1: Arrival

(Ankunft)

Verurteilt Concentration Camp

Fourteen miles west of Welmar, Germany

March 1945

Moose lumbers over, one giant-sized mitt covering his mouth and the other waving from side-to-side in front of his face like he was swatting at a pesky fly. White as a ghost, the big lug rushes past me and disappears around the corner of the nearest wall. I hear ‘im gag and spit and then repeat the process before reappearing and wearing an expression I’m sure mirrors my own; sick, dog tired and ready to relocate to anywhere but where we’re presently standing.

“Rance, that’s…holy h-hell, man, t-the…that smell,” he whines after wiping a shirtsleeve across chapped lips, “The ones still l-laying in their bunks, rotted so…that I couldn’t make out where the…bones stopped and the cot b-began.” Corporal Kane Moose Massey, six foot four and well over two-hundred pounds of steely-eyed, iron-gut courage, currently appeared about as courageous as a spooked farm-boy on the run from a wrathful rooster.

The stench of rot clings to both my nostrils like I still stood in the center of that room. Right about now I’d trade my left nut for a palm-full of smelling salts and I’d wager Moose would second that motion.

“Hey, I get it, pal,” I reassure with true sincerity, reaching over and applying a light tap to the big man’s right shoulder, “Why do you think I beat you out here? Air might stink like a skunk’s ass all over camp, but its fresh flowers compared to…” I nod towards the bunkhouse, “…to that.”

I’m forced to leave the big fella still stewing in his own haunted thoughts as I quick-time it behind a wooden storage shed to take a whizz I’d been holding for untold hours.

Just past ten in the AM on a cold, gray East German morning, and I feel like I’ve put in a full day already. As I look around at the scattered faces around me, I see the majority wearing the same masks of raw shock and revulsion as Moose and myself. Battle-tested veterans of the many atrocities of war, seems we’d been spared the very worst until now. Worst being the kind that stake a permanent claim in the deepest recesses of a man’s subconscious, never to be extracted.

Sweet, merciful Jesus, help us all. Then again, such a prayer can’t hold much weight in reality or spirituality, considering any deity that would allow this surely can’t be labeled the merciful kind.

~ * ~

If I had to describe in one word how a lengthy war remains sustainable and somehow tolerated by those trapped within its daily doses of hell on earth, it would probably be numbness. A kind of involuntary self-paralysis that sets in both over time and the excruciating miles collected beneath a man’s boots. I can only guess that at some point that the logical mind just shuts down and goes into auto mode, otherwise the connecting body would eventually shut down, topple over and roll into a fetal position. Just one sap’s opinion, but a sap with a smidgen of education topped with plenty of real-life experience.

In my three-year, two month and six days abroad, I can only figure these badly scuffed, ragged old size tens have strolled the length and width of France, Germany and Poland twice over. Least-which it feels as much. More every day. There is, of course, the fear of dying, of catching the one, or many, Jerry bullets with your name carved into ‘em. Dying abroad is no man’s goal; mom, apple pie, baseball and patriotic posters be hanged. I didn’t come over here to breathe my last, nor did anyone I’ve fought alongside. I came over to make the other guy breathe his last.

Oh, there is a sense of duty still, but admittedly one I’ve felt weakened as months turned to years and the hours pass in a bleary slog. There are days, and especially nights, when the goal of accomplishing the mission at hand can’t hold a candle to simple survival, to one day set foot back on US soil and never look back. The thing is, you won’t get the second ‘til you accomplish the first. Double-edge cutlery, I’ve heard it referred to by those endowed with higher education.

But the mental and physical fatigue and fear of death are only two of the elements of the overall detachment.

One other trigger, just maybe the stoutest of all, is when worn, weary, tired old eyes drift across a scene that causes even the most jaded amongst us to turn away. A vision of man’s evil to his fellow man so unreal, so wretched and inhuman that you fight to keep your latest meal from gushing out between stretched jaws like liquid mortar.

Up before dawn and crammed into a Red Ball express convoy of five transports hauling roughly two-hundred additional grunts from the skeletal remains of at least two dozen gashed units from all over the theater, we’d reached the outskirts of Welmar just past nine AM. I’d managed to doze in spurts as the truck had strained, spit and coughed its way up a slow, gradual, seemingly unending ascent. The smell of Verurteilt announced itself long before we’d parked just outside its front gate. It was the stink of death, lingering like a cloudbank pregnant with rancidity. Not about to lie, I dreaded what was to come with equal measure to taking live fire. We’d all heard the stories coming out of places like Dachau and Flossenburg. Most, yours truly included, considered most of ‘em foxhole bunk. Just another motivational tool to view each and every Hans as deserving any form of extermination you might introduce.

If the surrounding stink was any indication, not to mention separate kettles of vultures gliding overhead near the camp perimeter, we were in for quite the eye-opener.

To make matters worse in the prep process, some natty, ninety-day transfer lieutenant, no doubt fresh off a transport, briefed us that Verurteilt—means condemned—might be unpleasant, his words exactly, but it ‘Wasn’t any Auschwitz’, as if he’d recently toured the site.

The darker grapevine scuttlebutt had it that Verurteilt, reportedly one of the smaller camps in terms of size and inmate count, had been no less than Himmler’s personal baby, and that The Wolf’s righthand goon even paid it the occasional social visit to ensure proper procedure was being followed.

From what we’d viewed riding its western perimeter, it looked like two dozen or so single-story structures surrounding a trio of separate buildings, all but one of these two-stories, and still two more all red brick and stone sporting high chimneys. Most of these were cookie cutter in design and were surely inmate barracks and scuttlebutt was that each held upwards of one-hundred captives. I could only guess there was a chow hall, or what served as one, somewhere on the premises, as well as a motor pool. There was a stable of sorts spotted at the back of the camp as we’d circled the perimeter, no doubt for housing horses and possibly other livestock.

Once inside, the dull tin roofs of two separate underground structures at the rear of the compound were visible, and I’d heard whispers that these were air-tight dungeons used for gassing inmates before rolling them over to the crematoriums for proper burning. In obvious denial, I heard some others counter they were just air-raid bunkers. Still more countered that one step inside one of the crematoriums would shoot that theory to hell. So much for overblown spook stories. It sure explained the rotten stench that hung over the place like a cloud of decomposition.

Moose and myself had been handpicked from what was left of the 54^th Infantry Unit and relieved from the siege of Breslau, from where we’d spent nearly a month. As we’d all been ripe for a change, neither the corporal nor myself cocked a brow in disagreement or resentment at the time. Besides, by then the Ivan’s had swarmed in for a final push and the Krauts were falling back and fast running out of available space from which to cower. There was a sense that their time was short and so was this war’s. Personally, I’ll believe that when I’ve boarded a freedom bird and we’re halfway over the Atlantic.

Moose and I said our goodbyes to our fellow mud eaters and wished ‘em well in their travels. A tough, resilient bunch for sure, the fightin’ Fifty-Fourth. Faces and voices I’ll probably never forget, no matter how fervent the effort, from buck Privates James Jigsaw Johnstone and Harlan Ears Greene to Corporal Frederick Freddy C Converse and Master Sergeant Pete Bulldog Buckner, we’d dodged, ducked and sidestepped enough Kraut ammo to stock a good-sized armory while dishing out at least as good as we’d taken.

We’d bunked on sand hot enough to melt exposed flesh and grounds hard and cold enough to freeze the snot pouring out of your snout into a booger ’stache in a matter of minutes.

We’d shared enough stale army chicken and general-issue dog food to kill a lesser army, proving that not all warriors travel on their midsections alone. We traveled on stark fear, a fist-sized knot in our guts, the anticipation of death as heady as the putrid smells we all carried like a second skin. As far as battlefield prowess, I’m no scalp-collector, but I’ve taken my share of lives and wounded probably three times as many, all the while fortunate to avoid any permanent scarring, at least of the physical kind.

Along the long, winding trail, our unit had lost all but twenty-six of the original one-hundred fifteen, more than half of that to the many casualty counts that had started in Tunisia, continued in Mortain in the North of France and finally Breslau in Kraut-controlled Poland, with a constant influx of mostly fresh-faced replacements who came and went like shifting shadows.

We’ve seen bodies blown neatly in half or into shredded tatters, guts hanging out and swinging like red, wet rope from slit midsections, heads missing in their entirely or in distinct sections, their owners usually still and prone but sometimes groping about with clinching fingers as if searching out the missing portions. Enemy and comrade alike, we’d seen ‘em lain open, ripped to ruination or blasted into a fine mist with nary a spoonful of evidence remaining that they’d ever truly existed.

As far as grisly encounters go, the coup de grace for me personally had been on a windy and cool afternoon just outside Warsaw, humping it down the road after a firefight between smoking ruins when, upon breaking to fire up a smoke, I discovered a slightly mashed but otherwise intact eyeball lodged deep inside one of my field jacket’s side pockets. Stringy smears of crimson aside, it was as green as a chunk of uncut jade. Didn’t know then or now whether the unfortunate source of that dislodged orb be friend or foe, as many mortars had rained down around us and human bodies blowing up like dynamited watermelons wasn’t at all uncommon.

Unbeknownst to the rest of the unit, I’d felt compelled to keep that alien peeper with me for the next few weeks, stuffed away in my pack as a good luck charm. Weird as hell I know, but the logic was that since its original possessor had suffered such extreme trauma that a new owner might just inherit some sort of natural protection juju. Scientific? Nope. Superstition pushed to insane levels? Yes sirree, confessed with no shame whatsoever. Eventually it shrunk and shriveled to raisin size, not to mention reeked like a decomposing toad, so I tossed it.

All that said, what we’ve seen, felt, and smelled on this relatively small patch of German terrain in the last few hours trumps it all, hands down and gorge rising.

~ * ~

I’m still doing my best to console Kane, who appears about one dry heave away from retching onto his own soiled boots, when my name rings out from the near distance.

I turn, my own gag reflex tested by a fresh gust of warm rancidity, to see Captain Brad Mobley making a b-line our way. Cap had exited the same inmate barracks we’d departed in a stiff, rapid stride that in other circumstances might appear quite comical, as if one of the Jerry’s long stick grenades had been deeply inserted into his narrow rear end. Now, I didn’t know the captain from Omar Bradley other than sharing a ride through the countryside to arrive at our current locale, but his frail build, rat-like features, high-pitched tone and squirrely traits didn’t exactly scream fearless leader. He halts between Kane and me wearing an expression of the chronically constipated. I can surely relate.

“Sergeant Hawkins,” he greets with a slight nod, ratty eyes darting from Moose to myself and back several times before scooting away from the corporal and closer to me as the big guy fell to one knee, removed his cover and bowed as if in prayer.

“Captain,” I return the favor, my thirty-aught-six Springfield resting easily over both shoulders and behind my neck, a not unpleasant throb favoring wherever it lay.

“Sergeant,” he nods, either smiling or grimacing, it’s hard to really tell, though I’d surely accept the latter as the more normal of the two considering.

“We’re, uh, going to be mopping up here for the majority of the day and, well, said task appears be severely overpopulated in terms of need. Still have a half-dozen or more of the barracks buildings to go through and so far, we’ve only located a handful of regular army German’s, all extremely dead.”

“Rumor control at its leakiest. Surely they heard we were coming, cap. Probably just high-tailed it into the nearby woods.”

The captain shrugs as if not at all convinced.

“Infantry possibly, but I can’t imagine any SS-types taking the low road like run-of-the-mill cowards. We have sent out patrols in all directions for just that possibility and need you to spearhead yet another. As we currently stand here, the camp seems severely overpopulated with those whose only interest in this operation appears to be hem hawing and embracing extended smoke breaks.”

“Sir?” I ask, sincerely perplexed by his college-boy dissertation.

He reaches up to pinch both nostrils, his response comically nasally.

“Too many cowboys, not enough Indians.”

“Sure looks that way, cap,” I reply, peering over his rounded shoulders at a grouping of dogged-looking blister feet of no personal familiarity herding several hundred of the newly liberated towards the entrance to the compound, a few of ‘em stumbling ahead of the pack like somewhere ahead a dinner bell was chiming. Supposedly there are additional troops and the Red Cross busing their way here to treat and escort ‘em all to the train depot just past Delmar. Looking at some of them, it’s doubtful they’ll last long enough for medical treatment, much less a protracted bus or train ride.

Sincerely to God above, I cannot fathom how a man or woman who is more bone and sinew than meat can still be upright and breathing, much less self-mobile. Bare skin exposed as white as chalk and no doubt so accustomed to discomfort that the chill in the air can’t make a dent. Hollow-eyed and shuffling, many still smile and grin as if this is the happiest day they will ever know. Due some heaven after this hell, for certain. I see a spattering of ours handing out prefilled flasks of water and small packages of bread and saltines.

“Command figured on more resistance, obviously, and at least a few thousand prisoners to haul out,” Mobley says, following my eyes to the passing group while maintaining the nose-pinch. Unbelievably, a few scattered snowflakes flutter by and I briefly think the worst before positively identifying them as such only as one lands upon a flaring nostril with welcome frostiness. I don’t have to look over my shoulder to know the camp’s infamous crematoriums stand there like some brooding, overly fed beasts.

“Looks like the majority got the word and flew the coop on foot.”

I instantly regret my choice of words. To compare the victims of this unspeakable atrocity to fleeing fowl was not my intention. Thankfully, Mobley seems oblivious as he finally removes gloved fingers from his face, the nostrils temporarily sticking shut.

“Could be, could be. Reasonable enough. Anywhere is better than here. But if that’s the case we’ve got them scattered all over the countryside and not in the best of health for these elements. I’m really surprised the property isn’t riddled with mass graves. Um, with that in mind, sergeant, I’m going to need yourself…” he pauses with a deep frown to regard the still bowing corporal, “…the corporal here and a few other handpicked volunteers to head up the path towards a reported separate branch of the compound.”

“Second branch, sir?” I inquire, suddenly desiring a smoke more than life itself but knowing I’m fresh out since finishing off my last pack of Lucky Strikes. Instead, I pull my canteen and sip sparingly despite a great thirst. Certainly not looking to refill anywhere near these poisonous grounds.

“Supposedly a threesome of shed-like structures constructed and maintained solely for visiting Kraut high command to partake in their chosen brand of debauchery with the female inmate of their choice, or as reported in some cases, the child.”

Bone-weariness aside, I feel my blood instantly boil. The ever-present devil on my shoulder chides me to sprint away, find the first available Jerry and blow, stab or bludgeon his corrupted soul to hell. I want to spill the blood of anyone associated with this damnable place, no matter their level of involvement. I’ll then strike a match off whatever small portion of his exposed and thoroughly mutilated skull remains bloodless and partake in that cigarette.

“Fucking high-ranking lowlifes,” I growl, slapping the Springfield’s handle and snaring it in midair with a grace and precision that surprises even myself. Amazing what a sudden influx of rage can do. Seriously and with no shame, I want to hurt somebody, hurt ‘em fatally. Anybody will do, as long as their greenish/gray duds showcase that damn breast eagle and swastika.

The captain nods, flashing an occasional glance at Moose as if to address the big guy but having not built up a suitable level of courage to do so.

“Don’t expect to find more than a few lean-to hovels but the colonel wants it given a thorough once-over,” he says instead while staring up into the gray skies and catching a few thick ivory flakes in bushy, brown eyebrows for the effort.

Colonel Chad Brady was the mission head. Short, bald and stocky but with a booming voice that could crack glass at five klicks, I hadn’t had the formal pleasure, but he seemed a man better to avoid. A man about to be stripped of war time authority and none too happy in the thought. Plenty of power lust to be claimed in these past four years and not all just on the side of the bad guys.

“They find that missing Brit major yet?” I ask for no other reason than to decompress from my own building rage while allowing Moose a few more precious moments to compose. That damnable barracks had floored us both but good, as severely as sniper fire in an open field. A triple gut-punch to the breadbasket with a pucker factor of eleven.

“Not that I’ve heard. I’m afraid command, both ours and theirs, fear the worst.”

Supposedly six, maybe eight months back, a British pilot named Hudson had flown his Spitfire directly into some kraut fire and found himself captured near the camp. Brit command had offered up some wonky prisoner trade-off, but the Jerry’s had balked, most likely since the poor slob had already been hung, gassed or incinerated. Sad to say, but sometimes I can’t help but ponder if a series of allied bombing raids at every one of these damnable extermination camps would’ve been the more merciful option, but I guess there’s always a small chance the rumors of what went on inside ‘em wasn’t all true. Sincerely, how could such horrors be a real thing? Seeing just a small sample has convinced me that if anything, the multitude of spook stories didn’t do ‘em justice.

Thinking back, as we’d stepped into that dimly lit barracks to check for inmates maybe too ill to walk out themselves, I denied all I was clearly seeing for at least a full minute, maybe longer, even as the stink grew unbearable and the images gradually clearer. Understandable really. I mean, it isn’t often one sees bodies so decomposed they merge with the cots beneath ‘em or in at least one case that Moose so eloquently pointed out with the shaking tip of his Remington’s bayonet, droops down from the bottom of the mattress with something resembling insect feelers, the exposed guts having apparently eaten through the material.

“Corporal Massey?” I hear Mobley inquire, timidly and with great caution. Smart man, as an emotionally compromised Kane Massey is not to be trifled with.

The big man’s weary sigh speaks volumes of his current level of annoyance, though surprisingly the tone of his response is shockingly polite and respectful.

“B-be right with you, sir. J-just gimme…need a breather.”

Wiser than his age perhaps, the captain accepts this without question. Moreover, it is probably the threat of being throttled if he pushed the subject. Whatever the reason, he steps around Moose’s squatting form, addressing me while pointing and waving towards a separate clustering of huddled both rescued and rescuers.

“Fine. Just, um, get your bearings then. Sergeant Hawkins, I can afford you three additional bodies. Private Knapp, front and center!”

Out of the mass of humanity trots a figure whose slight frame and awkward gait makes me think of a child trying on his papa’s duds for fun.

“Yes sir,” the private replies sharply upon hitting the brakes and offering a textbook salute. Nice, pressed duds and energy to burn, this one; no doubt a member in good standing of the chair-borne infantry up ‘til now.

Up close, the kid is, if possible, even less imposing. Bony, slight of frame. Smooth, baby-cheeks that appear to never have required the formal acquaintance of a straight razor. Basically, if viewed from a distance, a middle-schooler playing soldier.

“Private Toby Knapp, this is Sergeant Hawkins. You’ll answer to him.”

“Private,” I nod indifferently, to which Junior returns the gesture before cracking a shaky smile and clearing his throat.

Two more privates, a tall, lanky black kid and a short, chubby Ginger cradling his cover like a bed pan with fresh vomit dripping off one of his multiple chins, join us a few seconds later and we form a sad sack looking bunch. The cap starts to walk away but then turns on a heel.

“Knapp is a translator in case you run into any more of the liberated up there that require an immediate briefing on what we’re doing here. Make it as quick as humanly possible, sergeant. Colonel Brady wants us out well before nightfall.”

“We need a portable, cap?” I ask, surprised I’d even thought of it. I’d been cut off without communication before and even though this assignment seemed routine enough on the surface, it was definitely a case of better safe than sorry.

“None to spare, sergeant. Sorry.”

“Smoke signals it is then,” I crack with no small measure of sarcasm, left undetected as Mobley has already dismissed the lot of us and stiff-strolled away, re-pinching his nostrils.

The new arrivals surround me timidly like shy toddlers to their appointed babysitter, Private Ginger toting an overstuffed backpack that’s forcing him to lean so hard to the right he appears ready to tip over like a chopped oak.

“So, what’s your mama call you?” I address him directly and he openly flinches. Swell. Kid’s gonna be about as useful as a boar with boobs.

“O’Brien. J-Joel. Joey O’Brien,” he mutters, small flecks of falling snow sticking to the wet barf coating each chin, “Altoona, PA born and raised. Ugh, I’ve…the captain assigned me the…this backpack with a couple of extra canteens, spare batteries, ammo mags and enough rations to last through the coming Winter. Weighs like lead. How far away is this mystery camp we’re searching out, sarge?”

You ask for a name and get a freaking biography. One minute into our affiliation and Red is already grating on my nerves.

“Hopefully close enough to ignore that pack’s inventory altogether. And you?” I turn to the lanky black private, who I notice for the first time has a wondering left eye. Glass maybe. It isn’t like the draft board could afford to be picky here in the latter stages of the conflict. I’d heard high command had been cherry-picking black soldiers from their assigned, segregated units to fill combat slots all over Europe. First colored I’d had assigned, and I instantly discover I care little about the man’s skin color in contrast to his usefulness to our plight. Nice to know my natural prejudices are limited to those taking potentially lethal potshots at my person.

“Marv. Jeffries, Marvin Jeffries,” he answers with about as much vim and vigor as I currently possess, a dying battery on the verge of spitting out its last spark, this timid response probably due to his fear of rejection and or mistreatment, or perhaps both.

Feeling it only fair and knowing I’ll probably regret it, I dig just a smidgen deeper to see if I’m able to crack the shell of distrust.

“Where you call home, Jeffries?”

Droopy-eyed and shouldered in equal measure, his execution of a simple head tilt is painful to watch.

“Oh, um, Saint Louis.”

Try as I might, I have nothing. Sincere disinterest wins in a landslide. No matter, as the slumped private decides a little clarification is necessary.

“Missouri,” he resumes sluggishly, as if Saint Louis, Alabama was the more viable option.

I nod knowingly, “Made the acquaintance of several of your brethren from the show-me state.”

“Colonel Jackson reassigned me from the 181^st,” he resumes in conclusion.

We briefly lock eyes, the private shrugging lightly in response before averting his eyes elsewhere. Still, I chalk it up as a small victory of mutual understanding. He is welcome within our strange, skeletal ranks.

“Stand at ease for a few, privates,” I blurt for want of a better term, though the trio stand sufficiently slumped as it is, “Give me and Corporal Massey here a minute and we’ll be on our merry way. Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em.”

Before shifting my attention back to Moose, I notice the lost look the two privates share, as if unsure how to function without further, immediate instruction. Jesus wept. I’ve been assigned the junior Three Stooges.

A single step to the left and I kneel beside the big guy, whose breathing seems to have eased from near hyperventilation to semi-normal.

“You gonna make it or am I gonna have to provide mouth-to-mouth?” I chide, applying a light jab with an extended elbow, “And if that is what you’re shilling for, I might as well order the privates to start scooping out a suitably enormous grave for ya.”

The big fella tenses and for a split-second, brotherly love and longtime comradery aside, I fear I’ve just bought myself a knuckle sandwich.

“Sarge,” he whispers, head rising so slowly as if hoisting a mighty weight, “Rance, I ain’t promisin’ how I’m apt to react to, well, anything from this point on. Not after…this. I might go bananas at a twig snap and pepper the trees with slugs or curl up and sob like a scolded tyke.”

“Fair enough, big guy. We’ll hump it as soon as you’re up to it.”

Thirty seconds pass and the big guy stands with a groan and knees that pop like dry kindling. With his gray-stubbled cheeks, hound dog droopy eyes and slumped shoulders, Moose appears at least ten years older than a man still a few winters away from this thirtieth.

“How far to this…where we headed again?” he groans while flatly refusing to give the new arrivals even a perfunctory glance.

“Cap said a couple of klicks.”

“No jeeps available, I guess,” he deadpans, and I feel an instant sense of relief, the thought of my last remaining trustworthy ally somersaulting off the deep end to never return at least somewhat alleviated.

“Nor covered wagons,” I shoot back, nodding toward the trio of privates to commence picking ‘em up and puttin’ em down as the light fluttering of wintry flakes grows noticeably heavier.

Taking point, as he was always want to do, Moose briefly regards the gray skies and grunts a familiar tune.

“Snow in blessed April, no less. Damn but I miss home, Rance. I mention that lately?”

Westlake, Mississippi he would proudly proclaim, population just over five hundred of the best the Southland had to offer. God-fearing, hard-working, kind but stern; offer a complete stranger the shirt off their backs and the last slice of bread from the cupboard. I’d heard it so many times through the countless months; endless descriptions of paradise lost, dixie-style, that I sometimes imagined myself having already visited the place.

Hailing from the Midwest, Lincoln Nebraska to be exact in the land of endless cornfields, state fairs and pancake-flat landscapes, I can’t really be sure how similar to the real thing my imaginative treks are, but it did serve as a welcome distraction on whatever endless hump our unit was suffering at the time.

“Not in the last half-hour. I was surely missing it.”

The big guy snorts as we fall in line behind his hulking frame, a narrow, well-worn path barely visible beneath a half-inch or less of ivory buildup, the stone-hard ground giving little beneath our boots.

“Hey, Rance.”

“Yeah?”

“Do me a favor and leave my little retching fit back there outta your memoirs, okay?”

To this I crack nary a smile nor offer anything resembling snideness.

“Faint memory evaporating to nothingness as we speak.”

The big fella pauses before turning and regarding me with a severely cocked brow.

“Meanin’ yes or no?”

This time, a long-suppressed smile will not be denied. Lately the inner sobs have been winning in a landslide, so it feels good to reverse the trend, if only for a beat or two.

“It’s done and gone, big guy. If such a novelization of our many adventures ever does see the light of day, rest assured the name Kane Massey will see nary a hint of besmirchment.”

The cocked, caterpillar-like brow is joined by a warped smile.

“I’ll take that as a good thing.”

The big guy nods in Jeffries’ general direction.

“First negro I’ve seen join the party.”

“I’d heard the brass was integrating them in slowly as replacements.”

“Runnin’ low on dagoes, wetbacks, Jew boys, micks, spics an’ regulation crackers, I suppose.”

I suppress a cackle, but just barely.

“I suppose.”

Lord love ‘im, Moose couldn’t help but add a parting shot while picking up the pace to officially take point.

“Next thing ya know, we’ll be up to our elbows in beaners, chinks and redskins.”

Sometime before stepping off that hulking transport in Belfast in what now seems like a decade ago, this green-as-a-gourd private vowed he’d script the great American war novel and see it bloom into a national bestseller upon publication, the next War and Peace or All’s Quiet on the Western Front. All these many months later and I can only shake my head and grin at that immature young corn-shuckers naivety. Regardless, the habit remains of scribbling down names, dates and locations when time and available scrap paper allow.

“Do the brass have any idea where all the krauts went?” Moose resumes from a three-stride lead, and I feel instant relief that the big guy seems to have shaken off at least a portion of his earlier heebie-jeebies. Shakes me up just seeing him that way.

“Nope. Figure they got the word long before we arrived and dashed off into the forest.”

“Leavin’ so many of the…incarcerated alive? You remember what we heard about the other camps.”

“Wish I didn’t. A mass slaughter of the innocents purely for evil’s sake. Couldn’t just release ‘em or leave ‘em be. Inhuman bastards killed thousands upon thousands just for spite’s sake. Just couldn’t stand the thought of letting anyone survive. Hell must be an actual destination if any justice is ever gonna be served.”

“Yep. The hotter the flames, the better, but then, why did…would they show mercy here?”

“You got me, Moose. Whatever the reason, we’ll take it. Maybe the good lord decided these poor folks had suffered enough for ten lifetimes.”

Moose shrugs as if to agree.

Survivor status aside, many of the skeletally gaunt patrons, if asked, might claim death came to them months or even years ago; mentally expired even as their husks continued to shamble along.

I still see the frozen smiles creasing many of their gaunt, haunted faces while being led towards that open main gate and have to believe this is true. Stubbornly defiant to the end.

Sad, but I also saw others wearing drastically different masks.

In them I saw only the hopelessly broken, the terminally whipped, the grim and grimy visages of those who had literally strolled into the fiery pits and had somehow crawled out before ever taking up permanent residence.

Speaking strictly for myself as we make our way up a gradually ascending rise towards a sparsely camouflaged maze of black alders, Douglas firs and sycamore maples, I silently pray with the upmost sincerity to the big guy upstairs that whatever we find there proves to be as tranquil and uneventful as Verurteilt’s main compound had been an open invitation to hell on earth.