A. THE COTTAGE IN THE WOODS

About 80 years ago...

THE COTTAGE IN THE WOODS

A. Prologue. 1943

The language was German, but then that was only right seeing as he’d been born and brought up in Germany. It was a lovely country, he knew that much, but he was troubled.

His father had been a good German. He’d even voted for Hitler, all be it rather reluctantly, but he had kept a secret because the contents of that secret might lead to trouble. Lost in the distant melee of time he had a smear of Jewish ancestry long enough ago to have little or no meaning in 1943 but nonetheless there, and German men, good German men, were being persecuted because of that accident of birth and nationality and even probably faith.

And today he’d learned through the grapevine that his father, that good man, that stolid, wonderful German, had died in a prison camp where Jews were being systematically erased from history. It was because there was poison in the air, spreading like a filthy invisible cloud from the Führer himself. And unless he was very careful they would seek him out, they being the thugs of the Führer’s personal brigade, the Schutzstaffel, and search him out and force him to follow in the very steps of his father.

But he was a pilot in the Luftwaffe. Trained to the highest standards, and out there on this French runway was a plane ready to take off. He was going. He couldn’t wait for the heavy tread of the Schutzstaffel. But not to kill any enemy he didn’t think was an enemy but to find a new land in which to live in peace and hopefully even to love on some future unimaginable day.

He dreamed of love. He had a girl back home in Munich, the perfect Hannah, though he doubted he’d see her again until this bloody war was over, and he didn’t really want to be here, didn’t want to take to the skies and shoot at young men he didn’t know and guessed that they didn’t want to shoot at him, either. It was all part of the führer’s dream of total world domination.

Sod the führer! Didn’t he personally have the prettiest girl he would never see, her image in monochrome grey next to his heart, and yet he had to get away? If he stayed they would seek his distant Jewish past out and he would follow his precious dad to the afterlife. And he was too young for that.

And yet he was a German! A German in the land of his birth! It was all so dreadfully wrong.

There were Schutzstaffel officers not so far away. He’d heard them laughing in a bar, boasting of this or that conquest, a w***e they’d deflowered because she was a French w***e and didn’t matter, and they were drunk which made their bestiality all the more important or relevant. They would find him, and that would most probably be that.

His plane, the one for killing, was ready.

He had a bag of coins. They were British coins, but they would have value everywhere that wasn’t in the Führer’s hands. He’d saved them before the blasted war had started raging across the world, meaning to find a place to investigate the roots of a world he’d only seen in books. That was his love. History, and the British throne had Germans sitting on it, didn’t it? More history! He would be safe there, and he knew he could find his way across la Manche and away from the gas chambers of the Führer’s hatred.

And he would have to go tonight.

Soon. Now.

He checked his flying suit and ran like a hare across the field to the runway. Nobody would see him, surely, not at this time of the night? Though Pierre was there to help him. Good old Pierre! A Frenchman used by his fellow Germans to do the grubby work on the airfield, the stuff no German would want to do. Pierre knew him. Pierre would help him take to the skies, would keep a promise of secrecy even to the grave. He had promised.

Then he was up. In the dead of night, his Messerschmidt’s engine tearing the dark into shreds.

La Manche, the English channel as the Brits liked to call it, was soon below him. Then the coast of his hopefully new home.

It was a cold December night, and the ground sparkled with frost as he flew as low as he dared, praying that no anti-aircraft guns would be awake and firing. And he was in luck. Hugging the ground he flew on. He came upon a river, and then followed that for a while until a cloud of trees to his left attracted him.

You can’t land in trees, can you? Not without dying in the attempt, and he didn’t have a parachute.

Then he saw it: the clearing, too small to land in, but maybe… he didn’t need the Messerschmidt again, not once he had landed, not when he was standing on the crisp soil of his new home.

It would be a tight fit, but he could see the white crystals of the uneven ground shining bright in the moonlight of a December night.

And then he was down.

© Peter Rogerson 27.01.23

Reviews

[AYVID N]

He was down and safely perhaps. Whatever he may face in the new place would be better than the death he was sure to find at home. So it was a risk worth taking. This was quite a thrilling story with good suspense in the climax as I half expected him to be trailed by some aircraft and shot down. The way you describe the war is quite moving,

"he didn’t really want to be here, didn’t want to take to the skies and shoot at young men he didn’t know and guessed that they didn’t want to shoot at him, either."

This touched so much. War is always so tragic.

[Wild Rose]

An enthraling read

Down in an enemy country (I hope)
But in a German flying suit > The fact that his aircraft would be smashed up might help