“Huh? I never heard that story.”
“You ask your gran about that sometime when she’s acting high and mighty.”
Since Danny had taken the window seat, Cole found himself directly across the aisle from a fellow who looked to be about his own age. Like Cole, the man had opted for soft drinks and Cole couldn't help but notice that he had a slight German accent. Finally, he caught Cole’s eye and said, “Hello. Have you been to Germany before?”
Cole nodded. “A long time ago,” he said. “During the war.”
The other man nodded and offered his hand across the aisle, “Hans Neumann,” he said. After Cole had introduced himself in turn, his fellow passenger continued: “I, too, was in the war, but I suspect that I fought for the other side. You see, I was a soldier in the Wehrmacht. But not for long, thank goodness. I was captured and sent as a prisoner to Ohio.”
“A POW, huh?”
Hans smiled. “It was the best thing that ever happened to me. I felt like I had gone to heaven! The people were kind and I was just a boy really, who didn't have much choice about going into the army.”
“Nobody had much choice,” Cole agreed.
Hans nodded. “No, and that is why I was glad to be out of the war. There was plenty to eat in Ohio. There were pretty girls. I ended up staying there for the next forty years, ha! I found a wife and bought a farm and raised a family. I became an American citizen, which was my proudest day. But you see, I still have a few relatives in Germany, so here I am on this plane.”
Cole appreciated that Hans had summed up his life story in a few sentences, like the summary on the back of a book. Cole doubted that he could do the same; his life was a little more complicated.
“Good for you,” was all he said.
Hans smiled. “Good for me, indeed. This may be my last time going back. I have a bad heart, you see. Growing up, we were always told to eat lots of cheese and butter. It’s good for you, we were told! Well, the whole time it was clogging up my arteries.”
Cole snorted. “Yeah, don’t get me started. No salt, no sugar—”
“No fun!”
Cole found himself taking a liking to Hans, the Wehrmacht soldier-turned Ohio farmer. They were now just a couple of old codgers, bitching about the things that all old codgers bitched about. At this point in his life, he liked that just fine.
Cole had felt some uncertainty beforehand about this trip, but now, talking with Hans, he was finally starting to relax. Maybe Norma Jean was right that he was always too worried about what could go wrong.
“You hit that on the head, Hans. It’s no fun getting old.”
“You are from the south?” Hans asked. “I can hear it in your accent.”
“Born and raised. Got me a little place in the mountains and couldn't be happier.”
Hans nodded agreeably. “Look at us, having survived that nightmare, we are here today. We are blessed, my friend.” Hans raised his glass of soda in salute and Cole did the same. “Is that your grandson with you?”
“That's right,” Cole said. “We're taking a tour of Germany.”
“He is a good-looking boy,” Hans said in a tone of grandfatherly approval. “I have three grandsons myself. I am so glad that your grandson is going as a tourist and not as a soldier, as we had to do.”
“Amen to that.”
“Listen, I am going to put my head down and take a nap. All this traveling has made me tired and like I said, my heart is not what it used to be.” Hans took a pen from the pocket of his blazer and jotted a phone number on a cocktail napkin. “This is my telephone number and the address where I am staying in Munich. I still have many friends there and many family. If you and your grandson need anything while you are in Germany, you get in touch. You never know when you will need a friend.”
Cole took the napkin and nodded his thanks. “Much obliged, Hans.”
Left alone now, with Danny wrapped up in gazing out the window at the play of fading light across the pillowy clouds, Cole found himself lost in reflection.
Cole thought about his own arrival in Europe aboard a landing craft at the Normandy beachhead. There had been lots of training in England, of course, but nothing truly prepared anyone for the horrors they had experienced on that beach. On that beach, Cole had picked up an abandoned sniper rifle and his real career as a soldier had begun.
Consciously, he knew that he should be saddened and filled with regret at all the lives lost and the killing that he had done. But a deeper, raw part of Cole that he sometimes thought of as “the critter” hadn’t minded at all. In fact, that part of him missed it. He missed the excitement and even the camaraderie of fighting alongside good men.
Maybe these weren’t the best realizations to be having thirty thousand feet over the Atlantic. He let his mind wander to other things, and soon Cole managed to drift off.
He awoke to the gentle chiming of the seatbelt light and the pilot giving a weather report.
Next stop, Germany.
Cole felt butterflies in his stomach, but he told himself that it was just from the jet changing altitude.
Chapter Four
After they disembarked from the plane and went through customs, with a bored official waving them through without even looking at their passports, they emerged into the busy international arrivals terminal to see a uniformed driver holding a sign that read, “Herr Cole.”
“I reckon that’s us,” Cole said.
Much to Cole’s embarrassment, the driver insisted on carrying their bags to a shiny black Mercedes. The uniform was simply that of a chauffeur, but deep down, it made Cole uneasy. He had some experience with uniformed Germans, and it hadn’t been good.
However, this German was friendly and pleasant. He spoke perfect English, and explained that he had been a school teacher before retiring and deciding to keep busy by ferrying important passengers around Munich.
“Last week, you would not believe that I met Jim Palmer. A famous American baseball player! I even got his autograph. Are you famous?”
“Not for anything that you’d want to know about.”
The driver laughed good-naturedly, then whisked them from the airport to the hotel. On the way, he explained that the hotel near the airport was popular with travelers from all over the world and was much larger and modern compared to the traditional hotels within the city itself, which were more like Gasthäuser—guesthouses. “I know you Americans like everything the bigger, the better,” he said.
In the lobby of the massive Hilton hotel, Cole was taken aback by the shiny glass doors, the gleaming trim, the expansive veined marble. He gave a low whistle.
“This sure ain’t the Apple Blossom Motel,” he said. “It’s kind of fancy.”
“We’re just like rock stars,” Danny said happily. “Or country music stars, at least.”
“Don’t get used to it.”
But things kept getting better. Cole was half-convinced that they must have been dropped at the wrong hotel, but sure enough, the clerk had a reservation for them, along with a voucher for meals.
“We even get our own rooms,” Danny said. “We don’t have to share.”
“It's something, all right,” Cole agreed, still amazed by the lavish surroundings. Not for the first time this day, he realized that he was a long way from the ramshackle cabin where he had grown up in Gashey’s Creek. Back then, he’d been lucky if he got some biscuits to go with his squirrel stew. He had slept on the bare wooden floor of the loft with his brothers and sisters, body heat alone keeping them warm on winter nights. When he had gotten older, there had been a mattress stuffed with corn husks. During the war, he mostly slept on the cold, hard ground and hadn’t minded.