1901

Ludwig shuddered. He hadn’t seen the woman who seduced Ulli, but the Schuler boys had, and they had tearfully insisted that the retarded-looking slattern with the greasy dark hair whom the military police had picked up wasn’t her. The German police simply insisted that she had to be because she had been found in the area and fit the general description. They had the company watch as a firing squad pulverized her with bullets. The poor thing had been wide-eyed and slobbering with terror. Her mouth was deformed and she wasn’t even able to speak, only grunt. It was then that Ludwig realized with a chill that the police were more concerned with closing the case than with solving the crime. Bastards. The event had seared them all. The death of dumb Ulli was such a waste, such a shame. What bothered him more than anything, except the attitude of the police, was the fact that some of his men, speaking in whispers, blamed the German military for having them here where they could be killed and not the slut who’d cut off Ulli’s cock.

And Ludwig had a hard time disagreeing with them.

“Hey, Ludwig, wagon coming.”

Ludwig shaded his eyes with his hand. Yes, it was a wagon. One lone wagon with two German soldiers in it, and it was pulled by one slow, old horse. Yes, it was a real threat. He rose slowly and started to walk the score or so strides from the shade to where the sun shone on the hastily improvised roadblock. This consisted of a length of wood on a stone stretched across the road, and a hand-painted sign that read “Halt.”

One of the Schuler boys offered to go with him, but Ludwig told him to go back to sleep. He could handle this massive threat to their security all by himself. It was only the third or fourth time anyone had come down the road all day. Ludwig stood in front of the sign and held his hand palm outward, and the wagon stopped. He could see that the two men were a little older and their uniforms didn’t fit that well, which made him fairly certain that they were reservists. Ludwig may have hated the army, but he took pride in the way they looked. This pair looked like slobs in comparison with the regulars. Perhaps he was being too harsh. Ludwig also didn’t recognize their unit, but that wasn’t surprising either. With all the reservists about, he hadn’t heard of half their regiments. After all, he thought, stifling a yawn, he was a teacher, not a soldier.

One of the men in the wagon was a sergeant; the driver was a private. Well, Ludwig thought, reserves or not, the sergeant has more stripes than I do and that makes him God if he wants to be. The sergeant didn’t want to push it, however. He smiled amiably and asked what the matter was.

“Nothing much.” Ludwig grinned back. “This is the most important road in America and we’re watching it for the Reich.”

The two men laughed and agreed. They knew make-work when they saw it. Funny, Ludwig thought, he didn’t quite recognize their accents, and he thought he knew all the regional nuances. “Where to?” he asked.

“Just going in to the supply center,” the sergeant replied. “We got a shopping list and specific directions from our captain. Jesus, what an old lady.”

Ludwig grinned and looked around. It wasn’t proper to criticize an officer that harshly. He and his friends did it privately, but not to a perfect stranger. He asked them what unit they were from and was told they were with the 141st Infantry, a reserve regiment. Well, that confirmed his guess and was probably why they were so critical of their commander. Rumor had it the reserves were not overwhelmed with joy at being here. For that matter, neither was he.

As he looked in the back of the wagon, Ludwig idly asked the sergeant where his hometown was and was given the name of a village he didn’t recall. It didn’t matter. He was getting bored again. The only things in the back of the wagon were a steamer trunk and the soldiers’ rifles, which lay flat on the floor. He noticed that the trunk was unlocked and the hasp had worked its way open. A piece of paper was protruding. He decided to do them a favor, so he pulled out the piece of paper and opened the trunk to reclose it properly.

He gasped. It was full of sheets of paper. Thousands of them. And they all had similar messages. “Surrender,” they read, or “Stay in America,” “Live Free,” or “Americans Are Your Friends-Not the Kaiser.”

His knees weakened and he had to grab the side of the wagon for support. He looked at the two men, who were staring at him, their faces suddenly pale and their expressions frozen. In his mind, he started to cry out for help, call for the others, but no sound came. Dear God, these are Americans, not Germans. No wonder their accents are so strange. Either they never lived in Germany or had lived there so long ago their accents had changed. Oh, God. Help.