Free Collision of Evil by John Le Beau Page A

along the sides of the outbuildings. We waited for the return of dusk, the time that had now become our friend and steadfast protector.
So it went. Uneventful days huddled in villages, eating hardtack and thin soup from the field kitchen and radishes and last year’s potatoes or whatever could be scrounged from the local inhabitants. Underway by night, south, southwest. On a few occasions we heard a radio broadcast of the latest war news in a gasthof. Even with the best efforts of Goebbel’s Reich Propaganda Ministry, the news was bad.
Fronts collapsing east and west, entire Wehrmacht divisions erased or overwhelmed by force majeure, the Rhine breached by the Americans, panicked refugees from the east clogging the autobahn network, massive air raids incinerating Berlin, Dresden, and Hamburg.
Of course, the commentary was peppered with references to Final Victory, secret miracle weapons that would turn the tide, and odes to the heroic individuals who were forcing the foe to “pay a heavy price.” But it didn’t take a genius to know where things were going, and Dante had described those surroundings rather well.
We heard Allied airplanes often over the next few days, but they were at high altitude and on their way to or from somewhere else. We crossed into Bavaria one night, traversing a winding one-lane road surrounded by vineyards near Wuerzburg. We avoided the city itself as it represented a bombing target. Here and there we encountered the corpses of Wehrmacht conscripts who had been hanged by order of a flying court for desertion. Most of them looked either too young or too old to be soldiers. Their crimes were written on placards hung around their necks.
We passed the outskirts of Munich in moonlit semidarkness thenext night, and I could see the shattered towers of the
Frauenkirche
like spectral giants brooding over the carcass of that ancient city. We did not pause; Munich was not our destination.
And then the next evening we found ourselves deep in the towering, protective folds of the Bavarian Alps, with lines of fir trees marching from the valley floor to heights far above us. My comrades and I were not far removed from where the two of us are sitting now. When dawn broke, it was as if we had entered a different world, as if the last months, even the last years, had been a bad dream.
Even at this stage of the war, the region had been largely spared the malevolent, consuming grasp of the conflict. There was no major city nearby, which meant that Allied bombers focused their attentions elsewhere. The battlefronts were getting closer by the day, but the countryside still remained unmolested and perversely peaceful.
We were able to dine on fresh milk and eggs and smoked ham. The locals had enough of these things and provided for us. We parked our convoy under the shelter of trees along the bank of a valley stream. The mountain water was pristine, and we drank huge, gulping mouthfuls and used it to wash the accumulated filth and sweat and stink of fear from our uniforms.
For two days we did nothing else; ate, drank, slept, and wandered around that patch of countryside, reveling in the scenery and stillness. No one spoke of the war. It was as if the topic—the center of our lives for the past six years—had suddenly become taboo.
On the third day, around ten in the morning, we were told to prepare for a short journey. Uwe, Ruediger, and I mounted our vehicle without enthusiasm, content to forget military duties altogether and await the conclusion of hostilities, whatever that might bring. But we did as we were ordered.
“What do you think is up?” Ruediger asked.
Uwe grumbled out a laugh and slapped his meaty hands together. “It’s one of two things. Either we are all going to some field where we will be instructed to shoot ourselves as exemplary heroes for the Fatherland in its last hours, or we’re going to unload these crates.”
“The Fuehrer Headquarters in Obersalzburg,” Ruediger mused. “That might