A New Plan

Source

Krafft was savoring the cigar he'd "liberated" from a wrecked Soviet command car. He and Lang were consulting a map which they'd found in the car as well.

When they had continued on south from the refugee column, they had stuck to the forests, only moving at night as the skies overhead seemed to be filled with Soviet aircraft looking for targets of opportunity. Deep in the forest, on a little used track, they found the wrecked command car.

"What were the crazy bastards doing way out here?" Lang had asked, shaking his head as he took in the three dead men in and around the wreck of their vehicle.

Krafft reached into the back of the car, the man in the back was an officer, on the floor was a bottle.

"Vodka? Looks like he was sharing with his driver and escort, what a wonderful, comradely thing to do, nicht wahr?" Krafft emptied the liquid out and then tossed the bottle.

"Dieter! What a waste of vodka." Lang chided him.

"I don't want us ending up like these three. I'm guessing they got lost, were probably too drunk to notice, then followed a compass heading which led them to this track. Which isn't marked on their map."

"Too bad the compass didn't warn them about this oak which seems to have jumped in front of them." Lang shook his head again. "We need to get moving Dieter."

"To have survived so far only to die in a car crash when the war is nearly over ..." Liesl was saddened when Krafft had told her of their find.

"Dead Russians don't concern me, the living ones do and I fear they are getting closer. According to this map, Konev's boys in the 1st Ukrainian Front are coming through here. They want to swing south of the capital then close in from the rear from the look of it."

"And we're right in the middle of all that?"

"Looks so ... wait a minute ... what's this?" Krafft had to look closely at the map. The sun was nearly gone and it was already nearly too dark to read the map here in the woods.

"I'll be damned. There is a German army, the Ninth, maybe fifty kilometers to the southeast."

"So?" Lang was, as ever, skeptical.

"Well, we're not going to make it through all these damned Ivans by ourselves. At least if we could hook up with the Ninth, we'd have a better chance of surviving this damned war!" Krafft had barked at Lang.

Before Lang could respond, Krafft continued, "Sorry, Kurt. Not your fault we're in this beschissenes Durcheinander.¹"

Lang grinned, "Probably help if I didn't bitch about everything."

"Then I'd really be worried." Krafft answered with a smile.

Krafft looked at the small group of soldiers and began, "It's nearly fifty kilometers from here to where the Ninth was when this map was put together. There are no guarantees that they will still be there tomorrow or the next day."

"In peacetime it's a pleasant hike from here down to the Spree Forest, but as some of you have noticed, it's not peacetime. And we can only move at night, and there are no doubt Russians between here and there. But my guess is that the Ivans want Berlin more than anything else, they're probably holding the Ninth in place until Berlin is taken. If I were a betting man ..."

"Which you are not," Lang quipped.

"Well, if I was, I'd bet my next paycheck on this plan. The odds are long, the chances of success are minimal, but hey, if you wanted to live forever, you wouldn't have joined the Army."

"I was drafted," one of the younger men pointed out.

Krafft grinned at the man, "I know Junge, so you should defer to us volunteers on this."

"What? I volunteered?" Lang offered.

"Alright, if you comedians are done, let's burrow in for the day, sleep if you can, we move out after dark. Questions?"

Surprisingly, there were none. Everyone realized that it was this or a Soviet prison camp.

Or worse.

¹ Shitty mess.