Page 99 of Hell to Pay
“You’re kidding,” Ben said.
“That’s some serious badass,” Sebastian said. “Excuse the language.”
Ashleigh didn’t say anything. That’s because she was recording me.
“What about the money, though?” Alix asked. “What about your train ticket home?”
“Dr. Becker and the children left the next morning for Föhrenwald,” I said. “They went on the train, and I saw them off. It was a hard parting. Not for them so much—Dr. Becker was grateful to me, I know, and to my family, too, but oh, how he wanted to be safe again, to have the children in a real school, and to practice medicine! He couldn’t hide how eager he was to get there, and why should he have? No, I was glad for them, but I felt very much alone once they’d gone.”
“Excuse me,” Ben said, “money?”
“I went back to that office. Back to the sergeant. I told him what had happened, he told me I shouldn’t have tried to sell on the black market, which was extremely illegal, and I agreed most humbly and said that I’d learned my lesson. And then I showed him the brooch and asked if he might possibly know anybody wealthy enough to buy it. In the end, I sold it to a captain from New York City. He bought it for his wife and paid me nine hundred dollars—it was probably worth a good seven or eight thousand even at the time, but nine hundredAmerican dollars was a fortune. Afortune.After that, he arranged a lift for me on another Army truck back to Nuremberg. I even got to sit in the cab. So you see”—I spread my hands—“how much one can do if one takes the initiative.Audentes fortuna iuvat.”
“What does that mean?” Ben asked.
I smiled and took a last sip of coffee. “Fortune favors the bold.”
43
CHANGE OF PLAN
“So,” Ben said, “was that, like, the end of all your troubles? Because you had some money?”
“Absolutely not,” I said. “I had money now, yes, more than I could possibly spend. I was able to buy an old bicycle, which was wonderful—what a difference! I could ride to Nuremberg for supplies without spending money for the train, and out into the countryside also, which became important. That’s how I managed to obtain not just occasional milk and eggs and vegetables and bacon—the real riches at that time in Germany were pigs; how one wished for a pig!—but also some precious wheat as well as a great deal of oats and rye. Yeast and sugar were still difficult to come by, so I relied mostly on sourdough for my baking, and bread and potatoes still made up most of our diet. I had to be sneaky about my purchases, and, yes, that generally meant buying directly from the farmers and using my own money to do it. Not to mention carrying it all home on that bicycle once we’d managed to fix the cart so it fastened on behind. I certainly became more fit at the bakery than I’d managed with all thosesilly BDM exercises—it seemed like every route involved miles of pedaling uphill.”
“Your own money?” Alix asked. “Were you even getting paid? Even though Frau Adelberg was telling you she’d kick you out as soon as her husband came home?”
“She paid me a little,” I said, “but we couldn’t possibly have kept the bakery going without my contributions, and if I’d left, where would I have gone? I would likely have been robbed, or worse; there were many people on the roads still, and most of them were desperate. And who knows? Even when Herr Adelberg came home, wouldn’t they still need help in the shop? There was still nobody to fix Frau Adelberg’s arm; how foolish that Nuremberg doctor was to turn away Dr. Becker! Viewed dispassionately, though, that made me indispensable, and I needed to be indispensable. Which means I baked the best bread I could possibly coax out of those supplies and was as pleasant and helpful to the customers as I could be, much as I may have bitten my tongue and written in my journal afterward.”
“But couldn’t you have left and just, like, bought food and rented an apartment?” Ben asked.
“You must understand,” I said, “how much of the cities had been bombed out, and how little food there was in the shops. Worse than during the war; much worse. Germany had been fed and fueled, until then, mainly by the rest of Europe. Their cattle, their chickens, their produce, their wheat, their fuel oil—all became the property of the Reich. But once those lands were gone?” I waved a hand. “Poof. Germany itself had long been embargoed, with no goods coming in by sea. Now, the land was laid waste, and much of the country, particularly the cities, began to starve. The Allies wouldn’t even allow food packages from relatives outside the country.”
“Why not?” Ben asked.
“For the answer to that,” I said, “I’ll read you Joe’s next letter.”
July 10, 1945
Dear Dad,
We’ve moved on again, this time to Salzburg, because the French have taken over the Tyrol. I guess you’ve seen how the Allies have carved Germany up between them. They’ll have a heck of a job to rebuild the place—or more likely, to get the Germans to do it—and feed all these people. The part of the country I’ve seen is like the surface of the moon now, craters and all. Why on earth did Hitler drag the thing out so long? Did he really imagine he could win? I’ll never understand the guy.
Food’s an issue with the population, even if not for us—seems the Nazis starved the Poles and Ukrainians and Danes and everyone else to the east and west in order to feed Germany and Austria, and what they didn’t take, they burned. Seeing how badly civilians here are eating now, how dire must things be in those places? And yet there’s still food aid being given out, though not very much, because apparently people here are going hungry. I find I can’t be sorry about that, but I suppose the powers that be don’t want them feeling like they’ve got nothing to lose again—a lot of people smarter than me think that’s why this war happened in the first place, that the terms after the Treaty of Versailles were too harsh on the Germans and made them ripe for a guy like Hitler, and they don’t want them getting that desperate. They’re desperate enough as it is, though, from what I see and hear, even in Austria, which wasn’t bombed the way Germany was. It’s lucky the good ol’ U.S. Army is keeping the mess halls operating and the K-rations and C-rations coming, boring as they are. What I wouldn’t give for brisket and potato kugel, or just a good corned beef on rye with a bowl of Mom’s chicken soup!
Here's the odd thing, though. The authorities don’t want the civilians as desperate as before, but theyalsodon’t want them forgetting that they lost. The idea seems to be that they’ll feed them, but not as much as the countries they looted are getting fed. Seems fair, if harsh, but I don’t know. I understand that you don’t want your tax dollars feeding the people who killed ours, like you said in your last letter, but on the other hand, there’sTzedaka.About the most Jewish idea there is, isn’t it, righteousness and fairness and trying to make the world a better place? Isn’t charity our obligation here, then, if the people are starving? But how far does that require us to go? One thing’s for sure—it won’t be you and me deciding! And thank goodness for that.
Meanwhile, I know you’re worrying about me heading to Japan, and trust me, it’s on our minds here, too. Any day now, we expect the order to come in, and who knows how long it’ll take to conquer the home islands? From the skinny we get here, the Japs are even more determined to fight to the last man than the Germans were—or than Hitler was, because most of the guys we ran into at the end were more than happy to throw down their rifles and pack it in. The Japs, though, even the enlisted ones, seem to think it’s the height of dishonor to surrender. That can’t be comfortable to know when you’re going up against them. Are we going to have to shoot every last one of them to end this thing? How many of us will go down along the way?
That order hasn’t come through yet, though, so for the moment, we’re doing fine. Spending our time supervising the POWs working in a lumber camp—there are thousands of them. Why they’re not being released now that the war is over is anybody’s guess—other than that they’d probably starve on the way home, let alone once they got there—but here they still are, so we may as well put them to use. They’re cutting up the biggest pile of lumber you’ve ever seen—supposed to be hundreds of thousands of round meters in all.
What are the powers that be thinking of using all that wood for? Heat this winter, I guess, and building materials, too. For Austria? For Germany? Who knows? But I’ll tell you—if it’s not for Germany, they’ll be in trouble, especially in the heat department. All Germany’s coal comes (or came) from the Ruhr Valley, and that area was bombed to smithereens, probably the worst of anyplace, since it was so important to their war effort. Plus, the Valley’s in the British Zone, and even if they’re still mining there, will the Brits be sharing the coal with the other zones? No love lost between them and the Soviets, at least. So I imagine the Germans aren’t just going to starve this winter, they’re going to freeze, too. Which I’d probably be OK with, honestly, except for that naggingTzedakahidea—and except for the kids. Even the one who shot me! One of the worst things the Nazis did, for my money—though it’s a long list—was kill all those kids. I find I don’t much want to be part of starving their kids now. Good thing it won’t be my problem, I guess.
Meanwhile, we laze around here, supervising our wood-cutters and waiting for orders. I’ll take it, and happily. Not sure if I’m more scared of going into battle again against the Japs with their backs against the wall, or of the troopship to get there. Could take weeks, and what miserable weeks they’re bound to be! Good thing I didn’t wait to get drafted—they’d have stuck me in the Navy for sure. Who says the U.S. military doesn’t have a sense of humor?
I’m not there yet, anyway, so picture me here eating as much chow as I can get down myself and reading whatever I can get my hands on. Every guy who gets a paperback from home passes it around afterwards, and I’ve managed to get through quite a few now. At the moment, I’m reading John Dos Passos’sUSAtrilogy. Yep, that’s America, all right, warts and all. If you haven’t read it, you may want to give it a try. Brilliant stuff, if you ask me. How does a guy think up such a new way to write a novel? I’ve doneThe Grapes of Wrath,too—that’s another one that makes me glad to get that Armychow! I’ve read the Rilke poems you sent in German, and the Thomas MannJoseph and His Brothersin English. Thanks for those. It’s good to remember that not every German is a monster. I’ve also read plenty more books, I’m afraid, that aren’t nearly as edifying, The Agatha Christies are the general favorite, and you can’t beat them for entertainment. Some guys swear they’ve guessed the murderer every time. The rest of us don’t believe them.
Love to Mom,
