At a bend in the main road, I was met by a familiar stench, but being on a crusade I had no time to investigate. I passed a mill with a spectacular water wheel turning in a canal choked with plump smelts. I made a mental note to come back with a net. Passing the spot where we had taken the trail into the woods, I began to nervously fondle the bulge under my coat. My hand fell limp when I arrived at my destination. The farm was now a heap of ashes and blackened walls.
“A direct hit?” I asked a neighbor.
“No, the Red Army torched it. You see, Kurt lost his mind when some Russian soldiers backed up a truck and took his damn potatoes. The idiot charged them with his pitchfork. I couldn’t believe my eyes. The soldiers shot him, threw him into the house, then burned it down.” Heading back, I tossed my weapon into the woods. I had to admit I was relieved that the Soviets had done the dirty work.
When I arrived again at the bend in the road, I followed my nose and discovered an arm sticking out of the ground with a swollen, blackened hand crawling with maggots. The markings on the green sleeve were that of an Italian uniform. It was peculiar that there would be Italian soldiers this deep into Germany. My attention was drawn to something under a nearby bush reflecting the setting sun. It was the chrome buckle of a knapsack stuffed with Austrian cigarettes. German money was worthless, but cigarettes were gold, and that knapsack would make the trip back home much easier. What a splendid day it turned out to be.
We received news of “the god with the moustache’s” death and the end of the war days later, possibly even two weeks later. In Auschwitz, I had dreamt that the day he died would be a joyously drunken day, but it turned out to be anticlimatic. Possibly I had anticipated it too much. Maybe it was anticlimatic because there was no dancing in the streets. But what kind of celebrations could I expect in the country of the defeated enemy? Maybe it was because I knew I still had a hell of a long way to go before I would be home.
More than likely, it was because his death didn’t erase what I had endured and seen in the last eighteen months. The one thing that I did rejoice, and I quietly celebrated it every day, was the fact that my German submachine gun would prevent any boche from ever ordering me around again.
The Soviets put up notices stating that no one—German or “displaced persons”—could travel without a permit. These traveling papers could be acquired only at the Soviet provost marshal’s office in Reinsberg, which was about seven miles south of Wustrow.
We woke up early and trudged down the empty main road. We came upon two Mongol soldiers with their heads shoved under the hood of their truck. Luckily they knew squat about engines, and Michel had spent time in a garage. Not that the problem, a slipped distributor cable, needed a mechanic. Grinning from ear to ear, the Mongols were more than happy to let us hitch a ride.
Ten minutes later we were floundering in a motley throng of refugees and displaced people in Reinsberg’s marketplace. Reinsberg wasn’t much bigger than Wustrow, but they did have a bank and that was where the Soviets had set up their provost’s office.
Seeing that it would take days to receive our traveling papers if we waited our turn in line, I elbowed my way to the entrance where a Red Army guard was sleeping in a red velvet armchair.
“Drasvicshem, tovaritch” (Good day, comrade), I blurted in my broken Russian.
The soldier, who had been snoring loudly, opened one eye.
“Trois Franzus, tovaritch,” I said, pointing to Michel and Jean.
“Franzus, tovaritch?” he repeated, unimpressed as he twisted the ends of his long handlebar mustache.
I slipped a few of my Austrian cigarettes into his hand. His smile revealed a row of blackened teeth.
“Da, Franzus, tovaritch, da, da!”
Deaf to their complaints, the guard pushed away those at the head of the line and planted us. Back on his throne, he pulled out an old edition of Der Stürmer from his jacket pocket. He tore off a square of the newspaper and rolled a cigarette with the tobacco from the ones I had given him. All the soldiers from the Russian countryside seemed to prefer the taste of newspaper to cigarette paper, since that’s what they rolled their makhorka in back home.
Blissfully the guard breathed in the first puff, and slowly the corner of a swastika became smoke.
An hour later a broad-shouldered female private ushered us inside. The bank was no more than a small office with a few chairs and a well-worn desk. Sitting behind it was a Russian noncommissioned officer who looked to be in his thirties. He asked in halting German where we intended to go. From our “pajamas” he knew where we had been. While the officer began to fill out our traveling permits, Michel stared out the window.
“If I’m not back in five minutes, wait for me at the edge of town,” he whispered, then ducked out.
Seeing that the officer was sympathetic to Häftlinge, I told him I had discovered that a “Nazi farmer” in Wustrow was hiding two draft horses and those beasts could make our return to France easier. The Russian smiled and wrote out a requisition on bank stationery.
As he said he would be, Michel was waiting for us at the edge of town. He had a Russian helmet pulled down over his ears and a bicycle hidden in a bush.
Jean pointed to the helmet. “How did you get that?”
“Simple. I saw a Russian park his bicycle in the courtyard behind the bank. He hung his helmet on the handlebars and went into a shithouse. When I got back there I could tell from the sighs he was heaving that he was going to be there for a while. Nobody blinked when I came riding out on his bicycle with this pot on my head.”
With that Red Army helmet bobbing on his head, Michel furiously pedaled back to Wustrow with me perched on the handlebars and Jean sitting on the small luggage rack over the rear wheel. We sure got some stares from the people on the road. Hey you German fools, get a good look at the three-clown Häftlinge circus riding by!
The next day we all went to the Wustrow garrison, which was a small house on the southern edge of town. I showed a soldier the requisition. He acted like it was meaningless to him. I wasn’t sure if he was illiterate or couldn’t be bothered. I asked in broken Russian who was in charge. A sly smile flashed on his face, and he led me behind the house to a girl’s bicycle, which was lying on a gravel path that cut through a meadow. He pointed to a knoll and waved me on.
I walked through thigh-high grass and almost stepped on the officer in charge. He was soaking the biscuit with a stunningly beautiful Slav girl in her early twenties, who had her skirt hiked up and blouse open. I turned my back to them and profusely apologized in German. I braced myself for a Russian tongue-lashing, but all the chagrined young officer did was turn his back to me, yank up his pants, and brush the grass off his uniform.
Still on the ground half-naked, the girl laughed at our reactions, making me feel silly and immature. Holding out the requisition, I explained in German why I had come to the garrison. The girl jumped up, snatched the paper from me, and read it aloud. Her smooth pink cheeks mesmerized me. She had the most beautiful skin I had ever seen. It had been way too long since I had laid eyes on such a fine creature. I asked myself how that lucky son-of-a-bitch had gotten his skin against hers. His officer stripes, of course.