Silver Wings, Iron Cross

by Tom Young

  Wilhelm walked in silence for several meters. But I do owe you, he thought. You and McLendon, the other kriegies—even Fox—are now my only friends.

  “I’m serious,” Karl pressed. “Don’t push your luck.”

  “I will not. But for now, I’m safer here.”

  In Wilhelm’s considered military analysis, that was true. Yet Karl had a point. Whenever the time came, leave-taking would bring pain. More than likely, there would be no time for a proper auf Weider-sehen.

  Do not let your emotions cloud your judgment at a critical juncture, Wilhelm told himself.

  * * *

  Dawn revealed avenues of snow-shrouded pines along both sides of the road. The sight would have been beautiful if not for the cold. Wilhelm’s fingers, toes, and lips grew numb. He balled his fists inside his Red Cross–issued gloves. Karl and the other prisoners suffered as well. Frost formed on the stubble of Karl’s upper lip as he exhaled moisture-laden air. Timmersby walked with a limp, the result of the blows he’d taken at the hands of the SS. Karl and Sparks offered to carry his bundle of food and blankets.

  “Not necessary, chaps,” Timmersby said. “Really, I’m fine.”

  The pines gave way to hedgerows and open fields. At a crossroads, the column halted. The POWs yielded to let a group of civilians pass through the intersection.

  They appeared to be a group of farm families, refugees fleeing the Russian advance. Twenty people—young mothers, small children, older men—trudged alongside three horse-drawn carts. The men had not shaved in days. The carts groaned with furniture and crates. Pitchforks, scythes, rakes, and hoes bristled from one of the carts.

  Wilhelm was a city boy and did not know horses, but to him, the animals looked sick and exhausted. Ropes of mucus dangled from their noses.

  Every adult had a weapon of some kind. A woman with an old rifle glared at the prisoners and spat on the ground. One man wielded a single-barreled shotgun. Those who lacked firearms carried a variety of sharp-edged farm tools: sickles, corn knives, and axes.

  They spoke not a word as they passed through the crossroads. The only sound came from the horses: the clopping of hooves and the jangling of hardware on their tack. A rangy animal smell lingered behind them.

  Wilhelm thought: This is what my country has done to itself. Brought down the world’s wrath and turned ourselves into refugees within our own borders.

  * * *

  By the third day of the march, men began to falter. At one rest stop, two POWs stretched out in the snow and refused to get up. Guards prodded them with rifles. Wilhelm feared he was about to witness another murder. He had heard shots in the distance, and he assumed guards farther back in the column were executing prisoners who fell out. But this time, the men rose up onto their hands and knees, then stood and began taking small steps. Patches of packed snow fell from their trousers. The guards did not shoot.

  The march resumed. Pell left his own group so he could rejoin Karl. The two erstwhile crewmates walked alongside Wilhelm, McLendon, and Fox. Several meters ahead, a man staggered and fell. It was Timmersby.

  “Sir,” McLendon said, “you have to let us carry your stuff.”

  Timmersby lay on the ground, lips blue from cold and eyes rheumy with pain. He held his side and said, “It’s not just where they hit me. My feet are in bloody awful shape. You chaps go ahead. I’ll rest and catch up.”

  “Hell no, sir,” McLendon said.

  “Let’s take a look at your feet, sir,” Pell said.

  Timmersby protested, but they removed his boots and socks. Wilhelm winced when he saw the group captain’s feet. Red and white blisters oozed fluid and pus.

  Up ahead in the column, a guard noticed the commotion. Wilhelm hadn’t seen this man before; perhaps he was a guard from a different compound. No telling whether he was kind or not. The guard turned and began striding back toward the knot of men around the commander.

  “Roust!” the guard shouted. “Schnell!”

  He looked tired and frightened. He held his Mauser ready across his chest.

  “Hold your horses there, Fritz,” McLendon said.

  The guard did not seem to understand. “Roust!” he said. Raised his weapon and pointed it at Timmersby. Thumbed the safety.

  “We will carry him on a sled,” Wilhelm said in German. “We’ll make a sled,” he repeated in English. The prisoners nodded their assent. No one commented about Wilhelm speaking German.

  “You have ten minutes,” the guard said, also in German.

  “I need a blanket, some rope, and three strong poles,” Wilhelm said in English. “This son of a bitch is going to start shooting in ten minutes.”

  “I got your poles,” Karl said. He began scrounging at the edge of the woods.

  Fox slid his pack—improvised from a blanket—off his shoulder. Untied the drawstring and dumped out the contents. Soup cans and packages of crackers tumbled into the snow. Fox shook out the blanket and tossed it to Wilhelm.

  McLendon began running along the road. “Rope,” he called. “Anybody got rope? We need it right now.”

  Karl returned carrying three branches. The effort reminded Wilhelm of building the raft, which seemed a lifetime ago. The sled would be much simpler—but now he had only about five minutes left.

  Wilhelm placed the branches on the ground to form a rough U. Didn’t bother to remove the twigs and pine needles. Spread the blanket over the branches.

  Somehow McLendon came up with a coil of old clothesline. He dropped the line beside Wilhelm. Wilhelm grabbed a handful of blanket, wrapped a corner of it around a branch, and tied it off with the line.

  “Knife,” Wilhelm said. “I need a knife.”

  No one had a knife. Karl’s folding knife had been taken long ago. A few kriegies had managed to hide little penknives during their captivity, but camp authorities usually confiscated any blade they found.

  Wilhelm looked at the guard. “Please lend me your bayonet,” he said in German.

  The guard stared, looked down at his web belt. To Wilhelm’s surprise, the man unsheathed the bayonet. Handed it to Wilhelm almost politely, with the handle foremost.

  “Danke,” Wilhelm said. “What is your name, Sergeant?”

  “Gunther.”

  Wilhelm took the bayonet, cut several short lengths of clothesline. Handed the blade back to the guard. In less than two minutes, Wilhelm lashed the branches together and attached the blanket with two pile hitches and two anchor hitches. He also created loops for handles.

  “Where did you learn to do that?” Fox asked.

  “I used to be a sailor.”

  Sparks and Karl picked up the commander and placed him on the cloth sled. Fox grabbed the rope handle on the right side. Wilhelm took the left side, and they began pulling Timmersby through the snow.

  * * *

  As the day wore on, two other POWs collapsed. In each case, Wilhelm persuaded guards not to shoot the men as stragglers, and he rigged up quick sleds as he’d done for Timmersby. In each case, someone asked him where he’d learned such skills, and he told them the same thing: He’d been a sailor. The answer seemed to satisfy the kriegies; they pressed him no further. Perhaps they assumed he’d been an avid leisure yachtsman before the war.

  The column stopped for the night at an abandoned brick factory near the town of Muskau. Rounded kilns, long cold, stood next to large warehouses. Frost patterned rows of windows, except for the odd pane broken out like a missing tooth. The men unfolded their bedrolls across floors chalky with red dust. An earthy scent lingered in the air. The buildings were unheated, of course, but Wilhelm felt glad just to get out of the elements. McLendon and Sparks helped Timmersby sit down with his back to an oaken pillar. They removed his boots and socks. The group commander winced as they dabbed at his feet with tincture of iodine from a medical kit.

  McLendon screwed the cap back on the iodine bottle. “Something just occurred to me, sir,” he said to Timmersby. “I haven’t seen any of the Russian prisoners since we left
the camp. Do you know what happened to them?”

  Wilhelm had wondered the same thing.

  “No, I don’t,” Timmersby said. “If we knew, I don’t think we’d like it.”

  At suppertime, Wilhelm, Karl, and Pell sat cross-legged in a circle on the concrete floor. They placed what remained of their Red Cross parcels on the floor among them. Wilhelm had thought most of the good items were already gone, but they came up with prunes, crackers, raisins, jam, peanut butter, and cheese. They took turns choosing from the packages and cans. Karl and Pell left the crackers and jam; Wilhelm suspected they were leaving the best for him.

  “Do you not want some of this?” Wilhelm asked.

  “Nah,” Pell said. “I don’t like strawberry.”

  Karl shook his head.

  The act reminded Wilhelm of little gestures of kindness he had witnessed among his crewmates: Near the end of a long patrol, galley stores would get low and men would save the best treats for the wounded or sick, or for those who had performed with particular skill or gallantry.

  “Good work today on those sleds,” Karl said.

  “It was a small matter,” Wilhelm said.

  “Not to Timmersby and those other two.”

  On this night of war in his broken country, for a couple of hours, Wilhelm felt among brothers. But the warmth brought an undercurrent of melancholy. He knew he must leave these friends for a future that promised little but chaos.

  Wilhelm hated for the evening to end, but fatigue washed over him. When he could no longer stop his eyelids from fluttering, he brushed crumbs from his lap and bedded down, still in his field jacket and boots.

  42

  Train to the End of the World

  On the last day of January, the guards marched the POWs out of the brick factory. At first, Karl felt encouraged when Wilhelm translated a promise from Gunther. “He says we have only sixteen miles to go,” Wilhelm said. But later, Wilhelm added: “Now he says when we get to Spremberg, they will put us on a train.”

  “I’d rather walk, if it’s like the last train they put us on,” Karl said.

  It was exactly like the last train.

  Kriegies groaned and muttered curses when they saw the boxcars waiting at the rail station. The stench from inside the cars hit Karl from forty feet away. And the odor, awful as it was, presented the least problem. From the air, this train would look like any other German freight train. It might contain weapons.

  If I saw this thing from the cockpit of a Mustang or a Thunderbolt, Karl asked himself, what would I do? I’d dive low, roll out nose-to-nose with the locomotive. Hold down the firing button from engine to caboose. Rip every car to splinters. If I had ammo left, I’d pull up off the target, roll into a steep 180, come back and do it again.

  As before, the prisoners crowded into the boxcars until they had room only to stand. No food. No water. This time, not even a toilet bucket. Men simply urinated on the floor. The odor grew worse and men vomited, which made the odor still worse. Karl almost wished a fighter plane would come and put all of them out of their misery.

  The train moved in fits and starts, short rolls and long runs. From time to time, Karl thought he heard distant blasts, but nothing close. At the end of the first day, the train stopped at some nameless railhead, and the men piled out for a meal of thin gruel and black bread. Karl hardly felt like eating. He sat with Wilhelm and Pell on the siding, and he forced down as much as he could, only because he knew he needed the fuel.

  Pell lifted a chunk of bread. “Just shoot me now,” he said. With thumb and middle finger, he flicked away a weevil.

  Wilhelm seemed in even worse spirits. He ate little and said nothing. When Wilhelm turned his face toward the glow of the setting sun, Karl thought he saw tears.

  If this were happening to my country and my only friends were former enemies, Karl thought, I’d weep, too. To Wilhelm, this must feel like a train to world’s end. His world’s, anyway.

  * * *

  After three days of agony, the train reached its final stop. The doors slid open to a scene from the farthest corner of Hades. At a marshaling yard outside a good-sized city, prisoners in ragged clothing toiled with shovels. They were digging slit trenches at the edge of the yard. Black smoke billowed across the horizon, and ack-ack guns pounded the sky. Heavy bombers were obliterating a target a few miles away. Air raid sirens howled. A signpost beside the tracks revealed the location: NUREMBERG.

  Karl, Wilhelm, and Pell clambered down from the boxcar. They found Timmersby, who had somehow survived the train ride in his weakened condition. Supported by McLendon, the group commander shouted at an English-speaking Luftwaffe officer.

  “You cannot mean to keep us here,” Timmersby yelled, his voice scratchy and hoarse. “This rail yard is an obvious target!”

  “We have no other place,” the officer said. “This will have to do.”

  With the ground vibrating from explosions, the kriegies filed from the boxcars into abandoned buildings beside the rail yard. The buildings appeared to have housed POWs at some point in the past: Filthy mattresses lined the floor. The open bays smelled of mold and rat droppings. Discarded articles of clothing lay here and there.

  “This is worse than the brick factory,” Karl said.

  “Smells worse, that’s for sure,” Pell said.

  “Perhaps we will get bombed,” Wilhelm noted. “But the werewolves will probably not come near this place.” Karl recalled the refugees they’d seen at the crossroads—their cold expressions, their weapons outdated but deadly.

  Just as they’d done at the brick factory, the kriegies combined their dwindling supplies to make supper. But this time, the Germans supplemented their rations with dehydrated peas and beans. The men heated water on camp stoves and made flavorless soups.

  With guards posted outside the buildings, but none inside, Sparks judged it safe to reassemble his radio. The men gathered around him in the dark to hear the latest news. He found a signal from the BBC.

  “Prime Minister Churchill, President Roosevelt, and General Secretary Stalin are meeting in Crimea to discuss postwar administration of Europe,” the announcer said. “Allied officials say the Big Three leaders have agreed to demand Germany’s unconditional surrender. Their agenda also includes establishing zones of occupation. Preliminary reports suggest Germany will be divided into regions administered separately by Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union, and France.”

  Men whooped at the mention of surrender, but other kriegies shushed them. No sense tipping off the guards about the radio. A few of the POWs seemed less enthusiastic about the news.

  “If they think the war’s over,” Pell said, “they should come here and listen to those guns and bombs.”

  “Yeah,” Fox said. “And how about they get us home while they’re at it?”

  Wilhelm said nothing. Karl left him alone. What could you say to a man who had just heard a matter-of-fact discussion about the end of his country? Carve it up like pie slices. Send diplomats from Washington, London, Paris, and Moscow to run it. Maybe not even call it Germany anymore. What would this mean for Karl’s uncle Rainer and aunt Federica? Were they even still alive?

  Later in the evening, bombers came again. The usual rotation, Karl supposed: Fortresses and Liberators by day, Lancasters, Stirlings, and Halifaxes by night. The kriegies rushed for the slit trenches and kept their heads low. But there was really no point. If bombardiers began walking five-hundred-pounders across the marshaling yard, these trenches would amount to nothing but previously dug graves.

  The sky convulsed with booms and flashes—and the bombs fell much closer than during the day. Searchlights swept the night. Prisoners shouted and cursed, called out differing wishes: “Let ’em have it!” “Give ’em hell!” “Let us sleep, you sons of bitches.” A burnt odor drifted in the air—from bombs, ack-ack, burning buildings, or some combination.

  Fire all around, and the smell of sulfur. Yeah, Karl had heard of such a place, but he’d thought you
had to die to get there.

  * * *

  The kriegies remained at Nuremberg through the rest of February and into March. The bombing never ended. Sometimes it thundered close; sometimes it rumbled faint in the distance. Each day, Karl feared annihilation and hoped for liberation. He imagined American trucks and tanks clanking up the highway that ran alongside the rail yard. If the bigwigs were already talking about what to do after the war, how much longer could it last?

  At the end of March, the POWs moved again. In the rail yard, Timmersby addressed the kriegies. He looked better now; he could stand without assistance. He told them they were bound for yet another stalag—this one in the town of Moosburg. Once more, they would travel by foot.

  “Stay together, lads,” Timmersby said. “Escape was always our goal, but the war is as good as over now. Don’t strike off on your own and get shot by angry civilians.”

  The prisoners marched from the rail yard and hiked along a highway. After an hour of walking, bomb-scarred Nuremberg lay behind them. The countryside displayed the first signs of spring: Pastures were greening. Trees budded. Cattle grazed, chewed, and flicked their tails at flies.

  Karl walked with Wilhelm, Pell, and McLendon. During the morning, Fox fell back from his own group and joined Karl and the others. He produced a pack of Camels.

  “Anybody want a smoke?” he asked. “I think this is the last pack.”

  Karl declined, but Wilhelm took a cigarette. Fox lit it for him.

  Wilhelm took a deep drag, exhaled through his nose, and said, “Very kind of you.”

  The men walked in silence for a few minutes. Eventually Fox said, “Anybody know where this Moosburg place is? I’ve never heard of it.”

  “It’s north of Munich,” Wilhelm said.

  “You know your geography around here, don’t you?” Fox said.

  “Navigator,” Wilhelm said. He smiled for the first time in days.

  “Uh-huh,” Fox replied. His tone suggested he still didn’t believe that story, but he no longer cared.

  “The Krauts are running out of places to put us,” McLendon said, “because they’re running out of real estate.”