girls your
lover? Did she
promise you something if you would keep her safe?”
“Damn you, Osimov. Are you some kind of
monster?”
“I have something to show you, Lieutenant, as
soon as my
sergeants arrive, and I’m no longer afraid of losing control of
these men. Once
I show you, you’ll be happy to feed these pretty Germans to my
dogs.”
12.
When Osimov’s sergeants arrived and the
initial terror faded,
Cal began to struggle with exhaustion and hunger. Osimov
gathered the prisoners
and more than a dozen guards and set them off on a cross-country
march that ate
up most of the afternoon. By the time they walked the two hours
to the village
where the Russian had set up his headquarters, Cal could barely
stay on his
feet.
The entire company of German prisoners
completed the march
behind him, and many of them showed fatigue from the beginning.
One elderly
woman collapsed, and no amount of shouting would get her to her
feet. Cal
feared they would shoot her in the head and be done with it, but
the Russians
threw her in the back of a cart pulled by a shaggy pony.
The village was filled with these pony-pulled
carts when
they arrived, interspersed among men on horses, squatting T-34
tanks, and
American-built Jeeps, painted with red Soviet stars. Troops with
mobile
artillery, Katyusha rocket launchers on trucks, and everywhere
the ponies and
carts, carrying rations, clothing, canisters of ammunition.
No German civilians on the street, but faces
appeared in
windows, peering through glass filthy with ash and mud, and once
Cal heard a
woman’s high-pitched scream that carried on for several minutes
before it came
to an abrupt halt. Two Russian soldiers staggered out of the
house that was the
origin of the screaming. One carried a clear bottle of liquor,
and the other
was buttoning up his pants. They spotted the marching prisoners,
and poked and
pinched Greta and the other women as they passed, and then said
something to
the soldiers guarding them, who laughed.
Osimov ordered the prisoners into a house and
set guards at
the door. He kept Cal standing in the street, while he consulted
with a pair of
officers, who directed them to a second house, across the
street. Osimov moved
Cal into the house, down the hallway to the kitchen, and then
kept him standing
while two soldiers swept up smashed crockery, broken furniture,
and torn and
soiled clothing. Two men emerged from a bathroom with their
shirts untucked and
held in front of them like aprons and full of potatoes. Osimov
yelled at them
and they scurried from the house.
“Damn peasants. They shit in the streets and
wash potatoes
in the toilet.” He walked over to the kitchen sink. “Yet this
German house
still has running water. Imagine.”
He took a seat at the table and gestured for
Cal to sit
across from him.
“You marched us east,” Cal said as he
reluctantly obeyed.
“Away from American lines. I demand that you make contact with
the U.S. Army
liaison so I can turn over my prisoners and rejoin my unit.”
“You don’t want to march west. Heavy fighting
that way, even
though the bastard is finally dead. Still, they fight on.”
“Who is dead? You mean Hitler?”
“Didn’t you hear? Shot himself in his bunker
yesterday.
Berlin is in Soviet hands.”
Cal didn’t know if this was true or not, but
he didn’t see
how that mattered at this point. “Where is the American liaison?
I know your
army has one to deal with situations like this.”
“And anyway, I am not a combat officer,”
Osimov continued,
as if he hadn’t heard Cal’s question. “I am a political officer,
in spite of
where you found me. It’s my job to bring order to this mess, and
to organize
committees for the de-Nazification of Germany.”
“So you can turn the Germans into good little
communists.
Yes, I