Silver Wings, Iron Cross

by Tom Young

  Another two hours of walking brought Wilhelm and the American flier out of Bremen’s southern suburbs and into the country. They followed the route of one of the new autobahns, but the fugitives kept several hundred meters from the road. At a distance, Wilhelm reasoned, motorists could not tell young men from old and might take the two for farmers, ever loyal to the Reich, working the fields to feed the soldiers.

  The ploy seemed to work. Staff cars, armored cars, and military trucks rattled along the highway, and no one slowed down to look. Wilhelm and the aviator waded into a barley field. Nearly ready for harvest, the stalks had turned golden brown, with just a few green streaks remaining in the seed heads. Though Wilhelm was no farmer, it seemed exceptionally late in the year for barley to remain in the fields. Perhaps exigencies of war had delayed spring planting. The stalks bent with a light breeze and moved in unison, creating terrestrial swells.

  “Amber waves,” the Yank said. He uttered the phrase in English—and as if it was supposed to mean something. Wilhelm had no idea what he was talking about and did not ask. Waves that color reminded him of waves on fire.

  The barley field stretched for about two hectares and ended at a wooded area. The forested space wasn’t deep—only about fifty meters—and it consisted mainly of mature poplars. They grew in neat rows, maybe planted by the current landowner’s grandfather or great-grandfather. Their boughs threw dappled shade onto the forest floor. Wilhelm stepped among the trees, leaned on a trunk, and closed his eyes.

  In this place of quiet and concealment, he felt the nearest thing to peace and safety he’d experienced in years. A bird called from somewhere in the limbs overhead. Tranquility flooded into him like fresh air filling a surfaced U-boat through a newly opened hatch.

  Here, Wilhelm sensed, no harm would come to him. If he could freeze this moment and stay within these magical woods, he could live out the rest of his days untroubled. Yet he knew he had to move beyond the trees, back into the world and all its dangers. The same illusion of safety had torn at his heart in the days when the U-351 docked in Lorient. Back then, he often sat at a table in a fine restaurant with a French beauty across from him. Clinking glasses, glinting silverware. The life of a king. All the while knowing he would soon cast off lines to begin a new patrol—and an Allied depth charge might get him before he ever left the Bay of Biscay.

  The downed American must have guessed the train of Wilhelm’s thoughts. The pilot, despite all his silly talk earlier, had the grace to allow a few minutes of silence.

  In the field on the other side of the trees, a tractor labored across the soil. It dragged a plow, turning under whatever crop had grown there. The crop wasn’t barley; these plants grew in furrowed rows. Wilhelm, reared in the city, at first did not recognize the plants. The tractor drew nearer, dust rising from the plowshares, a broad-brimmed hat on the farmer’s head. Wilhelm and the Yank stayed hidden within the trees. When the tractor reached the end of the row near the forest, Wilhelm saw that the farmer was using the plow to dig up late-harvest potatoes.

  At the end of the row the farmer pulled a lever to raise his plow. He turned into the next row, pushed the lever, and the plow bit into the dirt once more. Potatoes began cascading off the plowshare.

  “We can use some of those,” the Yank said.

  “I was just thinking the same thing,” Wilhelm replied. “Let him get a little farther out. Then we’ll grab a few potatoes and be on our way.”

  When the tractor got halfway across the field, with the farmer’s back to the fugitives, both men slipped out of the trees. Wilhelm picked up only two potatoes. He would have liked more, but he did not want suspicious bulges in his pockets if he encountered anyone. He dusted off the potatoes and placed one in each of his front trouser pockets. The Yank gathered three and managed to make them disappear in his workman’s coveralls.

  The men eased back into the poplars and traveled to the edge of the autobahn. A line of Wehrmacht trucks rumbled by, canvas tarps draped over their cargo. No other traffic followed, so Wilhelm and the Yank stole across the pavement and climbed over a wooden fence into a pasture. Black-and-white Holstein cattle grazed on a hillside that pitched down and away from the road. Wilhelm led the way downhill, drawing stares from the livestock and taking advantage of the slope to avoid being seen from the road.

  From this vantage point, Wilhelm spotted a village in the valley at the far end of the paddock and fields. Smoke rose from chimneys set among slate roofs. A forested hillside rose on the other side of the town. Though his hunger had grown from a vague ache to an acute pang, he did not relish the prospect of raw potatoes. He judged it reasonable to take a chance on finding a shop to buy something more appetizing. The burghers in the little town probably would have no knowledge of a navy deserter on the loose from Bremen—at least not yet.

  “Shall we see if someone will sell us some wurst?” Wilhelm asked.

  “Lead the way, if you think it’s safe.”

  “Nothing is safe.”

  As if to underscore Wilhelm’s point, a low hum began sounding in his ears. Not the buzz of deadened hearing, but something more distinct. At first, he supposed it to be farm equipment—another tractor somewhere, or perhaps a well pump. But the buzz deepened to a grind that came from no discernible direction. The noise seemed to emanate from the ground itself. The grind rose in volume and spread from horizon to horizon. Wilhelm looked across the hills and fields, tried to determine the source of this unearthly sound.

  The American aviator pointed into the sky. For a moment, Wilhelm could make no sense of the white grooves cutting through the deep blue. He had seen condensation trails of high-flying airplanes before, usually one at a time. But now there were dozens of them. Maybe hundreds. He could make out black dots, barely visible, at the advancing heads of the vapor lines.

  Liberators and Flying Fortresses. Innumerable, inexorable, and en route to a target.

  17

  Heil Hitler

  The cows began to run. They fled in all directions. Some ran into one another.

  Karl understood why. Their primitive minds could not comprehend the sound of hundreds of engines, the scores of spreading contrails. The creatures knew only to run from danger, and the danger seemed everywhere.

  Though Karl had flown in such formations many times, he felt a touch of animal fear himself. He knew the bombers wouldn’t unload here; perhaps they were headed all the way to Berlin. Still, he couldn’t help but stand in awe. Not until this part of the twentieth century could anyone have witnessed a sight like this. It appeared some force from another planet had invaded to rip the earth and sky apart.

  At the same time, the scene tantalized him. So close and yet so far. Right up there, right there, was his world, his element. A seat and a set of controls more familiar than his car. Well-rehearsed procedures and a Stanley flask filled with coffee. Friends and colleagues all around him. Surely, he knew some of the men who now flew miles above. He wished he could reach up into the blue and let them pull him aboard.

  The airplanes passed directly overhead. The cattle ran around until they exhausted themselves and stood lowing, steam rising from their tongues. As the formation droned eastward and out of sight, the noise faded and, one by one, the Holsteins resumed grazing. The bombers’ passage left lines chalked across the sky. The contrails began to widen and dissipate. Isolation closed in on Karl like a vise.

  He followed the U-boat man down the hill toward the village. Every few yards, they had to step around cow manure, but they managed to keep their boots unsoiled. To keep his sudden loneliness at bay, Karl thought of food. Something to go with the potatoes in his pocket.

  “Do you think they’ll have a grocery down there?” Karl asked.

  “I’m hoping for a baker or a butcher shop. They certainly have plenty of cows here for beef.”

  “These are milk cows.”

  “So you are a farmer, too?”

  “No, my dad is a steel worker. But we have lots of farms in Pennsylva
nia.”

  In fact, the terrain looked a lot like rural Pennsylvania. But the farmers here had a slightly different lifestyle. Back home, a farm family lived in the midst of its fields and pastures. Driving through dairy country, you’d see a house surrounded by a cluster of barns, stables, and silos. Then a couple miles down the road, you’d see another house and barn lot. Here, at least in this area, the farmers lived in the village and went out to their fields each day.

  Karl supposed they lived together because back in olden times, it was too dangerous to reside out in the country all alone. He’d heard plenty of German fairy tales from his parents, and many of those tales described a dark world filled with monsters, murderers, and robbers. There were witches and goblins; awful things happened to children. The tales probably reflected the lives and fears of real-world medieval Germany.

  The monsters on the loose in Germany now wore armbands, and they did far worse things than anything imagined in the Middle Ages. I tried to help slay the monsters, Karl thought, and I got swatted from the sky. So here I am—thousands of miles from home, stuck on the ground, hungry and stepping over cow patties, waiting to get shot. That’s progress for you. Fighting a wicked witch or a troll under a bridge would seem easy by comparison.

  “When we get into the village,” the German said, “let me do the talking.”

  “Sure.”

  The pasture adjoined the back lots of the houses and shops of the one-street village. Karl and the German sailor climbed the fence again, this time to exit the pasture. Along the way, Karl looked for a discarded tin can or anything else he could use for makeshift cookware. But the Krauts were too damned tidy; he saw no trash of any kind.

  The two men proceeded down a cobblestone alleyway between a traditional timber-framed Middle German house and a blacksmith shop. The sliding wooden door to the blacksmith shop stood open. Inside, the smith reached into his forge with a pair of tongs. The man glanced up as Karl and the U-boat man passed, then returned to his work. He looked up again, this time with a questioning expression. Karl tried to avoid his eyes.

  On the street in front of the shop, a horse clopped by pulling a cart. An old man sat at the front of the cart and held the reins, and a boy of about eight rode behind him. The old man ignored them, but the boy waved. Karl waved back.

  The street smelled of wood smoke and horse manure. From a closer view of the buildings, he saw that not all the roofs were made of slate. A few were built from wooden shingles or even thatch. Most featured window boxes overflowing with geraniums and other flowers. This late in the year, the plants had turned stalky and yellow, but had not yet died from a hard freeze.

  The villagers appeared to go about a typical workday. A man holding a rope bridle led a tremendous Holstein bull out of a stable. The bull’s solid mass of muscle and hide reminded Karl of a Sherman tank. A woman carried a bucket of milk. Another woman pushed a baby carriage. A black cat ran across the street and leaped onto a doorstep, waiting to be let back into its home. Two boys talked excitedly and pointed up at the contrails, which were beginning to disappear altogether. Everything looked normal for a German farming village except there were no young men, just like back in Bremen.

  Curious glances greeted Karl and the U-boat man as they walked down the street. In a town this small, Karl realized, everyone knew everyone—so two strangers might have attracted stares under any circumstances. But with a war on, the villagers had to be wondering: Why are you here?

  The woman with the milk bucket smiled as she neared the two men. In her twenties, she wore her blond hair in a long braid, and her peasant dress didn’t hide her pleasing figure. Karl flattered himself that she found him attractive. But then he remembered he sported a day’s growth of beard and was wearing rumpled work clothes. She probably hadn’t seen a man anywhere near her age in a long time, and she’d have taken a second look at any guy. Maybe she assumed he and the sailor were heroes of the Reich, home on well-earned leave.

  “Guten tag,” the woman said as she passed.

  “Guten tag,” the U-boat man replied.

  As his new traveling companion had asked, Karl kept his mouth shut. He realized he shouldn’t be happy about an encounter with a German civilian, even one as easy on the eyes as this woman. He should be terrified, because the slightest misstep could spell disaster. If these people knew he was an American bomber pilot, this pretty girl might well join a mob and skewer him with a pitchfork.

  The town looked prosperous for a farming community. Power lines sagged from wooden poles, so the homes had electricity. The farmer back in the potato field must have been doing well, since he plowed with a tractor instead of a mule or a horse. Maybe Germany had modernized more than Karl expected, or maybe the villagers had the right connections. The latter possibility worried him. If the town was full of especially loyal Nazis, then this was a very bad place for a German deserter and a downed U.S. airman.

  Don’t get paranoid, Karl told himself. Just stay calm, cool, and collected. As if you’re flying an instrument approach through fog. Little room for error, but manageable if you focus.

  Though Karl began to see lots of dangers, what he didn’t see was a place to buy food. Had he and the sailor taken a big chance for nothing? Maybe these farmers lived so independently they didn’t need a butcher or a grocer. Some of the old-timers back in Pennsylvania never bought anything for the kitchen except coffee and sugar.

  The U-boat officer was probably thinking the same thing. He scanned the doorways and gable ends, perhaps looking for a shopkeeper’s sign.

  Just when Karl had begun to lose hope of eating anything other than the potatoes in his pockets, the German pointed and said, “There.”

  On the right side of the street, a sign over a doorway: METZGEREI.

  Butcher.

  Apart from the wording above the door, the building looked much like the surrounding homes. Karl and the German sailor crossed the street, stopping to wait for another horse and cart. At the butcher shop, a pair of tiny brass bells hung from yarn tied at the top of the door. The bells tinkled when the sailor pushed the door open.

  Inside the shop, wurst, sausages, and hams dangled from hooks in the ceiling. The aroma made Karl’s mouth water instantly. A balding man, with a black apron tied across a wide belly, was placing cuts of meat in an iced case. He stared for a moment and said, “How may I help you?”

  “Good day,” the U-boat officer said. “I’d like to pick up some bratwurst and blutwurst, please.” He stood with his hands on his hips, trying to look like a casual shopper.

  “Ja, natürlich,” the butcher said.

  As they began the transaction, Karl looked around the shop. A framed photo of old Adolf himself hung from the rear wall. A scale rested atop one of the meat cases, and another of the cases contained a whole hog, skinned and dressed. Behind the cases, a radio and a telephone sat on a wooden table. The radio was turned off.

  This guy must be doing all right for himself, Karl thought. The radio makes sense, but in a village this small, who needs a phone? A status symbol, he figured. Like folks back home moving up from a Chevy to a Buick.

  “I do not know you gentlemen,” the butcher said. “Are you visiting someone in town?”

  “Ah, no,” the sailor said. “We are on leave from our regiment. We thought we’d enjoy a hike in the countryside for a change.”

  The butcher grunted, pulled a long blade from a drawer, and cut down a length of wurst. Karl looked more closely at the knife. The butcher had hooked his thumb through a steel ring attached to the grip. A muzzle ring. This wasn’t a butcher knife; it was a damned bayonet.

  “In my soldiering days,” the butcher said, “the last thing I’d have done on holiday was go for a long walk.”

  With his hands in his pockets, Karl put his fingers around the Colt. Where is this little exchange going?

  “It’s just such a pleasure to hike across the ground instead of crawling on my belly,” the U-boat man said.

  The butcher made
no reply. Instead, he cut down one more wurst and waved the blade as if to ask whether they wanted more.

  “Three, please,” the sailor said, indicating three in the German style, with his thumb, index finger, and middle finger.

  “Ja,” the butcher said. Very matter-of-fact and businesslike, Karl observed. No chitchat, no questions about how the war’s going. Karl eased his grip on the pistol. Maybe we won’t wind up stabbing and shooting, he thought, but this guy’s a rude son of a bitch.

  The butcher placed the wurst inside a muslin bag, weighed the meat, and tallied the charge. The sailor took bills from his wallet and paid. The butcher handed over the bag, snapped his heels together, raised his arm, and barked, “Heil Hitler.”

  The U-boat man returned the salute and greeting. Karl, caught with his hands in his pockets, did not. The butcher gave him a dirty look, but said nothing. And now it was too late. That salute was to be given quickly and automatically.

  Damn, Karl thought, did I just blow it? He hadn’t thought about this stupid greeting; hell, he’d had so much else to consider.

  “Danke,” the sailor said. Hefted the bag under his arm and headed out the door. Karl followed him outside, and the door with its brass bells tinkled shut. The U-boat officer’s heels clacked on the stone sidewalk, and he seemed to walk a little faster than before.

  “Should I have heiled, too?” Karl whispered.

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  The sailor didn’t look at Karl as he answered. He just kept walking, package tucked under his arm, staring straight ahead into the wooded hills beyond the town. His mood had obviously changed. Maybe a conversation with such an ardent Nazi had rattled him. But that couldn’t have come as a surprise. Surely, any German, let alone a Kriegsmarine officer, had seen plenty of ardent Nazis.

  When they passed the last building on the street, Karl noticed a sign over the door: BÄCKEREI.

  “Shall we run in there and get some bread to go with that wurst?” Karl suggested.