I looked at Amelia, who was overcome with the shock of seeing her mother executed before her very eyes. I realized then that I had no choice. “Okay, Johann,” I said with quiet capitulation. “You win.” It was all over. Wherever the Krupinskis and my parents were, I knew further resistance would just lead to more bloodshed. So this was the end of the road.
51
I never found out whether the RAF Lancasters over Stauffenberg that night were deliberately targeting the town or were off course on their way to Adelstatz and Keitel’s munitions factory on the Main.
As the ringing gunshot that murdered Hanna Engel faded from my ears, I could hear the engines, the distinctive bass-note drone of in-line Rolls-Royce Merlin engines practically right over our heads. Amelia wept openly but I wasn’t watching her, nor was I even considering the SS men before me. It was the vibrating crystal in her cabinet that set off the first alarm in me that a far graver threat than three SS thugs was now bearing down on us.
Keitel, his ears attuned to aerial threats more so than mine from years of fighting on the ground, pulled his attention from his moment of triumph to consider the low rumblings that were now the unmistakable intonations of an air raid.
“What the hell’s going on?” one of the SS men shouted as the din grew louder.
I looked at Keitel, who was looking up at the ceiling.
Suddenly he screamed: “They’re bombing us!”
I didn’t need to be told of the danger. “Amelia, get down!” I shouted, and I lunged for her and practically tackled her to the floor. Amelia, still in a daze over her mother, didn’t resist. As my face hit the dusty hardwood, I had the unpleasant vision of Hanna’s lifeless eyes staring back at me, my hand caked in her blood.
Keitel, too, wasted no time in dropping flat to the ground. By now the drone had grown to a deafening roar of hundreds of powerful engines rattling everything in the room as if a malevolent giant had picked up the house and was shaking it angrily down to its foundations. Torrents of soot poured out the chimney, and a fine dust began to rain down upon us as the enormous Lancasters passed directly over our heads like a fast-moving cyclone.
The two SS men with Keitel finally realized the danger, but their moves to hit the floor came a fraction of a second too late, as a blinding sheet of bright orange lit up every window like a direct lightning strike. My ears felt like someone had boxed them from the concussion of violent explosions that ripped through the house, sending a tornado of deadly glass shards and wood splinters flying in all directions. Even before the reverberating boom of the explosives impacting all around registered in their ears, the two SS men were cut down by a hail of debris like the soldiers of old before a battery of grapeshot. The dead men slammed against the walls, with their helmets flying in one direction and their machine pistols and torn limbs in the other.
I could see Keitel lying spread-eagle on the ground with his hands folded behind his head to protect himself from the shower of plaster and wood and glass that soon covered us. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! One after another the orange flashes continued unabated, the percussion of high explosives mingling with the bright starbursts of incendiary bombs pounding my eardrums, and it felt as if the entire world were disintegrating. As I lay there helpless, trying to cover a now frantically screaming Amelia as best I could with my own body, I thought: So this is what happens when the Allies get through our fighter screens. And I remembered all those bombers I’d watched over the course of the year continue on to their targets even after our squadrons had their run at them and thinned out their ranks. God have mercy on my country! Clearly the Allies were showing none.
As quickly as it had come upon us, the violent thunderstorm of the bomber stream passed. But as the hum of the heavy Lancasters faded to the west, the sounds of chaos and fury and suffering, firebells clanging, sirens screaming, people shouting in panicked voices, calling out the names of loved ones over the roar of the flames—the death throes of a bombed-out town—greeted our ears. The room was filled with smoke, and the dancing light of a village ablaze illuminated the scene as if a million flares had been shot into the air. The raging fires spreading through the town like relentless floodwaters after a levee breaks projected a sinister crimson aurora upon the night sky.
Having been on the receiving end of shellfire and bombs before, Keitel was quickest to recover. He got to his knees and shook the white plaster dust out of his eyes and hair. Coughing, he frantically searched for his dropped Luger. He wasn’t done with us yet.
“Get the hell out of here!” I shouted to Amelia, but if her ears were ringing half as badly as mine, then my pleas came to her as muffled sounds at best. I pulled her up to her knees with me and forced her face to look into mine. “Go!” I cried again as loudly as I could. She got the message and nodded. She then shifted her gaze to just behind me and her eyes widened, and I whipped around to see Keitel crawling for the pistol, which was lodged in the fireplace grate behind the mangled body of one of his men.
I pushed Amelia towards the direction of the blasted-out doorway and then made a move towards Keitel. I lunged at him and caught his thighs in my blood-caked hands. Startled, he turned to see me and violently kicked at my face with his heavy jackboot. It hit the top of my head and I saw white spots. But in my rage I quickly shook off the blow and managed to crawl on top of him and pull him away from the fireplace just as he reached for the weapon. He never got it. We rolled on the ground trapped in a grotesque corridor formed by Hanna’s body on one end and a parallel SS man’s on the other. Keitel was stronger than he looked, and very soon he got the better of me. My ordeal of flying a mission, taking Paul home, and burying him without sleep and little food was taking its toll.
Soon Johann and I were face-to-face, and his knee sat on my chest, pinning me to the floor. I could see in the light of the flames slowly creeping down towards us from the upstairs of the house that he’d gone delirious with rage. His eyes were set on killing me, and with the added strength that hatred provided him, he set upon me. I could only cover my face as I felt the hammer blows of his fists rain down on me, one following another until warm, wet blood flowed between my fingers.
I reached out for him in desperation and managed to catch both of his eyes with my clawing thumbs, which I pushed deep into his sockets. Shrieking in pain, he quickly pulled away from me, as to stay where he was meant blindness. He was still planted firmly atop my midsection, just like I used to pin Paul down to tickle-torture him, but his back was arched towards the now burning ceiling, his fists massaging his eyes furiously. Wiping the blood from my face, I made a powerful movement to heave him off of me while rolling to one side, but his arm quickly fell upon my shoulder to hold me down flush with the floor. I was spent. Trying to force his arm off of me, I could feel any remaining strength draining from my muscles. There was little more I could do but lie back and muster the energy for one last ditch defense, when he suddenly produced a field knife from a scabbard sewn into his boot. The blade, gleaming in the light of the flames, rose high above me, with his hand firmly grasping it in his fist. I felt like a human sacrifice upon a satanic altar as he looked down at me in mad triumph. In a way, I just wanted him to be done with it and this nightmare mercifully ended. I was prone on my back, my one arm pinned by his, the other held tight to my side by his firm knee.
“I’m going to enjoy this, Becker,” he said with a demonic grin. I looked up at the fire now spreading over the ceiling, flaming globs of plaster dropping down upon us like candle wax in the intensifying heat, and waited for the stinging pressure of the blade cracking through my sternum and ripping into my heart.
“I’m going to enjoy this more,” is what I heard instead. A confused Keitel spun his head around to see Amelia Engel aiming the Luger he’d just used to execute her mother straight at his face.
She stood there with the pistol in both hands, quivering. “Kill him!” I screamed.
But Amelia just wasn�
�t one to take a life. She gave life…and that’s what she did for Johann Keitel. It was more than he deserved. I can say that I’d have had no qualms about emptying the entire magazine into him had it been my mother lying on the floor with his bullet in her brain.
Despite the buzzing in my ears, her determined voice, which masked her fear, came through loud and clear. “Drop the knife and get off of him, Johann, or so help me God I’ll shoot you.”
“I’d do it, Johann,” I said, supporting her bluff. Instantly he considered me, then the gun barrel again. He knew Amelia to be a peaceful soul, but he’d also just executed her mother in cold blood. It wasn’t worth the risk. He dropped the knife onto the floor, where it made a dull thud, and slowly eased himself off of me. When he got to his feet, he stood in the billowing smoke and intensifying heat with his hands up.
I hoisted myself up slowly, using the mantel for support. Blood poured from a laceration in my scalp but, though messy, I knew it was a superficial wound. Panting heavily I stood face-to-face with the man a moment before was poised to ram a knife into my chest.
“You won’t get away with this,” he declared in a cocky tone despite his circumstance. “There are SS men all over the area looking for you. I wasn’t stupid enough to come here without a backup.”
At first he seemed right. But when I gazed past him out the shattered windows to the streets beyond, I could see nothing but flames and smoke, with ghostly figures running frantically back and forth in confusion and panic. “They’re out there?” I asked him sarcastically as I pointed to the town. “There is no ‘out there’ anymore.” I heard a groaning from the wooden ceiling beam that bisected the parlor and was now starting to burn from end to end just over six feet above us.
“Harmon!” Amelia coughed. The heat was growing unbearable, and sweat poured down my face in sooty rivulets. “The house is going to collapse.”
“What about him?” I demanded. For the first time I saw Keitel show a hint of fear.
“Let’s just get Mother and go!”
I stepped over to her. Years of combat had chased away any scruples I might have had about killing this man. “If you won’t do it, then I will.” I ripped the gun out of her hand and pointed it at my SS tormentor. That was when bona fide terror finally broke through his conceited mask, and his knees buckled. It was a gratifying sight. I aimed the barrel straight at his chest and pulled the trigger without another word. But all I heard above the crackling of the fire engulfing everything around us was the unmistakable click of a misfire. I tried to unjam the weapon, but there were just more clicks. Keitel breathed easier and even managed a smirk as his cockiness quickly returned. He was a tough one to ruffle for long, that’s for sure.
In exasperation I strutted up to him before he could regain his wits completely and violently pistol-whipped him across the face. He reeled back onto the stone mantel and banged his head on the hard surface. His eyes rolled back, and I figured I’d actually killed him then and there or put him out long enough for the encroaching flames to consume him.
I tossed the broken gun to the floor and quickly retrieved mine laying in a corner of the smoke-filled room. Now it was my turn to show some sense. I tugged at Amelia and tried to usher her out the door and the burning house, but she resisted. “Not without Mother!”
“There’s no time!” I picked her up with both hands and manhandled her, kicking and shouting, out the door.
“No! No! She’ll burn!”
When we made our way to the relative cool of the garden, I put her down. “She’s already dead, Amelia.” Then I borrowed the wisdom of my onetime friend and wingman: “But we still live.”
All around us, stretching well into the town center, were licks of roaring flames reaching like malevolent, glowing tentacles and belching up columns of thick smoke blacker even than the night sky. A ruby-red halo hovered over the devastated village; all of Stauffenberg from the river to the hills was burning. I wondered how anyone could have survived such a pounding. Then I realized that there had been others outside waiting for us when the bombs fell.
“Oh my God,” I shouted to Amelia. “Where’s the rest of us?”
Racing into the garden amidst a virtual whirlwind of flaming embers, I could see a cluster of figures in the far corner of a stone fence that had somehow managed to survive the raid. The trees beyond it burned like torches. The wind whipped as the vortex of a howling firestorm engulfed the center of town. In the radiance that now illuminated everything for miles all around, I recognized them as the Krupinski family, huddled up on their knees in what looked like a prayer meeting. I counted all four of them. “Krup!” I shouted to him. Jakob, his face blackened with soot and dirt, turned and stood up, tapping his father on the shoulder.
The rest of them rose slowly to their feet and gave me queer looks. Their faces, caked in ash, gave me a start as they appeared like apparitions from hell. What was going on? Then I realized two people were missing.
“Leo, where are my parents?” I said with a mouth suddenly gone dry.
The family bowed their heads and stepped to one side to reveal the twisted bodies of Karl and Greta Becker lying still on the grass. I gasped in horror, and my legs almost fell out from under me. Amelia immediately ran to my arms. But I couldn’t take my eyes away from them. “Momma? Papa?” I said blankly. “Oh please no.”
Krup approached me and above the din of the roaring fires and chaos all around, he said: “The bombs just started falling. They never knew what hit them.”
For an agonizing moment I continued to peer down at them. My lifeless legs refused to bring me any closer, as I couldn’t bear the sight. “I’m so sorry, my boy,” added Krup in a voice that seemed to fade in and out of me. Then I suddenly fell to the ground and wretched, acidic vomit splashing onto the grass at my blood-caked fingertips. I really felt at that moment that I might be struck down dead from the profound sorrow. Both of my parents, the centers of my world for most of my life, gone. Could this be? I had just seen them alive and well not a half hour before. But when I opened my eyes, the dark picture remained very much before me. Karl and Greta Becker had gone on to find their lost son, leaving behind an orphan—one they knew could find his own way in this world gone mad. As I closed my eyes again, I swear I could hear my father’s voice calling out to me through the burning ether: “You’re on your own now, Son. You’re the survivor. The only Becker left. Rise up and live!”
And that’s exactly what I did. “Harmon,” Amelia said, putting her hand on my arching back. “Harmon!”
I snapped my head to look at her and Krup, waiting for my next suggestion. With one last spasm of anguish, I reached deep into my reservoir of a father’s love and snapped out of it, hoisting myself to a stand. My legs regained their strength and began carrying me away from this cursed garden. As Amelia was forced to leave Hanna, so was I now compelled to leave my parents. I had people still alive depending on me.
“Come on,” I said, firmly in control again. “This is far from over.”
We gathered the rest of the Krupinski clan and darted to the Kübelwagen, which also, thank God, had been spared in the raid. It was a tight squeeze. I drove while Amelia sat up front with Elsa perched on her knees. Leo, Constanze, and Jakob crammed into the back. Sick as it sounds, the smoke surrounding the car had mercifully rid the seats of any trace odor my dead brother’s body might have left behind. Without pausing to assess the damage, we peeled out of the blazing bonfire that had been our village just an hour before as fast as we could. We bounced our way through the debris-filled streets, dodging overturned carts, mangled horses, and many dead men, women, and children caught out in the open when the RAF finally introduced Stauffenberg to the war.
52
The eerie crimson glow coruscating from the burning town of Stauffenberg was still visible in the night sky to the southeast even after we’d put several miles between ourselves and the crumbling Main Bridg
e. It wasn’t until several more twists and turns along the mountain road that evidence of the town’s fate was completely hidden from our view behind a wall of towering escarpments covered in evergreens.
We drove in absolute silence for the longest time. How could any of us put into words all that we’d experienced this terrible day? Amelia and I had each lost our entire families. Our once beautiful town of Stauffenberg, a hamlet whose medieval charm inspired roving artists to stay awhile, had been erased from the map by the RAF in a matter of minutes. I knew instinctively that not one building could have survived the inferno, save perhaps the stone-and-mortar Saint Gerard’s church and the Rathaus tower, which would serve as mute witnesses to the horrors of this night. I no longer even recognized the world I lived in, nor my place in it. But then I looked over to the Krupinskis and my heartache was eased somewhat. Yet I knew even this brief twinge of optimism was a foolish indulgence. I was well aware that even though the Krupinskis were free from their prison of Amelia’s attic, they were not safe.
For several hours we drove in the darkness, shielded from view by the undulating folds of the hills and crevasses carved out by fast-running rivers fleeing the Alpine altitudes behind us.
We must have made one hundred fifty miles by my estimate as the ground began to flatten into more familiar territory. Pretty soon a million stars were splashed across the mantle of a dark ceiling made all the more brilliant against the backdrop of the new moon. I glanced over to Amelia, whose head bobbed and weaved as if on a loose spring as we bounded along the road. Elsa was asleep in Amelia’s lap and she held the girl close, every now and then lovingly kissing the top of her curly-locked head.
Of Another Time and Place Page 29
