“Yes!” He bellowed as they stood there, mute and terrified. “Germany has signed the Geneva Convention…!” Every word was a stab of pain as Pieter Stahl screamed at them. The movement of his mouth threatened to open up the stitches in his cheek, but he wasn’t about to moderate his actions all the same… not for a moment. “As this officer has just learned, however…” he gave Scammell’s corpse a savage kick “…the SS has not!” He began to pace along the line of men, pistol waving about as he continued his rant at full volume. “You men will work here, just like everyone else! ‘Conventions’ and treaties have no place here — the only rule you need to know is ‘Work or Die’!” He almost managed a smug grin in spite of the pain. “You are no longer officers or gentlemen… all you are now are prisoners: failures of dead empires!” At a whim, he raised the pistol once more and shot another man through the head, this time a French air force pilot. The man crumpled to the ground, already dead, as the men around him leaped aside in horror.
Stahl was still filled with an incredible amount of repressed rage over his injury and humiliation at the hands of the Luftwaffe officer, Ritter, a few days before — something the constant pain wasn’t helping — and he had no qualms over expending that rage on his prisoners. Because of the injury and for other, more political reasons, he’d been reassigned for the duration of his ‘convalescence’ to an SS work gang, and he intended to make certain the work was completed to schedule if it killed him…or others, which was far more likely. He cast an evil eye across the whole group, pistol held outstretched and seeking out each in turn as a terrified target as his aim swept along the line of men.
“Think carefully on your actions from now on, for the next time anyone fails to obey an order, I will personally shoot four prisoners!” Spittle flew from his lips as he spat the words out at full volume and surveyed the scene before him. “The next after that and it will be eight… the next… sixteen!” The mental calculation somehow came to him in just a moment. “So you can either obey my orders, or do me the favour of disobeying them five more times, in which case there will be none of you left alive to waste my fucking time!”
There was just one more moment’s silent pause before Flight Lieutenant Edward Whittaker joined in as readily as the others in hurrying across to the piles of tools and reaching out for the nearest shovel.
L’Hôtel de Crillon, Place de la Concorde
Paris, France
Maria Ritter had married at just twenty years of age. Almost as tall as her husband when wearing high heels, she carried a slender and willowy figure with a fine waist, long graceful legs and alabaster skin that perfectly complemented high cheekbones, an exquisite nose and wide, blue eyes. When not held in place by what was usually a complex combination of clasps and clips, her golden hair fell in long tresses on either side of her face and down as far as the middle of her back.
Maria never failed to attract the attention of men when she was out in public. In any setting, she’d be considered at the very least an extremely attractive woman. On occasions such as cocktail parties, Regimental Dinners or similar official functions where some preparation might be expected in the way of make up and such like, most onlookers male or female would concede that in an evening dress or ball gown, Maria Ritter was a stunningly beautiful woman.
Carl Ritter, nearing the end of his second year at university, had been at a loose end one Friday evening in September of 1925 and had decided at a whim to attend a play at a theatre not far from the his apartment and the campus. The performance itself was barely memorable — an avant garde new director’s interpretation of Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet — however for the young Ritter there was one single, significant moment to be taken from the show that night.
As a condition of the Treaty of Versailles, Cologne had been occupied by the British Army of the Rhine and would remain so until 1926. Although an unpleasant situation, the English troops generally acted honourably and displayed fairness in their dealings with the local population, and the occupation for the most part was without incident.
As a result of this, and the fact that the play was being performed in English, the two hundred seat theatre that night held a significant number of British officers and enlisted men in its audience. The group was mostly quite well-behaved, save for one incident early in the performance: the initial entry on stage of Juliet. The first appearance of the female lead drew a number of loud and not altogether pleasant cheers and wolf-whistles from some of the British troops present, although several officers among them quickly silenced the men’s outbursts.
Resplendent in a long but nevertheless quite revealing contemporary cocktail dress of bright red — all the players were in modern dress as part of the director’s ‘vision’ of the performance — the stunning vision of young Maria Planck on stage captured the attention of all present, men and women alike. Herself a second year university arts student at the time, she’d also had a lifelong love of acting and the stage, and had already participated in several local theatrical productions.
Carl Ritter was as captivated by her as the rest, and found that he couldn’t take his eyes off the beautiful woman on stage before him. The rest of the crowd, and most of the performance itself ceased to exist in his mind as he followed her movements around the stage, jaw hanging slightly as if in outright shock.
After the performance, Ritter somehow managed to find somewhere nearby where he could purchase a huge bunch of red roses, and he returned to the theatre in a rush to join a small group of hopefuls of both sexes at the stage door, all desperately waiting to meet the cast as they left the building. The young man had never believed there was a chance the beautiful young actress might consider him worthy of her attention, yet as she stepped out through the stage door that night wrapped in a long, ladies’ woollen overcoat and fur hat, her eyes met his and everyone else around them was forgotten for both.
Carl and Maria were engaged soon after and were married in the spring of 1929, just six months before the Wall Street Crash. Carl didn’t think much of the idea of ‘love at first sight’ — he was a practical and logical man after all — and he was also well aware of the old English proverb that concerned ‘Gift Horses’ and the dangers of inspecting their teeth. He was happy to simply accept his excessively good fortune in the unfathomable fact that the lovely Maria was as head-over-heels in love with him as he was with her, and leave it at that.
Ritter sat on the queen-sized bed in their hotel room and stared down as his wife as she slept, arms instinctively cradling the baby boy he’d rescued from the farmhouse the weekend before. As Maria lay there beside him, she was as beautiful to him as she’d ever been, and their meeting at Paris’ Gare du Nord railway station earlier that day had been a happy one indeed after so many months apart.
The luxury suite he’d booked for the next week in one of the oldest, grandest hotels in Paris was large and beautifully appointed. The main bedroom they were currently in held that huge bed and a collection of antique Louis XV furniture that included a dressing table, armoire, secretary desk/cupboard and several chairs. The adjoining bathroom and living room area were proportionally as large, and were decorated with a similar opulence. More than enough money had changed hands to ensure there was no problem for the hotel staff to place an extra single bed in the main living area, in which Antoine also currently slept.