camp commandant was one of those in the trade.
“Wouldn’t surprise me at all,” he said, unfazed. “But don’t paint everybody that dark. Our own men eat in the mess hall and have more than enough to eat, and some of the good guys are giving leftovers to kids and the sick, but there’s just not enough of it to make a difference.”
Outside, screaming was heard. Diggs swore and ran outside and into the camp. Several dozen people were fighting over the shredded and bloody pieces of what might have been a chicken. Camp guards, American and German, waded into the throng with cudgels and clubs and quickly broke up the fight. A few refugees had bloody heads, but no wounds seemed serious. A woman sat on the ground and wailed in emotional pain. She’d been the first to grab the chicken and considered it hers. Now all she had left was feathers.
“Someone threw it over the fence,” said a grim Diggs, “and not out of charity. Some of the locals think its great fun to start a riot.”
They left Diggs with a promise to do what they could to ease the situation. Diggs thanked them but said he wouldn’t hold his breath. “No disrespect, but it’ll be a long time before we get this under control and a lot more people are going to die. Oh yeah.” He laughed harshly. “If you think this is bad, check out the German prisoners of war. They get what food the refugees don’t want.”
They left Diggs with the understanding that there was no solution to his problem. Jessica was angry, perplexed and frustrated, but understood the helplessness of those like Diggs who were trying their best.
“Going back to Aachen?” her uncle asked. “I can give you a lift.”
“No, but you can take Florence. I plan on staying here a few days and surveying the situation.”
“Surveying?” he laughed. “Is that what you call it? I ain’t stupid, Jess, I know where the 74th is stationed.”
“Then wish me good luck.”
Her uncle kissed her on the cheek. “Make your own damn luck, Jessica.”
Margarete listlessly poked at the food on her plate. It was no longer as inviting as it had been, although she would ultimately eat it. She would need it to keep up her strength for whatever ordeals were coming.
They were reaching the end of what food had been stored up for winter and there were serious questions regarding planting crops in the spring. Simply put, would the war let them? The specter of starvation was beginning to haunt them. Her aunt and uncle scoffed at her doubts. The Reich would be victorious well before food became an issue. Neither Margarete nor her mother felt that confident and she suspected that her aunt and uncle had unspoken doubts of their own. Meal portions had been reduced, and would shrink again. Still, one must eat. Food could not be wasted. What little they now had was much more than the people in the cities had.
The stress of waiting for the inevitable conflagration to sweep over them was sapping everyone’s emotional strength. The weather was definitely warming up and each day brought them that much closer to “Armageddon on the Rhine” as Margarete liked to call it. Her uncle referred to it as the final German victory. Margarete was too polite to laugh at him and, besides, she really did like the pompous old man. If he didn’t love the memory of Hitler so much, he would be quite charming.
Uncle Eric spoke softly. A new problem had arisen and the police had sent a notice. “Once upon a time I liked to go for walks in the woods. The forest was and is still thick and, when spring comes, it will be lovely again. However, it is now a place of death. The police fear that a number of bandits, deserters, refugees, and escaped workers are hiding in its depths and, when the snow is gone, we will be sweeping the place to get them out before they can emerge and attack us.”
“Who is we?” Margarete asked.
“Every man who can walk and carry a gun,” Eric said. “It will be a motley army consisting of the very old and the very young, but we must get the criminals out of the woods.”
“Is it that bad?” Magda asked.
Eric nodded solemnly. “Just the other day a man’s body was found. It was badly decomposed and eaten by animals, but bodies should not be found in the forest, and not our forest. Once upon a time it was such a friendly place.”
Bertha sniffed. “And we should not talk of dead bodies at dinnertime.”
“And why the devil not?” Eric said. “All we’ve had for all these years is war and death. Hitler’s dead. The Allies should negotiate an end to this.”
Margarete agreed that the war should end, but she doubted that the Allies would ever deal with Himmler. Still, the idea of the forest being so hostile was depressing. She remembered wonderfully scary tales of monsters and witches and goblins in the depths of the woods, and the tale of Hansel and Gretel always gave her chills as a child. But these were not imaginary trolls or bogeymen, these were people who would kill. No, she would not go anywhere near the woods.
Nor did it surprise her that people were hiding in them. On those occasions that she had to go near the tree line a mile or so from her uncle’s property, she’d had the uncomfortable feeling that eyes were on her.
On a happier note, she’d gotten a letter from Hans Hart, the young pilot she idealistically thought of as her beloved. His attempt to transfer to jet fighters had been, as he wrote tongue in cheek, shot down. He’d been informed that there were far more experienced pilots than there were jet planes. If he wished to transfer to the Luftwaffe and fly and ME109 or some other, older plane, he was more than welcome.
Hans wrote that he was willing to fight for the Reich, but not commit suicide. He was, after all, German and not Japanese. Realistically, other than the ME262, all the other German planes were either second rate, or outnumbered a hundred to one, or both.
As a courtesy to her father, General Galland had spoken to Hans and told him to stick with ferrying officers in his Storch. The Luftwaffe was kaput. Stay alive, Galland had said and Margarete wiped away a tear as she thought of the Luftwaffe general’s courtesy.
“We will have to move,” Alfie said and his two companions nodded agreement. Most of the snow had melted and tender green shoots were poking up from the wet ground. For a long time they’d been aware that they weren’t alone. As they patrolled their area, they’d seen footprints and, on one occasion, watched in hiding as a handful of wretched men in German army uniforms tried to eke out an existence in the woods.
The three men made no attempt to make contact with any of the others. Desperation could drive refugees to do terrible things. They did not go out without weapons and, since few Germans and even fewer foreign refugees had guns, they assumed that anyone who’d seen them would think twice before attacking. They assumed the German soldiers they’d seen were deserters, which meant they were criminals in the eyes of German law and would do anything to keep themselves alive.
As far as they knew, the cottage had gone unnoticed. No footprints had been seen anywhere near it, but perhaps others had hidden their tracks just as they had swept away their own.
“And where shall we go?” asked Rosenfeld. He had taught them what tender young roots were edible. Alfie thought he was crazy, but damned if they didn’t satisfy a craving and actually tasted good if you were hungry enough.
“Alfie’s right,” said Blum. “We can’t stay here forever. Sooner or later, someone’s going to stumble on this place just like we did. I wouldn’t be surprised if the police don’t send patrols into the forest to look for people like those deserters we saw, and if they find us they’ll kill us. You heard the Ami planes last night, didn’t you? Well, the Nazis will doubtless feel that someone is tipping off the Americans and we’ll be likely candidates.”
“But how would we ever do that without a radio? Smoke signals?”
“They won’t care,” said Blum. “If they catch us we’re guilty and the local Nazis would have done their job.”
“Jesus,” Alfie said. Last night, several American fighters had flown tantalizingly low over the forest before bombing and strafing a nearby target that had exploded with a tremendous roar. They’d argued whether it had been gasoline or ammunition.
But Blum was right. They would not be treated as prisoners. For one thing, Alfie had already escaped once
