The Farm

Walter Ulbricht visits the "Red Banner" production cooperative in Trinwillershagen.
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Von Lüttwitz stretched as the bus drove off. He watched as it rolled down the road, he figured that the shock absorbers on that bus had last been serviced in the '30s. His back had felt every mile on the road from Leipzig.

"You there!"

He turned, the voice had been in barely understandable German. Of course, here he was, in the land of his birth being accosted by a Soviet soldier. But the man seemed furtive, looking around as if were doing something he shouldn't.

"What?" was all von Lüttwitz said.

The soldier looked around again, then at von Lüttwitz, "Sigareta?¹"

Von Lüttwitz was about to shake his head and tell the man he didn't smoke, then he remembered. Someone, he couldn't remember who, had advised him to buy some cigarettes in the first East German town he visited. While he didn't smoke, one could often bargain with the lower ranking Russians with cigarettes.

Von Lüttwitz grinned and reached into his coat, he pulled out a pack which he had purposely removed a few cigarettes from to make the pack look used. He pulled one out and handed it to the soldier.

The soldier smiled and shook his head, then he held up three fingers. Von Lüttwitz noticed that the man's mouth was full of metal, classic Soviet dental work.

After handing over the cigarettes, the soldier thanked him, again in really bad German, then walked back to a small sentry box that Von Lüttwitz hadn't noticed before.

"Were the bastards everywhere?" he muttered under his breath.

There were two roads leading off of the main highway, the one the sentry box sat next to, which was cobbled, and another, dirt, which he knew led to his uncle's farm. As he started walking, the smell of manure was heavy in the air. The farmers were prepping their fields for the spring planting.

As he walked he wondered if his uncle was even still alive. The last he had heard from him was in the early winter of 1945. He knew that his cousins were home from the war, one minus a leg, the other minus his sanity. The letter had been unclear on that, perhaps his uncle was talking about shell shock and was trying to avoid anything which the Gestapo² might take umbrage with.

He turned a bend in the dirt road and saw his uncle's farm house. He could discern a man harnessing a horse to what appeared to be a plow. He could see someone else, sitting on a chair near the front door, a man with one leg?

"People are saying that we'll be forced to join the collective when it's mandated across the country." Herbert Lüttwitz said as he shifted himself in the chair. His missing leg still ached at times.

"Das sind ungelegte Eier.³" Kurt Lüttwitz said to his eldest son.

"Vati, someone's coming down the road." Herbert shaded his eyes as he looked. Then he grabbed his crutches and began to move towards the figure on the road.

"It's Jürgen, Vati. I'd know that walk if I saw it from a thousand meters!"

The elder of the Lüttwitz's stopped what he was doing and stared. When he saw his son hugging the man on the road, and being hugged in return, he knew it had to be his younger brother's son.

"Mutti! We have company for dinner!" Herbert shouted as he ran to greet his nephew.

As the family sat down to eat, Jürgen couldn't help but notice that the interior of the farmhouse was missing many of the precious knickknacks that his aunt loved to collect. He didn't want to ask what had happened to them, afraid it might upset her.

She noticed anyway, "Don't fret my nephew. We sold or traded many of the little things we kept around the house when the Russians came. We were lucky, the men who came here were more interested in getting a crop in so that they could feed their soldiers. Terrible things happened in the cities but not here."

"Annaliese Krupinski was raped over in Reinsberg, Mutti. How can you say nothing happened?" Herbert protested.

"Yes, and they shot the soldier who did it. We're farmers, we work the land, we feed the people, even the bloody Bolsheviks understand that. Cause unrest and crops don't get sown and people don't eat. The local commander understands these things." Kurt Lüttwitz barked at his son.

Herbert shrugged, he was tired of arguing with his father. He turned to Jürgen, "We thought you were dead, Junge. A telegram from the Army said that you were missing in action. What happened?"

Von Lüttwitz wasn't sure if he should tell that story, how he had surrendered his battalion in the late stages of the war rather than see more of his men die.

"We were surrounded in the ruins of Köln, most of my men were dead, or missing, all of my vehicles had been destroyed. There was no hope, the Amis mopped us up and into the cage we went."

"I read about those," Herbert said, "the Russians made a big deal out of it. Inhumane treatment, caged like animals, that's what they said at any rate."

"They were bad, make no mistake, but the western Allies had no idea of the number of prisoners they would have on their hands when resistance collapsed."

Von Lüttwitz shrugged, "The war is over, I've put that behind me."

"Do you plan on staying here, in Saxony?"

"I don't know, there is nothing left for me here. But there is nothing in the West either."

"Stay with us, work the farm with me," Kurt suggested, "Herbert can't manage it, not with one leg, and Heinz ..."

The older man paused and looked out a window before continuing, "Heinz is in an institution, in Dresden. The war, I don't know, unhinged him. He sits all day, staring at nothing. He awakens in the night, screaming. In his mind, the war hasn't ended. It never will end."

Herbert chimed in, "I visited him last month. The doctors keep him sedated, he sits and stares ..."

"And shits himself." Kurt added, deeply angry.

His wife snapped, "Enough of that in my house, Vati."

"Ja, ja, sorry Mutti. But it is true. Ah, forgive us Jürgen, we are bad hosts. Can you stay?"

"Certainly, but only for a couple of days. I have business in Dresden, then I must return to the West. The Amis have a hold on me, they want this little thing taken care of. If I refuse, they report me to the Soviets. No doubt I would then be transported to Siberia, or shot."

Kurt looked alarmed, "But why, you were captured by the Amis ..."

Herbert interrupted his father, "Jürgen invaded the Soviet Union, yes, with millions of others, but the Soviets don't care. To them he is a war criminal. The only reason I was released was ..."

Herbert's mother spoke again, "That's enough, Herbert."

"No, it isn't Mutti, it will never be enough. You see Jürgen, after I was wounded, I joined the Reds. I hated Hitler and his ilk, and not just because of the loss of my leg, I saw what they, what WE did in the East. I thought the Reds would be different."

Von Lüttwitz shrugged, "They are but two sides of the same coin."

"Exactly. But it helped my parents keep their farm. Do you know that Ulbricht and his gang of thugs plan to collectivize the farms in the DDR? Ours is small enough that we will be in charge of it still, but the Party will decide what we grow, and how."

"We do what we must to survive." von Lüttwitz answered his cousin. "We can do no more."

To be continued ...

¹ The Russian word for cigarette.

² The German acronym for the Secret State Police, Geheime Staatspolizei.

³ Those are unlaid eggs = We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.