At the dusty juncture formed by two huts and converging alleys. Tommy pointed Hugh in the direction of the medical services hut, and hurried down the narrow walkway between 119 and 120, which would take him to the burial ground. He could hear a voice coming from around the corner, but could not make out the words being spoken.
He slowed as he rounded the corner of Hut 119.
Some three hundred kriegies stood in formation beside the hastily prepared gravesite. Tommy immediately recognized almost all the men from Hut 101, and a smattering of other fliers, probably someone representing each of the remaining buildings. Six German soldiers carrying bolt-action rifles stood at parade rest just slightly to the side of the squares of men.
Trader Vic's coffin had been predictably nailed together from the light-colored wooden crates that delivered the Red Cross parcels. The flimsy balsa wood was the preferred building material for virtually every bit of furniture in the American camp, but Tommy thought with some irony that no one expected it to form the walls of their own casket. Three officers stood at the head of the coffin: MacNamara,
Clark, and a priest, who was reading the twenty-third psalm. The priest had been shot down over Italy the previous summer, when he'd taken his charge of administering to the flock of airmen in a light bomber group perhaps a bit too seriously, and had elected to fly on one of their runs over Salerno at a time when German antiaircraft troops on the ground were still active, and German fighters still plied their deadly trade in the air.
He had a flat, reedy voice that managed to dull even the famous words of the psalm. When he said, "The Lord is my shepherd…" he made it sound like God was actually tending sheep, not watching over those at risk.
Tommy hesitated, not knowing whether he should join the formations or merely keep watch from the periphery. In that momentary pause, he heard a voice from his side, which took him by surprise.
"And what is it, Lieutenant Hart, that you expect to see?"
He turned sharply toward the questioner.
Hauptmann Heinrich Visser was standing a few feet away, smoking a dark brown cigarette, leaning back against Hut 119. The German held the smoke like a dart, lifting it languidly to his lips, but relishing each long pull.
Tommy took a deep breath.
"I expect to see nothing," he replied slowly.
"People who go somewhere with expectations are generally rewarded by seeing what they anticipated. I'm merely here to observe, and whatever
I do see will be what I need to see."
Visser smiled.
"Ah," he said, "a clever man's response. But not very military."
Tommy shrugged.
"Well, then I guess I'm not a perfect soldier."
Visser shook his head.
"We shall see about that, I suppose.
In the days to come."
"And you, Hauptmann7 Are you a perfect soldier?"
The German shook his head.
"Alas, no. Lieutenant Hart.
But I have been an efficient soldier. Remarkably efficient. But not perfect. These things, I think, are not precisely the same."
"Your English is quite good."
"Thank you. I lived for many years in Milwaukee, growing up with my aunt and uncle. Perhaps had I stayed another year or two, I would have considered myself to be more American than German. Can you imagine, lieutenant, that I was actually quite accomplished at the game of baseball?" The German glanced down at his missing arm.
"No longer, I suppose.
Regardless. I could have stayed. But I did not. I elected to return to the fatherland for my education. And thus did I get caught up in the great things that took place in my country."
Visser swung his eyes toward the funeral.
"Your Colonel MacNamara," the German said slowly, his eyes measuring the SAO carefully.
"My first impression is that he is a man who believes his imprisonment at Stalag Luft Thirteen is a black mark on his career. A failure of command. I cannot tell, sometimes, when he looks at me, whether he hates me and all Germans because that is what he has been taught, or whether he hates me because I am preventing him from killing more of my countrymen. And I think, in all these hatreds, he perhaps hates himself, as well. What do you think. Lieutenant Hart? Is he a commanding officer you respect? Is he the sort of leader who gives a command and men follow instantly, without question, without regard to their own lives and safety?"
"He is the Senior American Officer, and he is respected."
The German did not look at Tommy, but he laughed.
"Ah, lieutenant, already you have the makings of a diplomat."
He took a single, long puff on the cigarette, then dropped it to the dirt, grinding it under the toe of his boot.
"Have you the makings of an advocate? I wonder."
Visser smiled, then continued, "And is that what is truly required of you? I wonder about this, too."
The Hauptmann turned to Tommy.
"A funeral is so rarely about finality, isn't this true, lieutenant?
Are they not really much more the beginning of something?"
Visser's smile bent around the corner of his mouth, twisting with the scars. Then he turned away, once again watching the proceedings. The pastor's voice had moved on to a reading from the New Testament, the story of the loaves and fishes, a poor choice because it would probably make all the assembled kriegies hungry. Tommy saw that there was no flag draping the coffin, but that Vic's leather flight jacket, with the American flag sewn onto the sleeve, had been carefully folded and placed in the center of the box.
The pastor finished reading and the formations came to attention.
A trumpeter stepped from the ranks and blew the soulful notes of taps.
As these faded into the midday air, the squad of German soldiers stepped to the front, lifted their weapons to their shoulders, and fired a single volley into the clearing sky, almost as if they were blasting away the remaining gray clouds and carving a hole of blue.
The noise of the shots echoed briefly. It was not lost on Tommy that the sound was the same as it would be if the same six soldiers were gathered into a firing squad.
Four men stepped from the formation and, using ropes, lowered Trader
Vic's coffin into the ground. Then Major Clark gave the order to dismiss, and the men turned away, walking in groups back into the middle of the compound.
More than a few stared at Tommy Hart as they moved past him. But no one said a word.
He, in turn, met many pairs of eyes, his own gaze narrowed and hard. He guessed that the men who'd threatened him were in the knots of passing airmen. But who they might be he had no idea. No single pair of eyes spoke to him with a threat.
Visser lit another cigarette and started humming the French tune
"Aupres de ma Blonde," which had a lilt to it that seemed to insult the ragged solemnity of the funeral.