You do what you can for your country. My father once told me that when a change in the weather made him remember the wounds he had received at Wissembourg. He said it again when I found myself marching away to the last war. As it turned out, it was the last thing he ever said to me. I found myself repeating it at various times over the next four years as I scrambled out of trenches to charge the enemy's position or defended those hard won meters with a machine gun as thousands of young men fell down before me. I do not actually remember saying it on my wedding day, but I must have for the priest gave me an odd look and my wife repeated it to me a few years later after she told me that a fifth blessing was to be bestowed upon us.
I am never quite sure what my country is though. I thought I knew once when I was a boy and looked at the maps in the classroom, but the maps were redrawn and what was once my country became somebody else's. I lost interest after that until the day my country asked me to do what I could and converted my toy factory to war work and invited me to pick up my military career where I had left it.
Luckily, my country realized that a man of my dimensions cannot fit into a tank. Or a plane. Or a trench. Or into any combat gear at all. I was also, I admit, very careful to make sure that although I passed my marksmanship qualification, I did so with only one shot to spare.
I will also call any man a liar should he happen to mention the Deutscher Schützenbund trophies and medals currently hidden at the bottom of the old well on my brother's farm. I got those from shooting targets, not men.
Where was I? Oh yes, my country finally decided that what I could do for it was guard the enemy. I am afraid that my heart was not really in it. As angry as I was at the destruction wrought by the bombers, when I saw the men themselves, all I could think of was boys who had been forced to play the games set for them by old men. But it was my appointed task to keep them in Germany. Every night after bed check, I found myself muttering, "you do what you can for your country."
I am not sure how it happened. That I would become friendly with the prisoners was not really a surprise. We were not that different really. I had not been given much choice about being in the Luftstalag either-the Eastern Front is not a choice so much as a threat. Looking the other way was, of course, natural. Especially when there was a bar of chocolate or a few grams of coffee on offer. War is hard enough. When the Cockroach started letting me partake of the gastronomic delights he magicked out of the camp stove I confess that it clouded my judgment. In the last war, I sneered at the cocaine and heroin my comrades would inject. I was more willing to partake of the occasional found cache of fine wine, but it was a poor replacement for what I truly desired-a decent meal. After several years of Army food, can you fault a man for being cooperative when offered a pan of Crepes Suzette or apple strudel?
After all, they were just prisoners. What could they be doing that was so bad? Digging an escape tunnel? Where would they go if they got out? They were foreigners in enemy uniforms in the middle of Germany.
When they did get out, they usually came back, anyway. Sometimes they were tricky and I would count five times with one or more missing, until suddenly everyone was where they were supposed to be. Sometimes they merely stood outside of the wire and waited for me to capture them. What I hated though, was when I ran into them in town. My duty was to turn them in, but if they were just going to go back to camp on their own, what did it matter to me whether they walked there or if I drove them back and had to answer some awkward questions from the Kommandant? Actually, it was far better that they got back on their own. I am too old, you see, to learn Russian or Polish. The times they did not immediately come back, Colonel Hogan usually managed to get them captured again. Colonel Hogan and his men were always good about being captured and usually managed to stage it so that I did not get too much blame.
Still, I knew I was not doing the right thing. Should any of the big shots have found out, it was either the firing squad or an assignment on the Eastern Front. My cowardice should have troubled me more. After all, I was a solider and loyal son of...well, that's where I always got confused. The Cockroach, after all, was originally from Strasbourg, which had been one of those cities on the map that I had memorized as a schoolboy. A couple of decades is just not long enough to erase those geography lessons.
If I was not doing the right thing, though, was I really doing the wrong thing? I saw nothing. I heard nothing. Really, I knew nothing.
Except for everything I did see, hear and guess despite my better judgment. Trains exploding. Bridges bombed. Important officers missing or killed. A revolving cast of airmen in which the names were the same, but the faces always different. But a man cannot be held accountable for what he has only guessed.
I cannot pinpoint when it changed-when I found myself cooperating in earnest with the prisoners. It was more of a becoming. It was not when I took the bullets out of my rifle. Nor was it when I went to the other Luftstalag while pretendng to be the Kommandant in a uniform that the prisoners made me-that was merely retrieving escaped prisoners. Okay, so I had not reported them as escaped, but what the Kommandant did not know would not hurt me. But I found that I was doing everything I could do to not call attention to the prisoners. I told myself it was because I would not like the results if the activities of the prisoners came to light. I would not like to be questioned by the Gestapo. I would not like what the Gestapo or even the Luftwaffe would do to me after they had gotten the answers they did not like. Really, I was protecting myself.
Then one day I admitted to myself that I actually would not like the result of the prisoners being shot as spies even if I was not punished myself. It was a bit of a blow. A coward who is only scared for himself has so much less to worry about. That was, now that I think of it, the day I realized that if I continued as I had that I was working against the Reich. I was the enemy. In fact I was probably a traitor.
Me? A traitor? To the big shot in Berlin? I was surely too far removed to be a traitor to him. To my uniform? Ach, perhaps so. To the Kommandant? I am not sure that I am. Colonel Hogan seemed to take even more trouble over protecting the Kommandant than he did me. To my country? That was a very tricky question to which I had no answer.
For the better part of a year, I asked myself that question. Especially when factories or trains were bombed and I knew that people-Germans, even-had perished. Was their blood on my hands? I didn't know. I could only guess.
Then came the night I suddenly no longer had to guess. Of course, I was off duty. Always when all I want is a beer and a bit of cheese I see things or people that ruin my enjoyment. For once it was not one of the prisoners popping up in the Hofbrau. It was the far more unpleasant vision of a certain Gestapo major who has always had a rather unhealthy interest in the relationship between the Luftstalag and certain acts of sabotage.
I saw him in the mirror behind the bar as he took the table behind me. Moments later a man approached him and gave him a signal and sat down at the next table. The stranger must of been somewhat hesitant with me so close, for the major immediately told him that I was too lazy to bother to listen and too stupid to understand anything that I might overhear. That seemed like a good time to ask for another beer. This must have reassured the major's companion for he began to report.
What I heard made my blood run cold. For the major's companion stated he was ready to deliver key members of the local group of saboteurs. He was to rendezvous with Papa Bear and his men that very night and would lead them to a trap which the major would spring. As the two men finalized the details, I began to feel sick. Once Papa Bear made the meeting, there was no escape. Not even for Colonel Hogan. That is, not even for Colonel Hogan, if he was Papa Bear. Which I do not know. A guess is not knowledge. I know nothing!
Except that I did know that it was too late. I had no idea how much time was needed to get out of the camp and walk to the meeting, but it seemed likely that Papa Bear, whoever he might be, was already on his way to the rendezvous point. If anything was to be done, I would be the one who must do it. You do what you can for your country.
I made rather a show of asking the time and when the bartender told me, exclaiming about how late it was and that I had better get back to my post before I was missed. The major and his companion barely glanced at me, but when they did there was just a hint of a stagger in my gait. I kept the stagger up all the way out the door and for a few hundred meters just to put on a good show for the few cars that traveled the street until I could turn off into an alley.
It was not really that hard to guess the direction the stranger would be going. The major was to wait at one end of the old railroad bridge along the abandoned rail spur. There were only so many ways a man can go into the woods, make a rendezvous with a group of men from the Luftstalag-IF they were from the Luftstalag-and lead that group of men into the arms of the Gestapo into a relatively isolated area of Hammelburg in just two hours. I had used the alley as a shortcut many times myself.
I think I only had to wait a quarter of an hour before the stranger turned into the alley. As he walked toward me, I heard a noisy car coming along the street he had just turned off. I took a deep breath, let it out silently and adjusted my stance slightly. The car that was passing by was in bad need of a tune-up. I remember thinking how Colonel Hogan's men would never let one from the Luftstalag motor pool get into such a condition. At any moment, it was bound to misfire.
So it was that nobody paid any notice the sound of my rifle.
And nobody found my target until long after the morning roll call at which all prisoners were present and accounted for.
Actually, I think there was one extra. I did not mention it to the Kommandant.
Author's Note: Yes, this was started for the speed writing challenge of June 2011. Yes, it's ten months late. No, it does not qualify as a participating story.