Chapter 17

I sat listening in amusement. The Intelligence officer erred one time too many naming innocent public facilities as armoires. City hall, he pointed out, was actually a museum, and our beautiful zoo he identified as a Polish army base. I had to wonder if he somehow had the wrong city, and that he knew it, and was bullshitting the colonel to save his ass.

When he implied that my father's large textile factory situated near the airport was an aircraft assembling plant, the humour of it all was suddenly lost on me. I had been in that factory several times a week, and there was certainly no evidence of airplanes in any shape or form, only huge looms and weavers as far as the eye could see and hundreds of innocent employees toiling to make a living. Their lives, as we well as my father's was at stake.

The colonel was in one of his 'children should be see, but not heard' moods, that when he was meeting with people in his office, I had always respected. I jumped to my feet and ran over to the two men. The colonel, with a quizzical look, read the panic on my face knowing that I wasn't being disobedient screaming that they had made a grave mistake. In my fluster, I spoke Polish more than German.

Immediately, I summoned Claus to come to my aid and interpret what I couldn't possibly trust my limited lingo to be clear and concise enough to explain the misinformation about my father's plant. In order to emphasize my knowledge of the city, I pointed out the intelligence officers other misguided logistical information. I prayed to God that the colonel would believe my rantings. Never had he asked where I originated from, nor had I the need to tell him, it just never came up in conversation.

On the large topographical map, I pointed out and named my street, my school, the park where I played rugby, the butcher shop my mother shopped at, going on until he silenced me with a hand gesture. I got a discerning glare when a moment later I broke the ordered silence and felt the need to point out my grandparent's street. Once again he raised his hand close enough to feel it on my nose, shook his head as if I was daft, and turned to the intelligence officer. I got the message and shut myself up. He already believed me.

The intelligence office glared at me before he turned his head to meet the colonel with a worried wavering smile. Refusing to look his superior in the eye for more than a second at a time as he busied himself flipping through paperwork in a file folder nervously searching for what he guessed was his oversight. At a loss for explanation, the haggard officer looked at the colonel and threw his hands up in defeat.

The colonel's strategic map that he was detailing was a farce as far as minor components were concerned. A tourist brochure of the city would have been more useful than what the Nazi warmongers in Berlin had supplied their front lines with.

The intelligence officer stood me on a chair to face the map and asked me to look over the scribbles that he and the colonel had previously pencilled. Not able to read German, Claus was positioned beside me and read the descriptions. I detected two more errors. What they identified as a synagogue to the east was actually a large monastery where my mother and father sometimes bought cheese and wine. Its star shaped design was coincidentally a grainy, blurred aerial image of the housing wings that were added to the main central structure over the years to accommodate its growth.

The most valuable piece of information I gave them that made the colonel furious was my noticing a bridge with red arrows drawn through it. The Vladimir drawbridge was one of four access routes into the city and had been struck by a river barge and been closed for repairs for at least three months. My father bellyached about the detour to and from work almost every day at supper time. In his opinion, the architects who designed it were nothing but buffoons for not building it higher in the first place. A few small ships had lost their con-bridges in the dead of night and mechanical failures plagued the efficiency of it since the day it opened.

With that invaluable piece of information, the colonel ordered the sentry at the door to summon a communications officer to his office on the double. He wanted to personally dictate a communiqué to High Command making them privy to the latest intel in order to drastically change their strategic bombing plans as well as the 121st division's planned access route into the city. The colonel commented to no one in particular that a fourteen year old Polish boy was more useful than all of Nazi intelligence combined.

I was proud of myself. I preferred to think that the man showed his gratitude by taking only me to his bed for an afternoon nap and made love to me the way I liked him to. My rectum burned, but he was conscious of my injuries and was gentle.

I had betrayed my city and my country in some small way; however I convinced myself that I may have prevented thousands of unnecessary deaths. In my simple minded knowledge of wargames, the small City of Pranski would be no more of a military threat to the Nazi's planned invasion than the docile village up the highway would be. Little did I know then how wrong I was.

Of course, the base camp was in lockdown for security reasons. Perimeter security had been doubled and extended to a five mile radius. No vehicle traffic was permitted to use the only highway linking neighbouring villages that by passed the base.

The colonel feared potential spies witnessing the dismantling of the base and the implications that military movement was imminent. The forested surroundings were crawling with Nazi soldiers with orders to shoot anyone on sight. I heard that many villagers were killed for simply trying to make their way home, caught in the sudden 'no-go-zone.'

He had ordered in another cot. Shoved together, the beds allowed the three of us only minor, cramped comfort and one of us would end up in the empty bed of his second in command who was only too pleased to see the pretty-boy back; his morning blowjob - jerk off sessions resumed every morning after shift change.

Claus and I did, however, have free run of the base after the colonel got tired of us moping around his office. We ate our meals in the enlisted men's mess, a silent movie reel usually followed dinner, preceded by a redundant clip of a speech by the Fuhrer.

We would stop by the "social club" tent and peak under the rear canvas discovering it was quite active at all times of day and night. Off limits by the colonel after we lost track of time one night and were late getting home. However, it didn't seem to matter to him the many evenings we sat in his office patiently awaiting Zane's departure from the bedroom before we could go to bed.

I saw Frank often. Still on light duties, he was the colonel's aide running errands or delivering orders on the man's behalf. He was always sullen, not his usual good natured self. He missed Franz terribly, that I was sure the reason for his melancholy demeanour. I tried to talk to the colonel about it, he sincerely understood, didn't get angry, but informed me that he could never take the chance on having the enemy on the base, or allow furlough to a soldier during quarantine. I understood and respected the man's position and his honest response to me. I truly think he was impressed by my candour in concern for Frank.

The colonel didn't come to bed one night. I awoke to hear voices in the office. Vehicles roared to life in the still of the night. The squealing of metal on metal could only be heavy artillery moving. The stench of diesel exhaust penetrated the tent thick and nauseous. The Nazi's were moving out, the full scale invasion of Poland was underway.

Claus had woken just before Frank entered the room and told us to dress and gather up our things. We joined the colonel at the wheel of his jeep and led a mile-long noisy parade down the dark highway the two-hundred miles toward my home. A final look back, much of the base remained intact, the future home of reinforcement troops to await orders.

I felt helpless worrying about my family. The markings on the colonel's map clearly illustrated that another two battalions would converge from the east and the west, the colonel, from the south. For a long way, the highway followed the railroad tracks. Boxcars and livestock cars seemed to go on forever travelling slowly in our direction. Little did I know the significant purpose quite then.

As we neared the city just before dawn, the colonel pulled to the left and slowed allowing several gunnery jeeps to lead the convoy. For the first time I felt in danger. Two civilian boys in a jeep with a high ranking Nazi officer would be no deterrent for Polish troops to bazooka the vehicle, nor would hidden snipers care who they picked off under the metal helmets provided us.

Throughout the night, the convoy had encountered only a few on-coming vehicles that were stopped and searched and left disabled. The occupants could do nothing but stand roadside and watch, thankful for their lives being spared. However, closer to the city, the early morning hour brought with it heavier traffic, mostly livery trucks going about their business. Two tanks had by then took taken the lead, the trucks were all considered potentially hostile and obviated then pushed off the highway by a bulldozer that had earlier been unloaded from its transport.

The carnage was extremely difficult to watch. Where the colonel saw the enemy, I saw innocent men simply plying a living being slaughtered. The odd car out and about was shown no less mercy, the gunnery jeeps took care of those. My father making his way to work could have easily been a victim. All the while, never for a second did the convoy slow its steadfast pace, and not one bullet had yet been fired in returned enemy aggression.