“Give me your lighter, Rudi,” demanded Schultz of Harz. “Now, please. You know I do not smoke.”
With a smile that could only be described as sympathetic, if amusedly so, Rudi passed the tiny machine over. Dieter was at Gudrun’s side in the next instant, flame springing from his hand.
The girl smiled warmly and thanked Dieter who, taking it for encouragement, promptly sat beside her, introducing himself.
“Ah, my name is Gudrun.”
“I am very pleased to meet you, Gudrun. Very.”
The girl didn’t ask if he was in the army; such was obvious from the field gray Dieter wore. She did ask of his unit and job.
“I am the gunner for a Tiger III in the 501st Heavy Panzer Battalion, 47th Panzer Korps,” he answered.
Gudrun recoiled momentarily. “The SS Korps? The Nazis?”
Laughing, Dieter answered, “We’re not an SS Korps, Gudrun. Why, according to my chief, Sergeant Major Krueger, we are not fit to wipe the boots of real SS men. They did train us,” he admitted.
“Then you are not a Nazi?”
“Me?” Dieter laughed again, louder. “No, Liebchen.[31] I was a student when they drafted me and gave me a choice. Sort of a choice. Not much of one, as a matter of fact.” He shrugged. “And my grandfather told me I would be better off training under the old SS than under the new Bundeswehr. So there I went.
“And you?”
“I am in school still, learning to be a tailor,” she answered. As she did the music in the hall changed to something slow.
“Would you care to dance, Gudrun the tailor?”
Brasche had let all but a skeleton crew go to the dance. Krueger was here in the Tiger III, christened, if that was the right word, “Anna.” Likewise was the new boy, Schüler, who had just been assigned. A couple of others manned the auxiliary MauserWerke twenty-five millimeter cannon stations by remote from the armored battle center deep inside the tank. The loader, whose job actually involved running the elevators and automatic rammers that brought the three-hundred-five-millimeter projectiles and their propellant to the main gun’s breech and fed them to it, stood by.
The other sixteen men of the Anna’s crew, including Schultz and Harz, were in Giessen trying for a last chance at love before entering the coming fray.
But Brasche had had no interest, this despite having the body of a twenty-year-old again. He had met one girl in his life who had meant anything to him. And that girl was lost to him forever; all but an image in a photo, a clip of hair, and other images and feelings indelibly engraved on his heart and mind.
That girl, the original Anna — once of flesh and blood, smiled out at him from a photo held lightly in Hans’ hand.
Gudrun was light and graceful in Dieter’s arms as they danced. The boy himself was no dancer. And yet, at its best, dance, like the act of love, brings souls together in union and harmony. So it was with this couple, bodily movements meshing into unity of bodies. By the time the dance ended, Dieter knew he had found the one right girl for him. They simply fit. Perfectly.
The soft sweet smell of her perfume lingered in Dieter’s brain, doing its intended job of short-circuiting that brain. The two walked backed to Gudrun’s table, arms about each others’ waists, leaning against each other.
At the table they talked. And both knew that the talk was serious. There was little time for the boy-girl games so beloved of the romances.
“I want you, Gudrun,” Dieter announced simply. “Now. Here or nearby. Anywhere, really. But now.”
The girl looked forlorn. Her face shone with desire at least equal to his own. Still, reluctantly, she shook her head No.
“I have a boyfriend, Dieter. With the 33rd Korps, 165th Infantry Division. It wouldn’t be right… not until I can tell him about you… about us.”
Schultz understood and said so. “But after you have spoken or written?”
“Then, yes. You and I,” she agreed.
He nodded his head in agreement, “Yes. You and I.”
At that instant there came a commotion from the entrance way. Dieter saw Harz threading his way through the thickening crowd.
“It’s on, Dieter,” announced Harz. “’Gericht.’ Sie kommen.” They’re coming.
From his elevated perch high atop Anna’s turret Brasche saw the lightning streaks slashing down and up — Posleen spacecraft softening the defenses and human Planetary Defense Centers snarling their defiance. Regretfully, reluctantly, he replaced the other Anna in the small folder he had carried by his heart for nearly sixty years.
“Anna, down,” he commanded and the Tiger’s voice-recognition software sent a command to move the tiny elevator platform on which he stood down into the heavily armored command center of the tank.
Krueger was there with the skeleton crew. As often was the case, the sergeant major was regaling the boys with tales from the last war. So far as that went, Brasche could not and did not object. Sometimes, though, Krueger told of other things, vile things. This Brasche loathed, as indeed he loathed the man.
“It was great, I tell you, boys. Great. Your pick of the women in those camps. And some of them were lookers, too, even if they were just Jew bitches.”
“How did you end up in one of the camps?” asked Schüler. “I thought you were a combat soldier.”
“Well, I was only there for about six months, you see. While I was healing up from being shot by the Russians. At Ravensbrück, it was. A women’s camp. There were so many we never even asked their names.”
That was enough, more than enough, for Brasche. “Sergeant Major, that will be all. Men: to your posts. The enemy is coming. We move to meet them as soon as the rest of the crew returns.”
The crew began to scramble to battle stations. Instinctively, Hans’ hand moved to caress the left pocket of his tanker’s coveralls, his “Panzerkompli,” and the small folder it contained. He kept his face carefully neutral.
Harz looked away, neutrally, as Dieter and Gudrun said their last goodbyes, whispered endearments and hopes for a future. “The bus is here to take us back now, Dieter. I am sorry; we must go.”
Reluctantly, Schultz disengaged himself from Gudrun’s arms. Her hands were the last things he let go of. Even then, he could not help but lift one hand to his lips and press them against it.
“I will come back,” he said. “I promise.”
Gudrun immediately dissolved into tears. In a wavering voice she answered, through her tears, “I will be waiting. I, too, promise.” The girl’s head hung in unfeigned despair. “I promise.” Through her mind raced the thoughts that this would be the only chance, that Dieter could not wait for her to break things off with the other boy.
But there was no time. The recall was sounded. Action called. The bus awaited.
“Write to me,” she cried. “Please write,” and she hurriedly jotted an e-mail address down on a napkin.
Dieter, his heart at once overjoyed and breaking, nodded, took the napkin, released her hand, and turned to go. Already, outside the recreation center, a bus awaited. Inside the bus the troopers sang: