(Sample Chapter)

            An eerie, dead darkness shrouded the city of Poznan.  Though it was early morning, there was no sign of life.  Unlit streets remained deserted.  Blacked-out buildings gave no hint of any activity within.  It seemed as if the city had fallen into a coma or under some evil spell.  Only occasional gusts of wind broke the black, lifeless silence, whooshing around corners, rattling a loose shutter or door, and momentarily clearing the air of soot and smoke.  In between, the air hung heavy with the threat of snow.

My colleagues and I sat on our trunks and suitcases, in the back of a canvas-topped truck, waiting for the driver to take us to the railway station.  Insulated by the darkness, cold, miserable inside and out, we had slipped into brooding silence, trying to come to grips with our fate.  Caught in the undertow of a raging, merciless war, our chances of survival seemed all too slim.

            There were eleven of us: eight girls, dancers, between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one; Hannimusch, a matronly singer and our accompanist; Egon Molkow, our director, ballet-and-taskmaster; and his wife, Hilde, mother hen and go-between.  I was the youngest in the group. 

Our small, travelling dance company had left Berlin on the second day of January 1943 to begin a tour through Eastern Germany.  Relieved to be out of bombing range, we accepted the tedium of wartime travel, from overcrowded trains, broken down buses, to unheated hotels.  At least, we were safe. 

Less than two weeks on the road, we received a summons to appear and audition before the German Military High Command in Poznan, Poland.  It superceded all prior commitments and put us on the next train to Poznan.  We were quite aware that the military, on occasion, drafted entire shows for the sole purpose of entertaining its troops, and speculated with some excitement that we might be sent to France, Belgium, or to some other safe zone. 

It took only days of arriving in Poznan to be auditioned, approved, and processed like draftees, then handed our orders---a six-month assignment to the Russian front.   

“…to the Russian front…!”  These words caused brave men to tremble and women to weep.  “…to the Russian front…in the deep of winter…where the bloodiest battles were being fought?” 

It had stunned us numb.  This was a nightmare come true.  And the timing could not have been worse.  The German army had just suffered its biggest, bloodiest defeat of the entire war at Stalingrad, which left it crippled and its front lines virtually defenseless.  Our troops complained bitterly about shortages on everything from warm clothing, to supplies, to ammunition and equipment.  Now they faced a stronger-than-ever Russian force, preparing to launch a new, all out major offensive, and they had nothing left to stop it.  Morale among our troops plummeted to its lowest point. 

At a map at headquarters, we looked up Smolensk, our immediate destination.  It was shown to be only twenty some miles behind the lines, protruding into enemy territory like a sore thumb.  Once the winter eased and the fighting resumed, we would no doubt be caught in the thick of it. 

            During the short, rough ride through the narrow, cobbled streets of Poznan to the railway station, my mind raced down the road of gloomy scenarios.  Six months from now, where would I be?  Dead?  Wounded?  Or worse---captured by the Russians?  Would I even live to see my seventeenth birthday?  I thought with painful longing of home, and of my parents who still knew nothing of my fate.  Dry, voiceless sobs shuddered up my throat. 

The truck stopped.  With flashlight in hand, the driver came around to the back and helped us down.  Arms and hands full with bags and packages, we followed Molkow through a tunnel of rocks and sand bags to a massive door which opened onto the enormous, empty lobby of Poznan's railway station.  Our entrance stirred up a drone of ghostly echoes.  Molkow waited until everyone was accounted for, then ordered us to stay put while he oversaw the transfer of our baggage.  

There we stood, alone, in the middle of this immense, empty space, drowning in the reverberations of Molkow’s footsteps that multiplied to sound like an army, marching.  The echoes hung in the chilly air long after he had disappeared into the shadowy recesses of the depot. 

            I scanned the dimly lit space for a bench, a counter or shelf, anything to rest on with my load.  Nothing.  The grimy outlines on the inlaid, marble floor still indicated where such furnishings used to stand, but the place was gutted, ravaged, plundered.  Broken ticket and concession windows had been boarded over with scrap lumber.  Holes in the stone walls with wires sticking out suggested an earlier presence of light fixtures.  A low-wattage bulb, the only light inside the station, dangled on a long, thin wire from high above a domed ceiling.  It offered the only clue that the station was still in operation.  My eyes lingered on the ornately sculpted border that banded the cupola and two supporting marble pillars.  Untouched and still elegant, it attested to Poland’s better days. 

            My arms ached from the weight of the packages. Reluctantly, I set them the dirty floor to allow blood to flow back into my freezing, tingling fingers.  Inge and Erika did the same.  The three of us usually hung out together.  Inge was from Hamburg and, next to me the youngest in our group---a quiet, shy, wispy, frizzy-haired dreamer with eyes like a fawn's, only months older than myself.  Erika, already seventeen, was my roommate and best friend.  Square and solid in build and character, with a no-nonsense attitude, she was my source of stability and advice.  In many ways, she and I were opposites.  She was orderly; I was disorganized.  She respected and obeyed rules; I questioned and challenged them.  She was level headed; I was impulsive.  While I was her source of entertainment and adventure, she made sure I did not step off the deep end.  It was a good combination. 

            None of us had much to say that morning.  Inge stood stiff like a statue with shoulders drawn up and a blank expression on her thin, pale face.  Her eyes were red from crying.  Erika fidgeted with a long, hand-knitted shawl that kept slipping off her head, and she and I kept tapping our feet to keep our toes from freezing.  The cold from the surrounding marble and stone penetrated skin and bones and turned our breath to steam. 

            Ever since we learned of our assignment three days earlier, emotions had run the gamut from disbelief, panic, outrage, despair, to morbid resignation.  We had not slept much, but had cried a lot.  Not until the very last moment when we climbed on that truck did I give up hope that reason would prevail and that our orders would be changed.  After all, most of us were still in our teens.  We were girls, not soldiers.  “What could they want with girls in a combat zone?   It doesn’t make sense.  This had to be a mistake,” I tried to reassure my colleagues and myself.  That hope now gone, I felt empty, betrayed, beaten and exhausted. 

            While standing around waiting, we had not seen nor heard anyone else come or go.  I was about to ask if we had come to the right station when Molkow returned. 

            “Follow me,” his deep voice thundered through the hall as he charged toward a large, double door opposite from where we entered.  He opened it and, to our astonishment, we stared at a platform jam-packed with German troops and their gear.  Dim blue lights here and there allowed just enough visibility to distinguish shapes.  In single file we trailed behind our chief, groped and stumbled over and through a tangle of limbs and resting bodies, bumped into mounds of gear, knocked over pyramids of rifles, drew curses, mumbled apologies, until we finally reached the far end of the station where we found our baggage piled.  Knife-sharp, icy gusts of wind tore at our clothing, pelting us with old snow whipped up from between acres of track beds.  With a sudden spurt of energy we girls stacked trunks and suitcases against the wind and huddled behind them, wrapping ourselves in blankets given to us by the military.  Molkow declined his wife’s invitation to join us.  Instead, he flipped up his coat collar, tightened down his black homburg and started to pace back and forth, alternately flapping his arms and blowing into his gloved fists.  His face, partly hidden by large horn-rimmed glasses, remained tight-lipped and impenetrable as always. 

            Hilde shrugged her shoulders at him, opened her purse and pulled out a gold cigarette case and lighter.  Without taking off her leather gloves, she inserted a cigarette into a long-stemmed holder and lit it.  Her already sunken cheeks hollowed even further as she drew the smoke deep into her lungs, held it, then, having satisfied that initial craving, let it slowly curl from her nostrils. She then passed the cigarettes to Ulla, her younger sister, only about half her age and the main soloist of our group.  Ulla helped herself, then, with a nod from Hilde, passed the case on to the others. 

            “Can I have one, too?  Please?” I begged Hilde, knowing she did yield on occasion.  “Just a drag or two?” 

            “You know what'll happen if Egon catches you.”  Her eyes flashed me a warning then glanced up at her still pacing husband.  Molkow did not allow anyone under eighteen to smoke.  That included Inge, Erika, Ilse and me.  We could drink, but not smoke.  Nevertheless, we did so anyway behind his back.  For me it had become a crutch when I was cold, hungry or afraid.  I was all of these things just then.  This time, Hilde stood firm.

            Before long Hannimusch, who sat beside me on one of our wooden show trunks, nudged and signaled me to look behind her.  One of the girls---it was Uschi, the oldest, smallest and brainiest in our group---had passed a cigarette to me.  I crouched down, sneaked a couple of deep puffs, than handed it back.  Hannimusch, single, in her mid forties, about the same age as Hilde, was our ally.  When we girls pulled one of our youthful shenanigans, she usually had a hand in it, too, which often saved us from Molkow’s brutal temper.  She laughed with us, she cried with us, and we comforted one another in matters of the heart. 

            Time passed quietly and slowly.  Erika, with her wool mittens on, awkwardly scribbled a few last good-bys on plain, prestamped postcards.  Inge and Uschi, resting against one another, had fallen asleep.  Everyone else seemed lost in thought.  Mine again wandered homeward.  I was scared how my parents would react, especially my father, when they got my letter with the news that I had been sent to Russia?  First my brother, now me.  I visualized my father erupting in anger, cursing the “damned Nazis and their war,” and being hauled off to Dachau, a concentration camp for misfits and political rebels.  For years, he had been walking a tightrope for refusing to join the Party and for speaking out against it.  Every time the doorbell rang early in the morning, my mother panicked, thinking the Gestapo had come to take him away, and that we would never see him again.  I was more concerned for his safety than for my own. 

            The wind had settled down.  It started to get light.  Suddenly children's voices drifted into the station from across the tracks and interrupted my thoughts.  I stood up and saw a gang of young scavengers pick the rails clean of anything usable from lumps of coal to cigarette butts.  Their noisy scramble entertained the men.  They tossed them money, food, and whatever else they could spare.  Then, when some older kids tried to sneak off with packs and rifles, the whole bunch got chased out of the station.  On an earlier tour through Poland, we had encountered such juvenile marauders in most larger cities and often wondered to whom, if anybody, these children belonged.  Some were as young as four or five and already quite adept at begging, stealing, wheeling and dealing.  At first, our hearts filled with pity until we started missing things.  They stole anything within their grasp, and sometimes we had to chase them down to get back what they stole.  Now we just kept a wary eye on them. 

            After this short interlude, the station fell quiet again.  The wait for the train, already more than forty minutes late, dragged on.  Every few minutes Molkow checked his watch and muttered to himself.  Finally, from an overhead loudspeaker blared a garbled announcement.  Soldiers scrambled to their feet and grabbed their packs and rifles.  The announcement was repeated.  “Train from Brest…”  Grumbling, the men settled down again.  Suddenly we heard a man shout orders, “Get back, men… get back… make way.”  I climbed atop the trunk to see what the commotion was about and saw litter-carrying medics clear a path through the crowd, then line up stretchers along the edge of the platform next to the tracks.  Minutes later the steel rails hummed.  A train marked with Red Cross signs and banners puffed in and screeched to a halt in a cloud of hissing steam.  Doors flung open and the first wounded emerged.  They walked, limped and hobbled through the depot with canes, on crutches, in casts and bandages.  Most wore a grin on their haggard faces and waved to the cheering troops in the station.  A tall young fellow not far from us cupped his hands over his mouth and shouted, “Hey, you Heinies… it's about time you made room for us up front.  We'll show you how to win this war.” 

            “It's all yours,” one of the veterans stopped to reply, swinging his crutch in the air.  “For us the war is over, thank God!  We are going home.” 

            The good-natured heckling between the wounded and their cocky replacements continued until the first litters appeared.  A hush fell over the crowd.  Stretcher after stretcher with moaning, mutilated bodies in blood-soaked dressings passed through.  Some appeared lifeless, wrapped in white gauze like mummies.  Some had the stump of a limb propped up. 

            “Poor devils,” Hannimusch mumbled, sighed and sat down, wiping her eyes.  I, too, had seen enough.  It was one thing to watch scenes like this on a movie screen, accompanied by heroic commentary, and quite another in real life.  I suddenly felt shaky as if I had not eaten or slept for days. 

A stench of iodine and rotting flesh now permeated the air.  Back in our huddle, we buried our noses in shawls and coat sleeves.  Even Molkow quit pacing and faced downwind. 

            Not long after the hospital train had left the station the arrival of another train was announced. 

            “This is it,” Molkow shouted over the sudden rumble of activity.  “Grab your stuff… let's go!” 

            A train labored in a few tracks over from the main platform, this time from the opposite direction.  It seemed jammed full already.  The push was on.  Swept along by this pushing, shoving mass of men, wedged between smelly uniforms and bulky packs, I lost sight of my group.  Some fellows passed their gear overhead and through the windows, then attempted to board the train the same way.  The majority swarmed toward the doors like bees to a hive.  I had dropped back, waiting for the congestion to clear, when I spied Molkow.  His black coat flapped in the breeze like the wings of a vulture.  He saw me, shook his fist and yelled, “Don't just stand there… get the devil on that train!” 

            How?  Where?  I glanced right and left.  “Oh, my God!”  I Suddenly realized what would happen if I did not get on.  Molkow had my papers, my ID, my ration tickets, my clothes.  Without them, I might just as well be dead.  Now panic-driven, I squeezed through the throng toward a coach door, managed to get one foot on the first step, then another, and from then on was pushed up-and-onward without effort of my own.  My bags and packages became entangled in the grinding mass of bodies.  I held on desperately while strings and handles cut painfully into my hands.  Barely able to breathe, feeling dizzy, I fought to stay calm and conscious, knowing that should I sink to the floor, I would be trampled to death before anyone realized I was there. 

            By the time the train started to move, the men had stacked packs and guns in corners and nooks from floor to ceiling, gradually gaining space to breathe.  I had advanced into the aisle with windows on one side and compartments on the other.  Farther down the coach, through the swaying, shifting bodies, I glimpsed something white.  Erika.  It had to be.  With a great sense of relief, I inched forward in her direction.  Finally she saw me and waved, and eventually we met by a window. 

“Mensch, am I glad to see you.  I was afraid you did not get on,” she greeted me.  Then her worried face broke into a big grin. Nothing could have made me happier at that moment than to see that broad, familiar grin on her freckled face. 

“You ought to see yourself.  You look a mess,” she said to me.  

“If you think I look a mess, go look at yourself,” I laughed.  Hair, scarf, coat, all was twisted and undone as if we had just been through a hurricane.  My hair had fallen over my face like a dark curtain.  I wanted to set my packages down to fix my hair, but my fingers were so numb that I had to pry them open.  It took several minutes before my hands functioned again to hold a comb.

            The air inside the coach turned gray from smoke and felt uncomfortably warm. 

            “Shouldn’t we be looking for the Molkows?” Erika mentioned with concern. 

            “Let’s wait till everybody has settled down,” I told her.  “We’ll find them soon enough.”  Some soldiers continued stacking gear, others rummaged in their packs. 

With our arms around each other’s shoulders and our backs turned to the men, we gazed out the window at the thinning houses of the city, followed by snow-dusted farmland squared off by rows of shrubs and trees.   

            “It looks so peaceful, doesn’t it?” Erika said and sighed.  I nodded, wishing myself home to the tranquil woods and meadows that bordered the neighborhood where I lived. 

The train picked up speed.  It swayed, jostled and knocked us off balance now and then.  From behind, a fellow suddenly careened into me and slammed me hard against the window frame.  I cried out in pain.  Instantly, his head jerked around, his mouth dropped open, and for seconds he simply stared at me, utterly speechless.  “Jesus,” he finally mustered to say, simultaneously elbowing a buddy.  “Jesus… what do you know?  GIRLS!  There are GIRLS on this train.”  Up to now nobody had paid any attention to us.  Suddenly we became the center of it. 

            “Hey!  What are you doing on this transport?  Are you Germans?  Are you nurses?”  Questions bombarded us from all directions. 

            “Where are you headed?”  The fellow that bumped into me asked. 

            “To a hospital,” I groaned, rubbing my head and shoulder. 

            “Sorry,” he said, and in the same breath repeated his question, “What are you women doing on a troop train?  Where are you going?” 

Erika, straight faced, with an exaggerated Saxon dialect, answered dryly.  “We finally got tired of the nightly air raids in Berlin and thought to take a vacation on the Russian front.” 

            “Ah… come on… really… tell, what are you doing on this transport?” others chimed in. 

            “The Fuehrer sent us to the front to cheer you up,” I answered. 

            “I know.  You are show people,” guessed one of the men. 

            “Figures,” scoffed a pipe-smoking sergeant leaning against the compartment door opposite from us, “We ask for reinforcements, weapons, ammunition, supplies, winter uniforms, and such simple things as socks, long johns, blankets, and what do they send us?  GIRLS!” 

            “Sorry about that,” Erika snapped, “we aren't exactly thrilled about it either.” 

            “Don't pay him no mind,” the first fellow interceded.  “He's already shell-shocked.  It's his third year on the front.”  The young draftees around him laughed.  The sergeant, a lean, weathered-looking man in his forties, calmly took the pipe out of his mouth and looked disdainfully from one to the other.  “Greenhorns!” he sneered.  “You'll soon find out what its like out there… when you’re holed up in trenches, in below zero temperatures, without long johns and winter uniforms…when your feet freeze to your boots and your flesh peels off your bones when you take them off.  Just wait, when you’re plowing miles through snow up to your belly because the trucks froze up, or ran out of gas.  Oh, yes!  And then when the Ruskies come at you and you have is blanks instead of bullets in your gun.  The last thing you’ll be thinking of is girls.  You’ll find out.”  He relit his pipe, and with it dangling from his mouth finished by apologizing, “No offense intended, ladies.” 

            Embarrassed silence followed.  Erika and I exchanged glances, silently agreeing that, perhaps, it was time to move on and look for the Molkows.  By now, we also needed urgently to find a toilet.  Normally there was one at the end of every other coach but getting there was not easy.  Every step required someone or something to shift or move, otherwise there was no space to plant one's foot.  As we picked our way through the coach, our presence raised quite a stir.  When we reached the end of it, there was a toilet all right, but it was stuffed full of gear, its door jammed open, leaving only a narrow path to the stool on which a soldier sat reading a book. 

            “Let's try for the next one,” Erika said.  When we reached it, the situation was the same. 

            “What are we going to do?”  Erika whimpered.  “I’m about to burst.” 

            “Go on… go…go…go…” I urged her. 

            We struggled through five coaches, one as jammed full as the other, and so was the third toilet. 

            “I can't wait any longer,” Erika said, pearls of sweat glistening on her forehead, “this has got to be it.”  Desperate by now, embarrassing or not, action was required.  “Hey, fellows…” I addressed the soldiers blocking the door to the toilet, “could you please move?  We need to use these facilities.”  I could feel myself blush.  They just stared as us, baffled.  We heard the men around us snicker, making wisecracks, and finally erupt in uproarious laughter.  A few did make a vague attempt to clear the door, but it was hopeless.  Suddenly a voice commanded, “Achtung!  Face front!  Eyes left.”  It cracked like a whip through the guffaws.  Men snapped to attention; those on the floor scrambled to their feet.  A human wall two to three bodies deep encircled the toilet’s entrance, facing away from it.  The soldier barking these commands turned to us.  “You ladies may use the facilities now.” 

            “Great!”  Erika mumbled, beet-red, rolling her eyes. 

            “Sing,” ordered the commander.  A crude tenor started  “By a waterfall…” but was quickly overpowered by the leader's voice who chose “Das kann doch einen Seemann nicht erschuettern…” a snappy marching tune about fearless seafarers.  The facility was now both peekproof and soundproof.  Without choice, we did what we had to do, and four choruses later uttered an embarrassed “thank you” and fled the scene.

            After struggling through three more coaches, we located the Molkows and the rest of our troupe in an officer's coach where Molkow snored by the window in the upholstered comfort of first class.  Beside him sat Hilde, applying fresh makeup.  The deep red color of her wide mouth and the strong, black outline of her large eyes gave her face a mask-like, almost grotesque appearance. 

            “It's about time you showed up,” she greeted us.  “Tell me, why is it that you two are always the last ones to show?”  She handed us our ration of sandwiches---blood sausage between slices of dry rye bread---and advised us to find a place out in the aisle where there was also a drinking fountain. 

            Erika and I found the rest of our troupe scattered about in the two first-class coaches reserved for officers.  We visited back and forth and listened to stories about Russia the men had to tell.  Eventually, however, we retreated to the aisle where the air was cooler and less smoky, and where a stack of duffel bags offered soft, comfortable seating.  Inge joined us and, from time to time, so did Hannimusch.  She could not stand cigar smoke.  It bothered her throat and vocal chords.  For a while we played cards until we finally succumbed to the hypnotic sway and rhythm of the train.  Leaning into one another, we fell asleep.