by Mary Hagen
Hunching his shoulders and lowering his head, he fought through the blinding snow toward the direction of the structure. He had no feeling in his toes. His fingers were like ice, and his arm was numb.
As he stumbled through snowdrifts, he searched for the buildings he thought he saw. Were they real? He would know soon enough.
Hannah. Wait for me. I’ll find you.
Chapter 18
The snow built around Penn’s legs and covered the tops of his boots. His eyes, even with his goggles on, watered out of control blurring his vision and making it difficult to pick out the buildings he thought he saw ahead of him. Now and again one leg would sink into snow up to his thigh. Pulling out of the snow and stepping forward exhausted him, but he continued headlong toward the shacks. At least, he hoped he was moving forward and not in a circle. He fumbled with his compass and checked his direction.
He paused, his heavy breathing fogging his goggles that froze blinding him completely. He attempted to clean them with the leather thumb of his gloves making the glass worse. The wind swirled in circles around him. He didn’t know where he was or what was up or down. If he was sitting, he wouldn’t know.
For a moment, panic threatened to overtake him as negative thoughts filled his mind. Control yourself. If you panic, you will die. He took a deep breath drawing the cloth of his scarf into his mouth. Choking, he blew out. The moisture on his muffler froze. Ice cycles built up on his cheeks, under his dripping nose, and on his lips. Penn stuck his chin into the collar of his flight jacket and stood still, lifting his goggles up. The cutting snow stung his eyes, but he saw the square form of a building to his left with smaller buildings around it. He had wandered too far right. Chipping away ice from his glasses, he covered his eyes. Slowly, he lifted one foot and then the other toward the smallest of the structures. Why didn’t some smell of smoke, some light, some evidence of life exist? Was the place uninhabited? Whenever the snow allowed him a glimpse of the shacks, he stumble in that direction.
He ran headfirst into a small shack with a fence around an open door that swung in and out with an eerie squeal. With his forearm, he pushed against the gate and entered the yard. The small shack was empty but was partially sheltered from the wind and snow. There were two stalls, a row of empty chicken coops, coal, and a gunnysack filled with frozen turnips. Food. His hands were stiff and cold but he managed to stuff three turnips into the pocket of his jacket.
Taking a deep lungful of stale hay and the lingering smell of animal dung, he left the shack. His thoughts registered it as a place to spend the night if no one was around. Shivers shook his body in uncontrollable spasms when the wind and driving snow hit him. Pulling his shoulders inward, he searched and saw in a brief second a square house not more than one hundred yards from him. Penn stumbled forward, grabbed a post of the corral to keep from pitching headfirst into the drifting snow, righted himself, and fought through knee-deep snow to a door that scraped against the floor. One hinge held it to the frame. Snow drifted into the structure. Penn made his way inside and hunted for and found a coal shovel he used to clear the snow away from the entry.
It took the last energy he had to force the door closed, the latch and one hinge holding it in place. Turning on his torch, he ran the beam around a small room that contained a cook stove, a table with four wooden chairs, a cupboard, and a sink. A rocking chair sat forlornly in one corner. Mouse droppings covered the floor and tabletop. Cobwebs were woven across a window above the sink, unbroken but frosted over. There was a second window directly across from it with a tattered faded curtain. A wall with a doorway led to a second room.
Penn’s legs were stiff, and he had lost feeling in his toes and fingers. When he brushed his hand across his nose, ice fell to the floor. He spotted a lantern on the top shelf of the cupboard, reached for it, and checked the base for fuel. It was half full of kerosene. Pulling off his glove, he struggled to make his fingers work and find his lighter. After several attempts, a blue flame caught, and he lit the wick. A deep sigh escaped his throat as the room came to life. A bucket full of coal and a pile of kindling sat next to the black iron stove.
Do I dare risk building a fire that will send smoke into the air and warn someone I don’t want to see find me?
Yes. The place is deserted.
He removed his gloves, one finger at a time, to free his hands. His knuckles were white and unyielding. He removed the lid from the fire box, stuffed paper into the stove, laid kindling over the paper, adjusted the flume, and lit the fire. Because the paper and wood were damp, he blew on the smoke that billowed into his face. He coughed releasing ice hanging from his chin. The paper flared and the wood caught. As soon as it was burning well, he placed a few small pieces of coal into the box. He rubbed his hands over the fire before placing the lid over it.
While he waited for the room to warm, he checked the adjoining room, a bedroom with two beds stacked against one wall and two beds stacked across from them. A small black stove sat between the beds. Hooks held jackets, pants, dresses, and coats. A shelf under the only window was stacked with undergarments, socks, caps, and mittens.
Penn wondered what had happened to the occupants. He knew. The farm stood on the route to Moscow and Stalingrad. The German army was losing the war. It was but a matter of weeks before the Russians would chase them out of the country. He was in a farmhouse the Russians would take on the return to first Poland and then Germany. He could not stay long in the small comfort the house offered.
Penn returned to the kitchen. As the room warmed, his fingers and toes thawed. He leaned against the table, rubbed one hand and then the other, sat on the chair closest to the stove, and wiggled his toes. He shook his hands, holding back the scream that again threatened to erupt from his lungs. Standing so quickly, he turned over the chair. He stomped his feet. Nothing relieved the throbbing and stinging. He moved to the stove, opened the lid, and held his hands as close to the fire as he could.
Gradually, his extremities came to life with slow smarting. Righting the chair, he moved it close to the stove. Before sitting, he brushed away dust and droppings from the table with his glove. The words of the Russian writer and journalist, Ilya Ehrenburg, came to his mind. “If you’ve killed one German, kill another. There is nothing jollier than German corpses.”
We had the chance to make Russians our friends. Instead we murdered them. The warming in the room did nothing to raise his spirits. More than once in the last year he had questioned his reason for fighting on the German side. I fight for Germany not Hitler, he told himself, but he could no longer separate the two. Hitler was Germany, his country he loved, committing unthinkable atrocities as the master race, annihilating millions for no other reason than they were different. God, how he wished he knew where Hannah was. She was different. Was she safe or in one of Hitler’s camps, the camps he heard about but preferred to deny and put out of his mind? He had to get to Warsaw and find a way to return to Berlin.
Penn took in a deep breath and stood to check the stove. The coal was burning. Picking up a bucket next to the stove, he braved the cold and the wind, and filled the pail with snow staying close to the house. Once inside, he set the container on the cooktop to melt and boil the snow. The room had warmed and he removed his cap, fished out the turnips from his jacket and set them on the table, and searched the cupboard for a pan, cup and coffee.
Inside the cabinet, he found a frozen loaf of bread, frozen jam, some lard, and oatmeal, but no coffee. Once thawed, food for a king, he thought.
The blizzard raging outside his temporary abode did not let up. For his supper, he boiled his turnips, filled his cup with hot water, and hacked through the frozen bread. Spreading lard on his bread did not appeal to him and the jam was too frozen to use. Before sitting down to eat, he wiped the table with a rag he found next to the sink.
Out of habit, after eating, he cleaned his few dishes an
d made plans for his trek out of Russia to Poland’s forests. Wearing his German uniform was not an option even though his leather jacket and cap were well insulated against the cold. Poland had active resistance fighters, Poles and Jews. They would kill him if they caught him. Deciding a peasant’s garb would be more suitable, he returned to the bedroom and checked the man’s clothing.
Penn shook the dust out of the first item he chose, a heavy dark gray sweater made of coarse wool. The sleeves were short, the body of the sweater large, so much the better to wrap around him. The abrasive wool pants were short and the waist too large, but he would take a chance and use his belt to hold them up. He found thick socks, a worn colorless shirt, heavy rubber boots, wool cap and gloves. The last item he carried into the kitchen was a crudely cut but heavy coat.
He shook the grate of the stove and added coal. Penn was fluent in the Russian language. Unfortunately, he did not know the Polish language, a problem if he encountered Polish resistance fighters, but he would cross that bridge when he came to it.
He dragged one of the straw mattresses into the kitchen, shook out blankets and fluffed the pillow. Tired beyond belief, he was ready to catch some sleep, but first he took out his compass and flight maps of Russia, Belorussia, the Ukraine, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Germany. The distance he had to cross was discouraging. He hoped he could survive the walk, but he had to get to Germany and resume his search for Hannah. With his pencil, he traced a route on his map pausing to check directions with his compass. He could find his way.
With Hannah in his mind, he took her picture out of his pocket. They had been apart so long, he feared he would not recognize her. He touched her photo to his lips. I’ll find you, I promise. He folded and stashed his maps and compass inside a burlap bag with a strap, crawled under the blankets on the mattress and fell into a deep sleep.
When Penn woke up, an anemic sun filtered through the window. He threw off the blankets and hurried to the door. Pulling it open, he looked out on a landscape of endless snow, untainted, unadulterated, pure white, chaste in beauty. If only the world were the same. He squinted his eyes against the glare, forced the door closed, and returned to the warmth of the house.
He ate a tasteless hurried breakfast of oatmeal and hard bread, drew the peasant clothes over his own, and made the decision to keep his flight boots, cap, and gloves. The gunnysack provided him a means to carry food, his maps and compass, and a place to stash his German articles should he run into resistance fighters. Reluctantly, he put the mattress back in the bedroom, checked his Belgium Luger, and stepped outside into the knee-deep snow. One slow step at a time and I’ll get to Berlin.
~ ~ ~
The first day on his walk across the broken landscape, he became warm from the exercise. Thank goodness he had packed extra clothing instead of wearing it. He encountered no one, saw no farms or villages as he pushed through the snow. That night, he huddled in a ravine under leafless trees and built a small fire out of limbs he broke from trees in the draw. The air turned bitterly cold. He sat on the burlap bag, pulled heavy socks and rubber boots over his flight boots, wrapped himself in the spare clothing he had carried from the house, and ate raw turnips. Even with the extra clothing, by morning, he was shivering and his teeth were chattering. He stood, wrapped his arms around him, and beat himself to get his blood flowing. It helped, but he had to move knowing the exercise would warm him. In his hurry, he ate another raw turnip, but skipped bread and oatmeal. Before leaving to avoid overheating as he walked, he removed his excess clothing and rubber boots.
Stuffing his belongings into the sack, he adjusted his pace for the conditions. In no time, he was sweating from slogging through the snow. In his mind, he recorded Day 2.
On the afternoon of Day 3, he came across the tracks of a sleigh. Later, a peasant driving a single horse and pulling a wagon stopped. The man ran his eyes over Penn, paused at his flight boots, and looked straight into his face.
“Who are you? A damn German?”
Penn took in a deep breath before answering in Russian. He pronounced his words clearly hoping he did not betray himself with his accent. “I’m running from the Germans. They’re not far to the east.”
Disbelief registered in the peasant’s features. “Running from the Germans? Have they retreated from Stalingrad?”
“Some are. And Moscow.”
“Get in.” He glanced at Penn’s flight boots with a question on his mouth.
“Took these from a dead German,” Penn said.
“Hmmm.”
They reached a small farmstead with square buildings and sagging outbuildings. Penn registered the layout in his mind deciding to ask to spend the night in one of them, but the peasant invited him into his home. Uneasy at the thought of betraying himself, he hesitated.
“Have no concern,” the peasant said. “My name is Dimitri and you are?”
“Igor.” Penn spewed the Russian name as positively as his own.
Penn helped the farmer take the harness from the horse, found a pitchfork, peeled off a wedge of hay, and tossed into the feed box.
“I hid my horse from the Germans,” Dimitri said. “When they first came, I was glad to see them hoping they’d be better than Stalin. Some were, most weren’t.” He sighed. In a low, bitter voice, he added, “They raped my daughter and then shot her.”
Penn hung his head in shame as his stomach tightened. He didn’t know how to answer.
“Follow me,” Dimitri said.
With feelings of reluctance, he hoisted his sack out of the back of the wagon and followed the man. Fear rumbled in his mind. Would he give himself away? Could he keep up the masquerade? Would he talk in his sleep? Would they search his belongings while he slept?
Although offered a place to sleep on the floor in the small house, Penn chose to sleep in the barn. He thanked them, picked up his gear and followed by Dimitri trekked through the snow to the shack.
“Take some hay and make yourself comfortable, but if you get too cold, come to the kitchen.” Dimitri handed Penn a pitchfork.
Penn made a nest while Dimitri fed his cow and horse. “Thank you,” Penn mumbled as he arranged blankets.
“We eat early. Six at the latest. Join us.”
Penn shook his head. Dimitri handed him his lantern and left. Penn’s intention was to leave even earlier not certain his German identity had been figured out, but he did need sleep. When Dimitri left, Penn, fully clothed, wrapped blankets around him, his bag of belongings rolled under his head, and his Luger at his side. He blew out the lantern.
Sleep proved impossible. He shivered, his teeth chattered, and his feet were cold. He covered his head with his blanket, curled up his legs next to his chest, and put on his flight gloves, but nothing helped against the cold. When the moon came up, the temperature dropped lower. He gave up on his attempt to sleep, checked his watch at two-fifteen, got up, and left, his tracks visible in the road he followed west. Thoughts of Hannah kept him moving, kept him alive, kept up his hope.
His luck changed. Peasants gave him rides and he made it to Warsaw by summer with Russian forces moving rapidly toward the city. Penn checked in at the Warsaw German Head Quarters to seek transportation to Berlin. The place was in disarray as the German staff destroyed records, packed boxes with what they wanted to save, making it difficult for Penn to find who was in charge. When he did, he was told to move boxes to trucks. He protested and found a colonel at a desk shredding papers.
“Sir,” Penn addressed him after saluting.
“Who the hell are you? How did you get in here? Corporal, remove this peasant.”
“I’m Captain Penn Schwartz.” With a rough shove of left his arm, Penn warded off the corporal. “I just arrived from Russia. I’m with the air force and I need to get to Berlin.”
The colonel eyed him from head to foot with disbelief. �
��We have no air force, no pilots to fly our planes and, you say, Russia?”
“Yes, but my plane went down. I borrowed these clothes to get here.”
“The Russians are about to drive us out of Warsaw and the Fuehrer orders us to hold at any cost. With what? If we can't, we're ordered to destroy the city.” He wadded up a piece of paper and threw it into the waste basket with such force, it bounced out. “It’s impossible for me to get you to Berlin. Corporal, find Captain Schwartz a change of clothes and a rifle, now.”
Despair flooded from Penn’s neck to his feet, pumping blood fast enough to make him dizzy. “I must get to Berlin,” he said. “I know nothing about ground fighting. I've been injured. My arm is useless.”
“We’ve lost officers to the Russians. We need you here. You’ll learn quick enough if you want to survive. That said, change and I’ll get you transportation to the front.”
Swaying on his feet, Penn grasped the arm of a chair. His chances of locating Hannah had been snatched away from him. The room spun, and he collapsed in the chair.
The corporal offered him a hand to stand, and led him to a supply room to find a uniform and rifle. Penn followed like a robot unable to accept his fate. He had survived his plane crash, used the Russians, outwitted the underground fighters to get to Warsaw only to be forced into a fight that could not be won. Why doesn’t that idiot surrender? Why did the several attempts on his life fail? We’re doomed. He would never see Hannah again, but a plan to desert began forming in Penn’s thoughts. God, keep her safe.
Chapter 19
An old man, his clothes in tatters, hung on a skeleton-like frame. His eyes were hollow and his cheeks sunken. He held onto the wire gate of Bergen-Belsen barely able to stand and said in a strained voice to the Lieutenant on the opposite side of the encampment, “Who are you?”
