“Colonel, when will the shells end?” said Klassen, I had advised him to tell me of his home and life back home in order to calm him while we huddled in the earthly safety of a fox hole.
I thought for a moment, I had been commandingly dishonest with him. “Private,” I said reconsidering for a millionth time the words before they would come out. “Private, I am not sure. This has lasted a lot longer than I expected, but we will survive.” I couldn’t reveal the whole truth; there would be an end; however long it would take. Perhaps the Soviets were looking at setting a new record for the most bombardments started in a twenty-four hour period; one could only wonder what transpired in an enemy’s mind when shelled into a foxhole.
Klassen’s face brightened with a glimmer of hope. The words “Yes, sir,” were uttered with a great sense renewal.
Twenty agonizing minutes passed. At least twenty tons of artillery shells had been effortlessly lobbed into the air and rained down upon our position. The young privates new found sense of survival however remote in actuality having never been dulled. I looked into the young boy’s eyes, barely older than Sebastian, perhaps a year or two but no more than eighteen years old. The disillusionment exploded in his eyes, he had been trained to believe that in Hitler’s Germany the Aryan race is supreme, that in combat against the undesired sub-humans the master race would triumph. Yet Klassen’s eyes showed that all is not right. He had perhaps recently been transferred to the Eastern Front and I had quite possibly even saw and unceremoniously passed over the one paper of hundreds that came across my desk within a week, condemning Klassen and hundreds of thousands of children like him to their death.
“So---,” I said interrupting myself choking back tears and withdrawing precious thoughts. “Soldier. Private Klassen, it sounds and looks like the bombardment has concluded. Follow me,” I said as I climbed the out of the fox hole that eerily resembled a trench I had willed myself out a dozen times as a young lieutenant no older than the current age of the soldier I found myself leading.
With the grace of the wind at our backs Klassen and I raced across the pock marked terrain. There seemed to be one crater for every meter we ran, a good three hundred meters to the supposed safety of the von Witzleben’s headquarters, where blond-haired and blue eyes Klassen had mentioned he would be. I expected to arrive to a building demolished, sandbags strewn as impromptu mounds for the obliterated corpses with limbs floating around like noodles in a soup. Yet when we arrived the building stood as if nothing happened.
Two guards stood outside the entrance to the building with their pristine uniforms, the buttons glistening in the bright sky and oblivious to the thunderstorm. I snapped to attention and pulled down the tunic of my uniform straightening it out and sending a cloud of dust into the air.
I drew closer to the building and when within two meters the guards snapped to attention as the one on the left conducted a salute with his gun. “Good afternoon, Colonel.”
“Is the General in?”
“Yes he is, sir.” The guard who saluted motioned for the other guard to open the door which he did without much delay in carrying out the informal order.
“Stay here, so…Klassen,” I said catching myself as I walked through the door before the same guard who opened it closed it, hardly waiting before I cleared the door’s frame.
**********
“Schnack, you made it!” said General von Witzleben, his eyes judged the dirtiness of the uniform it glistened better than before but never as well as his or his colleagues. The families of wealth that had controlled the power before the fall of the Kaiser ran the conspiracy, their families pride had been stomped upon by the common man Hitler, yet he still employed people like von Witzleben, von Gersdorff, von Breitenbuch, and von Tresckow in the military. These men have provided great inspiration and sacrifice to the whole of Germany, but they as a whole collective would never accept you because you were not of noble birth. The top echelon of the conspiracy; which I had been thrust into believed in the restoration of the monarchy one that had not ruled a single person for 24 years now. While they tried to hide their intentions those who had the means and key assets that the aristocracy lacked knew the truth. We came together as strange bedfellows knowing that we were using each other and once Hitler and the war had come to an end we would go back to the class divides and struggles, we would no longer need to put on the show of swallowing our pride and bearing each other.
“Yes, yes I did sir.”
“The situation is dire,” he looked at my uniform with the ever judging eyes that had been trained to look so calm. “As I’m sure you know,” he didn’t finish the rest for he didn’t have to; the words either intended or not were well implied.
I approached the table that he commanded like the king he thought he deserved to be. “I have received reports of the Soviets attacking here, here and here.” His finger pointed to each spot on the map and clearly indicated that the only direction our lines were not being attacked from stood to be the rear.
“Tristan,” he said trying to add more empathy to what I knew he would ask me. “I’m going need you to help coordinate the defenses, we have to hold out. You have read up on how the Soviets conduct bombardments and their attacks, your assistance with providing that information and what to further to expect will be critical,” he felt as if he could go on forever trying to make the common man aware of the gravity of the situation and how all people regardless of their class would lose if the Soviets were to penetrate our defenses and move on towards Berlin. His words of empathy by using my first name played no decision into motivating me into saying yes to brave round, another tick in the column of torturing combat and decisions that had grown countless.
I snapped to attention and saluted as the master of safety dismissed me into a world he only thought he understood. I returned to the young Klassen who had taken this brief time of reprieve to catch up on sleep. He lay almost lifeless in the grass that served as a majestic bed that few noblemen would deem worthy of their status. I slightly raised my voice to startle the young teen from his impromptu slumber and went off with him to fulfill yet another mission to earn the mark on the column of deeds done for the state and its rulers.