was the only human thing to do. The only thing that still kept them human, after they had been stripped of all else.
Such order didn’t last long though. The NKVD knew just how to instill their own order. The first camp was the worst one in this respect. The thing was, it wasn’t even a camp when they had first arrived there and were given some wooden planks and primitive tools to build the first barracks. Johann found it amazing, the low number of guards who were set there to supervise them. Then it all became clear; the entire area, as far as the eye could see, was surrounded by swamps and therefore anyone who wished to try and escape was more than welcome to try. The men did start escaping, as soon as the back-breaking work and lack of food got the better of them, driving them to desperation. They simply walked into the rotting water and let it drown their misery. The guards didn’t mind those escapes, just looked the other way.