by Tom Young
“No.”
What’s wrong? Karl wondered if the German had suddenly become angry with him. If he’s steamed about the Nazi salute thing, Karl thought, then he should have briefed me on what to expect.
“You want to tell me what’s going on?” Karl whispered. “You think I screwed up back there?”
“No, that’s not it. But did you see what the butcher did just as we left?”
“No.”
“He went straight to the telephone.”
18
Hares and Hounds
The village street turned into a country road, and Wilhelm chose the first dirt path he saw that led off the road and into the forest. He wanted to get out of sight and as far away from the village as possible. Perhaps he had grown paranoid, but he could easily imagine the SS or Gestapo at the other end of the butcher’s phone line.
As they entered the forest, the path became a tunnel underneath a canopy of juniper and spruce. The trees gave off an evergreen scent that Wilhelm associated with Christmas. In another era, the tall spruce trees might have served for mainmasts, but today they provided a screen between the village and two fugitives trying to disappear.
Wilhelm heard no truck engines or anything else to suggest pursuers. He began to think the butcher’s suspicion was more a product of his imagination than of reality. Unrelenting exposure to danger could have that effect. Wilhelm had seen submariners whose nerves became shot after a series of harrowing patrols. Every splash became a depth charge; every creak meant a collapsing hull. Fear could send your mind into a spiral of psychological warfare with yourself.
The forest floor sloped upward like the deck of a U-boat on a gentle ascent, just enough to make for labored walking. The American pilot kept pace; apparently, he was in good physical condition, and he had enough sense to keep quiet.
“We’ll eat when we get well away from the town,” Wilhelm said in a low voice.
“Yeah, that place gave me the willies, too,” the Yank said in English.
That was an expression Wilhelm knew. In German folklore, willies were virgins jilted on their wedding day. They died of a broken heart, and their spirits haunted the woods. They killed any man they encountered by forcing him to dance until he dropped dead of exhaustion.
At the crest of the hill, the two men came to another barley field. Wilhelm saw no one in the field, but he decided to remain in the trees, anyway. As they skirted the field border, the American stopped and dug into one of his pockets.
“Wait a minute,” the Yank said. “How well do you know this area?”
“I have never been here before.”
“Then let’s get our bearings. Keep your eyes peeled while I take a compass reading.” The pilot took out some sort of flask or box and pulled off the lid.
“Eyes peeled?” Good heavens. Wilhelm scanned the forest and barley field, while the American set himself to the task. The flier lowered himself onto one knee and took from the flask a tiny compass and a silk map. At a glance, Wilhelm could see the map’s scale made it almost useless; it covered much of the continent. But the little compass intrigued him. The Yank held the compass on the ends of two fingers and let the needle settle on magnetic north.
“All right,” the pilot said, “we’re still headed south, more or less. Just wanted to make sure my sense of direction wasn’t failing me.”
Good procedure, Wilhelm noted. From here, the River Weser was no longer visible, so they couldn’t navigate by that landmark anymore. He supposed aviators developed the same keen inner compass possessed by mariners—perhaps even keener. Since their craft moved so much faster, they had much less time to discover and correct a navigational error.
The Yank folded the map, put away the compass, and closed the flask. Pointed into the forest.
“If we keep going south,” he said, “it will take us off this path but still in the woods, and I think we need to stay off paths, anyway.”
“Agreed,” Wilhelm said. They needed no chance encounters.
The southerly bearing brought them over an unbroken carpet of fallen spruce needles, with more underbrush than had existed along the path. A hare bolted from a thicket, and Wilhelm flinched at the noise. The hare’s long ears bobbed as it zigged and zagged, gray quicksilver darting through the trees. Wilhelm heard the rustle of its hind paws striking the ground for a couple seconds after the hare became invisible.
Run, little rabbit, Wilhelm mused. Someday you may find yourself hunted like the two of us. Will you escape the men and their dogs, the Drahthaars baying behind you?
The stray thought reminded Wilhelm of something he’d read about Hermann Göring, head of the Luftwaffe and president of the Reichstag. Göring’s numerous other titles included Reichsjägermeis-ter, or master of the hunt. This close confidant of Hitler so loved the Fatherland’s woods and waters that he’d developed regulations governing hunting, fishing, and forestry. Göring had even built an enormous country home and hunting lodge outside Berlin—named Carinhall, for his late wife.
For Wilhelm, that knowledge lent a vaguely sinister aspect to the forest. Turned its shadows darker. Suggested a regime whose reach extended to nature itself. Did such a forest offer refuge, or entrapment?
The two men stole along the wooded hillcrest. The decaying spruce needles quieted their footfalls, and Wilhelm and the American made almost no noise as they ghosted through the trees. They walked long enough for Wilhelm’s legs to tire, about an hour’s hike from the village.
The trek became a little easier when the grade of the land angled downward. A stream murmured in the distance, barely audible. Cold water would go well with a meal. Wilhelm judged that he and the Yank had journeyed deep enough into the forest to call a halt.
“I think I hear water,” Wilhelm said. “When we get there, we can rest and eat.”
“Sounds like a good idea,” the pilot said.
The slope grew steeper until both men had to shuffle their way downhill, balancing occasionally against a branch or a trunk. The water’s gurgling grew louder, and the stream appeared in a crease of the hillside. A shaft of sunlight pierced the leaf canopy to where the stream eddied around a group of stones, and there the water sparkled like champagne. At the water’s edge, Wilhelm took a seat on a boulder patched by lichens while the American sat cross-legged beside him. Wilhelm waved his hand toward the brook.
“After crossing oceans and seas,” he said, “I come back to water ankle-deep.”
“And after flying over Germany a bunch of times,” the Yank said, “here I am on the ground. Ought to be some kind of moral in that story.”
“What do you mean by that?”
The American thought for a moment and said, “Nothing. Because I don’t know what the moral would be.”
Though Wilhelm did not say so, he did find a moral in the Yank’s story of dropping bombs on his ancestral home. The American pilot had been forced to choose between nation and family, and he had chosen his nation.
Until now, Wilhelm had thought he knew something about patriotism. He had seen throngs in long straight lines, offering stiff-armed salutes and singing “The Horst Wessel Song.” Reflexive expressions of fealty to the Führer, emotions stirred by propaganda bombardment through radio and film. Vows to overcome our enemies: the Jews, the Slavs, the untermenschen of the world.
But this man—this bomber pilot, damn him—loved his country on a more personal level. His loyalty stemmed not from hating anyone, certainly not from hating Germans. Lieutenant Hagan loved his country much the way Wilhelm loved his crewmates. Wilhelm had made his own terrible choice because of that love. Opposite sides of the same coin.
Wilhelm opened the muslin bag and withdrew a link of blutwurst. He patted his pockets and realized he had no knife.
“I’ll cut it for you,” the pilot said.
The American opened his escape kit and found a folding knife. Wilhelm handed over the wurst. The flier flicked open the knife, sloshed its blade in the water, and selected a flat, wet stone
from the streambed.
“This’ll have to do for a cutting board,” he said in English.
He placed the wurst against the rock and sliced a portion about two centimeters thick. Handed the slice to Wilhelm.
“Danke,” Wilhelm said.
The blutwurst tasted heavenly. He chewed for a moment and swallowed. The first taste of food made him even hungrier. The Yank passed him two more slices, then emptied the escape kit onto the ground and dipped the container into the water.
“Have a drink,” the pilot said, again speaking in English.
“Thank you,” Wilhelm said. He tipped the container to his mouth and drank half the water. Felt its coldness sliding down the inside of his chest. Handed the water back to the American. Wiped his mouth on his sleeve and said, “So, how do our chances look to you now?”
“Zero-point-nothing,” the flier said, cutting a chunk of wurst for himself. Wilhelm wondered if that was some kind of aviator talk, but he could not mistake the meaning.
While they ate, Wilhelm noticed vegetation growing along the brook. The stems branched into sets of leaflets with sawtooth edges, and the weeds had produced brownish seedpods with the approach of late autumn. He could not identify the plants, but they looked like some sort of herb. They prospered in this wet ground, lining both of the brook’s banks.
“If we cannot have sauerkraut with the wurst,” Wilhelm said, “watercress would do.”
The Yank looked at the plants. “That ain’t watercress. It’s water hemlock. You don’t want to eat that. Don’t even touch it.”
“It’s poisonous?”
“Kill you dead as a hammer.”
Mein Gott, another stupid Americanism. “You are a naturalist as well?”
“Nope. Just a flyboy. But they teach us a little about ground survival.”
“Very good.”
Wilhelm’s survival training consisted of the things a sailor should know: how to improvise a raft, catch fish, read stars. Land meant port, a destination, a haven. But now land had become as hostile as a swath of ocean pinged by Allied sonar.
And here we are in Göring’s forest, Wilhelm thought. So fitting that poisons line its streams. He watched the water tumble over sunlit rocks and wondered where each drop of it might go. This stream probably widened and became a tributary of the Weser. The Weser flowed into the North Sea, and the North Sea led to the open Atlantic. The very water at Wilhelm’s feet might someday grow salty and splash across the bridge of a U-boat or the bow of a destroyer. Mingle with the oil of a torpedoed vessel or the blood of a dead mariner.
The bomber pilot cut another chunk of wurst with his folding knife and popped it into his mouth. While he chewed, he said, “If you don’t mind my asking, what made you go over the hill?”
“ ‘Over the hill’?”
“Well, you didn’t really go over the hill. That means deserting and going to the other side. But what made you quit?”
“No,” Wilhelm said, “I did not go to the other side. Make no mistake about that.”
The American waved his folding knife. But not in a threatening manner. He held it by his thumb and forefinger, with his other fingers outstretched. Almost a gesture of apology.
“No offense, bud,” the Yank said.
The downed American had no business asking such questions, and Wilhelm felt no desire to discuss his motives. Not with anyone. Certainly not with an Allied pilot. But as Wilhelm thought about it, he realized the Yank wasn’t necessarily impugning his motives.
The bomber pilot, Wilhelm thought, is probably deciding how far he can trust me. Fair enough.
“My crew was given a suicide mission,” Wilhelm said finally. He told Lieutenant Hagan about the order to ram Allied vessels when torpedoes ran out.
“And you didn’t want to die for nothing?”
“I didn’t want to kill my crew for nothing.”
The Yank stopped chewing. He looked straight at Wilhelm and said, “I understand. I took my guys into harm’s way, and I got at least one of them killed. But I wouldn’t have done it for nothing.”
The pilot cut another piece of wurst and offered it to Wilhelm. Wilhelm did not take it.
“Do you really think you understand what I’ve been through and what I’ve done?” Wilhelm asked.
“Well,” the American said with his hand still extended, “let’s just say I get it.”
Wilhelm accepted the slice of wurst and continued eating. They sat in silence for several minutes, resting and drinking water. No sounds intruded except the brook’s burble and the jingle and chirp of birdsong.
Until dogs began barking in the distance.
“We need to move,” Wilhelm said.
“Nazi butcher dropped a dime on us, all right.”
Wilhelm ignored the nonsensical expression. He stuffed the remaining food back into the muslin bag, while the Yank dumped the water from his container and put his survival gear back into it. They followed the stream downhill for a few hundred meters, then waded through a hemlock patch and stepped across the brook.
Heading south became only a secondary concern; right now, Wilhelm wanted only to move away from the dogs. The barks sounded like at least three animals, and the sound grew louder, accompanied by indistinct shouts.
From the streambed, the forest sloped upward, and Wilhelm and the American clambered through spruces that grew ever more sparse. Open fields appeared to the right and left. The men had entered a finger of forest that stretched into agricultural land. They were about to lose their wooded haven, and the dogs sounded closer with each yap and snarl.
The hares and the hounds, Wilhelm thought. And we two are the hares.
They reached the top of a rise. Both men leaned over with their hands on their thighs, winded from the rapid climb. Wilhelm pulled his Luger from his waistband, used his sleeve to wipe sweat from his brow, and turned to the American.
“You do what you want,” Wilhelm said, “but I won’t let them take me. I have seen what they’ll do if they capture me.” He double-checked that the weapon had a round chambered, then placed it back under his belt.
“Don’t give up the ship just yet,” the Yank said. “We might find a way out of here.”
The American had a point. If the two of them could stay out of sight and well away from the animals, they might escape.
They had come to the borders of two fields where the trees tapered off. Barley grew in the field to the right, and the thigh-high grain offered poor concealment. But to the left grew corn. Perhaps it remained in the field at this season because of a shortage of fuel or labor. The dry stalks stood at least a foot taller than either of them. The corn rows sprawled for at least two hundred meters through loamy black soil. Another forest beckoned from the far side of the field. Wilhelm pointed into the corn. The bomber pilot nodded.
They plunged into the stalks. The rust-colored leaves scratched at Wilhelm’s cheeks. To protect his eyes and face, he kept his hands up like a man in a fistfight, still holding the food bag in his left. A couple of rows to his side, he heard the rustle of the American’s passage through the field. The noisy stalks made it difficult to hear the barking.
Wilhelm couldn’t tell if the dogs were getting closer or not. In the dense stalks, he might never see a dog about to run him down from behind. He still hadn’t caught a glimpse of the animals, and for all he knew, the barking might have come from some old frau’s pack of poodles. But they sounded like big dogs, and he had to assume they were shepherds in service to the SS.
In the middle of the field, Wilhelm paused to listen. He heard the American rustle on ahead of him. The barking continued, but fainter now.
Wilhelm pressed on through the field. At the end of the rows, he found the pilot breathing hard, scanning into the distance.
“I don’t hear the dogs anymore,” the American said. “Do you?”
Wilhelm cocked his head and held his breath. At first, he heard only the crinkle of stalks set into motion by the breeze. The noise masked ano
ther sound that became apparent very gradually: a distant buzz, like a bilge pump far astern.
For a moment, Wilhelm thought the noise came from within his own damaged ears, but then the American pointed to a dot above the horizon. The dot moved closer and materialized into the shape of a small airplane.
Wilhelm recognized it as a Fieseler Fi 156 Storch. The ungainly single-engine aircraft actually looked like a stork with its long, straight landing-gear struts. In Wilhelm’s old aircraft recognition charts, it would have been listed as a friendly model, used for liaison and reconnaissance.
Or searching for fugitives.
19
Knights-errant
Karl no longer wondered whether German authorities were looking for him and the sailor. The appearance of the Storch eliminated all doubt. The aircraft made its first pass about two miles to the west, cruising low, at less than a thousand feet. As it turned, Karl recognized that it was flying a grid search pattern. The wide wings, painted in a green-and-gray mottled camouflage, banked steeply until the Storch rolled out on a reciprocal heading from its original pass.
“Get in the trees,” Karl said. “Get up against a tree trunk and just hold still.”
“Maybe we should run deeper into the forest,” the U-boat man said.
“No. Trust me. That’s the last thing to do right now.”
As a pilot, Karl knew how hard it was to spot something on the ground. You couldn’t just gaze out the windscreen; you had to scan your instruments, mind your power, watch your fuel consumption. Even if you had a backseat observer with nothing to do but look, the observer had a lot of real estate to cover. The thing that tended to catch your eye was movement.
During Karl’s cadet days, back when he flew lighter airplanes, he got schooled on the difficulties of searching from the air. The schooling came not from the training syllabus, but from awful necessity. It happened during his primary flight training in Oxnard, California.
Under the tutelage of civilian contract instructors, the cadets flew the Stearman PT-13B, a big yellow biplane with a 220-horsepower engine. Karl hit it off pretty well with his roommate, a lanky Houston boy named Benny Ardmore. Son of an oil well roughneck, Ardmore kept Karl laughing with stories from the oil patch. Complained about nothing except that he had to wear his uniform all the time and couldn’t show off his Stetson and snakeskin boots. Good pilot, too—or so it seemed.
