The Past

Niedersachsenhaus
Baujahr 1779¹
(Source)

Sauer and Schwertfeger found Ziegler, stuffing his face with food the other companies had brought up. Both men stopped and looked on with amused grins.

"Diese Jugendlichen,² I swear Manfred, they can eat their own weight in a day." Schwertfeger said, looking at Sauer.

Ziegler had stopped eating long enough to swallow and reply, "What? I was hungry."

"Do you have siblings, Oskar?" Sauer asked, he did not. Though his father and mother both came from large families, he had many cousins, he had no siblings of his own.

"Two brothers, three sisters, how about you Horst?" Schwertfeger snatched a heel of army bread from Ziegler as he asked that.

"Three brothers, one sister, all younger than me."

"Sauer, have you no siblings?" Ziegler asked.

"None."

The men settled in for the night, though it was snowing on and off, the temperature had risen some. Not quite above freezing, but enough so that they were relatively comfortable. Sauer had moved off on his own, closer to the Soviet lines. He had told the others that he would take the first watch.

In reality the talk of family had depressed him more than he cared to think about.

Manfred Sauer was born in July of 1918. His father and his mother had managed to produce their sole offspring when Sauer the Elder was home on leave from the Saxon Army. Young Manfred grew up with his father's father, Wolfgang Sauer, and his mother, Hilda.

He had no siblings as his father had gone missing in action before Manfred had been born. His mother had never remarried, though she had many suitors. Which would cause problems for the family in later years.

Manfred's childhood was one of hard work and study. His father had wanted to go to university as a young man, his grandfather had told him that as soon as they could find someone to work the farm with them, then young Oswald could go off to school.

"Maybe then we can move to town and not raise pigs anymore! Live the soft life in the city!" old Wolfgang had said.

But the war had come along and ended all such dreams.

Though Manfred spent much of his day tending to the pigs with his grandfather, his mother had insisted he hit the books at night. The boy became a voracious reader.

Then in 1933, the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, the Nazis, had come to power and things went to hell, as Manfred remembered.

He had been almost 15 years of age at the time. Though he considered himself well educated, he had had very little formal schooling. He kept to himself, worked the farm with his grandfather and mother and read at night. History and philosophy were his favorites.

When the "New Order" had started to assert its power in Saxony, one local family, the Gottschalls, had risen to power in local politics, one of the sons, Wolf Gottschall, became Kreisleiter³.

Gottschall was single, his wife had died of influenza in 1919, and he was well known for being something of a womanizer. One thing he was also known for was being a coward. Somehow he had managed to stay out of the army during World War I. His family had always had connections, now those connections went all the way to Berlin.

The Sauer farm was very prosperous by 1936. Old Wolfgang had the means to hire men to work the farm, now he mostly managed the business side of things. He had help from his daughter-in-law who had a good eye for figures. She often lamented Manfred's lack of interest in mathematics.

The Kreisleiter had suggested to the Sauer's that it would be in their best interests to make certain payments to the Gottschall family in order to make things run "smoother."

Old Wolfgang had been incensed, "The bastards want our money without having to earn it!" he had said to Hilda.

"Opa, we can afford it, why make trouble?"

"Because they won't be content with this, it seems reasonable now, doesn't it? But it won't stop there, will it?"

"But Wolf told me that he can keep Manfred out of the army as well. He has connections."

"Mutti, I don't mind going into the Reichsarbeitsdienst,⁴ I'll meet other boys my age, maybe travel ..." Manfred had protested.

"And maybe go off to war and never come home once Hitler gets his war!" old Wolfgang said as he stormed from the room. "I swear boy, you are as stubborn as our pigs!"

Manfred had noticed that his mother's eyes were very wet, that was when he understood. He kept quiet and did as his grandfather and mother wished.

War had broken out in 1939, while other men his age were in the Wehrmacht, fighting and dying in Poland, Manfred was still raising pigs. He was now running the farm but things were getting tougher as many of their laborers were now in the military. The farm's profits were getting smaller.

And of course, the Gottschall's demands for payments had increased, as old Wolfgang had predicted. Which the Sauers were still managing to pay, somehow.

After the war with France, Hitler sought to deal with the Soviet Union which, of course, required a further expansion of the German armed forces, which Manfred had been exempt from, thanks to the manipulations of the Kreisleiter's family.

The day had come when old Wolfgang had decided that enough was enough and he had reported the Gottschalls to the police for "war profiteering." That had backfired however.

The payments to the Gottschalls were ended, as Wolf Gottschall was sent to prison and his family no longer held the office of Kreisleiter. Which was good, it was also bad as not long after Wolf Gottschall was hauled off by the Kripo, Manfred's draft notice had arrived in the post.

So at the age of 22, Manfred Sauer became a soldier. While the farm was still in business, the Wehrmacht consumed a lot of pork, Manfred was sitting in a hole near Leningrad, watching the horizon as it was lit by artillery.

Sauer heard footsteps behind him, he turned, it was Schwertfeger and Ziegler.

"Manfred, ready to go back and get some sleep?" Schwertfeger murmured.

"Ja, it's quiet out there, I think the Ivans are licking their wounds. They're getting pounded by artillery as well. I almost pity them. Why did you bring Ziegler?" Sauer whispered.

"Boy's gotta learn sometime, yes?"

Sauer nodded then slid out of the hole and made his way back to the lines. He realized then, that if the Russians had been active this night, he'd probably be dead by now. Daydreaming about the past wasn't a good idea while on sentry duty.

Thinking about the past at all was a bad idea.

"Live in the moment, in war it's the only safe thing." Sauer thought.

As he went to sleep, he saw his mother's face as he had boarded the train taking him away to the army. It startled him that he couldn't clearly picture her face any more.

His dreams were very troubled that night.

¹ Low Saxony House, built in 1779, (Photo taken in 1895)

² These young people

³ A Kreis in Germany is roughly equivalent to a county, a Kreisleiter was a district leader, responsible for running one of these counties.

⁴ Reich Labor Service, 18 years old boys were conscripted into this at 18, then went into the Army at 19 for a two year period. (Prewar, of course.)