So....My Tank Corps in Prussia...

[Luftman129]

Splendid, absolutely goddanged splendid as we say in Texas. Tom, I'm not the son of the foreign minister, if anything I'm the distant nephew and I absolutely despise his taking the "von" title for his own political means.

Thanks,
Chris aka:Lt. z. S. Joachim von Ribbentrop

[Tom Houlihan]

My bad!

[Commissar D, the Evil]

The Square

General Rosselsprung called his commanders in that very same morning, in an attempt to understand the events of the preceding nights and a last attempt to determine the town’s future.
A strange sight greeted the fighting commanders as they each arrived singly at the town square. For the first time since the battle began, the very center of Bad Frostberg was teaming with life. Thousands of people gathered there in the early morning, despite the frost and the danger. They were mostly civilians, but some were wounded soldiers and others, a tiny minority, were soldiers in arms. Under the watchful eyes of the “Chain Dogs”, none were prepared to speak their minds, but they gathered in hopeless silence despite this. Even the impact of a stray Russian shell on the town square didn’t move the crowd much past the corpses it left in its wake. The presence of death and its sheer randomness no longer frightened them. It had become, like the fresh corpses, part of the landscape of their lives.
Only one old woman, crippled and seated at the entrance to the General’s Headquarters, her cane resting on her lap, dared to speak that single word which entranced them all. She grabbed at the hem of S.S. Standartenfuhrer Von Bellow’s full length black leather coat and, pulling at it with all of her meager strength, stopped him, only to say, hoarsely, one word, “Surrender!”
“Surrender.” At once the word was repeated by others in the crowd, despite the scowling feldpolitzei. Von Bellow pulled himself free with an angry glance at the woman and rushed into the General’s headquarters, while the feldpolitzei used rifle butts and curses to try to break up the crowd.

General Rosselsprung remained unaware of this confrontation during the meeting, but his plan, his decision, was already set by the reports he read of last night’s events.

“Defeatist malingering scum!” Von Bellow sputtered as he entered the conference room. “They dare call themselves Germans—if they’re real Germans, Goddamn it, let them learn how to fight!!!” He sat down heavily at the table, his tirade over, but one of his hands was shaking noticeably.

As usual, Gruber began the briefing, speaking somewhat abstractly about the losses they had suffered that night. After a minute or two, he began to cough. This developed into a coughing spell which he couldn’t stop. General Rosselsprung comforted him, offering a cup of water and taking away his blackboard pointer with his other hand. Colonel Gruber drank the water but continued to cough uncontrollably; he finally sat down at the table as Rosselsprung took over the briefing.

“I think that the Colonel simply meant to say that we can’t replace last night’s losses, nor can we endure another such attack”, he said. “The answer to this problem seems obvious to me.”
At this point, both Von Bellow and Von Kessel, as good S.S. men, instantly sprang to their feet.

“Surrender is most strictly forbidden by the Fuhrerbefehl!” Von Bellow shouted across the table as he bolted to his feet. .
“I will blow my brains out before I surrender!” Von Kessel jumped up and declared just as loudly.
“And who here has said a single word about surrendering?” General Rosselsprung shouted back, attempting to assert his authority before everything broke down. “I’m a General of the Whermacht, I do not surrender an inch or a yard!!!”
That declaration silenced the S.S for the moment.
“On the other hand”, Rosselsprung quickly continued, “We all know what happens when the Russians break into this place—every woman between the age of seven and seventy will be raped and every man and boy will be packed off to Siberia—that’s why we’re fighting this war in the first place!!!”
Von Bellow stared at the table.
“I thought we were fighting to stop them from doing to us what we’ve been doing to them for the past four years”, Rath commented sharply.
Rosselsprung ignored him although his words earned some ugly stares from Von Bellow and Von Kessel.
“So we have to ask ourselves, how much can we save for Germany, should we fall?” Rosselsprung posed the question. By this time, Rosselsprung’s reasoned words and even tone had established a certain moral authority over the officers that prevented any objections to continuing the discussion.
Gruber had to leave the room. He returned after a few minutes, once he had regained control over himself.

[Prit]

More! More!

[Commissar D, the Evil]

Prit, my friend, you'll like this first little part, I owe it all to you..... )

BURIAL CONFERENCES:

When Gruber returned to the conference, he brought with him a bottle of clear liquid and sat it on the desk in front of him. Rosselsprung continued to brief the assembled officers on exactly how doomed they all were, not sparing them any detail or glossing over any of the many negative facts. Perhaps it was because his observations were so grim, as the minutes wore on, more and more of the officers began to stare at the unopened bottle in front of Gruber.
Finally, realizing that more of them were looking at the bottle than were at him, Rosselsprung flung down the pointer in frustration. “Well go ahead then, if you need that “cough syrup”, please drink it so we can continue with this briefing!”
Gruber opened the bottle and poured a few drops into a tin cup. Then, unexpectedly, he reached into his tunic, withdrew a match, lit it and tossed it into the cup. With a muffled “whompf”, the liquid blazed up and burned itself away.
“Potato spirits.” Gruber explained. “There’s a distillery in town. I’ve discussed this with the mechanics; we can use this to add to our petrol supplies. The engines may run hot, but with the right adjustments to the vehicles’ carburetors, it makes a very useful fuel supplement.”
“Congratulations Herr Gruber.” Rath said cynically, “You may have just invented the means to the happiest mass slaughter in history.” Rath wasn’t laughing when he said it, But Von Bellow and Von Kessel certainly laughed after it was said.
“We need it for mobility”, Gruber countered.
“Mobility?” Von Bellow stopped laughing. “To go where and do what? To go North—I don’t think so! To go South or East? Mobility to go where? Or perhaps you’re referring to those fairytale reports of an idyllic, untouched Germany somewhere to the West?”
“Gentlemen! Gentlemen!” Rosselsprung intervened sternly, “This is not helpful!”

The conference went on for several more hours, without achieving agreement on a much of anything, except for the bleakness of the overall picture.


Any death in combat produces a swirl of emotions amongst the survivors and especially within the hearts of the friends of the fallen. Often those sentiments remain unspoken, waiting only for the spark, like Gruber’s match, to ignite them.
Hans had been Ulrich’s gunner for two years, in one car or another and they had grown close in the bonds of trust and mutual reliance. He had also been a particularly good friend of Dietrich, the driver. Now his body lay in the stark solitude of death, wrapped in a shelter half on the snow, with only his boots showing.
The two cars were parked next to each other as a portion of the crews made repairs and the others dug the grave. Tom and Ulrich stood next to each other, their attention focused on the digging.
Dieter put all of his strength into one swing of a pick-axe at the unyielding earth. But the blade rebounded on him just as hard as the force he put into the swing. He looked at the tip of the tool and saw that the frozen ground had blunted it.
“God Damn it!” Dieter cursed and hurtled himself at the ground, scooping up a few bits of soil. “Why don’t we just leave him peacefully on the snow, at this rate the wolves are going to get at him anyway!” He stood back up and waived a fist full of dirt impotently at Ulrich.
“A man as good as him deserves a coffin.” Erik, the radio-operator observed, tossing his shovel aside. A half hour of digging and they had only managed to strip away the snow and an inch or two of the stubborn soil beneath it. “I wouldn’t bury my house cat in my own back yard without putting him into a box of some kind.” Erik complained bitterly.
They were all veterans and none of them squeamish. What they were, was tired of the long patrol and immensely angry at their friend’s death.
Ulrich looked over at his men who were sweating in the frigid air from their fruitless assault against the steel-hard ground. “I’m getting really sick of this bloody forest and these bloody trees,” he said.

Sam leaped down from the Puma’s turret and reported to Tom, “Fuels okay, three quarters of a tank, main gun's fine as well, but we’re real low on ammunition for it, sir, and the long range radio is busted up. The shell might have hit the turret, but the impact knocked it loose from its mounting. I can’t fix it.”
“What’s your ammunition status?” Tom asked Ulrich, who replied absently, “enough to run with, not nearly enough for a serious fight.”
Tom leaned back against the Puma. The Shadow emerged from its depths, a look of anticipation on his face.
“Well,” Tom mused, “we haven’t heard anything from Division about our last reports. And we’ve been saying that the Western approach to the city is weakly guarded. Perhaps now it’s time that we prove it. “What do you say to a bit of R&R in Bad Frostberg?”
Ulrich nodded and the others quietly agreed. It was one of those moments when men who had spent a long time together in combat found themselves silently arriving at the same conclusion. It only took Tom to put a voice to it and the tension slowly evaporated.
“Dieter, please secure Han’s body to the engine deck,” Ulrich said, “we’ll find plenty of graveyards in Bad Frostberg—and a decent coffin, even if we have to make one ourselves.”
“Yes sir”, Dieter replied with some satisfaction, only to hang his head as he glanced towards the corpse of his friend. “Let’s see to it that he steps out in style.”

Phlyo was on watch in his Panther when he saw the two armored cars emerge from a thicket. A Nazi battle flag and its spidery swastika was draped over the whitewashed bows of each one. Armored car crews kept these flags packed aboard mostly for air identification purposes-- although that was hardly important in 1945—but Tom wasn’t taking any chances in passing through the German main line. The groups of soldiers following in their wake quickly put Phylo at ease, but Tom and Ulrich found themselves shouting at the men, “Get back to your positions, there’s nothing behind us except the Russkies!”
For anyone to mistake the two battered armored cars, carrying the body of one of their crew men, as the advance guard of a rescue party would have been a cause for great amusement, if it weren’t so pathetic, Tom thought to himself.
Phylo quickly radioed off a report to Rosselsprung's headquarters.

Picking up speed, the cars drove through the rail yard. Tom and Ulrich agreed to split up and meet back there at a specific time, as Tom wanted to report to the Fortress Commander and Ulrich and crew had there own mission to accomplish for Hans.

[Commissar D, the Evil]

And this one's for Brother Tom...and no, the Commissar did not write any portion of this that sounds like an Irishman mangling two languages at once....)

A Skirmish in the Store Room of Hell

Being an Irishman in the service of Whermacht, Tom had always prided himself, whether through genetics or culture, as possessing the imagination of any two average Germans combined. But nothing in his wildest dreams had quite prepared him for the devastation of Bad Frostberg. The fact that anyone was still willing to fight for it was, to him, a tribute to German stubbornness. That anyone still lived in its ruins, was a tribute to the German instinct for self-survival.
His crew was equally awed and hung out of the hatches and gaped, except for the Shadow, as they made their way to headquarters. Sam knew very well how the Germans felt about every inch of the Sacred Soil of The Fatherland, but he couldn’t resist a crack. “Kind adds entirely new meaning to the phrase, “God Gave This Land To Me”, doesn’t it?”

Minutes later, Tom was deep underground, being debriefed by Rosselsprung and Gruber, who received his report with great satisfaction. Tom gave them every bit of information that he had, ending the presentation with the state of his two armored cars and his rationale for reporting directly to the Fortress Commander instead of remaining on station.

Rosselsprung kept looking at his, certain that they had met before, but the war had thrown up some many waves of names and faces, only to see them just as quickly receded in time…washed away…

Tom ended his portion of the discussion by simply asking “Do you have any orders for me sir?”

Gruber got to his feet and shook Tom’s hand effusively. “No one could have blamed you if you had simply returned to base. Your actions and that of your crews have simply been…stunningly courageous in the last weeks.” Gruber forced two small black boxes into his hand. One of those is for you, the other is for Urich, the equally brave commander of the other armored car. The appropriate notations to your records will be transmitted immediately to Division.” Gruber was bursting with enthusiasm and continued talking, even as Tom wondered what was in the two boxes.

“A Funktechniker will install a new radio in your car immediately! Then take it to the rail yard and find a Leutnant zur See Ribbentrop, he should have all the ammunition you need. “Gruber bent over and hastily wrote out the appropriate order. “After that, I want you and your men to scout here, and report directly to this command.“ Gruber drew a circle on the blackboard, Tom made a quick, precise mental note of it. “Remember, you are to report directly to this headquarters—don’t waste time with Division, this is information vital to us. Once you’ve accomplished this, you will receive new orders from us. How long do you think you’ll need?”

“Forty-eight hours”, Tom ventured.

Gruber looked at Rosselsprung, who nodded. “Very well then, you have it—but that’s all. As you can see, our position here is precarious.”
Tom would have used a more expressive word than “precarious”. But he saluted and clicked his heels, happy to get back above ground as quickly as possible.

They left the headquarters area as soon as the Funktechniker installed the new radio. Tom stowed the two small boxes in the turret and forgot about them as he thought of the new mission. Forty-eight hours was a short time, he had deliberately given himself some leeway, he knew, but he could still worry about what might or might not occur on the way. It was all a matter of imagination.

Ulrich and his crew accomplished there mission as well, although not without some hassle. Bad Frostberg had an extreme shortage of coffins. So The crew built him one, out of wood from a destroyed grand piano. Good finished wood. And they found a graveyard behind a church overflowing with refugees. The ground was still frozen, but a well-aimed bribe procured both a pioneer and just the right charge of explosives to blow open a suitable grave. No one in the city even noticed the explosion.

Few words were said, but they procured a kindly-looking priest to say them. Quietly, they filled the hole in and erected a small wooden cross with his name carved into it. The left having done right by their kamerad—he had “stepped out” in as much style as possible under the circumstances.

They joined Tom back at the rail yard, located the ammunition storehouse for Erika and began to loading as much fuel and ammo as they could get their hands on. As they were loading, a Beamte approached them. They can see that he is an Intendant, from what was now not much more than a Munitions Verwaltungs Kompanie. Not that they really cared, until he began to berate them.

“You men are not authorized that amount of ammunition. You are only authorized the basic load for your vehicles. You will have to replace that where you found it!”

“As you were, Lads. Pack as much as you can in both vehicles. Pay him no nivver-mind.”

At the sound of Tom slipping into his brogue, The Shadow pulled his collar up and his hat down, and slid down into the turret. No one could see the smirk on his face. Frodo looked almost as confused as Ulrich and his men. Sam simply sat down on an up-ended ammo crate and packed his pipe. A grin spread across his face as if he’d just found a new stash of Poteen.

The Intendant bristled. “Do you know who I am?”

“Not a bit of it,” Tom replied. “And to save ye the trouble of askin’, I’m not much caring, either. Right now, I don’ care if yer Eamon de-feckin’ Valera. We’ve Russians to tend to, and yer in me way!”

“I am Intendant Voss, senior Commissary officer in Bad Frostberg. I rank as an Oberst. You are an, er, Unteroffizier in the Waffen-SS. When last I checked, Obersts outrank Unteroffizieren.”

Tom tipped his hat back and lit one of his ever-dwindling supply of cigarettes as he eyed the man. “Well, yer after having the partial right uv it, ye are. You’ll be wearing the uniform of an Intendant, sure enough. A foin upstandin’ Sturmscharfuehrer as meself would be showing proper respect to the uniform. You, on the other hand, are a different story, ye trumped up stockboy!”

“Stockboy,” Voss spluttered! “I am a decorated officer in the Heer! I…”

“Dikkorated is it now? With yer KVK? I see nary a sword on it, which means ye got it fer countin’ boxes in a meritorious manner, which probably means ye did it nae havin’ ta take off yer shoes! Sure and if it had a couple o’ swords emblazoned on it, I might be after paying ye some mind! But you, ye wouldn’t know combat if’n it hopped in yer lap, though if ye give it a few more days, ye might just get the chance!

As fer yer rank, yer an assimilated Oberst. Well, let me tell ye, boyo, we’re not in any of yer Kasernes now. We’re surrounded by the front! Those aren’t assimilated Ivans runnin’ around out there, and we can’t be shootin’ at ‘em with assimilated bullets! On three quarters of yer perimeter, if’n ye even know what that is, ‘tis me and Ulrich and our lads that’ll be all that stands between you, yer KVK ohne Schwerten, and a Guards Tank Division! Now, the way I see it, ye have two choices!

Yer best choice is to shut yer gob, ye pompous git, and let us get on with winnin’ th’ war. Yer second choice,” he said, as he slowly unsnapped the flap on his holster, “ would be ta try and keep me lads from loadin’ as much ammunition, food and fuel as they can. And tobacco, too, if they can find wherever ye’ve hid it! We’re not in yer pappy’s grocery now, ye jackass! We’re at war, surrounded by more Russkies than even you could count, and I could give a @#% less whether or not yer ledgers add up right at the end of the war!”

At that moment, the Intendant snapped to attention. Slowly, the crews of the Panzerspaehwagens also came, more or less, to attention. Tom kept his eyes on the Intendant, but took his hand off the pistol as a hand gently closed around his wrist.

“Steady man.” The voice got only slightly louder, addressing the Beamte. “Voss, carry on with your duties. Leave these men to theirs.”

“But Sir! They are not…”

“Enough. I’ll tend to the situation Voss. I believe as Festungs Kommandeur, I have the authority to authorize ammunition issue in excess of your tables. That will be all.”

Tom turned, and saluted the General. “Zu Befehl, Herr General!”

Rosselsprung regarded him with a bemused air. “Not that I think he would have responded differently, but he probably would have understood you better had you delivered your tirade in more German than English, if that’s what that was. I do believe that’s not the first time I’ve heard anyone dressed down in such a mix of German and Irish.”

”Sir, we’ve known each other a while. You may not remember, Sir, but if ye be checkin’ you’ll know I’ll do my job as best I can, and me lads as well…”

“Yes, just as he was trying to do his job, as officious as he might have been. He too has responsibilities. Granted, this is probably not the best time to be worried about inventory.”

“General, I don’t need any damned Ettapönschwein telling me how to fight Russians. They die just as well as the Poms, but I need bullets to do it. You’ve heard my report. I could take four authorized ammunition allotments, and still have Ivans left when I ran out. I’ll be damned if I’ll risk my boys, or Ulrich’s, or the rest of your poor damned Festung because that self-important, arrogant feckin’ jumped up stockist is worried about his damned paperwork. How many munitions dumps have we had to destroy to keep Ivan from getting his dirty meathooks on ‘em? How many tons of food have we poured precious fuel on to keep it from getting in Ivan’s belly? More than you or I know, General! Where was that officious prick then? Hiding in some rear-echelon Heldenkellar with his feckin’ clipboard counting cases of champagne for some feckin’ general no doubt. No offense.”

“None taken, Tom. Are you finished?” Rosselsprung handed Tom a fresh, unopened pack of cigarettes. “These were to be for a Leutnant Jager’s MG crews, but I believe they’ll have a better chance of getting more tomorrow, as they’re a shade closer to them than you’ll be. As soon as you’re finished loading all that ammunition, and anything else you can strap, tie, or jam into any empty space on those cars, I need you back out there. As much as we can use it in the city, I fear the odds will be even longer where you’re going to be. We rear-echelon types will have to find a way to deal with it.”

At that, Tom’s face flushed. Drawing himself to a position of attention straight off an SS recruiting poster, he stammered “Sir, you know I didn’t mean you! You aren’t…”

Rosselsprung cut him off. “That will be all, Sturmscharfuehrer. You have your orders. I only hope Saint Patrick deigns to ride with you for the next few days. You could use him and a few of those, what do you Irish call them? Shamrocks?” He turned, gazing at each of his Panzer Aufklaerungsmaener. “God be with you, men! Good luck.” He reached over and re-snapped Tom’s holster, then shook his hand. In what could only generously be called a brogue, with a heavy German accent, he said to Tom in English, “Watch yer arse, Boyo!” Then he winked, turned, and walked back into the rubble that was Bad Frostberg.

Sam tapped out his pipe and stood next to Tom. He could feel the chagrin in his mate as they watched the General disappear. “Tom, me boyo, ye kin be abrasive, yer sense o’ humour is fecked seven ways ta Sunday, and some days ye kin be a right bastard. But speakin’ from personal experience, I think the Big Man woulda liked havin’ ye fight alongside him.”

Tom took a smoke for himself, and handed the pack to Sam. "Thanks, chum. Now help them finishing with loading, while I figger out how we're gonna get out of here, and get somewhere safe. Jayzus, but isn't it a shame when we're safer headed towards the Russians?"

Rosselsprung chuckled to himself as he left. He had followed because his memory had, at last, placed the Irishman from a battle long ago. Although he gave only the barest hint of it now, it was good to see an old kamerad again, even if rank prevented any kind of reunion beyond the gift of a pack of cigarettes.

Now, if he could only find that damned Leutnant Ribbentrop.

[AAA]

Excellent, it just gets better. And those cute little tehnical/historical accuracies Get a publisher DCC, take out the forum in-jokes and you got 3/4 of a kick-ass paperback here already. Even with some of the forum wierdness (Irish panzer troops etc), its kind of Tim Powers secret history amusing.

Shee-it, I just saw a Sven Hassel book, Latvian translation, in the history section of my local bookstore Paint me purple and f*** me dead thats embarrassing. If that waanabe Hassel can get his tryhard ass published in 40 languages, you got a future in fiction David.

[Commissar D, the Evil]

Sven Hassle as History?

Life gets weirder and weirder AAA......

Hey, I've got my brothers here, so who needs a publisher? Besides, I just want to live long enough to finish this friggin' Tale. By the way, Tom is solely responsible for the historical accuracy of the last section "Skirmish in the Store Room of Hell".

Bestens,
David

[Luftman129]

Wow, simply amazing!

Thanks,
Chris aka:Lt. z.S. Joachim von Ribbentrop

[Commissar D, the Evil]

Out of Town Again:

Tom briefed Ulrich about the new mission over the proverbial last cigarette upwind of the hospital. While doing so, he handed him one of the small black presentation boxes from Gruber. “The Colonel said to give you this.”
“Oh and what is it” Ulrich was already skeptical.
“I don’t know, some kind of small token of h.q.’s affection, I think.”
Ulrich tucked it, still unopened the box his coat pocket. “They’re all in cloud-cuckoo land here.”
“Yeah, noticed that.”
“Not a good place at all for R&R. Do you know what the Priest said to me when I asked him to say something at Han’s grave?
Tom shook his head.
“He asked me “why”? Can you imagine a priest asking a man why he’d want something said over the grave of a dead kamerad? And the church was full of Germans—do you think even one of them came out to see a German soldier on his way to heaven? Not one. It was just me, the idiot Priest and my men. We had to lower the coffin into the grave by ourselves. Arseholes!” The anger in his voice choked it off suddenly. Finally, after he regained his power of speech, he stared directly at Tom. “Why?” He snorted disrespectfully. “Can you imagine a Priest actually asking me “why”?
“In this place--yes actually, I can imagine it.” Tom replied, while carefully avoiding his stare. “Ready to leave?”
A few weeks in the field a cold cramped car, his freezing arse riding on a small leather seat and sleeping at night on the snow—all of these seemed infinitely preferable choices to Ulrich, compared to remaining in this city of unappreciated burials and Priests who were unable to answer their own questions.


Slipping back through the Russian ring proved to be ridiculously easy—scarily easy, as the Russian positions were spaced so far apart they couldn’t possible support each other, much less interdict a dedicated scouting party--and Tom duly, if uneasily, reported this to the General’s headquarters.
With nothing obviously positioned to stop them, the two armored sped towards their destination. Tom knew that every moment of delay would be bad for whatever hopes Rosselsprung placed in the mission, so he was determined to get it done as swiftly as possible.

[Commissar D, the Evil]

Teachers:

The day ranked as one of the quietest since the battle began. The Soviets were obviously still digesting their advances, however minor they looked on a map and however threatening they wer ion reality to Bad Friostberg's continued existence.

The German civilians use this time to stock up on essentials, as much as their ration cards and distribution centers might allow. The German soldiers simply either fell asleep on their feet or in their shelters or did what most soldiers did durig a lull—look for food and liquor.
W.F. had other plans. He took Jahn deeper into the city and tried to give him some instruction on the subtleties of being a sniper. This didn’t involve any actual shooting. Bullets were too scarce to waste, but much of a sniper’s time involves the little things that would keep a man alive, like finding adequate cover, setting up a perfect “hide” and pointing out the best spots an enemy sniper would set up in. For those lessons, the city was perfect, especially on a quiet day.
Jahn absorbed what he could, although much of what W.F. offered could only be appreciated by doing it at the peril of risking one’s life. Still, W.F. taught him more things that would safe his life than would put it in jeopardy, as W.F. was a wily old hare who had survived the three years on the Ostfront that killed the most German soldiers. And besides, he was almost fun to be with, as W.F. showed in his relaxation, that rare humorous side of himself. This might involve pointing out what a great target the local Speiss’s huge backside was, but usually it was slightly more thoughtful.
A crow flew over the block and W.F. aimed his rifle mockingly at it. “And why is a crow like a Russian Jabo?”
“Because if you don’t hit it first it’ll try to s**t on you?” Jahn guessed.
Pretending to be impressed, W.F. put the rifle down. “And what’s the best way to be rid of them?”
“A head shot.” Jahn answered without hesitation.
“Nope! Problem with crows is that they don’t always fly alone. Better to hide and wait for them to see a scarecrow.” W.F. pointed at a 20mm flakvierling unlimbered in the street. "Any place close too one of those---but not too close--probably won’t attract any but the bravest crow." As teachers go, W.F. was very good, but again, not quite as good as hard reality.

Ursula wandered away from the chaos and squalor of the hospital, secure in her perfect German and pilfered nurses’ uniform. Hundreds of men knew her on sight by then and many of them owed their lives to her, so her physical safety, even amongst the roughness of soldiers was not something she feared for deep in her heart. It was enough, for once, that she was able to wander freely, as freely as any German in the besieged town. She wasn’t seeking anything obvious, as her food, shelter and clothing were guaranteed by the hospital. Only her future hung in the balance and that wasn’t a minor thing indeed. That thought alone both haunted and scared her.

However intently she had hacked her niche from the stone that was German society, the Soviets were fast chopping away at her security. So, like Moshe, although in what she considered to be a much less pathetic, she had to decide exactly what course her life would take before it ended—assuming in her optimism that she indeed had some say over her ending. She had been perfectly happy as an object in Doktor Krollspell’s orbit, but still had no way of telling when the light of his own sun might set. As much as she admired him for his essential decency and unfailing self-sacrifice, she knew what the Soviets might do to him and his hospital if they ever captured it.
The streets seemed the only way to escape from this dilemma, however temporarily. And she walked for hours, would indeed have walked until nightfall forced her back. But she came upon, instead of the setting of the one sun in her life, the long shadow of a lamppost. Looking up forced her to look down quickly again, before she could evenly restore her gaze to its horribly ugly message.
Even frozen and long days dead, she recognized the face and body of her only true friend, Czimar, hanging from it. The sign on his chest read “I was a Polish Saboteur”.

What it really meant, although she couldn’t know, however accurately she might guess, was that the feldpolizei had captured him stealing bread and duly hung him for that crime.

For some unfathomable reason, perhaps due in part to the excess of horrors she had absorbed during her stay at the hospital, she couldn’t bring herself at the time to spare a tear for the lifelessly hanging hunk of frozen meat. His eyes—its’ eyes--stared blankly, like the eyes of a dead fish, down upon her misery. Those very same eyes that once belonged to her only and dearest friend, when she was still just a house-slave to the Brandts. That single observation broke her heart more than anything.

As quickly as she could after she recovered from the shock of the sight, she turned on her heels and walked quickly away, lest someone might connect her to the executed Pole. But, the lesson of his death stuck in her painfully, like a huge and inextricable wooden splinter piercing her still-evolving young soul. When she reached the hospital, she flung herself on to the bed in the sterile cell that served as her room and began to sob. Slowly, as the memories decompressed and unfolded themselves inside of her, she worked herself up into a state of uncontrollable crying and screaming.

Doktor Krollspell heard her from the wards below and rushed up to her room. She didn’t recognize him in her grief, indeed, she wouldn’t have recognized any German, however kind he might have been.

After some soul-searching and much contemplation, the Doktor injected her with one of the last hypodermics of morphine, so great was her torment and so greatly he felt it. He stayed besides her as she fell into a fitful sleep, leaving only when his conscience couldn’t stand the sounds of others screaming.



Well into the following day, the radio call from Tom came in, a full twenty-four hours earlier than expected. Colonel Gruber was elated, but somewhat skeptical. His doubts were only relieved when Tom gave him a detailed, on-the-spot, description of the most hidden monuments in the town—a town that Gruber was well familiar with from his pre-war travels. Satisfied that the report was genuine, the IA rushed it to General Rosselsprung, the only man alive with the authority and means to act on the new information. He, in turn, summoned his commanders immediately, careful to not let this last opportunity pass.

[Me-109 Jagdfleiger]

Simply amazing
Jahn

[Tom Houlihan]

David, as long as I've "known" you, as many times as we've chatted on the phone, I never cease to be amazed at what you can do with a Tale.

For the record, I've saved and archived this Tale to the current point. It's a long one, too!!!

Now, I have to see about some marketing research.

[Klaus_Arzt]

It’s great, stupendous, spellbinding, thrilling – yeah that’s a real war!!!

[M.H.]

It's alive! It's alive!