The Medic

by Leo Litwak

  THE GARDEN REPAIRS began within a few days. Maintenance workers cleared the ground, brought in sets of baby lettuce, tomato plants, boxes of annuals—petunias, violets, pansies, marigolds. I don’t know where the vegetables and flowers came from—it must have been high priority to bring them in—but the fräulein was back watering. She kept it up for a couple of days and then an ancient maintenance worker in uniform pants, stained shirt, and crumpled army cap took over.

  Lieutenant Klamm left each evening on what he called village business. Willy said he was with Gretchen Hartmann, outside Grossdorf.

  I asked Willy how many cigarettes the lieutenant would need for the fräulein.

  “She is beyond cigarettes. She is more than what a simple lieutenant, looking for a ceremonial blade, can manage.”

  “Maybe he’ll get lucky and stir her heart.”

  “The heart is one organ of Gretchen Hartmann’s that has not been known to stir.”

  I thought of how Sergeant Lucca had been able to keep the lieutenant in check, guiding him in his obligations, controlling his impetuousness. It was Lucca’s platoon until his death, the lieutenant usually deferring to him. The lieutenant needed someone like Lucca, conservative and careful, to rein him in. Lucca would have warned him he was in over his head with Fräulein Hartmann. She was precisely located, the least displaced person in all of Saxony. She had no doubt about the future or her role in it.

  “She will devour him in two bites,” Willy predicted. He knew her priorities and her intense focus. She meant to keep the factory intact, the machinery maintained, the core of her labor force in place. She needed shelter and food for more than a hundred workers. She needed petrol and oil. She needed information about the future of Chemnitz, of which Grossdorf was a mere satellite. If Chemnitz was to be Russian she would have to find other markets and sources of supply and that’s how she would use the lieutenant. She had already approached Willy for help.

  “What did you tell her?”

  “I said, ‘Meisterin, in the past you have owned my labor. Now I work for myself.’”

  We met her one afternoon at the town square, outside the camera shop. My camera used an odd-sized film we were trying to locate.

  We entered the camera shop as she was leaving.

  “Quite an actor, aren’t you?” she said to Willy.

  “I stay alive.”

  “You didn’t trust me? A Jew in our midst. I suppose it is better you kept it to yourself. I knew you were strange.” She smiled, patted his cheek. “Come see me, pretty Willy.”

  He shrugged. After she left he said that she had probably learned his ID from Lieutenant Klamm.

  “Why would he tell her?”

  “He hopes to amuse her.”

  WE SAW HER maintenance crew busy in the garage, working on vehicles she had somehow induced the Wehrmacht to leave behind. Parts came from a motor pool in the forest, full of abandoned Wehrmacht vehicles. Access to the motor pool required military approval and her requests were granted. She was preparing for the day when the rail would be open, the factory adapted to a new market, shipments renewed.

  The lieutenant was seen driving her into the forest. She sat beneath a thirty-caliber water-cooled machine gun that was poised behind her on an anchored pedestal.

  Roy Jones was at the checkpoint when the lieutenant stopped and introduced the guard detail to Fräulein Hartmann, whom he identified—as if they didn’t know—as the executive of the textile factory, no doubt hoping they’d consider the drive official business. She greeted Roy coolly, no concession that they had ever met. Roy spotted a closed picnic hamper in back.

  “Going flower picking?”

  The lieutenant reddened, said they were headed to the German motor pool, and stepped on the gas.

  Roy called after her, “Don’t soil that nice blouse, ma’am.”

  “Thank you,” she called back. “Have no fear.”

  She opened the lieutenant’s eyes to a larger world than any he could have known from the vantage point of Massillon, Ohio. He viewed the panorama of the East-West conflict as seen by Gretchen Hartmann. When the Russians were reported to be a few days from our lines, we speculated about what would happen when they arrived. The lieutenant said, “The alliance won’t last. World War Three begins.”

  I asked, “With us and the Germans on the same side?”

  He had never seemed a political man. “Bolshevik” and “Wehrmacht” weren’t words we expected him to use. Her voice issued from his mouth. He argued with the firm belief of a convert that there would be a confrontation between the civilized West and the barbaric East. He predicted that one day, the factory next door would be producing both GI and Wehrmacht gear.

  I told Willy that our naive lieutenant had become the tool of Gretchen Hartmann.

  “It’s Gretchen Hartmann you should feel sorry for.”

  “Why?”

  “The Russians will be even more terrible to gardens than Roy Jones.”

  I came across her on the forest road, above the town. She was sitting in the cab of a stalled German truck, a power loom lashed upright to the bed of its chassis. The hood was up, the elderly driver bent into the engine. She waved me over and stepped out of the truck. “Leo?” I didn’t expect her to have remembered my name. She was wearing slacks and a sweater. “We have a little trouble here. Perhaps you can help.”

  I told her I didn’t know anything about engines.

  “We need—what do you call it? Something for the distributor. Ja?” she called to her driver, who was bent under the hood. He came up holding a dull metal cap in his hands, pointed to wires. I’m sure she could have given me lessons about every part of an engine. Her English limped when she wanted to show herself vulnerable. “Maybe you can ask Lieutenant Klamm if he can send us some help?”

  I brought the message to the lieutenant and he drove to her rescue. The next day she waved to me from the factory side of the fence, “Danke, Leo.”

  I shouted back, “Bitte, Fräulein,” to the clear disgust of Roy Jones.

  CHAPTER 10

  < RUSSIANS >

  To the east beyond Grossdorf there was a large plain, once cultivated, but fallow for more than a year, old furrows eroded, almost leveled. You could see for a mile across this plain, as far as the tall stacks of Chemnitz.

  Chemnitz was abandoned, waiting to be taken. It was the third largest city in Saxony, known since medieval times for its textiles. Chemnitz pioneered machine construction, producing machine tools, railroad locomotives, textile machinery. It was a plum and we could have walked into its center at any time without resistance, but Chemnitz was meant for the Russians, and our only view of it was at a distance.

  A vanguard of refugees crossed the empty plain with news of the Russian advance. At first we stopped them at the checkpoint, asked a few questions to make sure they weren’t soldiers in civilian garb, then let them pass through, but as the flood increased we were told to hold them at the border.

  Among those early refugees was an elderly man bearing a massive pack, wrapped in oilcloth, bound in a network of rope. He stooped under the burden and didn’t straighten when he halted at our checkpoint. He looked at me with beggar eyes and I told him to rest and put down his pack.

  I asked whether he had seen Russian soldiers.

  “Heh?” He looked at his wife, a shawled, heavyset woman dressed in black, her ruddy, weathered face framed by the black shawl. She got the drift of my question and repeated it to him.

  Gray with fatigue, cheeks red at the bone, he eased the pack down and sat on it. He used a pidgin German to make himself understood. “Zu alt,” he said. Too old. “Kein schlafen.” No sleep. His wife dropped her quilt-swaddled bundle, pulled a bottle of water from one of the folds, offered the old man a drink, and after he swigged, took her turn, raw lips fixed to a wine bottle filled with water, her throat pumping—a sturdy woman with thick, chapped hands.

  She answered for her husband. “Sie kommen,” her voice hoarse with fatigue. They�
�re coming.

  “Wer kommt?”

  “Die Russen kommen. Schrecklich,” she said. The Russians are coming. Terrible.

  I asked the man if he’d been a soldier.

  “Nein, nein. Zu alt.” A farmer, he said. He had another drink and then talked and I got used to his German, which he studded with, “Verstehen sie?” Do you understand?

  He farmed land a few kilometers from Chemnitz. He had three sons, all prisoners on the Western Front. “Danke Gott,” he said.

  Better than if they were on the Eastern Front?

  “Sie sind barbarisch, die Russen.” The Russians are barbarians.

  “Schrecklich,” the old lady said.

  He said the Russians arrived at their farm in the late afternoon. The old couple heard the sound of their approach, grabbed the packs they had earlier prepared, and hid in the woods. They stayed hidden through the night. The Russians came endlessly in ragtag units, gathering in the fields, trampling the early grass, tanks and horse wagons destroying the fields. The farmer described them as a drunken mob, singing and howling. The German lines were in front of the town, in the valley below. The farmer said he’d seen the Wehrmacht troops dig in, kids and old men led by a few regular army. In the morning the Russians prepared for the assault. They were marshaled into one line that spread through all the fields on the heights—through acres of new wheat and alfalfa, through the neighbors’ fields—on and on and on, horse and wagon and tank and truck and artillery and cavalry and foot soldiers. The artillery set off a ferocious barrage. The sound of hell, the old man said. Shrecklich! said the old lady. Then came a vast surge, a wave of Russian soldiers in tan and dark brown tunics—drunk, singing, howling—advancing behind smoke and fire. The noise filled every corner of the world, only gradually receding as the line plunged down the slope. There seemed little discipline in the attack. You couldn’t tell who led or who followed; there was no apparent concern for losses. It was, as the old couple described it, an ecstasy of slaughter and ruin.

  The boys and old men below had no chance. Those who survived the shelling ran from their trenches, abandoning weapons and gear, heading into town. The Russians caught them, swarmed over them. The surge kept on through the town and beyond toward Chemnitz. It wasn’t until deep night, when there was no longer any sound of battle, that the old couple stumbled down the hill, following a path of ruin. Fields were destroyed, the town still burning. The dead were heaped everywhere, soldiers and civilians. The survivors said women had been raped on the spot.

  So the old folks told me. I sent them to the train station, where they would be able to put down their packs and scrounge for food and drink. They were among the fortunate. The refugees who came later weren’t allowed to pass through our lines.

  With stories like these, just the rumor of a Russian approach was enough to empty towns. The townsfolk brought whatever they could load into knapsacks and carts and made for our lines. They pulled carts by hand for lack of horses. They pushed vehicles out of gas. They crossed the field between Chemnitz and Grossdorf, warning that the enemy was coming fast behind them.

  They begged for sanctuary. We wouldn’t let them through. Our orders were to halt German civilians until Military Government arrived to weed out any war criminals who might be among them masquerading as refugees, or soldiers passing as civilians. Keep them all at the border, we were told.

  The refugees pleaded with us to let them into Grossdorf. They were stopped by rolls of barbed wire on the perimeter of our checkpoint. Our guards had a clear field of vision left and right and were prepared to shoot.

  We told the refugees to wait for Military Government.

  “When do they come?”

  “No idea.”

  “We cannot stay in this field. We need food and water.”

  There was no sanitation. They risked typhus and cholera and, worse than cholera, the Russians.

  I took my turn at the main roadblock as an interpreter. I said what I was told to say. Halt. No entry. We don’t know who you are. You could be soldiers disguised as civilians. You could be spies. You could be war criminals. You have to wait here for Military Government to sort you out.

  The replies were almost always the same. We are poor villagers, ordinary citizens, not Nazis. We have lost everything. Alles kaput. A plague on Hitler.

  They said it now, only after defeat, the Russians on their tails. I steeled myself to be hard-hearted but sometimes it was too much.

  A man in striped pajamas, concentration-camp garb, reached our checkpoint. He spoke directly to me with begging eyes, “I am trying to go home.”

  He was tall and dark. He could have been Jewish or Hungarian or Romanian or, for that matter, German. He was not in bad shape, other than obvious fatigue. He didn’t have a prison-camp pallor. He had intelligent, gentle eyes and looked closely at me as if he spied kin. I turned away, deferred to Novak, head of the guard detail, a ponderous, careful man. I relayed the refugee’s appeal and pointed to his garb.

  Novak shook his head. “How do we know he is what he says?”

  “By the clothes he’s wearing. I think he’s okay.”

  “The clothes are clean and he’s in pretty good shape. Tell him he has to wait for Military Government.”

  I told him he had to wait until someone with authority could check his identity.

  “I only wish to go home. You can see what I am.”

  He claimed to be Hungarian. I said there were Hungarian fascists.

  “Do I look like a fascist?”

  “I do not have the authority to let you through. I’m sorry.”

  I offered him a can of C-ration ham and eggs.

  He smiled, “Thank you,” and disappeared into the crowd. My instinct had been to let him pass. The soft voice, the sorrowful smile seemed identity enough. I could have let him slip through. Other guards, bribed with sex and loot, had allowed refugees into Grossdorf. I saw him squatting near the water, digging into the C rations. When Novak left for a break I motioned him over. I turned my back and spoke softly.

  “I am inspecting my medicine bag. If you pass behind me I will not see you. Move fast—schnell—into the trees. When I turn around you will be gone.”

  He said, “God thank you,” and I didn’t think that was a Jewish response and realized I could be making a mistake.

  Novak returned. “Did you let that guy through, Leo?”

  “What guy?”

  “He’s probably okay. But don’t pull that again, pal.”

  I told the captain I didn’t want to serve at the border. I was a medic, a noncombatant, obliged to tend all wounded, friend or foe, without distinction. I wasn’t here to tell refugees they were barred from safe haven.

  Captain Dillon said it was a lousy job for everyone and interpreters were in short supply and to stick with it.

  Military Government never showed up. Their resources were stretched thin and there were more important places than Grossdorf. The once-empty field between Grossdorf and Chemnitz was crammed with desperate people. Tarps and rain gear were stretched from wagons. A makeshift city came into being with a population perhaps larger than Grossdorf’s. The citizens of this new town huddled under canvas during rains, fueled their campfires with anything that burned. They had the use of a well near the post. They only had the provisions they had brought with them.

  WE HEARD A different view of the Russian advance from liberated Allied PWs. A band of ragged French soldiers marched into Grossdorf under an improvised tricolor, singing the “Marseillaise.” Contingents of British, imprisoned since Dunkirk and Arnhem, also came through our checkpoint followed by GIs, penned up since the German breakthrough at the Bulge. The Red Cross was on hand to usher the Allied PWs home.

  I told an Englishman who reached our lines what the German farmer had said about Russians in battle. That wasn’t his experience. His camp was liberated by Russian troops, and the freed prisoners were carried along into battle, so he’d seen the Soviets in action.

  He was a tall
, very thin officer, bristle-bearded, wearing a soiled garrison cap and ragged uniform, wobbling with fatigue. He was scheduled for immediate transport to a railhead and would be in a field hospital within hours.

  He had been with the Russians during just such an assault as the German farmer had described. He said the old man’s account was accurate to a point. The Russians swarmed down on the enemy with seeming indifference to casualties. The demoralized German troops broke and fled. And, yes, there was no sparing the Germans. He could believe the stories of rape and ruin. The Russians could be brutal, fueled with vodka. But he had little sympathy for the victims. Life in PW camps had been grim. The prisoners were held under deadly discipline and starvation rations. On the way to our lines they had met DPs released from extermination camps and had heard the first reports of genocide. You couldn’t pity the Germans when you heard what they had done. As for the Russians, they were impulsive, often drunk, and it was tough being their enemy, but they were generous, exuberant friends.

  “Barbarians?”

  “Maybe you could say that. But if they are, better barbarians than civilized, murderous krauts.”

  Lieutenant Klamm summoned us to hear the amended nonfraternization orders. We were not to have dealings with Russian soldiers when they reached us save for official business. We weren’t to go behind their lines; they weren’t to pass through ours. The intention was to keep the two sides apart. The brass was concerned that an incident—a drunken quarrel, a confusion of cultures—might touch off a larger conflict. Yanks and Russkies weren’t natural allies.

  We stayed in Grossdorf, listening for the sound of the Russians, expecting to hear the stormy approach of a long line of barbarians.

  The actual coming caught us unawares.

  ONE AFTERNOON A single wagon came up our driveway, pulled by a plodding horse. Aboard were three Russian soldiers. The driver was a hefty woman, red-cheeked and beaming, bobbed brown hair beneath a dark beret. She wore a brown military tunic and skirt and ankle-high stomper boots. Seated beside her was a trim aristocratic-looking soldier in a light tan tunic with epaulettes, wearing an overseas cap; his knees were crossed and black leather glistened along his calves. He was slim, blond, elegant. He smoked a cigarette gripped in a holder, his demeanor more suited to a command car than a ramshackle hay cart.