William Tyree - The Fellowship

*

After calisthenics, the boys were split into their units and marched toward the lake. They marched everywhere, and always in neat columns. Despite the frigid water, Wolf looked forward to these morning swims. Upon his first visit to the Reich School, he had been stunned to see the picturesque community of yellow mansions situated on the verdant shore of Lake Starnberg. Although it was an easy train trip from his hometown, Munich, the campus felt refreshingly isolated from the political tension he had grown up with in the city. As far back as he could remember Munich had been a place of endless party rallies, political speeches, military parades and ethnic violence.

Now the lakefront glistened orange as the sun rose over the surrounding hills. Wolf removed his clothes and leapt over a half-meter patch of semi-solid ice around the lake’s perimeter. None of the boys complained about the temperature as they swam the four laps between the shore and Rose Island. That was typical of the Reich School attitude. But with the high command watching, there were no pranks today. No boy dunked any other boy, and no boy pretended to be taken under by the ghost of Ludwig II, the Bavarian King who had drowned in the lake in 1886.

A breeze had picked up by the time Wolf and Lang returned to shore and began dressing. As usual, Albert was still swimming his last lap. Albert was a slow swimmer, and Beck usually waited for him before moving the unit to their next activity. Not today. As Beck began marching the shivering unit across a wheat field that the cadets had harvested themselves in July, Albert was alone in the water.

Wolf looked over his shoulder as they rounded the first hilltop. There was still no sign of Albert.

“He better catch up,” Lang muttered. “Himmler will bring the dogs.”

Stories of Himmler’s cruelty were legendary. One tale had him picking out a straggler from a line of boys and, after giving the student a 20-second head start toward a grove of trees, setting a pack of vicious dogs on his trail.

“Nonsense. Maybe at the NAPOLA schools. But not here. They have invested too much in us.”

It was true that the Reich School had the highest admissions standards of all schools in Germany. Exemplary achievement in either athletics or academics was mandatory. Another hurdle was racial qualification. A person born in Eastern Europe was not eligible for enrollment at the Reich School. Neither was a person whose family had been in Germany for less than 140 years. The bloodline, it was thought, needed at least that much time to be purified of other races. In addition, students were eligible for admittance only if they could prove that their family had been of pure German descent since the year 1800.

Wolf’s mother, Gertrude, had hired a certified genealogist to create an extensive family tree showing that the family had been of Germanic descent since at least the 1500s. And even with all the right paperwork in place, doctors from the SS came to the family apartment in Munich to measure Wolf’s cranium. It was believed that the skull should be of a certain size as proof of intellectual aptitude and, of course, there were certain undesirable curvatures that were supposedly telltale signs of an ethnic minority. To Wolf, these requirements had seemed more ludicrous than sinister. After placing a set of very cold calipers against Wolf’s head, the doctor declared, “Your skull is not overly round.” Within two months, he had received his admission letter.

*

The unit did not catch sight of Himmler and Vogel until they neared a barn in a neighboring field. There was still no sign of Albert. Wolf offered a stiff-arm salute as he passed wordlessly, feeling the inspecting eyes of the German high command upon him.

Moments later, Wolf spotted the longcoats. They were standing at the end of a barn with stone siding and a gambrel roof. They were setting up a movie camera.

A movie camera could mean only one thing. They were going to jump today.

Trust jumps. That is what Beck called them. In Wolf’s two years at the Reich School, he had leapt from a guard tower, several school and government buildings and, once, a gorge in the Austrian Alps. Trust jumps were always unannounced and, more often than not, they were also filmed. The footage of boy after boy leaping from great heights made terrific propaganda footage. It was nothing less than proof that the country’s next generation of leaders had already coalesced into a formidable, unified socialist machine. Germany’s future was bright indeed.

What awaited the boys on the ground was always a mystery. Sometimes they landed on a sort of trampoline held by older boys. At other times, a safety net had been tied in place ahead of time. In the Alps they had landed in a deep river. There was no choice but to have faith in Beck’s preparation. That, of course, had been the point. To follow orders without hesitation.

But Wolf had no faith in Beck’s oversight of this activity. His stomach filled with dread with each new ascent. His mind exploded with questions. When had Beck prepared the landing? Had he scouted the landing himself, or had he delegated the task to a junior instructor? What if the conditions had changed in the hours since the landing had been prepared? Could a trampoline tie not break? Could a tree or an animal or a boulder not fall into their path?

Now they were led inside a barn cavernous enough to hold at least 100 cattle. Beck instructed them to climb a wooden ladder to the hayloft, and then to ascend to the rooftop. Wolf measured his pacing as they made their way toward the rickety wooden ladder. He slackened his pace deliberately, falling back in line.

Don’t be the first, he told himself. Be second, or tenth. Anything but first. To see a boy jump before him and land safely was marvelous for Wolf’s courage.

By the time he reached the ladder, he was third in line. He climbed behind two other boys into a spacious loft that slanted sharply to accommodate snow drainage. A prominent steeple at the apex allowed for heat ventilation as well as an exit onto the rooftop for occasional repairs.

Looking down, he saw that Albert had finally caught up. He had no shoes or shirt on, and he looked rattled, wet and out of breath as he stood at the bottom of the ladder.

He soon found himself in the sunlight, standing near the steeple. He paused to admire the vast expanse of golden farmland. Hundreds of majestic acres bristled in the gentle morning breeze.

Suddenly he was jostled forward. He found himself at the head of the line. Beck’s voice cut through the morning, urging them to jump. Wolf looked left, down the eastern slope of the roof. He saw Beck, his finger pointed toward the far edge of the roof. Himmler, Vogel and the two longcoats were by his side. All waiting for Wolf to leap.

A flip of white-blond hair tottered back and forth on his forehead. Goose pimples rose over his legs as the breeze picked up. His peripheral vision was suddenly rimmed with darkness, as if looking through a pair of old binoculars. He stood on his tiptoes, but he could not see the landing zone.

As each succeeding student exited the steeple, Wolf found himself bumped further down the rooftop. He felt Lang behind him, hands pressed against the small of his back, pushing him. He heard Lang’s breath in his ear. “Go on, Sebastian! Jump!”

Suddenly Albert ran past him. Wolf was thrown off balance. He teetered, then felt Lang’s grip on his bicep. He recovered his footing just in time to glimpse Albert’s body disappear over the horizon.

The boys held their collective breath, waiting for the sound of Albert’s inevitable war cry. It did not come. Only a crunching thud and a chorus of worried noises erupted from Himmler’s entourage. One of the longcoats rushed to the film camera and switched it off.