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NO CHILD'S PLAY
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What is Hogan to do, when 'spying on the enemy' has become child's play?
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"Mum, can I take my bread outside? August and Werner are waiting for me."
Edith Meisinger sighed. "Alright. But finish your milk first." She watched how her son quickly emptied his mug. The boy was so much like his father in the fast pace with which he went through life. The adventurous spirit. And of course the beautiful brown eyes.
"Are you going to your secret hide-out again?" his sister Ida asked.
Theo nodded. "And before you ask again – no, you can't come. It's a secret. Besides, you're too young."
"I'm six!"
"And you're a girl. And we have a very strict rule: boys only! So stop asking."
"It's not fair!" Ida whined. "Mum, tell him I can come, too! I want to have a secret hide-out, too!"
"Why don't you and Beate build your own secret hide-out in the backyard?" Edith suggested as she picked up her knitting work.
"That's not the same," Ida complained. "It won't be a secret if it's right here in the backyard. I want to go into the woods, too."
"Well, in that matter I agree with your brother – you are too young."
Theo gave his sister a superior grin and got up.
"Hold it!" his mother said as he wanted to run off already. "You're not going anywhere without your bread."
"I'm just picking up something from my room." And gone he was, up the stairs.
Edith Meisinger sighed, and tried to shut out her daughter's sulky complaints. Instead, she tried to think of her husband, Horst, in faraway Norway. He'd been gone for over three years now – the youngest hadn't even been born when he was called into service. Thank God he was stationed at a fairly safe post – being part of the occupational forces wasn't half as dangerous as being out at the front. But Horst considered the natives to be too hostile to have his family join him in faraway Trondheim. Instead, they exchanged long and frequent letters, but it wasn't quite the same as having your husband at your side. In practice, she had to raise four kids on her own, and that, she found, was not an easy task. Theo especially needed a firm father-hand – he had gotten more and more difficult to handle lately. And he was barely nine years old! How was she going to deal with him once he reached the terrible teens? It didn't look as if the war would be over any time soon...
And there he was again. "Bye Mum." He grabbed his bread and...
Edith took him by the arm. "Be careful, okay? And don't go beyond the Hamel."
"Of course." Theo tried to pull free, but his mother wasn't finished yet.
"And make sure you don't tear your clothes again. And be back before dark, understood?"
"Yeah, sure."
"Promise?"
"Promise."
She pulled his head close to press a kiss on it, and finally let go of him. Her son. Her eldest. The child version of her dear Horst. "Have fun, sweetheart."
Theo gave her a cheeky grin. "Bye." And with his mouth full of bread he ran out the back door.
The woods reached right till the fence around the Meisinger's backyard, and Theo met his friends at the beginning of Herr Linnartz's track (named after the old man from number fifteen who always walked his dog there).
"You'll never guess what I laid my hands on," August greeted him.
Werner made a face. "A girlie magazine – how do you like that?"
Theo's eyebrows shot up. "How did you get that?"
August grinned. "I saw my brother stashing it away yesterday. So now I've got it."
They all snickered. Not because they were interested in girls yet – heaven forbid, who needed girls?! – but because that kind of reading material was strictly off limits for boys their age, and thus its attraction was irresistible by definition.
"Come on, let's go," Werner urged, and led the way down the track to the Hamel.
They chatted about school, about their new teacher that none of them liked, about Saturday's Hitler Jugend meeting and ways to get out of its boring exercise drills, until the light ahead indicated they were approaching the rift. For that's when their rituals kicked in.
"Ssh!" Theo hushed, and motioned for the other two to stay out of sight. Then he crept from bush to bush, until he finally had a free view over the narrow brook of the Hamel below. Carefully, he spied around, but there was no one in sight. A short whistle, and some minutes later, his friends joined him in the same manner.
Meanwhile, Theo himself had remained on the look-out, and when he decided everything was still clear, a nod to Werner was enough to have his friend climb up the nearest tree.
Minutes later, a soft whistle from above announced that all was secure, and now August came into action. He quickly scaled the steep slope down to the gurgling water, and picked his away across the rocks to the opposite bank. Climbing up the steep bank and disappearing among the trees was the work of less than a minute, and immediately, he climbed up a specifically chosen tree there, too, to keep a look-out.
Theo followed suit, slipping a little on one of the rocks and barely avoiding getting his feet wet in the rapids, and hid in the bushes on the other side. And when August finally gave the all-clear signal, it was Werner's turn to leave his post in the tree and cross the splashing brook to join his friends again on the other side – the forbidden side – of the Hamel.
August quickly clambered down again, too, and together, they crept the last few meters through the undergrowth till they reached a large disfigured pine tree. Their pine tree, with their tree house priding in it some five meters off the ground.
Again, they took turns in looking out and climbing up, until at last they had all disappeared in their secret tree house, and the deserted woods became quiet again.
"Hey guys, let's do something else now." Werner and August had been poring over that stupid magazine for what seemed like hours. At least that's how it felt to Theo, who had lost interest pretty quickly. (Who cares about girls after all?)
August looked up and stretched his arms over his head. "Yeah, you're right. There's only so much girls one can take." He jabbed Werner in the side. "So what'll we do?"
Even Werner put the delectable magazine down. "We can set rabbit traps again."
"We never catch anything anyway," August scoffed.
"No, that's boring." Theo shook his head. "But I've got a better idea: let's go spy on the enemy!"
The other two stared at him. "The enemy?"
"Sure! There's that prison camp down the road, right? The trucks with new prisoners always pass by our house. So let's go spy on them!"
"What's to spy on them? They're prisoners!" August objected, but he was already getting up.
"Well, they're still the enemy," Theo countered. "Let's see what they're up to."
They clambered down from their secret tree house, and instantly, Theo took the lead. "Now we got to be awfully careful. We can't let them see us before we see them." He himself gave the example by ducking down behind a tree and thoroughly scanning his surroundings before swiftly moving to the next tree. Spying or not, it was an exhilarating game – especially when Theo suddenly ordered them flat on the ground to avoid detection by the car that passed them on the road.
"We've got to stay alert," he whispered once it was safe enough to get up again. "We can't let anyone see us, or we're dead meat."
"How much further to the camp?" August mouthed back to him.
"A little further still." Truth be told, he didn't know, but... "We just make sure we follow the Hamelburg Road and we'll get there. Come on." He dashed to the next tree, with his friends in his wake. Another tree, a bush, a tree, a tree... Theo kept an eagle eye on the lighter stretch to his left that represented the road – so much in fact, that it was Werner who spotted the camp up ahead.
"There's a clearing up ahead. And I can see barbed wire."
"That must be it!" August's voice rose in pitch with excitement.
"Let's get closer," Theo ordered. "But super careful now, okay?"
With even more vigilance than before, they crept from tree to tree and from bush to bush. Their eyes were glued to the long stretch of barbed wire fence up ahead. They could make out wooden huts behind the fence, and once they saw a patrolling soldier with a dog go by. The dog looked in their direction, but thank heaven that he didn't give them away. And finally, they crouched down behind some bramble bushes at the tree line, where they had a free view of the camp.
To start with, there wasn't much to see actually. They were looking straight at the back of some wooden huts. Off to the left was a guard tower with one guard on it, and the only prisoners in sight were casually ambling away from them a good distance to their right.
They watched the near inactivity on the other side of the wire for a good while, until at last Werner asked, "How many prisoners are there in this camp?"
Theo shrugged. "A hundred, I guess. Or two hundred. Three hundred maybe. Judging by the trucks full that I've seen passing our house."
"Then where are all these guys? Are they hiding in the huts or so?"
"Maybe we just need a better look-out point," August thought. "Somewhere where those huts aren't blocking the view."
A big smile slowly spread over Theo's face. "We just need to get a bit higher up." He looked around. "There. That pine tree will do. Easy to climb, and we'd be nicely hidden ourselves."
Immediately, the spark was back. Without making a sound, they crept to the big pine tree, and experienced tree climbers as they were, it was the work of minutes before they were all perched on a sturdy branch some four meters above the ground, securely hidden from sight by the greens.
"Wow, there's lots of them!" Werner breathed peering through the clumps of pine needles.
"A hundred at least!" Theo thought with a hint of satisfaction.
Indeed there were. There were prisoners – enemies – milling about everywhere, and out in the barren compound, a rather lazy volleyball game was going on.
"The ones with the helmets are ours, right?" August got up again and moved on to the next branch up. "Not many of them there, are there. The prisoners have them way outnumbered."
"But ours have guns," Theo pointed out.
"And they look a lot better, too," Werner commented. "The enemies look really shabby. No military pride at all."
"Of course they do. They're no Aryans."
To that, Theo and Werner just shared a tiny grimace, and nothing more was said until Werner's eye fell on something else. "Look, over there – they're doing the laundry!"
"Where?"
Werner pointed, and Theo snickered. "Imagine – a guy doing the laundry. How humiliating."
"I wouldn't be caught dead doing the laundry," August declared. "I'd rather walk around in the same clothes for a year."
The other two agreed, and they watched with some gloat how the enemy prisoners scrubbed, rinsed and hung their garments.
Then they returned to the real espionage work in determining which of the enemies was the most evil-looking (as far as they could tell from this distance), speculated about what the enemy in the leather jacket had done in the Kommandant's office (murder the Kommandant perhaps?), and debated the purpose of the blond lady in the camp as she got escorted to the gate under a chorus of appreciative whistles (maybe she was the Kommandant's girl-friend?).
Until suddenly, Theo poked Werner in the ribs. "Look!" He pointed downwards.
Not far from their vantage point, a man in a long blue overcoat sat crouched behind the bushes.
"Who's that?" August asked.
Theo had an impatient shrug.
"He's waiting for something," Werner thought.
And indeed, the man seemed to be watching the guard tower in the distance.
"Maybe he's a spy, too," August whispered.
"Ssh!" Theo kept his eyes on the guy. He was certainly acting suspiciously enough to be a real spy. What the heck was he doing down there in the bushes?
But the next moment he grabbed Werner's arm in suppressed excitement. The guy in the blue overcoat had gotten to his feet and swiftly, keeping as low as he could, moved toward the... no, to one of those tree stumps! One last look around and...
Up in the pine tree, three jaws dropped. The top of the tree stump opened up, and the guy in the blue overcoat quickly climbed inside and disappeared, closing the top of the tree stump as he descended into... into what?