When the Warflowers Bloomed

© 2004 by Calvin Vraa. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 07/22/04

ISBN: 1-4184-0200-1 (e-book)

ISBN13: 9-781-4184-0200-6 (e-book)

ISBN: 1-4184-0201-X (Paperback)

Contents

Book I

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

Book Two

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42

43

44

45

46

47

Book III

48

49

50

51

52

53

54

55

56

57

58

59

60

61

When the Warflowers Bloomed is a work of fiction with some scenes set in historical events and places of World War II and its aftermath. Some situations are based on eyewitness accounts, written or oral, of events of that period. Historical figures appear in the story and the manners and interactions of those figures are based on written accounts of them. Their scenes with fictional characters are created. Any resemblance of the fictional characters to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Dedication

To my wife Barbara for all of her patience, encouragement, and love, without which this story would not have been finished.

Acknowledgments

I wish to thank the many World War II soldiers and Holocaust survivors whose sensitive and thought-provoking written and oral accounts of their experiences made this story possible.

Credits

We are grateful for permission and the opportunity to publish portions of the following lyrics:

Lili Marlene (German Lyric by Hans Leip, English Lyric by Tommie

Connor, Music by Herbert Schultze)

© 1940 by Apollo-Verlag Paul Lincke, Berlin

Copyright renewed.

English Lyric Copyright © 1944 by Peter Mourice Musci Co., Ltd

Sole distributor for the United States and Mexico: Edward B. Marks Music Company

Used by permission. All rights reserved.

America the Beautiful (Lyrics by Katherine Lee Bates, Music by Samuel A. Ward) In the Public Domain

Book I

1

Captain Mark Brayden tapped his canteen, his tall body cramped for space in the right seat of his jeep speeding across a Bavarian plateau. People had always told him when he was calm, his eyes were blue as the cloudless sky; when he was troubled, they dimmed to light blue. This morning they must be pale ice chunks. They would stay that way when the war ended; he still had to have it out with Adele over her betrayal at home. He snapped his head angrily at her distraction and forced himself back to the war.

Last night the Germans had ambushed his company crossing the Altmuhl River, which intelligence reported all clear. He struggled in the water to organize a counterattack. Flares popped above, and green machine gun tracers sizzled at him in the river channel. Casualties were heavy; his third platoon was virtually knocked out. His fury raged. Even after that shellacking, the colonel ordered him to headquarters—ASAP.

The old chill at being in the crosshairs of a sniper’s scope crawled down his back. He tucked the double silver bars on his collar under his shirt. The road was another piece of ground reported as German-held. Yet in April 1945, he was twenty-eight, a seasoned commander, and strong and tall at six-feet three; his uncanny instincts and curt glances plucked movements from enemy terrain. He flicked his gaze back to the ridges on the right.

That stink is stronger up here, cap’n, Corporal Adrian Tork Torkelson, his husky driver, said in his Bible Belt drawl. Like burned pig.

Mark’s sharp nod with set jaw, a split second gesture, acknowledged the puzzling smell. But his gut feeling of the last days rushed back. It was a consuming flash that blocked out the war, pleasant but undefined, a mystifying signal that something big was in store for him.

The jeep swayed, and he grabbed at the dashboard for support. He snapped his gaze back to a small depression in the trees and leaned out. No danger. He checked Tork whose muscular arms held the jeep steady while he scanned the left front with alert eyes. They approached high ground with heavier brush and—

Crack! Crack! Shots echoed to the left.

Hit the ditch! Mark yelled.

The jeep swung left, bounced heavily, and stopped with a jerk in the ditch. Mark vaulted to the bank, elbowed up, carbine across his arms, and peered through bushes at a gentle wooded slope. Tork hit the dirt to the left, M-1 rifle ready.

We’ll take a look, Mark said, his voice rapid and breathy. He signaled, and Tork’s large frame darted low to the left. Mark dashed up the right in lanky strides to a trail. Three shots clipped the leaves. Two striped flashes stumbled through the trees. At some distance, a dark-clad figure followed with a rifle. The bolt of a German rifle clicked shut. Mark heard Tork fire; the Germans returned fire.

Mark dropped by a tree. Tork zigzagged across a sunny clearing, dove into heavy brush, and disappeared. Mark spotted movement directly ahead. Two Germans bounded into the heavy brush and maneuvered as if they had seen Tork. Mark dashed to crossed logs and spotted an olive drab flash to the left. Tork! He crept low. Mark signaled. No response; and Tork disappeared. Mark scrambled to head off the Krauts and plunged into thick woods. His orientation vanished! He stumbled around, groping for direction. He squatted and froze; thrashing in brush would draw fire. The only familiar sign was high branches swaying against the sky. He crawled forward slowly. Suddenly, a branch snapped behind him. It couldn’t be behind him; his head spun. He crawled on. He cursed himself; he had to believe his ears, not his mind.

He crawled the other way. A gray-green streak—a German—popped from the shadows ahead. Mark’s orientation rushed back. The German signaled the other one. Mark couldn’t see Tork, and the Germans hadn’t seen Mark. They must be moving on Tork. Mark kept low and fell flat in deadfall. A quick movement flashed in brush ahead; a German crouched in the Y of a tree limb. A little further away, another rifle poked out of high brush. Mark rose cautiously to one knee. With a blink and an estimate, he fired just behind the rifle in the brush. He hit the dirt, and rolled as a scream rose in the high brush. The German at the Y swung and fired at Mark’s first position. Mark fired back. The German slumped, clung to the limb, and dropped to the ground. Mark waited as brush rustled. Tork emerged with his thumb up.

Back to the trail, Mark called softly.

They crept back, scanning carefully.

Cap’n, up here.

Mark hustled up the trail, then stared down. What’s this?

A thin body in filthy striped cotton lay near freshly turned earth. The man wore no socks inside battered shoes. A matching brimless cap had slid from his shaved head, and his glassy eyes were still.

Tork knelt, and his lips moved silently for several seconds. This poor guy was really skinny, and he smells. But we didn’t shoot him, captain. The Krauts murdered him.

They killed someone in that shape, for what reason? And what’s that on his arm?

Tork raised the sleeve on a stick-like arm. It’s a tattoo number, 84117. What’s that for?

Mark shook his head, grimly captivated by the wretched figure. It looks like a mine laying party, he replied slowly. The Krauts were hard up for labor. He shook off the scene. Let the rear echelons figure it out, he snapped. Let’s probe.

With the touch of nursemaids, they eased bayonet points in and out of the earth until Tork’s clinked. They brushed away dirt with their fingertips to gray metal.

Tork exhaled. Anti-tank mine.

Troops and vehicles will use this trail. Radio the mine location to battalion.

Tork took off for the jeep. The burned pig smell floated in. Mark patted his canteen, still bewildered by the dead man. The corpse’s pant cuffs were ragged, its shirt torn, and its skin more parched than he had first noticed. His gut feeling of something imminent flashed repeatedly, and it spooked him. Company commanders believed their instincts or they didn’t last. He had stayed in place since the war’s beginning. Something was coming, but he couldn’t figure it—yet. His gut gnawed as he crept back to the jeep where Tork was having trouble getting into the battalion radio net.

Heavy traffic, sir. It’ll be a minute.

Mark doffed his helmet and pointed with it. There’s a valley up ahead. I’ll check it out. Pick me up at the crest.

In cautious spurts, he humped over logs and mounds of earth to the crest and dropped between two pine trees. The stink was stronger in the Alpine gusts that blew across the valley. He focused his field glasses on a patchwork of fields and thickets below. A pencil-thin road stretched across the valley. He read battlefields like a school primer; this one was easy. Machine guns and artillery were zeroed in on the road; it could be mined; and the Kraut dogfaces who hit Fox Company on the Altmuhl could be in the woods for another ambush. He had to cross that valley.

He rested his forehead on his fists and his eyelids drooped. Two minutes of rest, he needed just two minutes. The ambush flashed back, and tremors rattled his body. Two minutes. He had two hours sleep in the last twenty-four. He pressed his head against his hands until he stopped shaking. He drifted off but snapped his eyes back to the valley. The quick rest, and the sunshine and beauty of Bavaria, shifted his thoughts. The rolling fields and pine-covered hills were farm country. Beautiful.

He slid his finger to his breast pocket that held Adele’s rumpled Dear John letter. He had carried it for two years. He had given her a ring and promised her a life on a Wisconsin dairy farm, but it wasn’t enough. Times were perfect with her in 1938. They were engaged; he had a college degree, an ROTC commission, and was heir to a family farm. An army tour in an unsettled world would be an adventure. Some adventure.

…it has been so long, and Henry asked me to marry him…I accepted… Adele had written.

He jerked at movement to the right! He swung his carbine.

A gray squirrel nibbled an acorn on a pine log. The squirrel looked at him and nibbled again. Mark slumped back down. A rush of warmth overcame him. He envied the frisky rodent its dry fur, its nights of sleep, and its opportunity to lick a wound in the safety of underbrush. It didn’t have to wake up to ambushes, stenches, and ruined futures.

Artillery thumped. He jumped. Machine guns rattled across the valley. He flipped up the glasses and saw puffs of smoke. He swung back to the squirrel. Take care, little guy. Chow down close to your lover and your foxhole in the tree. All hell could break loose here anytime.

The squirrel scampered away. Tork chugged up in the jeep, and Mark ordered speed. They raced down a heavily rutted grade to the valley floor where they hit the smell of burned oil from a gray German tank. The tank slumped down with a blown track, and its main gun slanted toward them.

That Tiger Tank fought yesterday, Tork called over the rushing wind.

Mark noted it. Burned oil and burned pig were a strange mixture.

Artillery smoke billowed up left. Above, two olive drab Mustang fighters strafed the hills ahead. Suddenly, the jeep swerved and bounced. Tork braked hard; but the jeep skidded and dropped dead. Mark slammed into the dash; his helmet hit the floor. The front wheels hung in a shell crater; the right one crunched in a rut.

We’re sitting ducks. Get it out! Mark yelled.

Tork jerked the shift and dropped the clutch. Squealing tires blew up a dust storm.

They can see us for ten miles! Mark fumed.

Tork jammed the gas. The jeep screamed, lifted up an inch, another inch, roared louder, and spun in place. It dropped back. It’s hung up tight, he yelled.

Bull gear! Mark jumped out to push. Ram it into bull gear!

Mark watched over the back as Tork yanked the 4-wheel drive shift. It didn’t move. He double-clutched and yanked. It didn’t budge. He yanked again; the shift moved; it slipped further and engaged. He jammed the gas; Mark butted his shoulder to the jeep. Wheels screeched and exploded a dust ball. They were a hell of a target. Mark dug in his heels. The engine whined; the wheels ground dirt; the jeep pitched, jumped, and popped out. It skewed left; Mark jumped in. Tork swung right, cut onto the shoulder, and shifted back into 2-wheel drive. Mark spit and gasped for air as the jeep straightened on the road.

Whew. Tork swiped his hand across his brow.

Get out of here, Mark snapped, and he cursed the colonel again for putting them on this road. He straightened and looked to the yellow and green fields stretching to distant highlands, and he watched for artillery bursts that would target them.

Captain.

Mark jumped.

Somebody up there, Tork said and pointed, on the right, by the tree line.

Be alert. Mark tapped the spare magazines wrapped around his carbine buttstock.

Tork gripped his M-1 rifle between the seats. A shadowy figure that blended with the thicket pushed a small cart overloaded with clothes and boxes.

Tork lifted his hand from the M-1. It’s a woman, he said in a subdued tone.

An awful place for her, Mark replied.

An artillery round burst to the right rear with shock waves against their backs. Mark glanced back, then to the woman again.

She’s just looking for a safe place, Tork said with a wan smile.

Mark visually undressed her as he had all women since the Dear John letter. Her hips and thighs were a shallow arc under her black clinging skirt. Her legs curved into narrow ankles in a way that stirred him. She would be a pleasure to bed down. Abruptly, his temper flamed at the ambush, the letter, and the colonel. Gun it. Get a move on.

The woman ducked away when they passed. Artillery exploded to the left front.

Off the road! Mark screamed.

Tork plowed the jeep to the right, deep into the thicket, and skidded to a stop in brush between two oak trees. They leaped as a whistle cut the air; a round burst near the road. Mark crawled on his stomach into the bushes and buried his face in his arms by a tree. Another round pounded the thicket; a tree burst would rip them to shreds. He pressed his helmet to his head at an incoming whistle. The explosion rocked the ground; shrapnel clinked on the jeep; tuffs of earth flew into the trees; twigs and dirt dropped on him. He burrowed down and waited, counting. A machine gun fired, one burst, two, three. Silence. Artillery would be done, too. He pulled his long frame from the bushes.

They really had us zeroed, Tork said, crawling around the jeep. I’m glad you’re sharp today, cap’n.

Mark slapped his carbine. That FO bracketed us, front and back, with those first two rounds; and we were moving targets. He beat off twigs and knelt to tie his boot. Those Krauts are still full of fight. We were dead pigeons on the road. He snapped his head up.

The woman, they both said.

Tork lit out for the road. When Mark arrived, Tork knelt over the woman’s body. The shell burst had thrown her inside the treeline, smashed her cart, and scattered her clothes, pictures, and shoes. A frayed white slip dangled from branches above her; a brown shoe lay by her knee. Her head was gashed from the top of her left ear to her eyebrow. The bloody mass was speckled with bone chips.

That chunk of shrapnel was meant for us, Mark said and removed his helmet.

Tork took her slip from the tree. With his big hands and strong arms, he spread the garment across her face and upper body and brushed it flat. They’re not men. They’re not soldiers, he said with large doleful eyes. Have we got a minute, sir?

A minute.

As Tork said a short prayer, Mark’s bitterness vanished. War had taught him that he couldn’t hate a dead person. He brought his helmet to his chest and remembered her innocent fear and her pretty legs.

Tork concluded his prayer…we ask Jesus to plead your case before God, and on that risen day, you’ll be with your loved ones, and you’ll all be together again.

Get the jeep, Mark snapped and flinched as the repugnant stench floated in. We’re not out of this yet, and I want to find out why the colonel put us out here. He pressed the Dear John letter and gazed sadly at the still form of the German woman. He couldn’t suppress his loneliness; for she reminded him it had been over three years since he held a woman he loved. Now he wondered if he would ever again hold a woman he loved.

2

Liese Weissman straggled into captivity under the broiling August sun in a ragged column of five hundred French, Polish, and Jewish women. Aging militia police prodded them with rifles and clubs from the Furstenberg railroad station toward Ravensbruck, the women’s concentration camp. Her dirt-streaked white blouse was clammy from her armpits to her ribs with the sweat of heat and terror. The prisoners hadn’t eaten in three days and were given only a meager water ration. Her strength waned; she flinched when the jittery guards pushed close; and her legs were rubber from the fear of torture. She forced longer strides to keep them from buckling and prayed the dirt road would lead to the end of the transport.

The whistle blew the train’s departure and destroyed her fruitless hope of escape. She shuffled through a patch of shade across an incline with her head down. Suddenly, heavy shouts burst out ahead, and a cold seizure gripped her. Dead ahead was Ravensbruck. Barbed wire with points as vicious as dogs’ teeth topped the eight-foot concrete walls. Despair flooded her with the jarring shock that the machine guns in the towers made her life disposable.

The camp was dreaded. The Nazis turned elegant women into field whores for military brothels and performed surgeries without drugs on others; floggings were carried out at the whims of the SS, Hitler’s elite guard. The French women called Ravensbruck L’Enfer des Femmes, ‘the women’s hell,’ and Liese was an elegant woman.

The police stepped up the pace, and she shuddered as the camp’s double iron gates swung open like the jaws of hell to devour the damned. Tough SS male and female guards in gray-green uniforms, the women in boots and pleated skirts, rushed to take charge with bayonets and straps. Snarling dogs strained on leashes.

Liese stumbled and her black hair flopped down, but she kept her balance. She had been relieved when she was selected for Ravensbruck and not Auschwitz or Treblinka where the new arrivals were gassed. She believed a women’s camp would be less harsh than a labor camp or a killing center. But that thought was dispelled immediately upon learning she would be transported. Her transport began in a rainstorm with a twelve-hour selection in the ghetto of Theresienstadt, which was near Prague. She had limited privileges there because she was a concert violinist and pianist from Dresden, but that status ended in the rainstorm. The women—all of them refined beauties—were designated as field whores, except that the Jews among them were not good enough for the Nazis. They would go to brothels for turncoats in the Baltic States fighting for Germany. Three days in a boxcar on a stifling stop-and-go shuttle transported them to Furstenberg, fifty-five miles north of Berlin.

Quick time, whores. Move!

Whores. Vomit spurted into her throat. Liese was thankful she wasn’t a virgin. Under the grime and filth on her body, she still had her looks at five-feet five and 105 pounds with curved hips and shapely calves and ankles. But her selection sealed one decision. The vomit sank back. If she were shipped out as a whore, she would take her own life.

Vicious shouts inside the camp shot tremors through the column. Liese marched weak-kneed through the gray jaws into a lane of SS bayonets and dogs. Beyond the lane, gaunt women in striped dresses shuffled with shovels and wheelbarrows near long buildings. They gawked like robots with chilling acceptance of the new inmates. The head of the column split near two barracks, and women were forced into both buildings.

An agitated, milling rabble broke out over vile screams that sprang from the barracks. The new prisoners bawled and pushed one another, and their cries spread down the ranks. The column turned into a wailing mob; women floundered out of line and collided with one another. Guards lit into them with straps and rifles to reform the ranks. An Alsatian dog lunged, and the dog’s fangs hooked Liese’s blue skirt as she screeched and fell against the woman behind. The dog shook her skirt, and both women stumbled and sobbed. The hem of her skirt ripped when the dog pulled away. The guard laughed and jabbed her into line with his rifle. The hem of her skirt dragged in the dust.

In a horrifying introduction, an attractive wardress, about nineteen with blond hair and blue eyes, darted at Liese waving her strap. She swung, but Liese ducked. The strap hit the woman behind and knocked her down. The woman tried to rise, but the wardress beat her, and a guard shot her. Liese veered off crying and straight into a guard’s rifle butt that shoved her into line.

At the barracks, the screams paralyzed the prisoners. Women hesitated and guards strapped and butted them. Others fell and were kicked; one was shot. A rifle struck Liese’s ribs, and she bellowed. A howling guard pricked her blouse at her breast with his bayonet.

Shut up! Move! he snarled.

Liese lurched to the door where the cries blasted her face. Her knees locked.

Inside, whore! a guard screamed at her.

She froze. A fist slammed into her back. She flew forward and sprawled onto a long, rough floor. She struggled up on her elbow and gasped in air that was hot and foul from bodies and cigarettes. Screeches and shouts, and—to her horror—naked bodies surrounded her. Straps cracked against flesh, and Liese’s mind disconnected. Blankly, she rose to her hands and knees. Whupp! A strap scorched her back; she screamed and flopped to the floor.

Undress! A woman bellowed over her.

Undress? No! She opened her eyes to a woman’s legs in boots. Trousers and glistening jackboots joined them.

A jackboot flipped her over. You heard Wardress Grinze, An SS man shouted. Strip!

No, no. I can’t. There are men—

Blurred leather streaked to slap her stomach. She screeched. God, it hurt. She grabbed her burning stomach and shed her blouse. The strap cocked above her; she flicked open her belt, and her loose skirt dropped as she rose. Grinze pointed at her shoulders. Liese shoved off her slip straps and it fell to the floor. The SS man drove her with a truncheon to a line at the wall where she saw the ultimate humiliation. No, no, she wailed.

Naked women were thrown onto tables and held on their backs by striped orderlies. Men in white smocks—doctors—extracted gold teeth and probed their body openings for smuggled objects. Flipped onto their stomachs, the probing into their bodies continued.

Vomit shot into Liese’s throat. No, not that, mama, not that.

Mother, mother. The shrill voice cut Liese’s cries short. A naked young girl, twelve or thirteen and crying, broke from the group. Straps flailed at her. She slipped, but kept going to a table where an older woman, plump and lame, was pushed onto the floor. Mother, I’ll help you.

The mother and daughter struggled under straps to a throng by a door where they fell to the floor screaming and struggling. Guards kicked them, and they crawled outside. In seconds, two shots rang out.

Liese twisted to face the wall, but she was spun back by Grinze.

All of it. Grinze’s strap went up.

Liese stripped away her brassiere as the SS man leered. She numbed while he stared at her underpants slipping down. She shrunk and tried to cover herself with her arm and hand, but Grinze and another wardress pinned her to the wall.

This is Irma Grese, Grinze snapped.

Uhh. Liese was shocked silent. It was the blond girl whose strap she had ducked.

Do as we say, pig, Grese said, pushing her strap hard on Liese’s breasts, or I’ll flog these right off your body.

We do with you as we please. Do you understand that? Grinze’s acne-pocked face twisted; she jabbed her folded strap into Liese’s stomach and raved, Do you?

Yes, Liese croaked.

An SS man strutted and shouted, Backs against the wall, feet apart, arms out, fingers spread, palms open. Quick time!

The order rolled again amid cracking straps. Captive women pushed out open hands with spread fingers. Family pictures, personal notes—small treasures—fell to the floor. Striped orderlies rushed over and scooped them up.

No please, it’s the last picture of my children. They’re dead. A short woman clutched a small picture. Irma Grese strapped it out of her hands, and the woman dropped to her knees crying and searching.

Get back in line, Grese yelled and beat her again.

In horror, Liese trembled and stared to the floor until a truncheon propped up her chin. The SS man who had watched her undress grinned as he looked at her full length. Your turn on the table, pretty one. Then we’ll turn you into a whore. He looked her up and down again. Too bad you’re a Jew, good only for those Baltic turncoats, he said sneering.

No, not that, she pleaded and clawed the wall; her soul disintegrated. Not that.

Shut up. He jabbed her ribs.

She buckled over and grabbed her side. No, please.

He flicked his finger, and orderlies dragged her to a table and pinned her on her back. The man in the smock pried her mouth open. No gold. He poked into her ears. He pushed his finger under her lips along her gums and stuck a finger into each nostril. He ran his fingers through her black hair and across her breasts. Finally, he pointed at her legs. Spread them.

No!

Whupp. Her bare stomach flamed, and she shrieked and thrust her back up in defiance. Her ankles were pulled apart. She glared at the doctor’s ruddy face. Never would she forget those sweaty creases, the woolen uniform, and the silver insignia flat on his collar. Never. He thrust his hand up between her legs. She snapped her back into a stiff arc. Never! He forced her thighs apart. Never. He entered her. Never! She wriggled. He probed. Never. She flushed with sweat. Never, never!

She was flung over with her arms pulled across her body below her neck. She cringed as his hand pressed her buttocks. Never. She clenched her teeth; she screamed in silence as he groped then—her mind exploded—he penetrated her and probed. Her face blew out with spit and sweat. Never! she screamed. Never!

Shut up. He slapped her back. Take her.

She was yanked off and pushed to the others, where she cried in the shadows and pounded the wall. Suddenly, the door flew open; sunlight swept inside.

Out. Out. Straps cracked. Run. Run.

She stumbled outside in a throng of naked women. SS men pointed and snickered. She ran with the others, passed between barracks, turned corners and crossed paths. SS men clapped. The women ran toward a far barracks. Nearly there, Liese bumped another prisoner. She staggered and flopped to the ground on her stomach. She pounded her fists. She rolled onto her back and kicked at the sky. Never. I’ll never be naked again! Never! She rolled over and cried in the dirt.

Get her! a woman shrieked.

Liese jerked her head up. Grinze and Grese descended on her in a dead run, their straps cocked for action.

No, please. No more. I can’t take it, Liese screamed. She crawled until she fell to her stomach. The wardresses hovered over her and laughed with straps high.

No. Her voice was dead; she was defeated. She curled up like a fetus with her arm over her face.

#

RAT-A-TAT-TAT-TAT.

Machine-gun fire.

No. No. Liese’s eyelids stuck before they popped open. She propped up on her elbow between two women and panted above the straw mattress. She wasn’t at Ravensbruck now; she was in the Neuenstadt concentration camp in Bavaria, a subcamp of Dachau. The ugly nightmare of her arrival at Ravensbruck nearly three years ago was over again. It wasn’t 1942. It was April 1945.

Her skin still crawled at the image of the man who had probed her and at the naked run and strapping that left her unconscious. She had other nightmares from Auschwitz where she was imprisoned for a year until she arrived at Neuenstadt seven months ago.

The war neared an end, and the Americans were close. But Liese faced immediate death because Jews were marked for execution. The machine-gun fire outside cut down Jewish men; the

Jewish women would follow. Bodies were burned on the pyres, and the smell polluted the camp and the prevailing breezes. In her upper bunk near the back, she gazed into the foul haze in the barracks. Slivers of light that squeezed through cracks of the locked window shutters, along with the dull light from the translucent windows near the roof, cast a deathly aura.

Liese’s barracks, with three rows of double bunks, was smothered in doom. Some women cried; others called for dead family members; a few paced the aisles pleading to God; three argued by the door; the sick lay quietly; the women at peace had died in their bunks.

The machine-gun fire punctured her eardrums like hot needles. She sat up straight and fingered her death warrant, the yellow Star of David on her black shirt. The guns fired. Another batch of men was herded to the execution wall. Her time was running out.

New prisoners told of the American advance. The Russians had liberated Auschwitz three months ago. German tanks and trucks rolled past Neuenstadt in retreat. Dark green airplanes with white American stars flew in the skies. She heard rifle fire now. The Americans closed in, but the SS kept killing prisoners.

Liese wasn’t much to liberate. She curled her fingers around a bony wrist. Starvation had reduced her to less than eighty pounds. Her arms were sticks and her fingers, which had glided over violin strings and piano keys, were pointed claws. Her womanhood—her sensual pleasure for love and passion—was destroyed. She hadn’t menstruated since she left Ravensbruck. Liese was twenty-seven; she felt sixty-seven.

She wasn’t pretty like she had been in early 1942 when she was among seventy-five women first selected for brothels. Eighteen hours they had sat in a circle, their knees straddling the woman ahead. At transport time, she was pulled out and ordered to report back to work. Now she was subhuman trash living in a horse barn. She was branded with purple numbers glistening under the sweat of her forearm, Auschwitz number 61855.

But she had a strong spark of life, and she stoked up hope with memories of mama and papa and her music. She was shy, but she had walked onto the stages of Europe and played her violin flawlessly to packed concert halls. She was pampered, but she survived three concentration camps. The spark of life burned, and she meant to live. She shut out the guns and the whimpering women. She had already considered survival in the same manner she studied a new concerto, note-by-note, measure-by-measure.

The camp was a converted cavalry post from the Great War of 1914-1918 and had two compounds. The prisoners were penned up behind a barrier only bugs and gnats could pass through, sixteen strands of razor point barbed wire stretched a mere inches apart on each side of ten-foot concrete poles. The poles curved inward at the top. Not far above, trigger-happy guards manned machine guns in towers. The north compound was sealed off and always guarded. The main gate was a thirty-foot cage with a separate gate at each end for double checks. Two small billets inside the cage housed vicious dogs. Guards could be bribed, but all she could offer were sexual favors. Never. That left one dreadful choice.

She had been assigned to the hospital when she arrived at the camp. She quickly discovered a ventilation shaft between two walls that rose from a storage bin. She could hide in it, but it would be horrid. She would stand cramped in darkness for hours on narrow cross braces. The heat could be ferocious. Suffocation was a danger, dehydration an eventual certainty. If her camp terrors overwhelmed her, she would scream and be found. If she passed out, she would never be found.

Timing was critical. If she entered too soon and the Americans didn’t come, she would have to crawl back out to the SS. If she delayed entry too long, she would never get there; and she would be marched out to the machine guns. Her biggest risk was being outside while getting to the shaft. The hospital was four barracks away, and all prisoners were locked up. Anyone caught outside was shot on the spot. She brushed the woman on her right. The woman had quit sweating. With the other woman, she stoically helped pull the dead woman from the bunk and drag the corpse to a corner where they left it with three other bodies. Shuffling back, she heard her name.

Liese, cried a woman across the aisle, sliding from her bunk. The woman was Gerta, a rake-thin Jew who had been marched in from the Gross Rosen camp a few weeks ago. She couldn’t cope with this camp and survived only with the help of others.

Get back in your bunk, Liese snapped. Don’t get caught out here.

No, we must try to get out. They’ll kill us. I know you can do something.

No. Liese was shocked. What did Gerta know?

Gerta grabbed her shoulder. Please, they’ll kill us. We must try. I know you’ll try something.

Go back to your bunk, Liese said and jerked away.

But Liese—

Go!

Liese scrambled into her bunk and turned her back. But the conflict chilled her spirit. She understood the fear of death. She also knew the gratitude of her life being saved by another inmate. She had left Auschwitz, weak and sick with high fever, in a cold boxcar. Three women, especially a young one whose blurred face and name she couldn’t remember, cared for her. The young girl gave her water and food and found a blanket to keep her warm. She saved Liese’s life, but they were separated at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp where most of the train’s prisoners were interned. Now Liese wavered with guilt and desperation. She planned an escape that trapped her between the courage of those women and Gerta who certainly would die. But survival dominated, and she forced herself to suppress Gerta’s certain death. The shaft could hold only one. She clenched her fists. I am going to live.

Next was a grisly task—estimate the time needed to kill the Jewish men. She figured and counted on her fingers like a pirate sending prisoners to walk the plank. She concluded that killing the men would be finished in the morning. Tonight she must go to the shaft. That completed her plans. She closed her eyes to rest and conserve energy. She blocked out the guns, and her thoughts drifted to her home.

Six years ago she had been Dresden’s celebrated concert violinist and pianist. Mama was a talented English violist, claimed by death all too soon. They had wonderful times playing together in the Dresden Staatskapelle Orchestra. And papa, before his terrible death in this awful war, was a noted art dealer in the Altstadt, always dignified as host of the receptions for musicians close to mama and her.

Liese gained renown in Germany and the European capitals. She would play a Brahms concerto, bounce back on stage, and launch a powerful encore. She was the young artist with the lightning smile and the compelling dark eyes.

She was also a shy vagabond in cap and slacks. Her cinnamon-tinged, raven locks had flowed when she bustled to the Zwinger to play in the garden courtyard with the adoring street minstrels. Among the Greek-age statuary of nymphs, rulers, and Olympic gods, she belted out her quirky improvised tunes and chords that she couldn’t let loose in concert.

She also hid her shyness playing in the carnivals on the shop-lined medieval streets of the Altstadt. She kicked up her heels in a musical skit as a masked kitten chasing blind mice, and as a captive princess who longed for rescue by her knight. With little coaxing, she did the skit she loved: a provocative pantomime in a sensuous red dress, a weepy musical spoof to Lili Marlene portraying a lonely, camp-following Lili waiting for her soldier lover.

She folded her hands and—

The door crashed open. Liese shot up.

Achtung! Get the filthy Jew women ready for execution. Mix them with the men.

No, Liese gasped. No, not yet.

Stay in place, stay in place! A stone-faced woman bellowed. Guards stomped to the first aisle to turn heads and check tattoos.

Liese crumpled. It couldn’t be too late; but maybe it was. She had to go—now.

Line them up. The command shook the barracks, and Jewish women were thrown down to sit in the aisle with their backs against the bunks.

Nooo. The pathetic squeal rose across the aisle. Gerta was yanked out. Please, don’t kill me.

Shut up. The wardress threw her on the floor. Whimpering with her head down, Gerta crawled to the end of her bunk.

Two SS men rushed to Liese’s bunk. A stocky private spotted her Star of David and jerked her out. He squeezed her wrist in a vise grip behind her back.

It hurts, Liese cried.

Shut up. He wrenched her wrist upward. A pudgy officer in gray-green grabbed her arm. It wasn’t the commandant, Major Trummer. It was Captain Diefer, commander of the camp garrison and ugly in his cruelty.

Auschwitz number 61855, he snapped, looking at her arm. Check the list.

English, the sergeant next to him said. Mischlinge, half breed.

English. Mischlinge. Diefer scoffed. He surveyed her with small suspicious eyes. Not this pig. Name, prisoner.

Liese hesitated. The private rammed her wrist up. Name, Diefer snapped. Prisoner Weissman, she squealed.

Weissman, he said ruminating. Ah yes. I selected you as a field whore, but you were exempted because you were a hospital orderly. How lucky for you. Right? The private wrenched her wrist. Liese cried out and rose on her toes. Yes, yes. You would have been a lousy whore you smelly pig, Diefer mocked. Now, your mother was a British subject. Right? She squirmed to ease her burning shoulder. Yes. Was she ethnic German? From Britain? Saxon heritage, Liese whispered and arched backward. Born in London.

And your father was Jewish. Yes.

Ha. You have two Jewish grandparents. Right Jew? She twisted. The guard jerked her wrist. Right Jew? Diefer screamed. Yes.

Jewish by the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, he boomed and stuck his nose to her face. Are you afraid to die, Jew? She wailed and arched backward. Stupid Jew. Do you want to die? He slapped her. No, no.

His smoky breath fouled her nose; his voice was hard and godlike in condemning her. No escape this time. You’ll die in sixty minutes. He planted his fists on his hips. Do you hear that? Sixty minutes. He marched to another woman.

Get in line. The private threw her down.

Her skirt flared, and she fell against a bunk stud; a jagged tin patch cut her bare buttock. She cried out as she hit the floor and bounced against the studs. Her bruise burned as the machine guns chattered.

Oh my god, sixty minutes to live, she cried.

One hour to get to the hospital.

3

Mark’s gut eased from the artillery barrage as they bounded ahead of their dust cloud into a bomb-shattered village with a heavier smell of burned pig. A chunk of concrete banged the underside of the jeep.

Mighty glad we’re off that road, cap’n Tork’s soft tone belied any fear.

Yeah. Mark nodded as he quickly spotted two things. There had been a hell of a fight for the town, and another buildup was underway. But the order to report to battalion was needless; the buildup had just started.

GI’s hustled like ants in and out of buildings with smashed windows and splintered eaves. They rushed to occupy stone buildings to set up senior headquarters, aid stations, and supply points. Signal teams strung wire on trees and statues. A column of replacements, young men with rolling eyes, slogged past in clean uniforms and carried unblemished M-1s.

At an intersection a stout MP with white letters emblazoned on his helmet held them up while he waved through a convoy of tanks and trucks. Mark hopped out and stretched as his anger fell away. The buildup primed him. His gut buzzed, and his instincts churned. Command took the edge off his fears, and he came alive as a battle loomed. The MP trotted up with a Tommy gun slung on his shoulder and saluted.

We’re looking for Headquarters, Second Battalion, 40th Infantry, corporal, Mark said.

Second of the Fortieth. The MP pointed. Green building up on the left, sir.

They passed a couple dozen ragged German POWs, some sitting with heads down, others smiling.

The smiling ones are glad we got them instead of Ivan, Tork said. I hear those Russkie POW camps are tough.

Like snake pits, I guess, Mark said. He jumped out of the jeep when Tork slipped it between rubble piles. Mark glared across the road, where an old couple picked in the ruins of their home. Tork, just a couple inches shorter, joined him. The woman clutched a picture and broke down. Mark flared cynically. The war broke many families. His was broken before it began.

Cap’n, Tork said pointing up the street, at headquarters, the flag’s at half-staff.

The Stars and Stripes furled in the sunshine. Mark blinked several times as the names of his men who wouldn’t return rolled before the colors. He slung his carbine. Somebody big got killed, he snapped. I’ll see what the old man wants.

Maybe he’ll say we’ll be home by the Fourth of July, Tork mused with a grin.

Behind Mark’s smile swelled the memory of the engagement party for Adele and him on the Fourth of July in 1938. It still hurt. You’re a dreamer, Tork, he said absently.

Dreaming’s a blessing for the soul, sir.

#

Mark skipped down cement steps into a dingy basement. A gasoline odor drifted from a lantern on a table. Light seeped through cracked windows at ground level on the far wall where an officer with steel rimmed glasses and closely cropped thick sandy hair pored over a map at a field desk. Mark dropped his helmet on a chair. The officer flashed a smile.

Mark. He grinned and tried to hurry with a limp. He was a solid six-foot captain with muscular shoulders. A blue and silver Combat Infantry Badge (CIB) was pinned above his left shirt pocket.

Good to see you, Ray, Mark said smiling warmly. Damn good to see you.

You bet it is, buddy. Am I glad you’re here. He clasped Mark’s arms.

Mark trusted Ray Schwartz, a straight shooting regular from Virginia Military Institute (VMI) where he earned three letters at right end. He had fought next to Mark commanding Easy Company from Normandy to the Rhine River where he was hit by sniper fire. He refused evacuation and was appointed assistant battalion operations officer. Neither mentioned that they were the only two captains left in the battalion who landed at Normandy.

Yeah. Mark blew through tight lips. And how’s the leg?

I’m off the cane most of the time.

Did you get my reports on the Altmuhl River ambush and the mine location? Mark said. He thrust a cigarette to his mouth.

Ray extended his lighter. I got them.

Mark stomped off ranting. How in hell did the Krauts get to the Altmuhl? They machine-gunned us in the water. Intelligence said it was clear. He slapped a chair. My third platoon has twelve live bodies left. Tell me how the Krauts got—

I don’t know. Ray cut him short and limped sullenly to the coffee pot. He had briefed Mark on the intelligence report.

Mark batted his canteen. "Tork lugged a fifty caliber machine gun up a hill on his knees