Gunther fled from his open position to behind a hill with three other boys. His face was still wet from the blood that had splashed him—he wiped it away, hands trembling.
“What do we do?” called one of the boys over the roar of bullets and the airplane engines above.
“Retreat!”
Retreat? What the hell did that even mean? Where would they retreat to? Gunther started to hope somebody would say “surrender,” but he couldn’t possibly be the one to do it—nobody wanted to do that. Soviet POW camps were of worse repute than death.
He had never once imagined even thinking these things. He’d never imagined seeing Soviet soldiers. It hadn’t even sunk in yet that he’d watched two boys shot right in front of him and now wore their blood on his face and shirt. He had no idea what to do, and so, he ran. He shot away from the hill and fled back in the direction they had come the night before, as far away from the advancing enemy as he could. The boys with him followed suit, and after a minute of running, they passed Heinz, who stood with his rifle looking bewildered. “What’s happening?”
“Soviets,” yelled one of the boys without stopping.
“You’re not supposed to fucking run,” shouted Heinz, though hesitation gripped him when he saw their bloodied clothes. He looked in the direction they had come from and spotted another frantic boy trailing behind. With a grumble, Heinz started after Gunther and the others.
They ran for what seemed like hours; nobody wanted to be the one to stop and listen to what was happening behind them. The occasional backward glance suggested it might only be the five of them who had escaped, and between them, they had only three guns.
They ran and ran, all the way back to the village from the day before, which had fallen eerily silent. Once safely in the town square, the group took their first real break, catching breath for the first time since morning. Gunther felt like his lungs had long since withered away. He was flushed and cold and dirty, as were the others. The whole way back, Heinz had called out to the four of them, questioning their cowardly behavior—especially Gunther’s—but this time, Gunther had support.
As they all panted, one of the boys spoke up, “What do we do now…?”
“You think those fucking crazy Ivans killed the Rottenführer?”
“Why the hell would they bury him like that?” came a harsh response.
“I don’t fucking know—they’re fucking Ivans.”
Tensions were high among the group, but they all fell silent when a solitary gunshot rang out from behind a nearby wall of rickety wooden houses. They all stood, petrified, until Heinz shrugged. “You guys are a bunch of babies.”
He took off to find the source of the noise. The others followed cautiously, and Gunther brought up the rear.
Heinz carefully pressed up to the wall of one of the houses and peered around. Whatever he saw comforted him, and he quickly shouted out, “Hey,” as he took off toward it. The others looked at one another and ran after him.
As Gunther stepped around the corner, he too saw the unusually refreshing sight: about twenty German soldiers from the Schutzstaffel Einsatzgruppen. The commanding Hauptscharführer watched the five of them skeptically as they approached.
“Heil Hitl—” Heinz had thrown his hand out in salute, but wavered as he saw the scene around the soldiers. “—Hitler!” He managed to finish strong.
“Heil Hitler,” replied the Hauptscharführer.
Gunther and the others had come to a nervous stop—around them were not just the Einsatzgruppen, but almost a hundred bodies. Most killed, it appeared, from single headshots. One body, very fresh, with blood still seeping into the dirt, was right by the Hauptscharführer. Gunther felt ill: he had never really seen a dead body before, let alone dozens. It didn’t help that he was still queasy from the running. He sat down, and one of the other boys, who didn’t look much better off, did the same.
Gunther could hardly hear what Heinz was saying, but he seemed to be explaining who they were, what division they were part of, and so on. Gunther passed a few minutes with his face buried into his knees until he heard a scuffle nearby. Looking up, he saw a tall officer dragging a handcuffed boy—maybe Jens’ age—through the dirt. He was putting up a violent struggle, but it looked as though he might be injured, with a broken arm or wrist. The officer easily overpowered him, and then tripped him at the Hauptscharführer’s feet. He looked familiar to Gunther; he had seen the boy when they’d passed through the village the day before. He had watched with curiosity as the unfamiliar soldiers marched through his home. Now the boy looked terrified—the fear he wore on his face far outweighed anything Gunther had felt earlier while running from the Soviets, yet it was tempered by rage. The boy did his best to lunge at the Hauptscharführer, and with no luck whatsoever—by the sound of a gunshot—fell to the earth.
Gunther tried to avoid looking at the body, instead reading the expression on the Hauptscharführer’s face. It was indecipherable to him in the short time before the other officer leaned down and removed the handcuffs from the boy’s body and another wave of illness brought Gunther’s face back to his knees. He clenched his eyes shut like he had when he was a kid, in vain hopes of blocking out the world.
By early evening, Gunther was feeling a little better after spending most of the day lying down. The Einsatzgruppen officers had taken some pity on him, being the youngest of the boys, and let him rest while the others dug a hole and, one by one, made all the bodies disappear. The only evidence of what had taken place was the earth itself, blackened with dried blood. Gunther looked away from the scene and saw several of the officers standing nearby and decided to climb to his feet and join them where they were crowded around a map. The Hauptscharführer was pointing and speaking.
“… Got maybe a day’s lead on them. The American bombings are still isolated to the south—odds are they’re targeting oil fields, not civilian locations. Tomorrow evening we’ll push into former Slovakian territory, here….” He pointed to a place on the map. “There is a MASH along this river, here, where we’ll meet with group C and divert back toward Poland.”
Gunther’s attention was caught by a sound not far away: Heinz had dropped a huge crate of potatoes beside a few other crates, boxes and barrels. Gunther swallowed and approached him, and Heinz noticed. “Oh, look who’s up.”
“What are you doing?” asked Gunther.
“The Hauptscharführer said to gather stuff from the town, so I’m doing it,” he said in his typical tone of condescension. “What are you doing?”
“They’re giving their food to you?”
“You fuckin’ stupid, Heulsuse? Everybody here is dead.”
Gunther swallowed, looking around. “Everyone?”
“Oh, man…. What’d you think? They were all fuckin’ Romanis.” Heinz shook his head. “Why don’t you make yourself useful or something? God….”
“Hey, you there,” called one of the Einsatzgruppe officers. “Check these houses.” He gestured to a small collection of dilapidated shacks. Gunther nodded and hesitantly started toward one of them. He was evidently going to go be useful.
Heinz let out an exaggerated sigh as Gunther walked away. “Ivans couldn’t have fucking killed you?” he murmured under his breath.
Gunther found the door had already been broken in. He was hesitant about entering, even though he knew it was empty. He looked around the modest room: there were a few simple wooden chairs, a tiny stove in the corner, a table which had been upturned…. The little home did not appear to have electricity, but light streamed in through the dusty windows and illuminated the faces in photographs on the wall. Gunther looked them over before finding that doing so made him tremendously uneasy. He turned his attention to the stove and small kitchen; he dug through cabinets and drawers, finding little other than wooden utensils and crumbs, and so moved on to a bedroom.
…Empty. The sheets had been ripped from the bed and a bookshelf had been toppled over, but there was nothing of interest.
He left the home and repeated his scavenging. In the next one, he found a loaf of bread and a basket of apples. Four plates were set out on the table, with half-eaten breakfasts turned stone cold. He shuddered and left.
He dug through the cabinets of the third house, finding absolutely nothing. He wondered whether or not to bother with the bedrooms, but decided, against his conscience, to continue prying farther into the stranger’s home. The wood floor beneath each footstep creaked agonizingly as he cautiously moved toward the rooms. The eyes of another family of photographs gazed upon him, and even in broad daylight, he had to look away. He opened one door and saw a stripped and defiled bed much like in the other homes—nothing of interest. He moved on to the second—the wooden door groaned hideously and Gunther found another identically ravaged room. He turned to leave, and between the squeaking of the door and his own footsteps, heard something unexpected. He scanned the room once more as he stepped farther in. It was a small room; there was hardly any space at all not occupied by a tiny bed and dresser, but the silence around him now felt somehow backed by intent. Gunther nervously raised his rifle. First he leaned down and checked below the bed, behind the door, the floor beneath a rug…. He was about to shrug it off before noticing the huge dresser nearby: the bottom drawer was open just a few inches, with bed sheets blooming out of the gap as though it had already been searched. Gunther approached it slowly and kneeled down. He knew he was being paranoid, and ripped the sheets away, exposing the empty drawer.
… Empty, but for a small girl. She was facing away, cowering. All Gunther could see was her arm, uncomfortably crammed with the rest of her trembling body into the undersized space.
He didn’t know what to do. He kneeled, petrified, before standing up and glancing out a nearby window. Heinz was outside, still moving boxes of food, and he could see a few of the Einsatzgruppe officers milling about. Gunther went to the door and shut it; the hinges squealed. He hurried back to the dresser and knelt by the girl.
“Hallo—sind Sie ok?”
She had no discernible reaction.
“Ich werde Ihnen nicht wehtun.” He paused. “Sie verstehen kein Deutsch, oder?”
Nothing.
Gunther did not know one single Romanian word. One of the Einsatzgruppen surely did, but that was hardly an option.
“Warten Sie mal,” he said, knowing it meant nothing, as he started stuffing the blanket back into the drawer. Once finished, he hurried over to the second house where he had left the apples and bread. He carefully hid two of the fruits and the whole loaf of bread in the pockets of his jacket, stepped outside, and ran right into Heinz.
“What’re you doing now, Heulsuse?” he asked with his permanent disdain.
“Nothing.”
“Uh-huh,” he said, suspiciously. “What’d you find?”
“There are some apples in that house, there.”
“Why don’t you bring ‘em out then, you idiot?” Heinz was exasperated by him, as usual.
“I’m just checking the other house for something….”
“God damn, Heulsuse, you don’t make any sense at all.” Heinz stormed past him and into the house containing the fruit. Gunther hurried quickly into the other home. He opened a small corner of the blanket in the drawer and set the bread, two apples and his own small canteen of water in with the girl, making sure one of them touched her. She tensed up violently.
“Schon gut. Das ist für Sie,” he whispered before covering her up. He had just enough time to get out of the bedroom and into the main living area before Heinz barged in.
“You’re such an idiot, Heulsuse, God. You’ve got to take the silver and shit, too.” In his hands were a few items he’d obtained at the previous house, including the apples. He started looting the drawers, finding candles and a few metal utensils amongst the wooden ones. On the floor, he found a pair of leather shoes and snatched those up as well.
Heinz pushed open the door into the first, empty bedroom, and Gunther hurried to the second, with the girl, looking around for anything he could take to show Heinz and prevent him from digging around. Gunther began opening and closing the other drawers of the dresser, loudly enough that Heinz could hear, unfortunately causing the whole thing to shake. He winced as he was sure he heard the girl whimper, and glanced over to Heinz, who was piling up clothing in the other room. Gunther sighed and started removing the clothes from his dresser. A few minutes later, Heinz joined Gunther to give the room his inspection. He pulled the drawers open, angrily checking Gunther’s work. The top drawer… the second… the third….
Gunther swallowed as the fourth caught on the bed sheet crammed into the final, bottom drawer. Heinz gave it a strong tug, shaking the whole dresser once again and also tearing the bed sheets from the drawer below.
A voice outside interrupted them. “Attention.”
Gunther peered through the window, and Heinz stood up to join him. They could see the Einsatzgruppen hurrying to group together. Gunther thought quickly and immediately exited the room. Not to be one-upped, Heinz shot after him, pushing him aside to be the first out the door. Gunther shut it as he stepped into the street and let his hand linger on the knob. From where he was, he could hear the group.
“Heil Hitler,” saluted the Hauptscharführer to the soldiers, and the soldiers back to him. “Heil Hitler!”
He announced their plans and next course of action to the group once more. Gunther figured all he was going to have to do was follow orders when they were given, and so elected to not pay particular attention. He sat down against the wall and began digging through his bag, hoping writing something to Jens, even if it might not be sent for a long time, would help him forget what he’d found inside the house.
The air outside was warmer than it had been the previous day, but when the wind blew, it sent a shiver through his body. The sun had nearly set, and Gunther sat for a while looking over Jens’ most recent letter and thinking—taking the occasional break to watch the colors in the sky—before putting a pen to paper.
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