John Ringo: Watch on the Rhine

Afterwards, when the long beating was over, the boy, Hans, walked dry-eyed past his mother, his walk stiff from the bruises, the welts, and the cuts.

The woman reached out to her son, seeking desperately to comfort him in his pain. All she felt was his shudder as her hands stroked his bruises and wounds. “Why, Hansi? What did you do wrong?”

The boy, he was tall for ten but not so tall as his mother, hung his head, buried his face in a maternal bosom and whispered, “I do not know, Mutti. He didn’t say. He never says.”

“He was never like this before the Great War, Hansi, before he lost the arm.”

The boy could not cry, that had long since been beaten out of him. He shrugged. The mother could cry… and did.

Later, in a Mercedes, one of the pair said, “I must say, you are a cool one, Herr Brasche.”

“I am old. I have seen much. I have never seen where being afraid, or showing I was if I was, ever did me or anyone else any good. Would it now?”

The other, the driver, answered, “In this case you have no cause to fear, Herr Brasche. We are here to do you a favor.”

Hans shrugged. “I have been done favors before. Little good I had of them.”

The times had changed. Plenty and hope had replaced hunger and despair. From the windows, from the street lamps, on the arms of men and women all over Germany fluttered a new symbol. On the radios crackled the harsh, gas-damaged voice of a new hero.

Hans felt his thirteen-year-old heart leap at the sound of his Führer’s voice speaking via the radio, to the nation.

“Meine alte Kameraden,” began the distant Hitler, and Hans felt his one-armed father, standing beside, stiffen with filial love. “Die grosse zeit ist jetzt angebrochen… Deutschland ist nun erwacht…” (My old comrades… the great time is now brought to pass… Germany is now awake.”)

“You see, little Hansi? You see what a favor I have done bringing you here?”

To that Hans had no honest answer; nothing from his father came without price.

It was a public radio, one with loudspeakers, intended for the address of a crowd. Uniformed HitlerJugend patrolled, keeping order mainly by disciplined example. Not that much example was needed for Germans of the year of our Lord, 1933; they remained the people who had fought half a world to a standstill from 1914 to 1918. Discipline they had, in plenty.

The father observed Hans’ eyes glancing over the uniformly short-trousered, dagger-wielding, hard-faced and brightly beribboned youths.

“Ah, you are interested in the Youth Movement, I see, my son. Never fear. I have arranged for you to be accepted a bit early. They’ll make a man of you.”

Why, how so, father? thought the boy . Do they have stiffer belts? What new favors will you show me, I wonder.

“Don’t do me any fucking favors,” snarled Mühlenkampf.

The Kanzler — the Chancellor of the German Federal Republic — ceased perusing the picture of the worn and shriveled shell of a wheelchair-bound man in the file on his desk. He looked up sharply at the brand-new, tall, dark-haired, ramrod-backed and broad-shouldered man before him. To the observer, Mühlenkampf, wearing the insignia of a Bundeswehr major general, appeared no more than twenty. Despite this, there was a harshness about the man’s eyes that spoke of stresses and strains no mere stripling of twenty could ever have undergone.

The chancellor observed, “Amazing, isn’t it, Günter, what taking eighty-four years off of someone’s life will do for his disposition?”

Mühlenkampf snorted in derision. Quickly and determinedly he lashed out. “Fuck you, Herr Kanzler . Fuck all of you civilian bastards. Fuck anybody who had anything to do with dragging me out of that nursing home. Fuck you for giving me a mind back to remember and miss my wife and children with; a mind with which to remember the friends I have lost. Fuck you for sending me back to a war. I’ve had better than thirteen years of war in my life, Herr Kanzler . And never a moment’s peace since 1916. I had thought I was finally past that. So fuck you, again.”

Halfway through Mühlenkampf’s tirade Günter arose from his chair as if to shut this new-old man up. Mühlenkampf’s glare, and the chancellor’s restraining hand, sent the bureaucrat reeling back to his seat.

The chancellor smiled with indulgence. “You are so full of shit it’s coming out of your ears, Mühlenkampf. What is more, you know you are. A ‘moment’s peace’? Nonsense. The only peace you’ve ever known was from 1916, when you were first called to the colors, to 1918, when the Great War ended. Then you had some more ‘peace’ from 1918 to 1923 in the Freikorps … Oh, yes, I know all about you, Mühlenkampf. And then you found the greatest peace from 1939 to 1945, didn’t you? Get off your high horse, SS man. War is your peace. And peace is your hell.”

Mühlenkampf cocked his head to one side. He tried and failed to keep a small, darting smile from his lips. “You missed one, Herr Kanzler . Spain, 1936 to 1939. Unofficially, of course. That was a fun time.”

The smile broadened. Mühlenkampf laughed aloud. “Very well, Herr Kanzler . Whatever you have done to make me young you must have had a reason. What do you want of me? What mission have you for me?”

The chancellor returned the beam. “We have some problems,” he admitted. “How far gone were you in that nursing home?”

Mühlenkampf thought briefly, then answered, “I think I was gone back to about 1921. Speaking of which, what year is it? How am I here? How am I young ? How is it I have my mind back?”

“ Ach , where to begin? The year is 2004.” Seeing the former officer’s surprise, the chancellor continued, “Yes, General Mühlenkampf, you are a sprightly one hundred and four years old. As to how you have the body and mind of a twenty-year-old? That is an interesting tale.”

The Kanzler had long since decided to be direct; Mühlenkampf was known to have been a direct man. “We are about to be invaded, General.”

“Germany?” bristled the new-old man. “The Fatherland is in danger?”

“ Everyone is in danger,” answered the chancellor. “The planet Earth is about to be attacked… actually has already been… by alien beings, creatures from space. As I said they have already begun to land, in the United States and — ”

“Bah! Ami trash. And aliens? From space? Herr Kanzler , please? I was born at night but it was not last night.”

“Not so trashlike, Mühlenkampf. Restrain your prejudices; the last war is long over. And the Ami’s, at least, utterly defeated the first invasion to hit them. Not everyone can say that. Though it cost the Americans frightfully. As for when you were born… well, you were reborn about thirty minutes ago. Contemplate, why don’t you, the implications of that?”

“Ah,” agreed Mühlenkampf, contemplatively.

“But, in any case,” continued the chancellor, “those first landings were small-scale affairs, comparatively speaking. What we are facing, commencing in as little as eight months, are five more invasions, each of them ten to fifteen times more massive. You will be briefed in much greater detail on the nature and numbers of the enemy after we are finished here.”

Mühlenkampf shrugged. He could wait for the details.

The chancellor interlaced his hands in front of his face. “We have a problem though. It is not too much detail for now to tell you that these five coming invasions will come with weapons superior to ours or that they are mostly… infantry of a sort. They will have complete command of the air and space. Each will muster from ninety million to as many as two hundred million combatants.”