Veruka's Dreidel; A Long Shadow

The Back Story;

History doesn’t repeat itself exactly, it rhymes. This is about my sister Laurel, also known as ‘Satan’s Whore’ and that ‘Jewish Bitch.’ Both monikers the Soviets impaled her with. She is my half-sister as matter of detail, we share the same mother. She is also as a matter of detail, a sixteenth cousin. To understand this, I rely on two sources, what my Granny told me about the family linage and what a German genealogy firm said. Both sources agreed.

Also, I didn’t know I had three half-sisters until 1987. I met all three in birth order, all with in the first half of that year, in Wiesbaden Germany. We were all members of the United States Army, all three of us were ‘drafted’ by various intelligence services. I was introduced to Laurel by my cousin Mortician. She thought I needed a girlfriend. Interestingly, my sister Laurel met my adopted sister Bavarian Fox first, in Basic Training on Ft. Leonard Wood six months prior. She didn’t know she shared a brother with her.

Then came Terry. She was killed in action before she could meet the rest of her ‘new’ family. Again, Laurel knew her prior, from their work in operations. She found out she shared a brother with her, unfortunately, after the funeral. There were no remains.

Then came Kelly. Laurel met Kelly, aka Slut, through contact with Army Intelligence. Unknown to them they grew up twenty miles from each other in Florida. They didn’t like each other, but Laurel learned to put up with her for my sake. That’s why she didn’t kill Slut in the kitchen by knifing her over well, her using sex as a weapon.

Laurel is the real killer.

No group of women have ever broken my heart more than my sisters. No group of women have I met, have had worse lives outside of a whorehouse.


Now for the history lesson.

This takes place about a few years after 800 AD, in a Swedish town of Gothenburg, the place where Goths come from. Down the road a bit and a way, was another town of Wilkin, where Vikings come from. In that town a silversmith named Karl, he didn’t have a last name, lived and due to reputation was contracted by a very rich, excessively powerful and a supremely prideful man name Harold So-and-so to produce a silver service for his daughter’s wedding.

He had four daughters, this was Grisnelda ’s nuptials, where Karl met her sister, Isolde. Well, a couple of months after the wedding, the socially inappropriate relationship between Isolde and he comes to light. Along with a pregnancy. Harold being a class-conscious Viking type, hence a prideful man, put a contract hit out on Karl. He also locks his daughter up out of plain view.

Karl flees in fear of his life across Sweden, jumps a boat across the Bothnian Sea to Finland. After a few months of keeping his head down, he absconds days ahead of Harry’s thugs, across the Baltic to a country known as Pomerania.

Where as there on, he’s Karl Wilkin, and he manages to avoid being killed for the next four years. Now, back in Sweden his son is walking, talking and putting Harold to task. Now his future father-in-law, in spite of his pride or because of it, puts the issue to rest with what passes for justice at that time. Isolde is disowned formally, Karl is off the hook, and the two get it on and get it down in Pomerania.

Three hundred years later, the Germans come. They do what Germans do, they take over under the Margrave of Brandenburg, the Knights Hospitaler launches a civil rights movement and lays it too the institution of slavery by attempting to buy them out. This wasn’t out of the goodness of their hearts at the top, they did it to work over the Pomeranians to economically destabilize them. It also sold Christianity mostly, to the lucky beggars to be cashiered out.

However, a group of them weren’t really interested in what would later become the Catholic Church. See, they were Jews. One of them was a nine-year-old home born named Veruka. She didn’t have a last name, slaves are property not people. Fortunately, her father networked among the Slavs as both a pedagogue and a traveling bookkeeper and that a few years later put her in contact with the son a of a merchant.

The boy’s name was Rupert Wilkinberger. See, when the Germans come, they take over. They take over everything, including how your last name is spelled.

I believe the marriage was arranged.

Officially she converted to ‘Catholicism’ so the marriage would be socially recognized. However, Rupert being a Slav that’s Germanized, figures otherwise. If God gives you a Jewish wife that’s okay with him so she goes on to be a Jewish housewife behind closed doors. Naturally he learns to eat kosher. And put up with her collecting knick-knacks.

On the marriage records in the small chapel in Brandenburg where they were married, Veruka got her last name, The Jew. That’s what was scribbled down under the column, Bride’s Last Name. Two words; The Jew. Granny said it was the scribe’s idea since Germans like to fill in all the blanks.

She was between eleven and thirteen years old.

Well a war comes along, more accurately the on-going war flares up from a state of détente with the Pomeranians. They called it the Brandenburg-Pomeranian War and Rupert for his reasons, as in he was drafted, picks up a sword and goes off to war.

Veruka being a proper, key words here, German housewife, goes with him.

She’s a small woman, about four foot ten, weighs about 98 pounds. She begins to sell the equivalent of war bonds among the Slavic Pagans who have a problem living under Pomeranian rule. The girl had some brass in her pants too.

She pried enough cash out of them, Slavs are cheap among other endearing traits, not to mention broke most of the time, to purchase a battering ram. With a penthouse. A penthouse is an armored shed on wheels. This in the twelfth century is the equivalent of what an armed B-2 Stealth Bomber is today.

It took a year to build, using the latest materials available. Notably, Silesian White Oak. Why? The oak part has the same tensile strength as iron but is malleable where the metal is brittle. It bends before it breaks. Also, being white oak, it’s an ablative material and burns very, very slowly. It burns so slowly and in such a specific manner, that today, in the twenty-first century the Chinese space program uses white oak for heat shielding on re-entry vehicles.

Casting the iron head took several skilled craftsmen and six months to dig the hole. Line the hole with clay, pour the iron into the hole. Wait several months for it to cool down and set. Then dig it up and attach it to the white oak. It weighed between two and a half and five tons.

Shipping it from Silesia to Pomerania cost a mint.

They did it covertly.

The ram and the penthouse were shipped separately.

On the cargo manifests it was labelled as crockery.

Bribes were paid.

So, they field this weapon. Find a castle and begin to batter it down. Naturally, those in the castle find offense at this and proceed to dump naphtha, a distillation of crude oil, peat moss and coal tar on said penthouse. Then shoot flaming arrows into it. It took twenty to twenty-four men to operate the ram.

Rupert is helping to drive the battering ram. During the stampede to leave the penthouse, he’s trapped and his bride isn’t going anywhere without her man.

No matter what.

Remember what I said about Veruka having brass in her pants? Well, by todays medical standards, she should’ve died a few days later from injuries sustained by running into the flaming penthouse and dragging Rupert out by his ankles. He should’ve been killed right then and there. That’s using current medical technology. On that day, Veruka’s left arm stopped above the elbow.

After things were done up, they go back home and have two children over the next four years. In 1108 one of many soon to be ignored peace treaties is signed, then Veruka and Rupert get mandated (or else) to attend that festival. They pack up both kids, with a third on the way and leave a small town who’s name I can’t say for the celebrations. The town is still standing, it’s south by south east of Berlin and when I was there, it had the DMZ running through it. Rupert was an innkeeper, and yes, the inn is still there, still in the family and I slept in the maid’s quarters in the attic free of charge one night.

They didn’t have a maid. Veruka ran the domestics herself.

One 21-23 May 1108, Veruka The Jew was knighted by Sir Albert the Bear. Eleven to twelve positions behind her, they were lined up in alphabetical order, Rupert was knighted also. They were two of about 800 soldiers knighted. Twelve to sixteen of those soldiers were women. Six to eight of those women took brides…See? Nothing new about happy marriage or women on the battlefield.

Now this is a big party. Germans like to drink and Slavs like to party. Albert the Bear was too drunk to stand, he according to Granny was arrogant snob that didn’t really want to be there. He had an Abbott hold him up being too blasted to stand or for that matter read by the time when it came to Veruka. Armed with alcohol, an attitude and a rusty scimitar he does two things of importance. He knights her, and mispronounces her married name.

Wilkinberger became Wahrenberger.

Mr. and Mrs. Rupert von Wahrenberger then left with a monumental hangover a week after everyone else did. After drinking some more with family, they went home, and had three more children. Four of which survived until adulthood. Rupert died in his early twenties, lung issues that more than likely related to nearly becoming a crispy critter during somebody else’s war.

Veruka never remarried.

As for the Abbott that performed the happy weddings, he was ordered to recant and hence nullify the nuptials by the Papacy, directly ordered, from Rome. Or else. The or else being sent to a cloistered monastery under an oath of silence until he did recant. He did perform the nuptials on the grounds that ‘…who am I to judge anyhow? I can’t find anything in the Scriptures against it and the world needs more love anyway…’

Slavs have a thing about weddings…Roll out the barrel.

He died two decades later in a cloistered monastery never once recanting. According to Granny, when asked to recant on his death bed he simply said two words; Fuck you.

A few centuries later another war shows up, and their grand-children stop being Brandenburgs and start being Prussians. More centuries and few wars later they stop being Prussians and start being Germans and Americans.

In 1987, eight military aged descendants of that line stood in the Charmed/Haunted Forest of Poland, that use to be part of Pomerania. Both sides from Grisnelda and Isolde. Wars never really end. Peace is the time it takes to reload.

Slut wasn’t there, Mortician by this time, a field surgeon, paid a bribe and wrote fraudulent paperwork saying she was medically incapable of performing her duties. She stayed in the rear and memorized this story you read. Reason being if the worst happened, we weren’t all killed at once.

Now I’ll tell you the story of Satan’s Whore, that Jewish Bitch who has brass in her pants. One thing I want you to remember, Dame Veruka and Sir Rupert, they were ordinary people in an extraordinary circumstance.
****
Sitting on a horse acquired from the Polish Gun Clubs (ref; I Hate Writing Wars Stories, I Truly Do 1 and 2, The Men Who Do Evil) Satan’s Whore armed with a Norwegian Battle Board, binoculars and PRC-77 radio, played hell with the other side. She used golf tees on the Battle Board to represent the Soviets and the original ivory pegs for our side.

Her Battle Board is ancient. It was passed down from aunt to niece for eleven centuries. Why aunt to niece? Female warriors don’t have children generally, because of PTSD, homosexuality or asexuality. Its used exclusively by women, as they have a problem with spatial relationships when moving at speed of horse. No self-respecting male Viking would be caught dead using one. Your supposed to keep things like that (up to the equivalent of battalion sized elements straight in your head…However they did use a rope for pace count and a solar dial to measure topography). Oh, they had a billiard table sized version, for the Viking equivalent of army group commanders. At that level keeping track of supply, logistics and the other side is daunting for anyone.

It looks like a checkers board with holes drilled in the center of each square, with two over lapping circles on it. The object is to keep track of everything and sucker your enemy into the space were the circles overlap. That was called the Dead Zone. On each side is a runic symbol for your cardinal compass points, North, East, West, South. Modern scholars when they dig one up think it’s a game or a training aid.

It’s a lethal weapon in the right hands. Like napalm.

As Satan’s Whore rained doom on the Russians, ‘Grace’ aka John W. Stone, stood next to her, avoiding being stepped on by her horse. She was out of character in a big way. She was bloody blue pissed off and angry to an exceptionally frightening degree. Up until then, she was always prim, proper and annoyingly polite toward her new family. Between calling out orders and moving golf tees around her Battle Board she explained herself.

She bribed her way into coming to the front from the rear. She used the excuse of having to deliver The Gun to the front, paid bribes and committed an act of extortion. Then after her diatribe she admitted the truth. She was angry to avoid being scared. She figured by sundown Grace would be dead and she came to say goodbye.

Grace for his part was dumbfounded. The notion he was going to die in Poland never occurred to him. As a matter of fact, any ideas of his own death never occurred to him and this was his twelfth combat deployment. What did occur to him is the death of his sisters, Bavarian Fox was on site along with his cousins. Animal Mother (aka Rabies, aka Hildegard- you have to sing it in a cartoon voice) Mortician and Atomic Blonde. As far as his cousins Air Dave went, and Little Brother, he figured they could take care of themselves quite nicely

What scared him to the bone was what he did to other people. what could happen to Animal Mother who was now five months pregnant and showing. He truly feared for her. She was single and claimed not to know who the father was. So he assumed, voluntarily, certain responsibilities for her.

After a very private conversation they shook hands and he walked several tens of meters back from the defile area into the wood line. Animal Mother met him and asked what was wrong with his sister.

Grace, feeling any admission of fear would degrade and embarrass his sister, how do you shame a woman named Satan’s Whore (?), ignored her at first. She insisted so he answered with one of his less than witty intellectualisms.

“Don’t call me Grace…I hate that name,” he barked and returned to watching through the trees, Satan’s Whore on horseback dance around the defile area.

“Grace! Talk to me! I hate that about you! You never talk to me!” she howled.

“Spec. 4 Rabies,” Grace barked now himself loosing control. “You ever call me Grace again and after your Art. 15 I’m bouncing you out of her like a red rubber ball…”

“Yes sir,” she replied and then muttered something about his rank going to his head.

“Specialist Rabies… You are now Pfc. Rabies, and your pay is reduced by 2/3 for two weeks,” he glared at her. “My rank is what Mr. They Said gave me…I didn’t want the job.”

She stood there floored.

“She kills like a man…” he finally replied.

“You didn’t want the job?” she gasped. “I thought you were a lifer!”

“I came because Mr. They Said ordered me…I didn’t know Bavarian Fox was here and dropped the ball…That’s why I stayed.”

“Oh,” Animal Mother wheezed as he walked away. She then yelled, “What does she kills like a man mean?”

“It means just that,” he replied and walked off. “She kills like a man.”

Grace walked away and found Mortician. She asked the same questions and got the same answer. He leaned his empty Ak-47 against the tree and asked if they flew in any ammo yet. Morty answered that Little Brother and Air Dave were collecting it from the rear and trucking it in.

At this point Grace fiddled with his spike hanging off his BDU belt. The Soviets had fielded a knew knife, and he fielded a sixteen-inch steel bar stock spike, ground like a coal chisel with a handle to counter it. The Soviets wouldn’t hesitate to go hand to hand and they were better at it than Americans as a result of doctrine. His idea, the spike. His custom contribution to absurdity.

The Army also fielded an experimental replacement for the Huey. Armed zeppelins with Stuka Sirens. Every time he’d hear the siren, followed by the staccato drumbeat of Ma’ Duce he’d jump out of his skin.

“I’m going to have problems with that in twenty-years,” Grace prognosticated.

“What?”

“Fireman’s Day Parades,” he muttered.

“Let’s talk about something else,” Mortician encouraged him.

After a moment of chattering he watched his sister gallop off between the trees at a distance. He relaxed. Almost.

“Grace,” Mortician asked as she braided his hair. He hadn’t had a haircut in five maybe six weeks and it hung down to his shoulders. “I have to ask…About that incident on the aircraft…”

“What about it?” he replied looking sideways at her.

“Is it true?”

“Mr. They Said and Mr. You Will didn’t have a problem with it…” he evaded, “Why do you braid my hair?”

“Viking men wear their hair like this in battle,” she replied. “Makes you look like Thor. Is it true?”

“They killed Terry…” he justified it.

Grace was called to the rear of his position a few weeks earlier. On the aircraft were six wounded soldiers, five Americans and a Russian. When he noticed the Soviet, he stood up, walked over and with his .45 automatic shot him in the head then dumped his remains out the open cargo door. When asked why he did it, he said, ‘They killed my sister…I owe them…’

It started a trend.

Mr. They Said, Mr. You Will along with Dr. Strange Love and three Mr. We Aren’t Really Here grilled him over it within minutes of landing. The group determined he really like killing Soviets and since wars are fought like that dispensed with the criminal inquiry in less than half an hour.

He then went to his debriefing and saw a movie at the base theater, all located about seven hundred kilometers inside of Poland. The most popular movie by request, shown three times a day for three weeks until the film broke, was ‘The Sound of Music’ starring Julie Andrews. The second most requested film, Walt Disney’s ‘Fantasia’ starring Mickey Mouse.

On the way back from the theater he ran into Mortician wearing her black Witches vestments. She told him his sister was on the way with The Gun. He asked if she had problems wearing her Pagan vestments, as he was given a ticket by the MP’s for not having his hair cut.

No, she giggled, everybody was afraid of her. She said she was coming from the morgue after its weekly ritual cleansing. The distilled herbs she spread around not only blessed it, but were an aromatic antiseptic. She also suggested he stop by and make friends with The Jamaican. People avoided him as he was part of ‘The Ghoul Squad’, the mortician in charge of the morgue. He spent his days playing cards with ghosts to keep his sanity.

John W. ‘Grace’ Stone, that evening didn’t sleep, nightmares of him screwing the pooch kept waking him. He was too worried about Satan’s Whore being in theater. It added to worrying about the rest of his family to extreme.

End Part One.