Fleeing the Children's Crusade

CHAPTER ONE


I just wanted to run away, it would have been easier, but I was stuck with what came to most boys who made it past sixteen: gray uniforms, steel helmets, an obligation to fulfill. Still I ran for another purpose and under orders, not the same as running away. For away lay an unknown place, a fleeing from manhood, leaving everything behind to do a thing no one had done before. I knew the fallibility of our Führer, and the futility of being better than everyone else, but was afraid to act upon my longing to escape. I could not deny that the Führer was my father, a forebear demanding obedience. I soon became disheartened with the same doors everyone took to enter into quarters overseen by him. I knew what an open window late at night meant if I could just leap out of it fast enough before being caught. The outside did smell much sweeter. Despite the strain of his false teachings, my paternal father still found room to frolic in my thoughts. He mocked our attempts to please our Führer and let me live in a reverie of boyhood memories, until one day in generosity, he showed me the way of escape from his house.

It was Germany in 1944, and autumn, although it seemed too muddy and wet to give hint upon this worse of deadening seasons. The muck lay frozen everywhere: upon rocks, blanketing bases of pines like slops from an overflowing latrine. Its stench rose with a stinky and asphyxiating nature, made worse from festering under the sun, and as we ran upon it, our sergeant, Lessing, worsened our travails by forcing us to take it in haste.

"Garbage! You're all garbage!" he shouted as he ran ahead. "I am not your youth instructor, you bastards. Some of you think your youth instructor is still here to clean your dirty shoes, but he's not. Stop your childish games. No more, I tell you. Enough nonsense!"

I did not listen, being an ignorant soldier who had just passed my seventeenth birthday. Besides, Hitlerjugend, joining the Waffen SS, were not meant to think but to do, and I was busy obeying instinct. We wore gray tunics and trousers of such coarse fibers charges sprang amongst hairs on my legs. Each shift of a pant leg sent a bolt of lightning up from the ground into my crotch, the pain made even worse by the weight of boots, kept at a cant above my head, their laces dangling, but the soles at such a tilt towards the sky they proved abidance to Lessing's punishment.

"Come on you bastards!" Lessing cried.

"Ja Oberscharführer!" we replied.

"Der Führer raises soldiers, not gasping swine.'' He thrust himself into a thicket, bending branches in his charge, and like a whip, they lashed back at soldiers behind him.

Of course, Hermann ran behind us, beaten by shame for his failure to spit shine boots. He could not help himself, could not even put up a fight against a child. He looked small and frail, except for his hearty ears. Some of the boys taunted him with cries of, ``untermenschen'', or underman, for his impudence and physical fallacies, others made a dash next to him to flick his lobes. He screamed in agony after each flick.

"Come on, Hermann. Schnell! Schnell! Schnell!" Lessing yelled.

Lessing's bulging arms swung for a tree limb. He tore off a branch. Below the bill of his steel helmet, his blue eyes darted about above cheeks of tight pink skin.

"Don't fall behind, Hermann!" he shouted. "Or you'll have me at your heels!"

"Come on, Hermann," I blurted, in an attempt to show sympathy for him. "Come on."

"Do you need help?" asked another boy. Hermann gasped, yet, in response to my chants of encouragement, he never gave a sign of faltering his pace.

``Hermann you can do this, just keep up with me,'' I said to him.

Still, he fell back, slowed down by exhaustion. Lessing saw him lag and a smile curled from his lips. We knew it was not good to see that smile.

"Achtung!" he ordered.

We snapped to attention on the muddy trail under shade of a spruce. Our mouths agape, we savored each quick breath.

"Shut your panting faces!'' Lessing snarled. "You sicken me. All of you. You're not the select few we need against Ivan. You're just a bunch of babies who still need a stick to your behinds. Run in place, damn you! Run in place, you swines of muck! And, Hermann..."

Our noses snorted out clouds, powerful puffs, as the legs below went up and down in place, quick to match each other's stomp against the mud. Filth thrown by the movement of our numb feet sent clods of earth into the air; flung high, they hit the bottoms of boots hanging above in our aching hands.

"Hermann,'' Lessing roared. "They gave me a reason to come here. And it's not to slow down." He gave him a menacing look. "You hear me, Hermann? Do you want to give up or run?"

"Run, Oberscharführer," he choked out and his squat legs struck the ground more quickly as he strove to run in place.

"Then show a worthy effort."

"Ja Oberscharführer," Hermann wheezed.

"Run. Don't talk...just run. Save your breath."

The poor boy ran in place. His nostrils flared, breaths became a wheeze, but his legs kept at a sprint, knee up, knee down, going ever faster, or face a foul retort from Lessing.

"Aaaah!" Hermann cried as fatigue deadened his shanks. His cheeks suffused with blood while sweat descended from under his helmet to drown his eyes. He did put up a struggle.

``Don't think of giving up,'' Lessing shouted.

"Relief, Oberscharführer!" Hermann squealed.

"Don't talk."

I could feel the pain in my calves start to climb into my lower limbs as we marked time with our bursting lungs.

" Schnell! Schnell! Schnell! Faster, Hermann! Faster!"

"Ja Oberscharführer," the small boy wheezed. He ran to the point of exhaustion, his lungs desperately inhaling oxygen to keep him on his feet.

The sergeant's face turned ugly, wrinkles in his forehead becoming furrows, his eyes swelling out belligerently below blond brows.

"Hop! Hop! Hop! Hop!" he shouted.

I rapidly thrust my feet in and out of the mud to keep pace with the others, my arms sagging from weight of the boots. I could only imagine the pain Hermann felt as his body strained to endure merciless demands.

When Hermann could take no more punishment, his legs buckled and he fell flat into the mud. He dove into the slop headfirst. He lay there whining in long gasps of misery. I thought he would cry, but he looked up at our sergeant and got to his feet. Hermann's standing did not impress Lessing.

"So you want to give up, eh? Do you want to know what happens to those who give up? They get killed or kill themselves."

"Nein, Oberscharführer!"

"No?"

"Nein, Oberscharführer," he gasped.

"You run,'' Lessing ordered. "I don't care if you can't breathe. Run! Get up front of the herd! You're going to lead us the whole sprint."

Hermann, broken by Lessing's physical tortures, found it too hard to rush in front of us. When he got to the head of the pack at a limp and made a vain attempt to run, the boys in the lead kicked his heels. They would neither go around him nor did they slow down. When we got to the clearing, Hermann struggled in muddy trousers and shirt. The sergeant ran aside to let the soldiers charge forth at their physical limits.

A trance set into my mind. I saw only the horizon with its tall blades of grass and the sun overhead. What was it all for? I thought of children too young to join the ranks. Instead of being forced to run, eat a strict diet, and keep awake all night to do watches, they were given drink and rest. Every morning we awakened not to the ring of clocks or the affectionate touch of a mother's hand, but to shouts and chants similar to those yelled down on miscreant dogs, and then sent to run the same windy trails and mountains only to return into camp hoping for relief.

Out beyond edges of the wood amongst gray offshoots of the clearing our trail led to canvas tents. Undergarments hung from lines strung between these shelter tops. We were allowed enough time to give the clothes a swipe with a scrub brush, dunk them in a wash basin and then throw them on a line. Many of the garments hung dirty with dark stains under their sleeves. Two men in black watchcoats and of respectable rank stood by the washbasin and laughed at us as we sprinted by.

"Go to your tents,'' Lessing ordered when he also saw the officers in camp.

When I caught up with Hermann, his face was flushed. He breathed hard through his mouth, almost unable to speak.

"Let's get into the tent," I said to him.

"Can't," the boy wailed. "Please. . ."

Hermann sank to his knees in the grass. I got him back up by hugging his armpits.

"Come on, we've got to get over there," I said.

"Can't."

"Yes, you can. It's only right there." I pointed at the tent. The wind made ripples in the cover cloth and the wooden poles bulged from behind the canvas.

"My feet... they hurt," he said.

"But we've got to," I said.

Hermann worked up enough strength to stand, so I let go of him. He put his hand on my shoulder to steady his balance as we lumbered toward the camp.

"You know, you shouldn't have done that," I said.

"Otto!" he gasped. "I've got my lesson for not shining my boots."

"You're going to get more than a lesson," I said, watching a grasshopper glide past, fluttering its leaden wings over the waist-high grass. "That Lessing, you know, he's a sergeant who won't let a thing die."

"Don't," he muttered, and I saw he was about to cry.

"None of that...none of the crying. It won't do."

"But... it's so hard.'' He bent his head down, so I would not see him pout under the steel helmet.

"It's tough, I know," I said. "But you don't see me crying over it."

CHAPTER TWO


We limped into camp. Lessing, a barrier of haughtiness made even more impenetrable by his accompaniment amongst officers, burst by, his essence pushing me to the ground, while tried as I might, I could not get back up, until he vanished into a tent tucked beyond reaches of our encampment. A sensation of relief came upon me with his absence and in response to it, I sprang up, brushed off dirt that had clung to my shirt like powder from snow, and made an approach for the washbasin, hoping to quench my thirst.

At this washbasin, both a social center and means of survival for our always-thirsting ranks, I dipped my canteen into the water and then took it out. As it rose from the pool, it made ripples and I saw the red face under bill of my steel helmet in its reflection. How I cherished the nose mother gave me at birth! It was a woman's nose. The tuck and smooth bridge of the skin was not manly and it gave my cheeks and eyes a touch of her beauty.

Hermann followed the canteen with his eyes. His nose stuck out pink from a sunburned face. He licked his lips.

``Please, Otto. May I have some?'' he asked.

``Ja, that's why I got it,'' I said. ``It's for you.''

He took the canteen and gulped it down. The ball in his throat bulged then sunk with every swallow.

``Come on, hurry,'' I whispered. ``I want to get some for myself.''

He drank all of its contents without pausing to take a breath. A gurgle arose from his throat. He threw his hands to his lips. I took a step back before a milky fluid spilt through his fingers to drip onto his uniform.

``You're spitting all over yourself,'' I said.

He bent over the side of the basin and blew out a mess of white grog.

``Nein,'' I cried to him. ``Don't do it there.'' But it was too late. A chalky cloud blossomed in the water. I took hold of his collar to wring his neck.

``Don't do that,'' I whispered. ``I don't care if you're sick, you'll make us run again.''

``I tried,'' he coughed. ``But can't help when it...when it goes in the water.''

Suddenly somebody came out of a tent. I did not look, for I feared it would be one of the officers. On the earth a shadow crept toward us, a black panther's paw stretching over the ground to strike us down. Nothing would get me to look up, and still the ears under my steel helmet were open to the stomping of heavy boots, thunderous steps from a giant.

``What you two ape-dicks doing out here?'' rang a baritone voice.

``Achtung!'' I shouted, and Hermann and I went rigid, our arms flat at our sides with hands open and against the seams of our trousers.

``Look at me when I speak to you, schütze!''

It was a game, I thought. He would not hurt me if I looked at him.

``Oberscharführer, we came out to get water!'' I shouted. When my gaze rose to examine his chest, gray in its flawless tunic of medals and shiny buttons, I felt fearful.

``What? A drink of water?''

``Ja Oberscharführer,'' I said.

On Lessing's shirt pocket, at a perfect center below the button flap, shined the Iron Cross First Class. The black of that cross, cold and sinister, gave me only more fear for this beast of a man. I thought of Jesus and the cross from which He had hung on nails struck into His palms. Then I saw a portrait in my mind of Lessing in a suit of brass Roman armor, a tall wooden spear close to his side with a sponge soaked in red wine atop it. He knelt below the Savior hanging in His final throes, with a grin on his tight visage, a smirk of glorification for this man being crucified. I really did believe he wore the Iron Cross to show us how he gave honor to men who could die more horrible deaths than any of us, men with enough courage to be put on crosses even though given chances to live a fruitful life.

``A drink of water, eh?'' Lessing growled. ``Hermann doesn't deserve any drink. Did you give him any?''

``Ja Oberscharführer,'' I said.

``You gave him water?''

``Ja Oberscharführer, but I only did it for he was about to...''

``No excuses!'' Lessing cut in. ``You disobeyed a direct order to go to your tents.''

``Ja Oberscharführer,'' both of us replied.

``Now somersault back to your tent! Schnell!''

I fell quickly over into a somersault, the top of my steel helmet taking the brunt of my thrown weight. ``Flip now! Flip!'' he shouted.

I threw my body into another somersault and at the end of the turn, my legs fell hard on the ground, and my head felt dizzy. We did this all the way to our tent, where it was I did not know, but the yells from our sergeant told us, if I went astray. Hermann, sick at every turn, spat out a foul brew all over himself. The stink arose from his clothes.

``Hermann,'' laughed Lessing. ``You're going the wrong way. Do you need a guiding hand?''

``Nein, Oberscharführer,'' Hermann groaned.

Finally, in one of my ground flips, I saw the flap door of a tent ripple in the breeze, fleeing from vision when two dirty feet struck out at the sky as my body came out of another toss. When I landed inside the shelter after a dizzying somersault, laughter broke all around and fists were thrown at my helmet and back. I rolled into a canvas lining and got the toe of a boot in the mouth. The boot hung on laces thrown around my shoulders, and the dirty taste of it got on my tongue. I do not know why, but the bitterness of the mud made me think back to Mother's vegetable sausages and how she used to overcook them. She was such a bad cook, and those sausages, although I ate them, were no better than the filth on the toe of my boot.

I stood, or tried to stand, for the earth swung above me in a wild spin. Shadows passed by, and in my dizziness, these black forms danced around me in laughter. I grabbed for one and caught only air.

``Lost, are you?'' a spinning outline cried. A kick was thrown at my groin for being obliged to smile at this remark.

``You bastards!'' I shouted in pain, trying to keep a firm balance on the ground, as everything flew into a maelstrom. I rubbed my crotch to take away the soreness, but the pain sent me down hard on the dirt. A boy knelt over to whisper into my ear, but I could not hear what he spoke for he did not mean to say anything -- he only did it to show off to the others.

``It's been three months now we've been in this rot hole,'' he said aloud. ``And still he gets himself licked for the lousy swine.''

``He's a scoundrel. Throw him to Ivan and let him be a good boy to them. He can run around kissing their cheeks and pull daisies to sniff,'' another boy said behind me. When my head had stopped spinning, I saw two youths at the corner of the tent lying on bedspreads pricking thorns out from their feet. Three others, muddy boots at wear, stood over these bruise pickers. Behind them all, the sun shone indigo through the gray lining, giving a shade of blue to everything. In this dim light, they embodied a murky appearance.

A little to my left four rifles leaned against their own stocks in a pyramid stack, muzzles stuck out like the four wooden poles of a teepee. They were never loaded, for Lessing did not trust any of us. When the call for formation rang into our tent, carbines were taken outside quicker than Lessing could utter the last word. If one carbine got out late, say, two seconds, we would have to run our legs weak with sprints through the forest.

For a moment, I had forgotten about Hermann, and when he made a somersault into the tent, his uniform reeked with thrown up food.

``Look, he's almost dead!'' I heard someone shout.

Hermann did have the bleak look of a corpse. His skin shone an eggnog color and the bruise on his forehead, split with a blister, made a messy blot on his countenance. I crawled to him and smelt waste rise from his clothes. He breathed heavily, and boys who laughed all around did not assist in his struggle to get air into the lungs.

``Don't help him, Otto,'' one boy said. He made a pull at my trousers and dragged me until he ran back into a canvas wall. ``He don't belong with us.''

``No,'' I said. ``He's tough! You just don't see. But he's tough.''

``Tough? Tough for the mules,'' said a blond-haired boy who lay on a bedspread picking at thorns stuck in his foot. This boy, Heinrich, stood as the wise fellow of our ranks. He held all the titles, first to master rifles, quickest to strap on a gas mask, and first to grow scratch hairs above his top lip, but he stood cocky in a tight gray uniform, and only made friends with the elitists of our Kompanie. ``With the big ears he's got,'' he said, ``we could tie his lobes around the tail. Watch him spin around when mule runs. Spin he goes on his ears. Then he falls, splat, right under Ivan's tank!''

``Let him quit, you know he's no good,'' said the youth who had grabbed onto my trousers. ``You've seen what he's done to us, Otto. He's no good.'' He let go of me and went over to the knapsacks.

``No, no,'' I said. ``It's not him who get us in all the trouble. He tries hard, so hard to be a schütze.''

``A mule try hard to be a horse,'' Heinrich said as he grinned at me. ``But he'll always have big ears and be dumber than a partisan.''

The group behind him laughed heartily at this remark. Even Hermann, the boy made fun of by Heinrich's witticism gave a nervous giggle.

``Get him up,'' Heinrich said. ``He's a fake. He's just fine.''

``Your Feldflasche,'' I pleaded, pointing at the felt covered canteen kept near his toes. ``Throw me it.''

If the canteen had been close to my side, I would have certainly chanced a reach, but Heinrich's eyes fell on it. He wrapped a foot over the shell and dragged it away from me.

``Come on give it to me.''

``Why?'' I heard the anger rise in his voice.

It was impossible to ask help from Heinrich. His eighteen years and grandeur as a Hitlerjugend toughened his blond head with selfishness.

``It's for Hermann,'' I said, uncomfortable talking to a soldier who refused to listen.

Hermann turned to look at them. ``Don't, don't,'' he muttered weakly. His chest rose under the tunic as he drew in a breath. ``I don't want any. I'll do good with no water.''

``See Otto,'' Heinrich said. He sat up cross-legged on the bedspread. ``He's so useless, water can't save him.''

``He just doesn't give up easily. He's more a schütze than you'll ever be.''

``More of a schütze?'' Heinrich shot to his feet. ``You think the swine is better than me?''

``Ja.''

``He can't, he's too young to be better. If it wasn't for him knowing Slavic, he'd never have been let in. He'd be sucking up them foolish words in grammar school. He's only here `cause his mother was an Ivan. After the war, boys like him will just be sent to the gutters. They're too weak Otto, we don't need them here.''

Another boy, Wernøe, thin in the waist and tall as his Viking ancestors, a height he was not proud of when it came to hiding behind a bush in concealment exercises, strode over to Heinrich to steal the canteen. Till that moment, I had not seen him in the tent, though one could not miss a soldier of such stature in small boots. He had remained at a distance from the whole scuffle that erupted at entrance into our tent. His curling blond hair sat messy on a sweaty scalp and a fly clung onto a knot of strands, fanning its wings. After a quick shrug from his shoulders, as if the motion would pester the fly to buzz away from him, he scooped up the Feldflasche and threw it at me. I caught it just before it hit the ground. ``I've got so many thorns in my foot, verdammt this place,'' Wernøe complained and almost stumbled over a bedspread before sitting next to Heinrich. ``I should have enlisted in the regular ranks of the Waffen SS, not this hell.''

``Another Hermann are you?'' Heinrich said.

``I think you have started a bunch of foolishness,'' Wernøe continued, picking at a pimple under the bridge of his nose. ``No one's got it harder than us soldiers.''

``You're just as weak as Hermann, with rocks in your boots and a need for Mother. He gives it to us hard so we give Ivan what he deserves. Don't you remember? Don't you remember when Lessing said he does it all the brute way so we can give Ivan a cheek of the devil's arse?''

``Brute, Ja. But we're Germans,'' Wernøe said.

``He just does his things so we fight strong,'' Heinrich said. ``Ivan treats his soldiers like rats.''

The bully, although right, had too often repeated his claims for the fairness of Lessing's training throughout months of torture. Following the end of combat basics, I knew we were destined to enter the ranks of a division fighting somewhere on the Eastern Front. Ivan showed no hospitality towards his soldiers. Broken limbs, unsettled stomachs, and the cut Hermann received from quick somersaults, were all lessons taught by an instructor who understood the savageness that could arise out of Bolsheviks. He gave us harsh treatment for our own good.

A wind picked up from outside and blew into the lining of our tent. A large bubble of cloth stretched out from the wall, filled with pressing air, and one of the soldiers lying on a bedspread closest to it, got up and punched the thing until it fell flat again.

``I wish I had a cigarette,'' Wernøe complained, lost in thought, probably not knowing he spoke aloud. ``I would kill someone for a cigarette. But no, I think we'll never see a smoke. Not so long as we're here in training. Those Offiziers who come into the camp, I think there were three, weren't there?''

``Two,'' I muttered, and then gave Hermann the canteen. The boy grabbed it in earnest, raised a weak chest, and with great strain struck an elbow out against the earth to support his upper trunk as he took quick sips at the canteen.

``I hope them Offiziers, I hope they have cigarettes,'' Wernøe stated. ``If they don't, I'll go crazy.''

Heinrich giggled at this, flashing a set of clean white teeth. He laughed not from any humor found in Wernøe's words --the tone was too pathetic and came out in a gasp. We could all relate to these sudden outbursts of false merriment that masked our inner misery.

``Why do you worry?'' I asked.

``Huh,'' Wernøe said.

``Ja, why you worry so much on smokes? We got only a week and we're out.''

``Easy for you to say, kamerad ,'' Heinrich shouted. ``You don't smoke.''

``But there's...''

``Shut your mouth Otto,'' Heinrich cut in. ``I hate hearing you, you sound like a sissy girl when you talk.''

``No, I don't,'' I said.

``You should hear yourself, you sound so much like my sister,'' he laughed. Then he made guttural utterances just to start me off. ``Blaah! Blaah! Blooh!'' and he came right in front of my face opened his mouth to spit out his tongue before he made a last and very pathetic murmur which sounded much like a pout from a monkey who never gets the chance to grab onto a banana stuck into its cage.

Suddenly there came a long quiet after Heinrich performed this foolish stunt. We sat silent, listening to the tent cloth flap against the breeze. Some of the boys pouted while taking stickers out of their feet. In this quiet solace, a strange image materialized in my thoughts. I saw the frail figure of a woman in a white bodice, youth swelling from her tan skin. She sang a melody my mother used to sing when tucking me into bed. I had forgotten the words but the humming of her voice rang true and I remembered my childhood. There was the sun outside the window casting a bright glow on the panes and when my fingers crept to it, they shone white in the light. She had always kept the bed near the window so I could see everything and not feel lonely. Then came months before joining the camps, moments filled with great happiness, where many times I skipped school to play with a boy named Franz. We would run in the groves growing out of the expanses of our backyard, a cool breeze blowing at our backs. The sun, high in the sky, touched its rays on branches, the leaves allowing only spangles of yellow to fall in messy patterns on the grass. The green went soft against my skin as I rolled in it for hours on end, Franz giggling as he sped down a hill doing cartwheels. Those were such different times, days lost to becoming a Hitlerjugend, and I longed to see Franz once more, scratching his curly crown of black strands, always smiling, for he never looked sad being blessed with a jester's face. He was one of those boys born out of some spirit crop that captured all the souls of king's entertainers and made them alive in the deep carving of his cheeks, and the smile went wide all the time.

Where was Franz now, I wondered, did we scare him away? I never meant to shout at him, no, I never meant to call him names. Those rocks, the fists, and Franz in the middle, his shirt torn to ribbons, his face still smiling, no it was not my fault. Boys in black shorts with wisps of Franz's hair clinched in their fingers dragged him along the road cut through trees, and called him ``Dirty filth.'' Yet all I could do was stare and follow them.