Copyright © 2016, Andreas Oertel
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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Oertel, Andreas, author
Prisoner of Warren / Andreas Oertel.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-77108-375-1 (paperback).—ISBN 978-1-77108-376-8 (html)
I. Title.
PS8629.E78P75 2016jC813’.6C2015-908192-0
C2015-908193-9
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For Jay and Ripper
Chapter 1
Near Gagetown, New Brunswick, Canada
July 1944
“Is your dad insane?” Tom frowned, repositioned his back against a poplar, and continued scanning the horizon.
“Why?” I shot back.
Okay, fine, I knew why, but I still wanted to hear it from him. I was sitting next to Tom, letting my eyes follow the zigzag of dusty gravel roads toward Gagetown. The heat waves dancing over the fields told us we were in for another hot day.
“Jeepers, Warren! Just think about it for a minute.” My best friend took a few seconds to gather his thoughts. “Every normal person in Canada—no, make that the world—is fighting the Nazis. And your dad drove to Fredericton to bring one home.”
I wiped a bead of sweat from my temple, and wiggled to get further under the shade of the towering poplar. “I know,” was all I could bring myself to say.
Four hours ago, just after breakfast, Dad had proudly announced that he was bringing home a German prisoner of war (a P.O.W.) to help work on the farm.
I couldn’t believe it.
“Maybe that’s him!” Tom’s finger shot out and jabbed at something on the distant skyline.
I sat up and stared at the tiny cloud of dust that materialized four miles away. More sweat rolled down my face and neck as the dust plume swelled. “Could be,” I croaked, my voice giving away my anxiety.
God, I prayed that wouldn’t be him yet. I needed more time. More time to figure out how to deal with this.
Tom broke the silence again. “Anyone who can hold a gun is over in Europe shooting Nazis and trying to stop Hitler. And your dad is hauling one home from the Ripples camp right now.” He shook his head slowly, as if that was the saddest, dumbest thing anyone had ever done. And to be honest, I really couldn’t think of a sadder or dumber thing anyone could possibly do…ever.
I felt sick.
“People around here are not going to like this,” Tom added.
“Shut up already,” I begged, carefully eyeing the vehicle heading our way.
“Naw.” Tom shook his head. “It’s not your truck.”
Thank God. We watched the black Dodge cross the Tilley Creek bridge and continue past our farm’s approach. “Looks like Mr. Peterson.” I sighed and let my body slump into the dry grass.
“Take your drunken neighbour, Peterson, for example.” Tom waved his arm at the vanishing truck. “How do you think he’s going to feel knowing the Webb family up the road has a house full of murderous Nazis?”
“It’s only one Nazi,” I corrected.
“Point is, one of his sons died just last month during the Normandy Invasion, fighting these guys. And here you are, possibly feeding the very same Nazi who shot his little Billy.”
“Christ, Tom. Just shut up about it.” I had had enough. “Do you think I want the guy in the house? Do you?”
Tom’s face turned red and I immediately felt bad for hollering at him. But what was his point? He wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t know. And there was nothing I could do about it anyway.
What was Dad thinking?
He knew I was counting down the next four years, that I couldn’t wait to turn seventeen and join the army. I had told Mom and Dad a hundred times that as soon as I was seventeen I was going to do my part. And that was going to Europe to get rid of Nazis—as many as I could. It was my duty.
But now this! I shook my head, still not believing it.
“What do you think he’s going to look like?” Tom said quietly, not wanting to rile me again.
I slid down onto my back and gazed up into the branches. Sighing, I said, “Like all Nazis, I suppose. He’ll have pasty skin, blond hair, and cold, evil eyes—basically ugly.”
Tom nodded. “That’s what I reckon too.”
Neither one of us had ever seen a real Nazi (or even a German, for that matter), but the posters in town always showed Nazis looking like that.
“What if he tries to escape?” Tom’s voice began to rise again. “Or what if…if he’s a spy for the Germans, and he let himself get caught so that he could come to Canada and send back military secrets?”
“Military secrets?” I closed my eyes and laughed. “I don’t think we have to worry about that. There’s not a lot of strategic planning happening around here. And if he did escape? Well, then he’s just dense. There’s nowhere to go!”
Tom’s brain worked on this for half a minute. “But he could sneak back to Germany, rejoin his unit, and then continue his killing spree across Europe. My Uncle Oliver said if we don’t stop Hitler soon, he could take England by next year.”
“Well, then we’ll just have to get rid of him,” I said, joking of course.
“Who? Hitler?” Tom’s eyebrows shot up to his dark hairline.
“No. The Nazi my dad’s bringing home.” Tom watched my face crease up, and then we both laughed.
“You know, that may actually not be a bad idea.” Tom stopped giggling. “If we rubbed out your Nazi and—”
“He’s not my bloody Nazi!” I interrupted.
“Yeah, yeah,” Tom continued. “If we whack him, we’d be doing everyone a favour.”
“Especially the Nazi.” I smiled up at Tom.
“No, really. If we take care of this guy, we’ll be getting rid of a killer. We will have killed a soldier who killed thousands of women, children, and Canadian soldiers. Heck, we might even be the only thirteen-year-olds to get medals for helping with the war effort.”
“Yeah, Tom,” I said. “Some people stay on the farm and grow victory gardens, or can vegetables, or coordinate scrap drives to help, but we can pitch in by killing a P.O.W.” I thought that was amusing, and I laughed.
“What’s so funny? You say you can’t wait to join the army and shoot Nazis, but when one shows up here at the farm, you wanna feed him and fatten him up? We have to whack him.”
Everything Tom was saying made a lot of sense, but I wasn’t totally convinced. So I decided to change the subject. “Why don’t they keep them locked up, anyway? They’re supposed to be prisoners of war, right? You shouldn’t just be able to go to Ripples and sign them out for th
e day like…like a stupid library book. I mean, can’t the government see the potential threat this poses to national security?”
I watched Tom’s freckled face and waited for him to join in.
“Exactly!” he sang. “Imagine if every farm in New Brunswick had a Nazi, and they all decided to escape on a predetermined day—say, April 20th—and then—”
“Why April 20th?”
“That’s Hitler’s birthday,” Tom said.
“How do you know when Hitler’s birthday is?” I asked. “You send him presents?”
“My Uncle Oliver told me,” Tom said, ignoring the sarcasm. “Anyway, if all the signed-out Nazis killed all the farmers and fishermen and loggers at the same time, they could take over Queens County just like that.” Tom snapped his finger in the hot air.
“How is it that you and I can understand these things,” I said, serious now, “and the government can’t see it?”
“We have to get rid of him.” Tom ran his fingers through his thick, black hair. “Before he gets rid of us.”
I sat up and considered Tom’s plan again. If Dad was too dumb to see the danger in bringing home a murderer, it was my duty to protect us. I couldn’t risk an enemy soldier sneaking around the farm at night and slitting our throats as we slept. No way!
“Okay,” I said. “I’m with you. Let’s get rid of him.”
“That’s the spirit, Warren.” Tom grinned and continued his vigil for my dad and the Nazi.
We sat in silence for fifteen minutes and then Tom started up again. He could never be quiet for long. “I wonder what his name will be? What’re some German names?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “Adolf? Gunter? Klaus?” The only names I could think of were those that got repeated over and over on the CBC—on the radio war reports.
“Yeah, those are good,” Tom said, enjoying his game. “What about Heinrich, or Wilhelm, or Erwin?”
“Erwin?” I repeated. “That’s not a German name.” We had an Erwin in our school—Erwin Clark.
“Sure it is,” Tom fired back. “Uncle Oliver said that’s Rommel’s first name. Rommel’s the guy causing all those problems in North Africa.”
Tom’s Uncle Oliver was a veteran from the last war. He wasn’t really Tom’s uncle, he was actually his great-uncle—his grandpa’s brother. We suspected that he spent every waking minute either reading about or listening to radio reports on the war in Europe. Tom believed Uncle Oliver was the only source for accurate information on the fighting.
“I know who Rommel is. I just didn’t think Erwin was his—oh, crap!” I pointed in the direction of Tom’s farm, two miles away. “I think that might be them.”
My stomach churned wildly as I watched the slow, steady approach of a dark vehicle. It was too far away to make out any features, but the driver seemed to handle the truck like Dad would—slow and deliberate. I think Dad was the only person in New Brunswick who actually drove twenty-five miles per hour, like the government asked. When Mom and I told Dad to speed up, he would say, “We have to save fuel for our boys in Europe.” That’s what he called all the guys fighting in the Canadian military—our boys.
Today I wanted him to drive even slower.
“I suppose we should sneak down and see what he looks like,” Tom said. The cockiness seemed to have drained out of him, and now he sounded nervous.
I took a deep breath and stood up. “I guess so.”
“Are you going to run?” Tom asked.
I shook my head. “If I did, I think I’d barf.” I can’t remember how it started, but when I was outside I always ran wherever I went—Tom’s house, the pastures, the swimming hole, everywhere. It drove Tom nuts trying to keep up with me. Luckily for him, he had a bicycle.
Tom picked himself up and we wound our way back down the dirt trail to meet my Nazi.
Chapter 2
“Let’s get a look at him from here first,” I said.
We were standing behind the main barn, with Tom’s bicycle resting in the grass. We had beat Dad to the farmyard, but I could already hear the crunch of gravel as the truck approached.
Tom pressed his back against the barn. “What if he killed your dad on the way over and now he’s driving?” His face glistened with sweat.
“Shhh!” I hissed, chancing a peek around the corner and straining to hear and see what was happening.
Mom appeared on the steps, followed two seconds later by the familiar sound of the screen door slamming shut (with two bounces) behind her. She tilted her head slightly and I could tell she was listening to the hollow rumble of Dad crossing the big timbers of the gully bridge.
My heart threatened to pound its way out of my chest. I pulled my head back and took a deep breath. Calm down. I counted to five, and again peered out at the house. Mom wiped her hands on her apron and fussed with her hair. It’s not the Queen, Mom. It’s a bloody Nazi! I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. My mother was actually flustered by the arrival of a dangerous war criminal. Or was she scared of him too?
“Let me look.” Tom pulled me back and took his turn watching the yard.
My reflection in one of the barn windows suddenly caught my eye. The window was over Dad’s workbench, and with the barn being dark, the glass mirrored my face like…well, like a mirror. And although I expected to see a boy with dirty-blond hair looking back, I sure didn’t expect to see such a look of terror. My hazel-coloured eyes looked like those of a startled deer and my jaw was—
“They’re here!” Tom announced.
I ignored my reflection, grabbed Tom’s T-shirt, and yanked him back. I had to see what this guy looked like. The truck lumbered across the yard at an excruciating pace. Dad’s side was facing me, so I couldn’t make out the passenger.
The truck inched its way to the house and finally stopped in front of the steps. Dad opened his door and jumped out.
Good, he was still alive. Mom walked down the steps as the passenger door opened.
Darn! I couldn’t see a thing with the truck in the way.
I thought I heard Mom say hello and then something else, but I couldn’t make it out.
Suddenly, Dad swung around and looked right at me. “WARREN!” he yelled. His voice boomed across the yard and hit me like a cannon ball. “Quit loafing about and get over here.”
Holy smokes!
“He’s seen us!” Tom cried, directly into my ear. “He knows we’re here!”
“Well, then we may as well get this over with.” I wiped the sweat from my face and together we left the shadow of the barn.
I crossed the yard on legs that felt like rubber, my eyes flitting nervously from Dad to Mom. It wasn’t till Tom and I rounded the hood of the truck that we saw him.
I stopped ten feet from them and froze in my tracks. I shot a glance at Tom and saw his jaw drop. Mom was just letting go of the Nazi’s hand when he turned to us.
Was this really the Nazi? Or had Dad been pulling my leg?
Standing in front of us was a man in his early twenties. He had dark brown hair and a deeply suntanned face. I figured then that Dad must have been joking all along about fetching a P.O.W. from Fredericton. I took four extra steps toward our guest—probably some cousin from Nova Scotia. The cousin gave me a quick nod and thrust out his hand. And was he ever tall! I always thought Dad was big at just over six feet, but this guy had several inches piled on top of that.
Dad spoke up. “Martin, this is our son, Warren. Warren, this is Martin. Martin Keller.”
Martin? I couldn’t recall meeting a cousin named Martin, but that didn’t mean much. There were Webbs scattered as far away as Alberta. I figured he must be a distant third or fourth or fifth cousin, if there even was such a thing. “It’s nice to meet you,” I said, shaking the hand that was offered to me.
“Und it is good to meet you also, Varren.”
W-what!? Di
d he just call me Varren? Was that a German accent?
My hand snapped back in alarm. I think Martin saw the sudden terror in my eyes, but Dad had missed it. No one was horsing around. He was a real German. I was staring at a Nazi.
“And this is Warren’s friend, Tom.” Dad continued the introductions unfazed. “Tom’s family farms down the road.”
Martin swung a powerful-looking hand toward Tom. “Hallo.”
Tom reached out automatically and shook the soldier’s hand weakly. His mouth opened to say something, but nothing came out.
I’m sure Martin saw Tom’s discomfort too, but he didn’t react. He simply nodded again. I figured then that he didn’t want us to know we were onto him—that we knew he was a killer.
Dad turned to Mom and said, “I’ll show Martin around the farm a bit, and then we’ll come in for some lunch.”
Mom said that was a good idea and disappeared behind the screen door. Hopefully she was running to the kitchen to hide the knives.
“You wanna stick around, Tom, and have a bite with us?” Dad asked.
Tom was still dumbstruck. “Ahh, no…I mean, no thanks, Mr. Webb. I should be getting on home. I have some…some chores to do in the orchard.”
“Well, all right then,” Dad said. He turned his back to us and guided Martin to the rear of the house, in the direction of our chicken coops, barns, and other farm-type structures.
“You’re all dead…we’re all dead,” Tom whispered as we walked to his bicycle. “Did you see the size of that Nazi? He’s huge!”
“Yeah, he’s big.” I was still confused over his appearance, and wasn’t sure what to think. “But he sure doesn’t look like the poster Nazis.”
“His hair’s not blond, and I guess his face is sort of…sort of normal-looking,” Tom admitted. “But he is a giant. I reckon he could lick your dad easy.”
I nodded. Dad was no slouch, but Martin definitely looked bigger, faster, and stronger.
Tom hopped on his bike and began pedalling for home. I jogged with him in silence all the way to the main road. He wasn’t riding hard, but even if he was, I could have kept up with him for at least a mile. There was no one in school who could run faster than me. Even the high-school boys knew me as Rabbit, a nickname the track and field coach, Mr. Roberts, had given me. Most people seemed to be good at something, and running was the thing I was good at.
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