The old windmill was a solid towering structure, but barren inside. It was built to serve a purpose, and had very little in the way of creature comforts.
But for the stone milling wheel, the cranks and shafts and gears, and the ladders that twined up and around allowing access to the mechanical parts that might need repairs or oiling, there was no cosmetic beauty to the inside.
High above the moving parts of the mill there was a small platform. It hadn't been used in years. The tiny room that it formed sported a single hexagonal window, a similarly hexagonal floor of worn timbers and a small desk, with a broken-down radio.
Leaning on a cane for balance, Newkirk winced at the grime that touching one wire had left on his hand and shook his head, "You weren't kiddin' when you said there wasn't much left of it."
Master Aldrich Werner, the man who owned the radio, the windmill it sat in, and the vineyard on which the windmill had been built, shook his head. "It was a project of my son's when he was young. For his seventh birthday we bought him this. There are not a lot of friends for a young boy growing up on a farm. We hoped that he could make some with this."
"How did you power it?" Hogan asked, leaning heavily against the peaking wall behind the radio. The apparatus had once been connected to a line that ran down into the floor, but the wire had been severed.
"The windmill." Master Werner replied, gesturing vaguely toward the giant arms that were stilled at the moment. "An old friend of ours built and installed a generator on the main gear. All that Hadrian need do was start the windmill and he had power. When the Gestapo came through years ago they found the radio, as you see it now, cut the power cord and demanded to see the generator. They shot it full of holes, and practically destroyed the main gear as well."
"But the windmill still turns." Hogan said, then broke off into a coughing fit that left him hunched painfully against the wall.
Werner waited patiently until the colonel had straightened a little, unable to hide the concern on his face. But the minute he had heard about it, the colonel had insisted that well or not, he needed to look at the radio. "The windmill turns, yes, but not during the winter. It would be a red flag to any suspicious soldier passing through this area. Even if he knew nothing about milling, he might see the motion and decide to investigate. We can not risk it."
Hogan nodded his understanding, but resisted saying anything, his face still red from the coughing fit. He leaned in closer to the radio moving various parts, and testing the connections of the wires.
Newkirk watched the colonel, hesitant to touch anything that he might break, and asked, "Can it be moved into the house? It's freezin' up here."
Werner was already shaking his head, even though his eyes held oceans of pity for the wounded but determined men. "It is bolted to the table. The table bolted to the floor. The bolts are old, rusted. And…frankly…here the radio is harmless. In the house it would be a beacon. I…I can not risk the lives of the people depending on me."
"Not a problem." Hogan said quickly, his voice pinched, but his response fast enough to cut off the protest Newkirk was about to voice.
"Colonel…"
"Leave it, Newkirk. Let's get ba-" He couldn't finish the sentence, and the racking cough left him with aching ribs, a head that felt like it was about to explode and his throat raw.
Getting back down the maze of ladders was an exercise in patience and will power. The waiting put stress on Newkirk's gunshot wound, and each breath needed to keep from passing out forty feet in the air, threatened another coughing spell from the colonel.
By the time both men collapsed into chairs in the kitchen, Ida Werner, the Master's daughter-in-law, stood over them both fuming in all her pregnant feminine glory and Miriam Werner, the matron of the house buzzed about snapping in German about foolish young men, playing soldier when they could barely stand.
"The radio. Will it work? Can it be done?" LeBeau asked bringing hot tea for both men, his shirt front and hands coated with flour. He was walking, but with a noticeable limp, and could not spend long hours on his feet, yet.
Even as Newkirk was preparing to say, "Not on your bloody life."
Hogan was vigorously nodding his head, yes.
"You've got a fever, sir, still can't breathe three times in a row without losin' a lung. You mind tellin' me how exactly you're going to get that radio to work?" The Brit demanded, lingering pain in his leg giving his voice a little more acid than he'd intended.
Hogan opened bleary eyes and took his first careful sip of the tea, sighing softly as the mix of natural honey and herbs soothed the fire in his tonsils. Then he pointed a finger at Newkirk. "You. Caine. Carter."
"Me, Caine, Carter…we know nothin' about radios."
As if on cue Master Werner walked into the room and plunked a thick book into Newkirk's pleading hands.
"Emp-fanger und Sender Reparatur.." Newkirk sighed and flipped through the pages, shaking his head at the diagrams, instructions and faded black and white photos. "It's in ruddy Germany. I can hardly understand the thing in English-"
"Caine.." Hogan said patiently.
Newkirk considered for a moment then nodded and said, "Alright, what about power."
"Carter."
As hard as he tried Newkirk just wasn't the 'we can do it' type by nature, and he hated himself even as he said, "Carter's not an electrician, he's spent the past four days milkin' cows, how-"
"Carter could make a detonator out of hair oil and a piece of string." LeBeau cut in.
Hogan nodded. "Tell Carter, need an electric detonator, with continued output." The phrase cost him, but both his men responded with the beginnings of understanding.
"A generator." Newkirk said, and Hogan nodded.
Still fighting the natural devil's advocate tendencies of a man born with only the luck that he made for himself, Newkirk gave Hogan a tired salute and grabbed the cane, pushing himself to his feet.
"I'll go drag Carter from his precious cows, then." He said and limped back into the cold.
Andrew Carter had milked a lot of cows in his life. His favorite cow had been Addie. Addie stood at 50 inches, a speckled black and white Holstein that he had raised from birth. He'd been there to bring each of her calves into the world, and had wanted to be there for the day that she finally left it, but Addie had passed a few weeks after Carter went overseas.
She hadn't really been a pet, but she'd been with him a long time, and he took it hard when the letter came explaining her passing. The other guys in the barracks hadn't understood, but Carter didn't care.
The day that he was introduced to Master Werner's prize milker he fell all over again. She wasn't a Holstein, and she didn't necessarily look like Addie, but the gleam in her eye, and the feisty little kicks that she gave most of the other hands who dared to try milking her, certainly did.
Werner warned Carter that he might get stepped on or worse, but the farmboy knew better and to Master Aldrich Werner's amazement Carter not only got close enough to milk her without injury, but got almost two pails out of her in one sitting. She produced five gallons that day. An absolute record.
Aldrich Werner was not the only one to notice. Two people on the Werner farm were able to milk Brunnhilde. Aldrich Werner, and Hannah Meier. Hannah was a refugee. At five foot two, 23-years-old, weighing about 100 pounds even, she was a spitfire of energy, attitude and a willingness to take on the world by herself if she had to. A German version of Carter's buddy LeBeau, but with more hair and less cooking ability.
The day that she was forced to step away from Brunnhilde to let the new American POW try his hand, she stood back with her fists perched on her hips ready to laugh like a maniac when Hilde kicked him but good. Except that Hilde didn't kick. Carter got through the milking like a whiz, and by the time Hannah was finished with her chores and came back to check on them, Carter had managed to get more out of the old girl than Hannah ever had. All five of her years in hiding, outraged at the Germans and even more mad at the Americans for not stopping them, made her blow up.
She snatched the pails of milk from Carter toting them away from Hilde's stall so fuming mad that she couldn't hear beyond the boiling in her ears. When Carter caught up with her, trying earnestly to take the pails from what looked like a girl too skinny to carry them, he watched in awe as she hefted the heavy buckets and poured the milk into the steel lined receptacle without so much as a grunt of effort.
Once her hands were empty she whirled on the sergeant, snapped a half-dozen choice insults in Yiddish-spun-German, then shoved a bony elbow into the sergeant's gut as she walked past him. The sharp, pointed appendage landed square in the middle of his solar plexus hard, and Carter had to take a few wheezing moments to recover.
By the time he had collected his breath, and the two empty pails he was in love.
Four days later, when Newkirk limped into the barn, not too pleased at the smell but glad for the warmth, he found Carter and Hannah at each other's throats again, arguing over the way Carter was mucking out one of the stalls.
Hannah, per usual, appeared to be winning the argument. Newkirk found a milking stool and lowered himself onto it, prepared to sit back and enjoy the show. The fact that Carter spoke mostly English and badly pronounced German, and Hannah spoke only Yiddish, German and a handful of perfectly pronounced American phrases, did nothing to stop the two from carrying on hours of arguments.
"You are wrong, Carter. All wrong!" Was Hannah's favorite go-to, and she spat it out before snapping the handle of the straw rake back into her possession and stepping past Carter into the stall.
"Hannah, I been mucking out stalls for a coupl'a decades here, I know what I'm doing. Ich weiss, was ich tun."
Hannah spun around and laughed, "Ich weiss, was ich tun? You don't know nothing." She said, then mumbled in German. Newkirk caught something about Americans and questions that answer themselves. Hannah bent to rake at the stinking hay and Carter stepped in to grab something that Newkirk couldn't see.
The end result was that the end of the rake handle was jabbed into Carter's stomach and the sergeant went down in the hay with a grunt, and all the air leaving his lungs.
Newkirk leaned over on the stool until he could just see Carter's rapidly reddening face. The sergeant noticed the corporal for the first time and weakly raised a gloved hand in greeting and Newkirk smirked and waved back, giving Carter a 'take your time' motion, and lighting the half a cigarette he'd been saving. Carter nodded and closed his eyes, then crawled out of the stall, bits of soiled straw clinging to the overalls he was wearing.
Hannah was oblivious to the damage she had done, and continued to viciously muck out the stall, her mumbled protests eventually falling silent.
Carter managed to get to his feet halfway to where Newkirk sat and it was then that the Englander realized that the rake hadn't hit Carter in the stomach, but a little lower. Carter sat down on a nearby stool gingerly, and stayed in a hunched position, even as he nodded a greeting to his pal.
Newkirk winced sympathetically, and waited until Carter started to look a little less green, before offering the cigarette.
"You uh…gonna be alright, there chum?" Newkirk asked cautiously.
Carter gave him a sheepish nod, his eyes watering still as he leaned over to check on the firey woman who had finished the first stall and moved on to the next.
"I don't get up and help her in a minute she'll come out and whack me again for being "ein lazy Amerikanisch". "
"I'm tellin' ya Carter she's a lost cause. She'll either break your heart or break your…em."
"Might have already done that." Carter moaned softly. "How's that radio look?"
"I'd be the first to call it another lost cause but the colonel wants us to give it a go. He needs a generator." Carter immediately opened his mouth to respond, but Newkirk interrupted. "He said to tell you, "Make an electric detonator with continued output."
For a moment Carter's mind was at work, translating and computing, before Andrew said, "Oh! Well that I can do."
Newkirk was mildly shocked, but straightened and asked, "Tell me what you need and we can get started on it right away."
With one last cautious glance down the length of stalls Carter got gingerly to his feet and led the way quietly out of the barn, practically on tip toe. Newkirk followed, snickering in delight.