Chapter 2

Heidi was able to blend into the military mission at the Army base with very little difficulty. Her primary function was to translate and make comments on witness reports of incidents involving American military personnel. She was on a team of translator interpreters that had sufficient background in intelligence and interrogation matters to comprehend the complexity of the reports and to comment with effective conciseness.

Her other members on the “B” team were Cindy Garcia who was already a Corporal and had only been in country for five months, and two male translators that spoke German better than English having been born in the fatherland and moving to the United States when they were teenagers and learning English at an accelerated pace with a combination of excellent Catholic school teaching and native language speakers that immersed them in the English correct grammar and introduced them to the nuances of slang spoken in various geographic sectors of the lower forty-eight.

The two males were both Sergeants making Heidi the lowest ranking member of the team and the maker of coffee for the team due to her position at the bottom of the totem pole.

The oldest male on her team was Sergeant Danny Noble with his wavy black hair and his image of himself as totally irresistible to the female soldiers on the base and a fair slice of the female population in the surrounding area.

The other male member of the team was Sergeant August Spieldorn with his irritating manners and constant criticism of everything and everyone around him from the time he got up in the morning until he put his head on the pillow late at night.

Actually, Heidi liked Spieldorn the best because she loved his critical analysis of people and things to a degree that she never thought possible in another human being. A lot of what he said out loud was exactly what she was thinking but was too cautious to say out loud because it draw attention to her negative thoughts about people and things that were traditional favorites for most normal people.

Private First Class Heidi continued her practice of early morning gun range shooting and she soon became a familiar sight at the base armory where she helped clean and repair the weapons assigned to the troops. They would probably never use the because the base was more of an administrative center rather than an actual front line combat unit like Heidi wanted to join desperately.

She always got to the office early and made the coffee for the group.

Sergeant Spieldorn was continually pestering her to talk to him in her perfect grammar German because he still retained the low-class speech of his youth before he went to the United States with his parents. Because of her native born American status, Heidi was the only one of the four that was granted Top Secret clearance. Of course, nothing of her connection to the Hitler family line was mentioned in her background report and she was never asked directly if she was related to the infamous dictator because such a thought was deemed ridiculous just on the surface. She joined a fencing club downtown and practiced twice a week to keep her sword skills sharp as a tack. The civilian males at the club were incensed that a woman was accepted as a member and the fact she was actually an American was downright disturbing to them.

Heidi was a shoo-in for the membership because the Fuhrer League was keeping tabs on her and a couple of their strong arm members paid a visit to the director in the evening and told him in no uncertain terms that she would be accepted as it was in the best interests of the Fatherland. The director was an old man and he remembered the politics of his youth. He didn’t question the statement and considered it to be a valid “order” and his life was a series of orders that never stopped him long enough to question them even if he might develop a desire to do so which was extremely unlikely.

Every second day, Heidi could be found on the cross country track that ran just inside the perimeter of the base. She attracted the stares of the German civilian walking on the dirt trails outside the barbed wire fence making their way to the back gate to enter the base as employees of a foreign power. There actually were more civilian employees than there were American troops assigned to the base. It was a fact that Heidi was acutely aware of. She knew that the American troop levels would be severely cut down in the very near future and most of the American troops would go home as the changing political scene was all topsy-turvy to the unbiased observer.

She considered herself to be unbiased because while she was loyal to her adopted country, she had an intrinsic connection to the Fatherland that was related to her birthright and her hidden bloodline.

Most of the Germans that viewed Heidi considered a perfect Aryan example with her long blonde hair and blue eyes and her long lean athletic body that reminded them of their traditional roots and not of the diversity thrust upon them by global enthusiasts.

In the morning formations, she stuck out like an Olympic contender rather than the bulk of the women who looked more like ordinary females one would expect in housewives or store clerks. This fact did not escape the scrutiny of Major Lee the Japanese American who was the Deputy Commander of the base and was responsible for all security on the base related to classified information. He was aware of Heidi and her membership in the fencing club. It had mystified him a bit when he found out because he had wanted to join it but was turned down because he was not deemed suitable for their standards. He, being a field grade officer, rejected the fact that a lowly enlisted female was accepted and it made him more curious than angry and he resolved to determine the reason why.