Darkness Before The Dawn

One of the advantages of having an important person as a father is that you can get away with stuff.  More than once, a police cruiser deposited me on my front porch, instead of the Madison County Jail. 

 

The same thing happened when I acted up in school.  Principal Moss would give me a stern lecture, then tell me he knew I was a good kid on the inside.  He was sure, one day I would follow in my father’s footsteps.  The principal’s heavy wooden paddle always stayed on its hook on the wall.

 

Of course, I was not a serious criminal.  Just a spoiled kid who knew he could get away with it.  More than anything, I was a threat to myself.  And the women I dated.  I know I didn’t treat them like I should have.

 

My father had his first stroke when he was 80.  He couldn’t do much after that, but we had time to talk.  Once I asked if he had regrets about how his life turned out.  During the war, he got caught up in some pretty bad s**t.  Way worse than anything I’ve ever done.  I said, “If you could live your life over, what would you change?”

 

Artur smiled and said, “Nothing.”

 

The world my father stepped into at Peenemunde could have been an episode of the Twilight Zone.  On the one hand, it was paradise for a math nerd.  Artur quickly made the transition from theoretical mathematics to applied science.  One does not need to solve the Hodge Conjecture in order to design an effective rocket.  It did not take long for him to find his voice, in the rowdy brainstorming sessions von Braun would become famous for.

 

On the other hand, there was the brutality and absurdity of the Third Reich. 

 

Artur was spared the direct obscenity of battle.  But he knew what was happening around him.  He knew the V-2 rocket he helped design would be used to kill people.  The calculations he performed varied based on different payload weights.  Payload refers to the cargo a rocket carries.  In this case, the payload would be bombs, to be delivered to military forces and civilians in western Europe.

 

When Artur lay in bed at night, he asked himself if he was a murderer.  He wished Piotr was here.  His father always knew what to say.  Except, Artur knew.  Even his father couldn’t help him with this one.

 

Personal freedom was not a big thing in Nazi Germany.  Artur knew the warnings his father had given him applied now more than ever.  He was no longer some faceless baker who could survive by doing the same thing tomorrow as he did yesterday.  He had been noticed.  And, he had produced results.  That led to the expectation of continued results.

 

He had no illusions about what would happen to him if he fell out of favor with the Nazis, or if he stopped being a productive member of the team for any reason.  He possessed too much sensitive information to be sent to a concentration camp.  He realized, one wrong step, and he would quickly end up in an unmarked grave.

 

Artur did his job, and kept his head down as best he could.  Going through life with blinders on might be the best strategy, if the other options are death, or experiencing a totally insane world full on.

 

For a while, the exhilaration of scientific discovery was enough of a distraction.  Artur knew he had helped advance human knowledge far more than if he had spent his life teaching mathematics in Warsaw.  But he lived in a world built by a madman, and it was destined to crash to the ground.

 

Sometimes in war, the hunters become the hunted.  The idea that Germany, Japan, and Italy could defeat the rest of the world was ludicrous.  Yet, they came remarkably close to pulling it off.  Had Hitler not sent much of his army to be ground into dust in Russia, the outcome may have been different.

 

In August of 1943, four years after Artur lived through the bombing of Warsaw, he witnessed an encore performance.  The Allies knew about Peenemunde.  It had been a matter of time before the raids began.

 

The Nazis saw it coming, and had constructed deep bunkers for the scientists to hide in.  Ironically, Artur slept as well in the bunker, with bombs going off above him, as he did any other time.  He didn’t have nightmares about people hiding in basements from his rockets, when he was doing the same thing.

 

When the bombs started falling, everyone knew the end was coming.  Within a few weeks, the entire team was transferred to the town of Nordhausen.  That was when Artur’s nightmares went to the next level.

 

As much as the purpose of the rockets bothered Artur, that did not compare to the shock he experienced when he found out what was going on at Mittlewerk.  That was the underground facility near Nordhausen where the V-2 rockets were manufactured.

 

Conditions at the facility were deplorable.  The labor was done by prisoners held in a nearby concentration camp.  It is estimated that 20,000 people died there during the war.  More than twice as many as were killed by the rockets they built.

 

If someone said, “War is Hell” to my father, he would have agreed.

 

By then, the mood of the rocket team had darkened.  The excitement of being part of the leading edge of science was replaced with fear of the unknown.  In June, 1944, Allied forces landed at Normandy.  Bombing raids became more frequent.  Artur spent much of his time underground.

 

One spring day in 1945, von Braun called Artur into his office.  He had been having conferences with the members of the team.  The scientists were to be evacuated again in the next few days.  They would head east, away from the front.  Artur and his boss talked about getting captured.

 

Von Braun was hoping the American-led forces coming from the west would reach them before the Russians closed in from the east.  He knew Germany was done for.  He talked about how he wanted the team to stay together and be able to continue their research in America.

 

Artur barely heard any of it.  His mind was somewhere else.  His taste for science went sour when he saw what was happening in the tunnels at Mittlewerk.  That day, he came to a decision.  No matter what, he was going to get away from the Nazis, and sooner rather than later.  He’d had enough of war. 

 

He could see how the once efficient German military was frayed and on the verge of falling apart.  He started to put together a plan.  He gathered the supplies he would need.  He sewed pockets on the inside of a jacket, so he could carry money and maps.  Artur decided that he would make his move during the next evacuation.

 

The bus carrying Artur and the others headed towards Berlin.  It stopped every few hours.  The gas tank had to be refilled, people needed to eat.  The soldiers escorting them weren’t paying that much attention.  Nobody expected Artur to attempt an escape.

 

When the bus stopped for fuel in the middle of the night, several people headed for the bathroom.  Artur noticed the window in the back, facing away from the gas pumps.  He took his time in the stall, and waited for everyone else to leave. 

 

He was a few months away from his 25^th birthday.  Yet, he felt like he was an old man.  He didn’t particularly care if he lived or died.  The weight of constant upheaval and war had been pressing on his mind for years.  There was only one thing he wanted from this life.  To see his family.

 

Artur opened the window and slipped into the night.  He could see the dial of the compass in the dim moonlight.  He began walking east, towards Poland.