For Malice and Mercy, page 43
“Tom?” N26
Chapter 60
July 5, 1944
Stalag 17-B, Krems-Gneixendorf, Austria
Hank finished writing his fourth postcard to Ella. He was allowed one postage-paid card per month, and this time the short letter he wrote left lots of white space on the card.
Dear Ella,
Why hasn’t anyone written to me? Are you okay? It’s very lonely here, and I sometimes wonder why God has forsaken me. Maybe it’s because of something I’ve done. If so, please forgive me.
Hank
Maybe she didn’t know he was a prisoner. Maybe she thought he was dead. Every other man in his barracks had received a letter or package from home. There had to be a logical explanation.
He addressed the card and crossed the compound to drop it in the mailbox adjacent to Kurtenbach’s barrack.
“Hey, schweinehund.”
He turned to find Sikkar glaring at him, arms crossed.
“My name is Meyer, sir.” Even with as much respect as he could muster, he couldn’t hide the disdain in his voice.
“You are a schweinehund, and I don’t care what you want to be called; you will always be a schweinehund to me,” Sikkar spat.
Hank stepped around him and kept walking.
“Stay where you are,” Sikkar snarled.
Big Stoop hovered over Hank from behind and said in German “Are you walking away from a guard and disobeying an order?”
Hank turned around to stare up into Big Stoop’s oaf-looking face.
Big Stoop let loose a barrage of German insults and obscenities, his spit flying into Hank’s face. Hank wiped his face while Sikkar threw his head back in a cackle.
When Hank turned to walk away, Big Stoop’s giant hand smacked him squarely in the temple. He dropped to the ground, head bouncing in the dust. Pain pounded through his skull as the daylight turned to black.
Hank could hear Sikkar cackle again as Big Stoop let out a raucous laugh at seeing his accomplishment. Hank lay motionless, still aware that Big Stoop was hovering over him. Through the ground, he felt the patter of footsteps gathering near to see what had happened. Hank’s blurry vision turned gray, the shadow of Big Stoop hovering over him like a boulder. Hank tried to roll over, but his head flopped like a rag doll. Two prisoners leaned over him and hefted him to a sitting position, but Hank wobbled. “Let’s just let him lay on the ground for a minute.”
When Hank stirred, another prisoner asked, “What barracks are you in?”
Hank’s head bobbed back and forth as he tried to focus, but he could only mumble.
“What barracks are you in?” the prisoner asked again, pronouncing each word with care. Hank was still too confused to respond.
Sergeant Kurtenbach’s voice came through the haze. “Bring him in here for a minute until he recovers.”
They lifted Hank and carried him along, his feet dragging on the ground as they carried him into the barracks. Carefully, they set him on a bunk. Hank sank back into semi-consciousness.
After a few minutes, he lifted himself to his elbows, blinking to focus.
“You got clobbered by Big Stoop,” Kurtenbach said. “You alright now?”
Hank squinted and then blinked again.
“Just stay there for a bit until you get your bearings.”
“Yes, sir,” Hank mumbled.
“We’ve got to find a way to separate Big Stoop and Sikkar. This is out of hand.”
Hank’s spinning mind was aware enough to agree with Kurtenbach.
“Big Stoop is too dimwitted to be bribed. He’s by-the-book; too dumb to take risks,” Kurtenbach explained. “He would just as easily smack you as listen to you try to bribe him.”
Hank rubbed his head to feel for a goose egg, but that hurt too much. He shut his eyes and groaned.
“Sikkar will trade for cigarettes and D-bars to get anything we want from outside the camp, if he can, so we know he can be bought, but he’ll snitch on you.” Kurtenbach smiled grimly, and asked, “Do you need help back to your barracks?”
“No, I’ll be okay.” Hank fumbled for the right words. “I…I appreciate the use of your bunk.”
“Stay out of the way of Big Stoop for a while, okay?”
Don greeted him at their bunk.
“I heard you got smacked by Big Stoop.”
“Boy, news travels fast.”
“They said he knocked you out cold.”
“Not quite, but I’m okay.”
For nearly an hour, Hank sat on his bunk, fiddling with the empty D-bar wrapper.
Don studied Hank for a moment and said, “What are you thinking about?”
Hank twisted the D-bar wrapper in his fingers.
“I wish you’d open up a bit. I’m beginning to worry about you.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Why not?”
“It’s hard to explain.”
“I’ve got a few minutes before my next appointment, so shoot.”
Hank sighed. “There’s a lot to it, and I don’t think you would understand. I don’t really understand it all. I don’t know how to explain it.”
“Try me.” Don settled in to listen.
Hank lowered himself onto his pillow and rested with his hands beneath his head. “Even if I wanted to tell you, it’s very complicated and involves some secrets that I can’t really talk about.”
“Religious secrets?” Don’s bushy eyebrows cocked in question
“No,” Hank said, “nothing like that. It has to do with my family, and, well, it’s just complicated.”
“So, your family wants you to be isolated in a prisoner-of-war camp with no outside communication, because of some family secret?”
“No, Don,” Hank snapped. “I told you it’s complicated…”
“Your family isn’t communicating with you in this forsaken war camp in the middle of nowhere…”
“Thanks for reminding me,” Hank spat.
“But even if it has nothing to do with that, what do you have to lose by telling me what’s troubling you? It might help you deal with this place better. You’ve lost just about everything you’ve cherished in this world. Your faith is shaken for some reason, and that faith was your bedrock. We’ve got nothing here except for a few packs of cigarettes and some rock-hard chocolate bars, and if you don’t come to grips with your questions, you will not survive this.”
“I’m fine.”
“Hank,” Don said, “you are my brother. It matters to me that you survive.”
Hank took a deep breath. Of course, he wanted to tell him everything, from the day he was shot down, to his grandmother’s betrayal to his raging questions about God. But that would mean revealing his German heritage. It would mean explaining his loss of faith in a God he once thought he knew, and Don was the last person he wanted to tell that to.
Don continued, “Look Hank, the only thing we’ve got left here is hope. If you’ve lost your hope in a God, in a heaven, and in getting out of here someday, then as a religious man, you’ve lost everything.”
Hank’s throat tightened. How could he possibly know so much?
“You may as well cash it in ‘cause there’s no reason to stay in this bug-infested rat hole another day. Lots of us have given in. But you’re hanging on for some reason. There’s still a shred of hope in you somewhere.”
Sitting up, Hank crossed his feet on the bed. One foot twitched back and forth as he thought.
“You have my solemn promise I won’t tell a soul,” Don said, “as God is my witness.”
Hank took the chance. “Okay,” he said. “You’re right.”
Don sat back to listen.
“My parents were born in Germany. They met in Utah and raised me and my sister there. But my mom always insisted that we only speak German at home, and so my sister and I are really fluent.”
“No kidding?” Don asked with amazement.
Hank sighed. “I wish I were, but yes; it’s true.”
“Why haven’t you used it here?”
“Listen, Don. You can’t tell a single person about this, okay? You promise?”
“Hank. I promise. But what’s the big deal?”
“You don’t understand. My German has no American accent. I could hide here in Germany in plain sight, and no one would be any wiser. It means I should have been a spy, not on a B-17 crew.”
“Why didn’t you want to be a spy? They get paid a lot more.”
“My uncle was a spy in the first war, and it ruined him. My dad says that before the war, my Uncle Willy was a lot like me; now he’s the town drunk and a laughingstock because the memories haunt him. He’s a good man with a big heart but lives a rough and lonely life now. I probably would have been a spy if he hadn’t made me promise not to.”
“Go on.”
“So, here’s why it matters. Of all the bombing missions we completed throughout Europe, in France, in Norway, and in Germany, where do I get shot down? Twenty miles from my grandmother’s house near Bremen. My sister and I spent a glorious summer there when we were kids. I loved Germany. So, I knew my way around, and thought landing near her house was God’s way of protecting me until the end of the war.”
Don looked on as he listened to Hank’s story.
“Boy, was she shocked to see me. She didn’t want me there. Then she calmed down, but after I went to bed, she called her bishop… a Nazi officer, and I was arrested. She snuck away without saying telling me anything. She didn’t even say goodbye. Can you see why I’m a little cynical? My own grandmother betrayed me; the presiding church leader was more loyal to the Führer than he was to his promise to ‘feed the hungry and liberate the captive’.” Hank rocked back and forth, shuddering with anger. “God abandoned me.”
“You know that isn’t true,” Don scolded. “As for your grandmother and the bishop, maybe they had a reason for doing what they did.”
“To save their own bacon?”
“Could be. But there’s got to be some other reason.”
“Maybe it’s just God punishing me for something?”
“Not likely. We both know He’s not like that. There’s got to be a logical reason.”
“I can’t come up with a good reason why she would do that to me. But why didn’t God warn me, or stop me from going to her house in the first place?”
“You think God is to blame?”
Hank muttered, “Look where I am now. I’m still here, and I’m not going anywhere.”
“Do you really think God would ignore you in the moment of your greatest need, and just not care that you became a prisoner of war? Does that sound right to you?” Don asked.
A mist blurred Hank’s vision. Don stood and added, “You know better than this, Hank. God allows bad things to happen to good people to see if they’ll stay true to their faith. It’s just a test Hank. It’s just a test.”
As Don walked away, Hank whispered to himself. “It’s a pretty cruel test if you ask me.”
Chapter 61
August 16, 1944
Bushnell Army Hospital, Brigham City, Utah
Ella’s work kept her busy as Bushnell expanded with more patients and employees. She lived in the nearby dorms instead of finding housing in crowded Brigham City. Her sporadic schedule had her working day shifts one week, swing shifts the next, and the occasional graveyard shift.
She visited Tom almost every day. His neck and back injuries brought him the most agony, and doctors could do little to ease the pain. The constant pain took a toll on his patience, and his short temper became known throughout the hospital. Other nurses and staff whispered that he snapped at them when he didn’t get his way. Ella had gotten only glimpses of his temper before the war, and now his anger boiled beneath the surface even when he was with her. Still, each time she came to his room, it was with more trepidation and a softer tread than the last.
She came in one morning and stood by his bedside while orderlies helped lift him into his wheelchair. When they accidently dropped him down into his seat, he gasped through his teeth.
“Be a little more careful, will you?” he snarled. “Just because my legs are out of their casts doesn’t mean you can throw me around.”
“Tom,” Ella didn’t hide the sternness in her tone, “you could be kinder.”
The orderlies ducked out of the room, but not before giving her sympathetic glances. Or perhaps they wondered what she saw in this guy. She wasn’t so sure herself anymore. Before he left for the war, they had talked of marriage, children, and of a future together untouched by the fighting in Europe and elsewhere. Now at every turn, she saw glimpses of the war in his eyes, which were battle-hardened and full of a strange, frightening kind of anger she’d not seen in him before.
“They could do their job right, Ella,” he muttered. “I’m in so much pain.”
She sat next to him. “Did the pain keep you awake again last night?”
“Yeah. Well, that, and some other things.”
Frowning, she asked, “Like what?”
He sighed. “Did you know they’ve got German prisoners here doing laundry? I saw one yesterday, when the door to my room was open. He walked by with a load of linens.”
“Yes, I know. They’re hard workers. Very helpful.”
“But this guy, he stared at me. He stared at this,” he gestured to himself, with braces on his legs and the wheelchair. “Looked me right in the eye. I should be the one walking on my own two feet, not him, and he knows it.”
“Maybe he was feeling sorry for you?”
“Oh, that makes a lot of sense. A German showing sympathy. What a joke.” Tom’s anger was escalating. He gripped the arms of his wheelchair. “What are they doing here?”
She kept her voice calm. “There’s a shortage of workers. We need the help, and they’re willing to do it. They work about ten hours a day for just eighty cents a day.”
Tom scowled in disgust. “I saw another one delivering the meal trays yesterday. It’s so…”
Ella looked away from his clenched jaw and the angry twitch in his eye. From the way his bitterness and displeasure streamed out of him, he had been troubled by this for some time.
“Why do they have to be here?” he asked. “I know we house a lot of German prisoners here in Utah, but why put them around us? Why remind us of all the horrible things they’re doing?”
A knot formed in Ella’s throat. She swallowed and said, “Horrible things who is doing?”
“The Germans. All those hateful Germans,” he spat.
“I’m German, Tom. Am I hateful?” She raised her voice, even though it trembled.
“You’re as German as I am. You were born here. Real Germans are evil, and I hate them.”
Ella stood, her chair scooting back on the floor. “Maybe we need to increase your pain meds.”
“I’m fine,” he shot back. “I don’t need more pain meds.”
“I’ve never heard you talk like this.” Ella looked at him with pity.
“You don’t know what they’re capable of doing. I’ve sat in on intelligence briefings. I’ve heard some of the horrible things the Germans have done. It makes my blood boil…”
“Nazis, Tom, Nazis,” she cried. “They are the ones doing these things.”
“I know they’re systematically trying to kill all the Jews. Did you know that?”
“There’s been conflicting reports.” Ella breathed in deep through her nose.
“Don’t be fooled. It’s happening. I know it is,” he barked. “Ever heard of Lidice?”
“I have not.” Ella kept her voice calm, hoping to keep him from growing more agitated.
“It’s a town in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia. Or it was a town, until the Germans destroyed it. Do you know what they did? They wiped it off the map. I’m not just talking about blowing it up, like they’ve done to thousands of villages. They executed all the men, one at time; then they sent the women to a forced labor camp. There were a hundred orphans that were left to die, and they bulldozed the village flat. They even dug up the cemetery because Hitler wanted the world to forget this town ever existed. All because of a rumor that some citizens had assassinated a German general.”
Ella bit her lip and cried.
“Have you ever heard that?” he asked. “The Germans bragged about it in their newspapers. I could tell you about other horrific and blood curdling stories, but you wouldn’t believe me. You’d think I was making it up.”
Breathing heavy, Tom stopped to catch his breath. “A friend of mine from England is here at Bushnell. A week ago, he sat in on a debriefing of a B-17 crewman who was shot down in France. Lucky for the crewman, he was found by the resistance and they snuck him back to England. In the debriefing, this man described the remains of a village in France where they rounded up all the men, women, and children and shot them all. They crucified a baby and left it hanging for everyone to see.”
”Tom, please,” Ella whispered. “Stop.”
“But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. They’ve brutally killed so many people, they’ll never be able to count them. It’s how Germans are. Natural-born murderers. They’re raising their children that way. You can’t un-teach them to be killers. They’re monsters.”
“I’m going to leave now.” Her voice was firm yet calm. “I’ll come back later.”
Tom looked at the floor. “I’m not going to apologize for telling you this,” he said. “I could go on for hours. I know what I’m talking about.”
“And I’m not going to apologize for not wanting to be around you. Spewing this much anger and hatred is not how I remember you.” N27
Chapter 62
August 20, 1944
Stalag 17-B, Krems-Gneixendorf, Austria
Hank listened to three guards who stood just around the corner in the shade of the barracks overhang, out of sight. He leaned against the wall with his arms crossed, striking a casual pose.
