Free Collision of Evil by John Le Beau

altitude and soaring over a brown ridgeline in the distance, the burnished metal of their wings dully reflecting the muddy sunlight. It was as if they had lost interest in us and had decided to hunt for more worthy game. More likely, they had hit the limit of their fuel capacity and had to return to their airfield, somewhere along the Rhine.
We spilled out of the truck and, as one, stretched like cats after an extended nap. Behind us we could hear the voices of our comrades, plaintive requests for medical attention, orders bellowed out by the officers. There was a thick plume of oily black smoke issuing from the trees near the road and the crackle of flames from brush that had caught fire. After taking enough time to empty our bladders, Uwe, Ruediger, and I picked our way through the undergrowth back to the rest of the column.
Things were not as bad as they could have been. A line of SS men stood sentinel around the chaos, scanning the sky for any return of the American planes. One truck was on its side nestled among some austere-looking saplings. Two bodies had been pulled from the vehicle and lay alongside it.
I noted that both corpses had been spared disfigurement. Internal injuries, I concluded.
A second truck was burning madly still; its paint already devoured. A sort of charred sweet scent in the air, like a whore’s cheap perfume gone bad, instructed us that the passengers of this vehicle were part of the pyre. Not a good death, I thought, hoping that, if my time came on this trip, it would be a bullet to the back of the head. One second you’re here, the next second you’re not.
“You there, help those fellows move the crates into the other trucks.” It was the officer with the sling, clearly in command, two noncoms at his side. He gestured to the overturned vehicle where four or five solders were grunting and wrestling the heavy wooden containers from the canvas-covered bed.
“
Jawohl,”
Uwe said and we added ourselves without complaint to the little troop. As we maneuvered the first container to the ground, we heard the unmistakable tinkle of broken glass issue from inside.
“You need to be careful,” a voice intoned from behind us.
Uwe and I turned and saw that it was one of the civilians, a thin, dour-looking man with a crushed hat and long, cadaverous face. He was wearing pince-nez glasses, which gave him a professorial cast.
“We’re doing what we can,” I said, evenly. “Whatever’s broken in here broke when the truck slid over, not because we’re manhandling it.”
The civilian nodded and adjusted his glasses with a finicky motion. “I know, I know. It’s just that we want as little damage as possible.”
I was about to ask the fellow what sort of breakable stuff there was inside the crate, but before I could get the words out, he had touched the brim of his hat in a salute and turned away. It occurred to me that gold does not break or tinkle like glass. Was there also precious crystal or Dresden porcelain among the cargo? I returned to the ancient human task of lifting and pulling.
Within the hour we were underway again, leaving the wreckage behind. We buried the two comrades from the overturned truck in a gully by the road and an officer had recited a prayer and we had given the National Socialist salute. Their stahlhelm were placed atop crude crosses fashioned of branches from nearby trees and we inscribed their names on scraps of cardboard. It was the same ceremony I had witnessed a hundred times during the years in Russia. But now this feral, rushed ceremony preceding another retreat was being conducted on the soil of the Fatherland. What could speak more clearly of defeat?
We had to leave the charred and twisted remains of the four soldiers inside the burning truck. The truck was still too hot to approach, and we had to get moving, the little Scharrfuehrer said, before the Americans returned. We moved to a small farm a few kilometers away, concealing our trucks in the barns and flush