OUT OF THE RUBBLE - 11
Copyright 2004 by Carl Mason
All rights reserved. Other than downloading one copy for strictly personal enjoyment, no part of this story may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, except for reviews, without the written permission of the author. Comments on the story are appreciated and may be addressed to the author at carl5de@netscape.net.
This story contains descriptions of sexual contact between a young adult male and young male teenagers. Nevertheless, "Out of the Rubble" is neither a strictly "suck and fuck" exercise nor is it a story that focuses on the "love of adults for the young"...often without sex or with the mere suggestion of sex. If you are looking for these types of erotic fiction, there are fine examples of each on Nifty. Something slightly different is required here.
However based on real events and places, "Out of the Rubble" is strictly fictional. Any resemblance to actual events, or locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Further, this is homoerotic fiction designed for the personal enjoyment of legal, hopefully mature, adults. If you are not of legal age to read such material, if those in power and/or those whom you trust treat it as illegal, or if it would create unresolvable moral dilemmas in your life, please leave. Finally, remember that maturity generally demands that anything other than safe sex is sheer insanity!
PART 11
(Revisiting the End of Part 10)
Before the trio left for Tieferwald, the Baron settled his financial obligations and delivered his second gift for Andreas, a gift concealed in a beautifully wrapped box. (On arriving home, the youth found that it contained four contemporary American sports shirts and two pairs of authentic jeans. They were perfectly sized.) He also promised Andreas five hundred U.S. dollars for each and every time he took part in one of his future photo shoots. As he saw them off on the steps of his mansion, the Baron encountered an almost forgotten member of the company. "And what of you, young Rolf?" he asked affectionately. Reaching into the pocket of his smoking jacket, he pulled out his own gold cigarette case engraved with the family crest, glanced at it, and handed it to the startled former SS-jock. "Here, brave German soldier. Hopefully, we shall meet again."
(Continuing Our Story : A Tragic Arrival)
A house meeting was in progress as an American soldier arrived with a personal message from General Clemens. Sam was informed that a new "shipment" of Silesian refugees, in terrible shape, had arrived over the past week at the Relocation Camp. The General wrote that anything that he could do to alleviate their misery would be appreciated. Recommending that
Sam's boys be involved, he noted that he would arrange for a Silesian teen to serve as a guide during their visit.
After Sam had shared the gist of General Clemens' request with his gang, Ehrhardt took over the meeting, challenging the teens to do something really important for their fellow Germans. Horst, who had earlier escaped from the Sudetenland before Czech and Russian persecution reached its zenith, begged them emotionally to help the Silesian refugees. A unanimous decision was reached. While Sam and Ehrhardt consulted with the Camp Council and officers from the American military command, Andreas and the other teens would tour the Camp. Everyone would then meet again to decide on a plan for action. Hopefully, in addition to the military, the URA, leaders in the Tieferwald community, and young people from the area could be mobilized.
When Sam's little band arrived at the Camp the next day, all that they saw on a rainy, dark, and cool September morning made their hearts heavy and their faces grim. Compared with the city, where some progress was slowly being made to restore minimal living and working conditions, the Relocation Camp was a desolate wasteland. After introductions, Sam and Ehrhardt departed for their meeting. Andreas and the other lads - guided by Konrad, a nearly 16 year old member of the Silesian "expellees" - began their tour.
Limping, for he had been wounded while taking part in the defense of "Fortress Breslau," Konrad pointed out how many of the refugees were young children and women whose husbands were missing - or dead. They entered barracks with thin wooden walls and no storm windows, cardboard pasted on the walls as protection against rainwater leaking through them. (Wooden outhouses and toilets had been roughly constructed "out back.") In one tiny room, walls dripping wet, lived two adults and seven children. A scantily clothed infant lay in a wash basket. Throughout the camp, blankets were scarce; two beds had to serve five people, and little other furniture was available. The few belongings of the refugees were hung on the walls in rooms packed with those with TB, invalids, and the elderly. The was no clothing, linen, or shoes. All that they had been able to save from their former possessions was in rucksacks, suitcases, or bundles brought from Silesia. There wasn't that much and, in any case, little was still fit for use. The refugees had been promised a small living allowance, but it would not be enough to maintain families, let alone purchase things on the prohibitively expensive Black Market to improve their lot. They lay huddled, exhausted, looking at their world through dull eyes that reflected little hope.
As the boys finished their tour, Andreas asked Konrad if they might move over to the Camp's main office shack where a room would be available. "We're going to try to help," he declared, "but we need to hear more about what happened to you and your people. I was driven out of Slovakia, so I know that it must have been pretty horrible." After looking at him doubtfully for a moment, Konrad wearily nodded. The boys trudged off through the mud, Horst's arm locked through Konrad's, Andreas's arm across Konrad's thin shoulders.
(Konrad's Story)
The young Silesian German began by saying that he came from a part of eastern Germany where his people had lived for 700 years. The Silesians had made great contributions to German culture. For instance, the Nobel Prize winning atomic physicist, Max Born, had come from Silesia, as had Otto Klemperer, the famous Wagnerian conductor, and brilliant poets such
as Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff and Gerhart Hauptmann who had won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1912.
As Russian columns slashed through western Polish lands that had been annexed by Hitler in 1939 and finally entered Germany proper, resistance had stiffened, the fighting swirling back and forth across the entire region. As they had been fought earlier on the Eastern Front, ferocious battles raged without mercy being shown on either side. Counter-attacking German troops, for instance, would often retake villages only to found great mounds of raped and butchered women, as well as dead children, police, and soldiers. Additional babies, children, and young people appeared to have been seized and shipped to Siberia for slave labor. The villages were smoking ruins, the possessions of the people looted and scattered across the ground. The situation had not been helped by Nazi officials, who had often screamed for resistance and held civilians in the towns and villages until it was too late for them to flee. Many columns of terrified refugees were slaughtered by Russian cavalry, tanks, and planes as they finally tried to escape. Even if successful, it was often too late. For instance, as many as 200,000 Silesian refugees may have been in Dresden on the Elbe when it was fire bombed on February 13, 1945.
Konrad came from Breslau [today's Polish Wroclaw - pronounced "VROTZ-vaff"], a large city founded in the tenth century and a center of German life on its eastern borders. When the Red Army reached the River Vistula in central Poland in September of 1944, Hitler had declared Breslau to be a fortress - Festung Breslau - which was to be the part of so-called "Eastern Wall" on the River Oder. The city was heavily fortified by creating to two defensive rings and stockpiling supplies for long-term encirclement. Numerous fortifications were built around the city in addition to two defensive rings. Indeed, the defenses ran as far 12.4 miles (20 km) from the center of the city. The work was done by forced laborers, volunteers, women, children, and old men.
The Germans had attempted to evacuate civilians from the city in January 1945, but some 90,000 people died due to the lack of transport and frigid weather. After early attacks on the city, beginning in February, were repulsed, the Russians began using artillery to destroy enemy positions and tanks supported by assault groups in street fighting. It turned into bloody and savage fighting for each house. Even after the last strong German military formations in the area had been destroyed, fighting in Breslau continued. Soviet troops and tanks pushed German defenders ever deeper into the city. In turn, the defenders destroyed every house and city block behind them to delay the advancing Soviet forces.
When the city was surrendered on May 6,1945, 21,600 out of 30,000 buildings had been destroyed. Six thousand German soldiers and 170,000 civilians had been killed, while 45,000 had been taken prisoner. On May 9, 1945, the city was taken over by the Polish City Council and on August second, it became part of Poland by decision of the Potsdam Conference.
Wounded, Konrad had found his way back to the shell of his home where he found his mother and two sisters, one 13 and one 10, still alive. They were soon discovered by Soviet troops. Over three days, he had served as an occasional punching bag for Russian soldiers and was forced to watch his mother and sisters being brutally and repeatedly raped. Eventually, they had been collected and interred under Polish guard in a former SS camp at Lamsdorf, Upper Silesia, along with thousands of other Silesian civilians and military prisoners. Provided with little food and less shelter, 6480 Germans, 623 of them children, died at Lamsdorf between August 1945 and the autumn of 1946. His mother and both sisters perished. Many others, together with all but the oldest military prisoners, were sent to the Soviet Union. Eventually, groups of survivors were loaded onto railway cattle cars and sent west.
The white-faced boys of Sgt. Ehrhardt's Army hugged the now weeping Konrad, promising that they would meet again...and in the very near future.
(Fighting A Cleaner Battle)
On returning home, Sam, Ehrhardt, and the young men of the House quickly set about trying to find ways to assist the Silesians. Several meetings were held. Thanks to their efforts - combined with those of the American Occupation Forces, special emergency relief efforts mounted by the URA and the American Red Cross, and Tieferwald's young people energized by Ehrhardt and Andreas - a disaster of potentially mammoth proportions was averted. Despite their own misery and need, the people of Tieferwald rose as one to help their own. Other than Sam, Andreas never told anyone that he had arranged for the sale of his proudest possession, the heavy gold neck chain given him by the "Herr Otto," and donated the substantial sum realized to the relief effort. The situation was still grim - for instance, the long-range weather forecast promised a much more severe winter than had gripped the area in 1945-46 - but there was hope...and a bit of breathing space. In late October, Ehrhardt, Andreas, and Konrad (who was the "Poster Boy" of the relief drive and had actively supported it throughout the area) attended a special meeting of the Tieferwald City Council. The Buergermeister presented them with scrolls that began, "To the Heroic German Youths Who Saved Thousands of Their Fellow Citizens." Sam sat in the audience, beaming. Earlier, he had received fervent personal thanks from General Clemens - and, we may assume, the General had received his recognition as well. (When he finally retired, it was with a second star!)
Konrad was often over at the house - for meetings, for dinner, and just because he was especially well-liked by its inhabitants. (In fact, the young Alsatian Blondi had decided that he was her favorite playmate - and the feeling was reciprocated!) One night, seated on the bed in Andreas and Sam's room, he tearfully asked Andreas if there were any chance that room could be found in the house for him. Knowing that the old home was creaking at its seams, Andreas had to tell him honestly that there would be a delay, but that he would do everything in his power to help. In his heart, he knew that it HAD to happen!
(An Announcement)
September wasn't out before Andreas received another request for assistance. Nervously and rather shamefacedly, Rolf informed his best friend that he had arranged a photo shoot with the Baron. "I just had to do it myself, Andy; I just had to," he mumbled. He had also arranged in two days time to take one of the infrequent trains up to Frankfurt. Blushing, he asked if Andreas would prepare his body for the shoot, much as he had for the late-summer canoeing trip in southern Bavaria.
While full of questions, Andreas could only say, "Hey, Rolfie, you know that I'm your friend and that I will do anything to help you. You're a great guy! You're going to make it, you know!"
(To Be Continued)