embankment and a water tower. If the sky remained clear, our planes would be in the air at dawn, blowing up fuel depots and nailing every armored unit they could spot. But where were we going to hide when the starlight faded from the heavens and the sun broke on the horizon, and what would we eat?
We trudged across the snowfield, clinging to each other, our eyes tearing, our ears like lumps of cauliflower, the wind as sharp as a barber’s razor when I turned my face into it.
W E STAYED IN the woods the entire day. A flight of bombers with a fighter escort passed high overhead, vapor trails barely discernable. Later we could hear the explosions of bombs through the earth, probably blockbusters designed to blow gas and water mains before the incendiaries were dropped in strings that looked like cords of firewood. The forest contained no signs of either human or animal life. I could only assume the animals had been killed and eaten. That there were no human footprints except our own was more than disconcerting. As the sun descended, shadows formed in the sculpted, funnel-shaped tracks we had left in the snow, creating a trail not unlike ink dots leading to our hiding place.
Just before sunset, a lone Messerschmitt painted with zebra stripes came in low across the field, close enough for me to see the pilot’s goggled face as he swooped past us. The area around his wing guns was black with burnt gunpowder. It seemed grandiose to believe that the pilot of a Luftwaffe fighter plane would have interest in two escapees from a one-sided slaughter, weak with hunger and in the first stages of frostbite. Less than one minute later, I heard his guns rattling as he strafed a target by the river, and I realized that others had probably survived the massacre. For a committed hunter, no target was too small or insignificant.
As soon as night fell, Sergeant Pine and I made our way down to the river and pushed a rowboat free of the ice and frozen reeds along the bank and rowed to the far side. We huddled at the base of the train tracks. I was exhausted and colder and hungrier than I had ever been, the kind of hunger that is like a rat eating a hole through the bottom of your stomach. To the east was another wooded area, and beyond it lighted buildings of some kind, perhaps factories manned by slave labor, operating twenty-four hours a day. I climbed up the embankment and placed my ear to one of the rails. For me, at that moment, the sound inside the steel could only be compared to the warm and steady humming of a woman’s circulatory system when you rest your head against her breast.
The headlight on the locomotive wobbled past us. Most of the cars looked empty, rocking on their undercarriages as we ran alongside the tracks, gravel skidding under our feet. I jumped aboard a boxcar whose interior was blowing with chaff and smelled of grain and livestock, then I reached down and grabbed the sergeant by the wrist and pulled him through the door, the riparian, marshlike countryside dropping behind us. I prayed that we were headed north, into Belgium. I prayed that a great deliverance was at hand.
The train gained speed and began to bend around a long curve that took us due east. Far up the line, I could see the glow of the firebox in the cab and sparks fanning from the smokestack. I lay down in the back of the boxcar and covered myself with a pile of burlap bags, too tired to care where the train took us. As I closed my eyes, I heard the sergeant push the sliding door shut. Soon I was fast asleep, the boxcar’s wheels clicking on the tracks, the floor rocking like a cradle.
I woke at sunrise with a start, the way you do when you realize that the problems surrounding you are real and that your sleep has only placed them in abeyance. The train had picked up considerable speed; the boxcar was one that Depression-era hoboes called a flat-wheeler because it had no springs and bounced a passenger all over the floor. “Where are we?” I
We trudged across the snowfield, clinging to each other, our eyes tearing, our ears like lumps of cauliflower, the wind as sharp as a barber’s razor when I turned my face into it.
W E STAYED IN the woods the entire day. A flight of bombers with a fighter escort passed high overhead, vapor trails barely discernable. Later we could hear the explosions of bombs through the earth, probably blockbusters designed to blow gas and water mains before the incendiaries were dropped in strings that looked like cords of firewood. The forest contained no signs of either human or animal life. I could only assume the animals had been killed and eaten. That there were no human footprints except our own was more than disconcerting. As the sun descended, shadows formed in the sculpted, funnel-shaped tracks we had left in the snow, creating a trail not unlike ink dots leading to our hiding place.
Just before sunset, a lone Messerschmitt painted with zebra stripes came in low across the field, close enough for me to see the pilot’s goggled face as he swooped past us. The area around his wing guns was black with burnt gunpowder. It seemed grandiose to believe that the pilot of a Luftwaffe fighter plane would have interest in two escapees from a one-sided slaughter, weak with hunger and in the first stages of frostbite. Less than one minute later, I heard his guns rattling as he strafed a target by the river, and I realized that others had probably survived the massacre. For a committed hunter, no target was too small or insignificant.
As soon as night fell, Sergeant Pine and I made our way down to the river and pushed a rowboat free of the ice and frozen reeds along the bank and rowed to the far side. We huddled at the base of the train tracks. I was exhausted and colder and hungrier than I had ever been, the kind of hunger that is like a rat eating a hole through the bottom of your stomach. To the east was another wooded area, and beyond it lighted buildings of some kind, perhaps factories manned by slave labor, operating twenty-four hours a day. I climbed up the embankment and placed my ear to one of the rails. For me, at that moment, the sound inside the steel could only be compared to the warm and steady humming of a woman’s circulatory system when you rest your head against her breast.
The headlight on the locomotive wobbled past us. Most of the cars looked empty, rocking on their undercarriages as we ran alongside the tracks, gravel skidding under our feet. I jumped aboard a boxcar whose interior was blowing with chaff and smelled of grain and livestock, then I reached down and grabbed the sergeant by the wrist and pulled him through the door, the riparian, marshlike countryside dropping behind us. I prayed that we were headed north, into Belgium. I prayed that a great deliverance was at hand.
The train gained speed and began to bend around a long curve that took us due east. Far up the line, I could see the glow of the firebox in the cab and sparks fanning from the smokestack. I lay down in the back of the boxcar and covered myself with a pile of burlap bags, too tired to care where the train took us. As I closed my eyes, I heard the sergeant push the sliding door shut. Soon I was fast asleep, the boxcar’s wheels clicking on the tracks, the floor rocking like a cradle.
I woke at sunrise with a start, the way you do when you realize that the problems surrounding you are real and that your sleep has only placed them in abeyance. The train had picked up considerable speed; the boxcar was one that Depression-era hoboes called a flat-wheeler because it had no springs and bounced a passenger all over the floor. “Where are we?” I
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