“I’d be happy to, Colonel. If you think it’ll help.”
“I do, son. Keeping their spirits up is as important as antibiotics half the time. I’ll see about getting you a few extra hours of R and R a week for it. But dinner and shut-eye first, Captain, or I’ll have another patient on my hands.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, nodding my agreement.
I exited the tent, the blanket of night still over us. The gunfire in the distance had slowed, but it never stopped entirely. Though lights were strictly forbidden, the moon was full. Paired with the orange glow from the artillery fire to the east, it was almost as easy to find my way as it would have been at dawn. The mess hall loomed large, and while the fare varied from miserable to nauseating, it was warm and filling if you didn’t think too hard about it. The memory of my mother’s chicken soup and brisket was dancing in my head like so many sugarplums, but a flash of yellow from my right stole my attention. I saw a slight figure at the edge of the woods, leaves and twigs crunching underfoot as he tried to escape into the cover of the trees and the gloom of night.
“Freeze!” I called, not for the first time lamenting that medics generally traveled unarmed, else forfeit the protection of our medics’ helmets and armbands, such as it was.
The figure did freeze, his hands in the air, his breathing rapid and shallow. By the size of him, he had to be a boy of no more than sixteen.
“What are you doing there?” I demanded. He wasn’t in uniform but wore ragged woolen trousers and a coat whose very fibers looked to be held together with dirt and sheer determination not to collapse into dust. His yellow hair, which had given him away, came down to his shoulders, and was pulled back with a leather cord. An unusual fashion for boys nowadays, but war made for odd habits.
“I mean no harm,” a voice said in a thick German accent.
“Turn around,” I ordered.
Slowly, the boy turned toward me, but I was greeted by the face of a young woman. Her eyes were wide and filled with fear, like a rabbit caught in a snare.
“What are you doing so close to the front?” I asked, thinking, And on the wrong side.
“I took some bandages and antiseptic,” she admitted. “There is a wounded man I must tend to.”
“And that wounded man is likely responsible for wounding some of my own. Give it back and I won’t hand you over to the military police. This time.”
“He hasn’t hurt anyone on your side. I swear it,” she said. “He’s been against Hitler and his thugs from the beginning.”
“Which is exactly what I would say if I were a German who wanted to avoid being handed over to the American military police,” I countered.
“Blumenthal, I need a hand in here before you head to the mess,” the disembodied voice of Colonel Pankhurst called from the tent.
I grabbed her bicep and her eyes went wide. I had to drag her over to him and report her presence. How she’d gotten through the forest and so far behind enemy lines, I didn’t know, but she’d stolen army property. She could be dangerous, planting explosives behind the lines, sabotaging our troops from the rear. She could be a spy reporting sensitive information to the German commanders.
Or she might be exactly as she seemed.
“Please,” she whispered. She was shaking beneath my grip as though I meant to tear her to shreds with my own teeth. No tears welled in her blue eyes, but there was no mistaking her fear.
I pulled her a step closer, leaned down to her ear, and whispered, “Run.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE MECHANICS OF WAR
JOHANNA
October 1939
Berlin, Germany
Harald packed his bags as I sat on the edge of our bed in the room we shared. The little cottage on the shore of Lake Wannsee was our haven of peace, despite being so near the humming hornet’s nest of Berlin that lay just to the east. It was a shoebox compared to what Harald’s mother expected for her son, but every centimeter of it was perfect in my view. It was thirty minutes by bicycle to the air base at Gatow for me, and thirty minutes by car to the University of Berlin for him. The sunset over the lake, the trees, and the birdsong were balm for Harald’s excitable nerves. They allowed me to sleep as though I were in our mountain chalet.
We’d hoped fervently that his post at the university would exempt him from military service, but as in many things since the new regime came into power, we were mistaken. I should have been folding the clothes for him, placing them in his bag, and tucking in a hidden memento for him to find when he reached his post—a picture of me, a lock of my hair, or some such romantic nonsense—but there I sat, my knees pressed to my chest so hard, I wouldn’t be surprised to find bruises on my breastbone in the morning. I would not dissolve as I sent Harald off to war; he deserved better. But to keep that from happening, I could concentrate on nothing more complicated than holding my body in one piece. The taking in and expulsion of air was Herculean.
“I’ll be fine, Häschen. I’m a professor, not a soldier, and I’ve no ambitions of being a hero. I’ll find my way into some clerical work. They’ll know I’m of better use at a typewriter than at the front.”
“And what if they just want to be rid of the von Oberndorff name altogether?” I asked. “I can think of no easier way to dispose of a man than to send him to war.” Harald’s family had been outspoken about their concerns regarding the party, but too powerful to silence.
“Even if that’s so, my love, there is nothing I can do to stop it. If I refuse, I risk the firing squad. At least heading to Poland, I stand some chance.”
“I can’t bear it. I can’t stand the thought of you fighting for that evil man.”
“I’m not. I fight for Germany as it once was. What it could be again if we regain our senses.”
I said nothing but swallowed a diatribe that would have lasted into the small hours of the morning.
“Liebchen, if you want to hasten my return, keep at your research. Give Germany so formidable an air force that no one will dare take us on. We can convince our countrymen of their folly and elect a sane leader in due course. In the meantime, just keep quiet and hope no one digs too far back in your family’s past. I couldn’t bear to serve knowing you were under arrest or shunted off to a ghetto somewhere.”
I wanted to debate with my academic. To ask him how we might dispose of a despot when he’d banned all opposing parties. How we could turn the hearts and minds of men when Hitler had given the common man the two things he’d been craving since the war—jobs and a scapegoat. But those weren’t fitting words for a parting. And I knew full well my Harald didn’t believe what he said. He knew Germany and its people were sick and the only cures we could conceive of were catastrophic.
It was time for Harald to leave, and I summoned all that I had to stand. To hold him in my arms and give him a proper goodbye.
“Don’t fret,” he said, answering my silence. “I’ll be home as soon as it can be arranged. Be strong and look after your mother. She’ll need your support more than ever with Oskar being called into service.”
I nodded. We’d taken the trip from Berlin to Berchtesgaden monthly since we’d moved to the capital. Though it left us exhausted, Harald shifted his classes and I my work schedule to allow for a five-day weekend the first week of every month so we could spend three days together with Mama and Metta. Oskar had become a rare fixture in the house the higher he climbed in the echelon of Hitler Youth, and now the army. Mama had sent me the picture she’d taken shortly after he enlisted. He was the exact image of our grandfather on Mama’s side—tall, muscular, and serious. Handsome enough to have gained quite a reputation with the bright-eyed, eager girls of the Bund Deutscher Mädel, or BDM.