Peace and War

by Joshua Held

I

Captain Jim Howard sat bolt upright against the grimy chill wall of his cell. Cramped for the last 16 days, near-starved, he squinted up to see bristling Colonel Klemper march into the dank cell block. More than slightly balding, this model of military deportment perched a pristine commandant cap judiciously over his dull grey hairs and pinched a monocle between his raised eyebrow and wrinkled cheek. This slight, Nazified simpleton strutted evenly over to Jim's cell and sharply turned 90 degrees to face his American captive. Peering down his crooked Prussian nose at what he considered to be a most pitiable sight - a prisoner awaiting execution - he stiffly summoned to his side the prison guard, Sergeant Wunsch.

"Jah, herr commandant," he responded, as he hurried over to Klemper's side, snapping to attention. "Vas is it you vant?"

"Wunsch, I want you to search this cell immediately," Klemper rifled back, throwing his hands into the air.

"Jah, her commandant," answered Wunsch as he drew out his keys and fumbled with them for a moment. "Ein, zwei, drei..."

"Come on, you fool," scolded Klemper, slapping his baton against his right leg, "Can't you even find the right key?"

"Jah, I have it," beamed the sergeant, proudly producing the key, before one withering look from Klemper silenced him. He ponderously shifted his 300 pounds inside the cell, constantly excusing himself for bumping into the cot, wash basin and the cell's amused occupant.

"You dunderhead, stop bumbling and get out of there," ordered Klemper, whose voice verged on shouting.

"But he didn't find anythin'," mused the captain, "he can't be done yet."

"I'm commandant of this camp," steamed Klemper, "and I'll decide when my staff has done a thorough search. Uumph." This last exclamation, well-known at Stalag eight, accompanied a grimace and a slight jab with his baton, per his usual tantrum.

"Are you sure you're satisfied?" needled the captain.

"Oh, jah, I'm satisfied if the commandant is satisfied," answered the sergeant, looking over at the colonel.

"I am satisfied with nothing until this prisoner is gone out of my stalag, out of my sight, out of existence. When is this prisoner scheduled to be executed?"

"At midnight tomorrow night," the captain cut in.

"Silence!" stormed Klemper, fists clenched. "Let's move that up to tonight."

"Ach du lieber," wailed Wunsch, "that makes three tonight. There's no use vearing out the gallows all at once."

"Aw, come on Wunsch. The more the merrier," cheered the captain. With a mock salute he sardonically droned: "I regret that I have but one life to give for my country."

"What did I tell you before? Shut up!" Klemper growled. "You will be singing a different tune tonight."

"And then you von't be singing at all!" chortled the sergeant.

"You shut up too, you domkopf," snapped Klemper, glaring at the sergeant. "Pretty soon I'll be hanging my officers too."

"Or you could send him to the Russian front!" piped in the captain. "Or shoot him and then send him to the Russian front. Or send him to the front and then..."

"Enough of this madness!" Klemper cried. "He can only blabber for another 11 hours," he confided to Wunsch as he motioned him out of the cell block after him.

"Drat. It's dark again. Two others goin' to be hanged with me tonight, huh? Or is it "hung"? Stupid English classes never teach ya anythin'. Well, anyway, it won't matter cuz I'm not goin' ta be hanged "with" anybody, cuz I'm not going ta be hanged, or whatever.

"Whew. I thought Wunsch was goin' ta find somethin.' I'm sure glad our chaplain was an engineer before he was a chaplain. Now to dig that stone out of here again.

"I wish Em' could see me now. She'd hit the ceilin'. And ma, yeah, she'd hit the ceilin' too, even harder, especially if she found out that I lost grandpa Jim's Civil War medal to the Gestapo. She'd want to march right into Hitler's office and snatch it back.

"Blasted fuhrer. All that "Heil Hitlerin'. I'd like to putsch him in the nose, just once, right on that big fat nose. Come here you phony corporal. Oyez, oyez, oyez, the right ‘onorable judge Jim Howard presidin'. ‘Mr. Hitler, why have you been oppressin' your people? I'm waitin'. Why have you been oppressin' the Frenchies? Yes, I s'pose it's nice to own the Eiffel Tower. Why have you made a deal with an Italian terrorist? What have you to say for yawrself? That's what I thouwght. Too many words and not enough thinkin'. How long is it since you saw your own face in the mirror? That's what I thouwght. It's been much too long to remember. Now all ya see's the face of a demon. How is it, bein' king o' Germany? Huh? Just you wait till you're stuck in the slammer like me.'"

Jim was pawing and scraping the dirt from around a concrete slab that led to his escape route. Chaplain Eddy and a group of his men from barracks 12 had begun this tunnel two months ago to rescue a colonel and a lieutenant who were scheduled to be hanged that night as well. Jim's cell was just a short detour from the main tunnel to the colonel's and lieutenant's cells in the next cell block, so he had a chance at escape on the coattails of two men he'd never met.

Many "Hail Marys" and "Our Fathers" later, Jim heard a dull knock on the opposite side of the slab and hastily hoisted the stone floorpiece out of its place, maneuvered it to the side, slipped through the narrow opening, and slid the stone back over his head, settling it back in place.

"Stop being so careful with that. You think they're not going to dig up every inch of that cell in about an hour?" the chaplain kidded.

"Boy, it's good to hear an American voice again!" Jim said through a full smile. "Let's get out of here!"

"Right you are, chap," chortled the soldier behind Jim. "I'm colonel Michael Custer, 14th earl of Longbury, and this man behind me is lieutenant Barry Tucker. He's a yank like you."

The chaplain had already begun moving gingerly through the tunnel, crouching, sometimes crawling, always with ears cocked to the faintest sounds above.

"Let's keep it quiet in here," he whispered back to his comrades. "My life is at stake here."

After silently wending through yards of turns, they began a gradual ascent and exited within a covering of mulberry bushes, oaks, and shrubs.

"Thanks again my dear fellow," Custer offered, only to be shrewdly shushed by a trio of forefingers.

After a moment of silence, the chaplain indicated a slight ravine slightly overgrown as the best bet for a getaway. With just a sliver of a waning moon, this could be difficult to navigate, but the chaplain edged back to the tunnel's opening, and, with a sharp salute, slipped away.

"What a fine kettle of fish," griped Custer. "How does that man expect us to pass through this filthy gully?"

"Well, I wouldn't say that you're looking like a one of the King's royal guards at the moment anyhow," growled Tucker. "A little more dirt on that outfit won't hurt."

Now that the colonel and lieutenant were out of the tunnel, Jim could make out some features. Colonel Custer's bushy mustache sagged above a thin mouth and as he hunched over to creep through the ditch, his thick graying red hair flopped over his round glasses, covering his eyes and causing him to frequently brush the flailing mop back under his cap. When it inevitably became too great of a bother again, he straightened up revealing a sizable paunch, and scolded his "inexplicably" unruly hairs.

Lieutenant Tucker had a recent crew cut, and the rest of his face followed the squarish pattern set by the hair style. His wide, firm jaw, newly shaved, showed a scar which could have come from a previous shaving miscue or from a hand-to-hand engagement. The men in his outfit suspected that he'd acquired it in a bayonet duel with some unfortunate Hun. His bass voice complemented a powerful physique that he had managed to preserve through his prison time.

"Quiet!" he warned as loudly as he dared. "Let's make sure that my first escape is my last. I don't want to see that commandant's face again."

"Oh, come on. He wasn't such a sore fellow," bantered Custer.

In tacit agreement or careful consideration for his own safety, Lieutenant Tucker declined to answer and crept more quickly through the ravine. The captain had forged ahead, perhaps aware that his head was the most valuable of the three escapees. As a movie star back in the states, his name had been valuable propaganda for the Nazis, especially since he had been in a variety of war films. He had volunteered in a rush of patriotism prompted in no small part by a slight inebriation after discovering that he had been selected for a major role in Calasancta. Once this trio had scampered, trudged, and plodded a few miles from the stalag, they collapsed in the protection of a haystack.

"Wake up. We've got to get moving," crackled Custer as he anxiously roused his two allies.

"It isn't even light yet!" grumbled Tucker." You're always getting up too early. He was always getting up too early!" he stormed, looking to Jim for justification. "Look, if you want to move on this early, go ahead. This is the warmest bed I've had in months."

"Snap out of it chap. It will get better."

"Yes, once I'm in my own bed. But this is plenty good for me."

"Jim, get up. You're not as lazy as he is."

"I haven't slept well all night. We'll need our strength for our traveling. Anyway, we shouldn't travel during the day. What if the Gestapo sees us."

"Well I'm going up into a tree back in that woods - see where we are. See you chaps in a jiffy."

II

"Hah. Vhat dit they think they were doin? Running away from camp - bah. I found out vhen I checked captain Howard's cell. I vould be in a lot of trouble if I ditn't get my prisoners back. And I knew I vould be in a lot of trouble if anyone found out that the captain vas gone. It gets vorse. Vhen I checked the colonel's cells, they vere gone too. And did they tell me? No! That's vhat I get for trying to be nice to them.

"I knew I vould be sent to the Eastern front if they vere not fount, but I couldn't tell anybody because they vould know that I had let them escape. I had to find them. And if I didn't find them before midnight, I vould never return to camp. Maybe I could run to Svitzerland. My vife, she vouldn't like that.

"I vill have to find them on my own. No one must know. Schnell, through the gates. Good riddance, you monster! You "arbeit mach frei." These 300 pounds do me some goot, anyhow. Goot insulation against the colt. Boy iss it colt. Wait! Who's this?

"Vhat do you tink you're doing in here! Not so fast! Put up your hants. Vee are going back to camp. Schnell!"

Jim and Barry Tucker scrambled out of the hay, brushing stray straws from their uniforms.

"Sergeant Wunsch!" yelled Custer.

"Vhat do you tink you are doing out of the camp?

"How did you know about us?" asked Tucker.

"That is my own secret. Now put your hants up or I vill have to shoot you! I don't vant to shoot you, but you know how big my hants are, and how small the trigger iss. My hants might just slip and you would be det."

"I guess we'd better follow his advice," said Tucker.

"That iss not advice. It iss a varning! Now vhere iss the Englisher?"

III

British Broadcasting Corporation: "How did you get the drop on Wunsch?

Custer: "It was quite easy, really. He never was a very capable Jerry in the first place, always bumbling about, grumbling to himself. And he was so loud there was no mistaking him."

BBC: "Would you be so kind as to describe the exact situation to our listening audience?"

Custer: "A towering oak about twenty feet into the wood we'd traveled last night provided a jolly-good vantage point for my purposes. This type of oak is not particularly noteworthy. I could have sworn I was climbing a good old oak in my Southwark neighborhood - only, I was in Jerry-country. All around was more forest. The field we had found seemed to be the only patch of pure white, for the rest of the view was considerably brown and green from trees of a deciduous and coniferous nature. There was no sign of the camp, except for a distant glint from one of the guard towers, which caused me to hurry down."

BBC: "How did you descend from the tree and get the drop on the Jerry?"

Custer: "Very carefully, of course. How does one usually descend a tree?"

BBC: "How is it that you are named Custer, although the name, to anyone with a military history background, is easily recognizable as the name of a renowned American soldier?"

Custer: "His name is his business and my name is my own business. I must say, I get sick of all the American officers who bring up this very point. Whatever that blasted American soldier did was his blasted business. Wouldn't a Custer by any other name smell as sweet?"

BBC: "What was your first reaction to seeing Wunsch?"

Custer: "Why, if he weren't going to squeal on the lot of us, I would let those two really have it. It would serve those two lazy Americans down there quite properly if they got the gizzard scared out of them. Roll over and turn their back to a colonel, will they? Humbug."

IV

"All right, Wunsch, that will be quite enough. You may put down your weapon or you may end up with a hole in that helmet. We wouldn't want that, would we?"

"Vhas! You, you tricked me!" yelled Wunsch as he whirled around.

"Oh, that wasn't so hard, my good man. You were so obliging to stand with your back to me for the last five minutes like a good chap that I could hardly miss the opportunity," gloated Custer. "Now, if you'll kindly put down that rifle, I would greatly appreciate it."

"But, but, but...."

"Come on Wunschy, you heard the colonel," said Howard.

Unlikely captors trudged into the woods with their prisoner, one sergeant Wunsch, awaiting the coming of night, the only cover against the watchful eye of Gestapo and inconveniently alert patrols. Night creeps in stealthy as a spy. Delicate smidgens of clouds wisp effortlessly through the leaden sky, ghosts which inhabit the night, Valhalla's fluttering battalions. Our prisoners' fading forms blend into the obscuring night, entering the realm of anonymity.

© Joshua Held, 2008