Ellie Midwood - Of Knights and Dogfights

At dawn, the fog rolled in and obscured the crypt of a city from sight, consuming it, hanging in heavy clouds over the ruins. The trees, protruding from the ravaged ground, were missing their budding tops now and it was impossible for one to see if they were only shrouded in fog or torn off with a passing shell a day ago. Moist air smelled of explosives and rotting dead; the streets were littered with them. A small Hitlerjugend squad was singing the Horst Wessel song somewhere in the distance. Harald was awoken by the familiar marching tune and sprung from his bed◦– a habit formed over the years. Only after his gaze roved around the apartment taking in the unfamiliar surroundings and stopped on the corpse on the floor, did he spring to his feet, march over to the window and shut it closed, in silent fury.

The hospital was in Charlottenburg, which was still unoccupied◦– at least as of yesterday. Harald headed there first thing in the morning; again, around the Soviet “frontline,” through more rubble and barricades, through the digging brigades, through his own defense troops, who were so drunk that they paid him no heed whatsoever.

The ghostly silhouette of the hospital rose out of the dense mist. It still stood, even though it was overflowing with wounded to such an extent that many of them were laid out outside and the doctors and nurses tended to them right there, in the street. A teenager who was manning a narrow makeshift barricade in front of it sprung to attention and offered Harald a snappy salute. Staring straight ahead of himself, Harald marched forward, passing him and his roadblock without acknowledging the boy. For the first time in his life, he didn’t shout Heil Hitler back at someone.

“Excuse me, where can I find Wilhelmina Brandt?” he asked the first nurse he saw. A BDM girl, his age perhaps, with two long braids under her white cap. “She’s a nurse here.”

“Are you wounded?”

“No…”

“Then don’t distract us from our work, please.”

With that, she turned back to the stretchers in front of which they stood, threw a cover over a soldier’s face and shouted, “this one too,” to a couple of corpse carriers.

Harald waddled through the sea that was pleading and moaning and calling for help around him; swiftly moved away from the doctors who were shouting frantically to each other and finally found her◦– by her golden hair, which still shone like a sun in this chloroform-soaked communal grave◦– his brother’s wife, Mina.

Bending over a soldier, she was smiling and patting his hand◦– the only one that he had left. Both his legs below the knees were gone too.

“Mina!” Harald cried out, navigating his way to her among the stretchers.

She started, then broke into a smile that appeared relieved and rushed to hug him, apologizing for her stained apron in passing.

“Mina, you have to come with me,” Harald said without any preamble.

“Now? We’re so overwhelmed here—”

Her face was wet with fog, or perspiration from running about for endless hours. Harald studied her closely for the first time, the woman who he had sworn to his brother to protect by any means. In Napola terms, it would have meant to slash her neck if no other option was available just so a proud German woman wouldn’t fall into the beastly hands of those sub-human Bolsheviks . With a chilling lack of interest, Harald suddenly wondered if his Napola still stood or was obliterated by the enemy fire together with everything that it signified. Perhaps it was better that way? Wipe them all out as a nation and start with a clean slate? Scorched Earth policy, on a grandiose scale, like everything in the New Reich .

When he spoke, his voice was hoarse for some reason. “It’s Johann.”

Mina’s expression changed at once, became frightful and guarded. “What happened?”

“You just need to come with me. I promised to bring you.”

“Is he here in Berlin?”

Instead of replying, Harald took her by the hand and led her further and further away, until he could hear moaning and crying no longer. To all of her questions and pleas, he only gripped her hand tighter and stubbornly repeated the same, “you’ll see when you get there,” until Mina gave up and followed him along deserted streets.

Artillery began firing in the distance. The enemy was approaching from the south this time. Narrowly escaping an SS patrol, they darted into a street which soon opened into a shadowed alley with abandoned villas lining both sides. Reichstag big-shots’ heaven . Harald pondered something, finally pushed the wrought-iron gates to the nearest one and motioned Mina to follow him. The door was locked fast. A white sheet hung from the closed window◦– a silent plea to spare the villa from plunder. Harald searched the ground, picked up a rock and hurled it through the intricate stained glass with rays of light shining out of small swastikas, shattering the past with savage satisfaction. Leaving speechless Mina behind, he climbed inside. Soon, his grinning face appeared from behind the front door.

“Care to come in?”

“Why did you bring me here? Where’s Johann?” Golden eyes regarded him wrathfully, with apparent mistrust.

“Mina, come in, please.” He wasn’t smiling anymore, his face growing stern and emotionless. Only his eyes stared oddly out of the hollows of that death-head mask, bright-blue and clear.

Leaden with chilling, alien fear which she couldn’t explain to herself, Mina carefully moved forward, inside the hallway, closer to the young man in a dark uniform. How much he had grown; how much he had changed! Taller than her now; maybe taller than Johann even. She still remembered him, a young boy in his Jungvolk uniform, on a train station in Beeskow, standing next to his brother... How long ago was it? Seven years . She couldn’t quite believe it.

“Harald, you’re almost eighteen, aren’t you?”

“I will be, in a few months.”

“No more Napola then? Are they officially enlisting you in the SS?” She followed him cautiously through the dining room and into the kitchen.

Harald stopped his rummaging through the cabinets and broke into hollow, vacant laughter instead of an answer.

Her eyes brimming now, Mina pressed herself against the wall. “Harald, what are we doing here?”

“What do you think I just found? Preserves! We won’t go hungry.”

“Harald!”

He slowly put the can down and turned to face her. Only now Mina noticed a pair of scissors which he had extracted from the cabinet and was now holding in one hand. Harald hesitated for a few moments before finally saying, “Mina, sit down over there, on that chair, please.” His voice was coolly polite, but the request itself had the quality of an order.

“Why?”

“Don’t you trust me?”

Trembling and hot-eyed, she took a step back. A sad smile appeared on Harald’s face. He lowered his gaze as though not to intimidate her any further. “Mina, I’m a Napola cadet who’s been running marathons for his infantry training almost daily just because it pleased my superiors. You won’t even make it out of the front door before I catch you.”

A tear dropped from her eye. She swiped it in some frantic gesture. “What do you want with me?”

“I promised Johann to keep you safe from those Bolshevik hordes.”

A shell exploded in the distance. A sole ray of light tore through the dense clouds and pierced the window, gleaming on the blades of the scissors in Harald’s hand. She had not once ceased staring at them.

“Mina, do you think I will hurt you?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” He was smiling again. “I’m your husband’s brother. Do you believe for one second that I would hurt his wife?”