“Bring us some food, too, man, and make it fast. We’re hungry!”
“I have only cabbage soup and some bread,” the owner protested.
Danny picked up his rifle. “Pretend we’re officers.”
The owner nodded and ran to the kitchen, yelling at the cook. Soon he returned with three loaves, some margarine and another bottle of wine. The men munched on the bread while sipping their tea. Maurice was disappointed—the tea was not hot enough. Out of pity for the proprietor, though, he did not say anything.
A few minutes later, the owner brought four bowls of soup, slopping some onto the table in his nervous haste. When the soldiers had finished that, the owner brought a platter of fried chicken and potatoes.
Maurice remembered the long days without food, the long marches with army rations. He remembered the dismay all the boys felt when a German shell hit a field kitchen. He realized then that Danny had no intention of paying for the food. It’s just as well. We have no money, anyway.
Danny yelled for a fourth bottle of wine, and when they had drunk that, they all stood up unsteadily, picked up their rifles and left. The owner watched them, silently.
The next morning, Maurice woke lying on the ground, covered by the chenille tent; Danny and Peter were lying beside him. How did I get here?
He remembered, vaguely, staggering back to camp. Peter had another friend who had set up a still in the middle of a stand of trees on the edge of the camp, and who happily doled out samohanke, Ukrainian home-brewed whiskey.
Maurice stood up and went for a drink of water. Fog gradually burned off his memory of the night before. He remembered a major showing up at the still, and how all the boys had panicked until the major held out a mug for a shot. He had downed it, asked for another and they all relaxed.
Did the major join us in singing Ukrainian songs, too? Maurice could not be sure.
The sun was just coming up; Maurice washed his hands and face outside the latrine. The camp was beginning to stir. The sentries by the gate looked sleepy; their replacements would be coming soon. He made up his mind. He took his rifle to the gate and slapped one sentry on the shoulder. “I’m on duty today,” in his best rural Russian accent.
The sentries look doubtful. “Just you?”
“Nikolai will be joining me soon. He’s just in the latrine right now. You two can go on.”
“We’re supposed to stay until the next watch gets here.”
“I’m here, tovarisch. Is this the first time you’ve stood watch all night?”
The sentry that Maurice had slapped on the shoulder nodded. “Got into a little trouble with the commissar. You know, that bastard Linsky.”
“Go on, get some rest. It’s okay, the war is over. No one’s going to try to get in.”
The sentries started to leave. “Okay… who are you, anyway?” the second one asked.
“George Fedorov,” Maurice answered. The sentries waved thank-you, then headed for the kitchen.
Maurice waited just until they were twenty yards away, looked around quickly, put down his rifle and walked as quietly as he could toward the road. He looked over his shoulder to make sure no one had noticed that the gate was unguarded. Then, as soon as he could, he ducked behind trees and moved away, walking fast, but not so fast that he would attract attention.
The sun rose; he could tell it would be a warm day. He took off his coat, rolled it and slung it over his shoulder. That, his uniform and his boots were all he had—those, plus the greatest treasure he owned: his Canadian birth certificate.
It took over an hour to reach Berlin. There were soldiers everywhere, but none were alone. But there was something else as prevalent as soldiers, though: debris. Maurice picked up a cloth pouch he found on the side of the road. He hoped that if anyone noticed him, he would look like a courier delivering a message.
It had been two weeks since Germany surrendered. The Allies were starting to restore some normalcy to Berlin. As he walked through the shattered streets, Maurice noticed that most of the broken water mains had been shut off and the streets were dry. Work crews consisting of German prisoners supervised by Soviet soldiers, picked up rubble and swept the streets. Others boarded up empty windows. A large crew swarmed over what Maurice thought must have been an old hotel. Making it livable for high-ranking officers, probably.
Back at the British headquarters in Charlottenburg, Maurice found the pleasant blond lieutenant at the tidy desk and sat down on a polished wooden bench. He was more than an hour early for his appointment. The lieutenant smiled and nodded at him, then busied himself with his papers again.
Maurice was used to waiting. He was a soldier, after all.
At precisely 10:00, the lieutenant ushered Maurice into a crowded office. Behind an ornate wooden desk sat Major Retent, a tall, thin man with a dark, thin moustache and an impossibly well-pressed uniform. On either side of him sat his aides: a portly, bald captain on the left and a nervous young lieutenant on the right. On one side of the room was a corporal behind a stenographic machine; on the other side, two non-commissioned officers sweated in the close quarters as they tried to keep a growing stack of files straight.
“Name, rank and unit,” said the lieutenant.
“Maurice Bury,” he answered, in English. “Private.” I should have said “lieutenant,” he thought. “Soviet Red Army.”
“What are you doing here, Private?” asked the Major. He had a very nasal voice.
“I need papers to go to Canada.”
The major did not even look at him. He was studying some papers on the desk. “And why should you want to go to Canada instead of Russia?”
“Because I want to go home. I am not Russian, I am Canadian.” That made the Major look up. Maurice was very conscious of his very non-Canadian-sounding accent.
“Canadian? What do you mean, ‘Canadian’? You are wearing the uniform of the Soviet army.”
Maurice was ready for that. “My birth certificate,” he said, and put it on the desk in front of the Major. The Major appeared to study the big letters across the top that spelled “Dominion of Canada,” then gave it to the captain, who passed it back to the lieutenant. The lieutenant gave it back to Maurice.
“Very interesting, Private Bury,” said the Major, leaning forward with his hand under his chin. “Tell me, how does a Canadian end up in the Soviet Red Army?”
Maurice knew he couldn’t tell his whole story, but he had rehearsed what he would say as he walked in from the camp. “I was born in Montreal in 1919. My parents had immigrated from western Ukraine, near Ternopyl, which was then under Poland. When I was nine, the depression came.” The Major nodded at that and the captain wrote something down. “So my mother took my sister and me back to Ternopyl, where she still owned some land and we thought we would be better off.
“When the war came, Germany took that part of Poland. Then, when the Soviets returned in 1944, they took me into the army.” There is so much more to the story, he thought. But more will get me killed.
“And now, you are here,” said the Major.
“Yes.”
“Jolly good bit of fighting you Russkies did, there.”
“I’m not Russian,” Maurice repeated. “I’m Canadian.”
“Ah, yes, a Canadian. Of Russian descent, though.”
“No, not Russian. Ukrainian.”
“Quite. Little Russia, the Ukraine.” Maurice inwardly winced at the Major’s unintentional slight—or was it intentional? It did not matter. What was important was…