When I began my life I was ignorant. Ignorance to my surroundings was the most amazing sense of peace anyone could ever achieve. To be a child in the after math of WW1 wasn't desirable, but my family were in a very good position, as my father, Heinz Beilschmidt was a member of the Reichstag, I can hardly remember the name of his party anymore, but he eventually switched to Nazis. We had no choice after all.
I was 12 when I realised my parents weren't as around as normal parents should be, and that my older brother Gilbert and my cousin - who was the same as Gilbert - Julia would take care of me and Monica (Julia's little sister, she's my age) as much as they could at such a young age. I grew up determined to make my parents as proud as I could have, Monica shared these ideals, and yet me and her were not as close as me and Gilbert.
Gilbert was an amazing brother, he cooked for me and made sure I was at school on time and took me home, he used his own savings to buy me books and clothes... when he had money. Recently we both joined the Hitler Youth, we don't have much money but our parents often leave us a lot of money in a small pot we have to distribute throughout a week, only sometimes did we have some left overs to save for an emergency.
I am Ludwig Beilschmidt, the last Beilschmidt son as of yet and I am a part of Nazi Germany, soon to be a Soldier for my country.
And I never predicted the day this would happen to me.
I was on patrol with the HY, the regular stuff we do, I was 15 at the time. Suddenly our patrol leader said we were set to beat a load of Edelweiss Pirates that had decided to graffiti over the Nazi symbols. It was a regular occurrence, the Edelweiss would do something against the law, we'd run in to stop them, a fight would break out, the Edelweiss would disappear. It was obviously quite annoying. This time they were hanging around the back of the railway, I heard the beat of music when we were nearing the area, the English words were slightly familiar to me, but I didn't care to make them out. The smell of paint was fairly strong by the time we crossed the rails. The Edelweiss were gathered around, some of them dancing to the tunes of an old radio, others smiling and chatting, and lastly they were painting on the walls, different words and the Edelweiss symbols. They were graceful if you saw them in a different light, their words were simple but in these times they meant a lot more than I realised, and the elegance of the dancing, the way they held each other and span, the swaying skirts of the girls, the grinning on the faces of the younger members, all of it was beautifully calm. That was until one of them spotted us and cried out to the others.
And suddenly the calm grace had left their dancing, and what replaced it was metal pipes and small planks of wood. We were launched into a war of our own, the Edelweiss shouted to each other and shouted at us, one of them threw me down into the mud, going to punch me in the face, I used my arm to block it and elbowed him in the stomach, the radio music was faint in the background, and the angry German voices were jumbled in my mind...
As I was about to get up, someone tripped over me and stumbled. "Merda!" The boy called out, that word was certainly NOT German and not anything I recognised. I stared at the boy with the radio in his hands, he was fairly scrawny, a light brown mop on his head that was covered in mud, a few bruises up his arms and down his legs, and glossy brown eyes that stared back at me. The boy gave me a thumbs up and a grin before sprinting off again. I could only stare at him go, weaving through the crowds with the radio clutched to his chest like his most prized possession. In those five seconds between him tripping and him running away, I would never have realised the kind of world that had just opened up in front of me, and I don't think the boy did either.