Chapter 2 – Chapter 2

Cook approached me in the mess hall two evenings later as the dinner hour was drawing down and men were leaving the hall. We were in a state of unaccustomed limbo here at the base of the German Alps. The men had been warily trudging through fields, avoiding roads, where ambushes could be set, and being ever aware of their environment for years before landing here in the small camp near Obersalzberg below the Eagle's Nest, Hitler's famous mountaintop tea house that was carved out of the rock of the Kehlstein. Here, the march was over. The war was over. Presumably the danger was over, although there continued to be whispers of "lost cause" partisan cells that kept the Americans close to their camps and bases. There was little for the men to do in the evening after dinner and before night when they could surreptitiously move about their barracks into each other's beds. They lingered in the mess hall, but it was dark and growing late.

I habitually ate late, walking around to the tables earlier in the meal, coffee in hand, checking on the well-being of the men—and frequently making assignations with one or two of them for meetings in my separate room in the night.

"Excuse me, Captain," Cook said, his voice hesitant.

"Yes? Is there a problem? I saw the supply truck come in today. We were shortchanged in some rations?"

"No, Captain, that is all good. It's the German refugee from the other night."

"The young man who somehow got into and out of the camp without alerting one of the sentries?" I was still chaffing over that happening. I had doubled the sentries. I also was chaffing a bit from having gone soft and giving him something to eat. I was somewhat surprised that I didn't have half the population of Obersalzberg at the front gate the next morning begging to receive what he had.

"Yes, the same," Cook said. "He returned. I caught him going through the trash again."

"And did he run off when you found him—like the other night? I can call out the men to search the camp for him. We need to know how he's getting in."

"No, sir. I have detained him."

"Detained him?" A chill went up my spine. The regulations were to summarily shoot any German invading a camp to steal anything, especially food. I thought it was barbaric, but I had been assured that it was the only way to keep the starving population from trying to overrun the camps. An example ran through my mind that had been spread around the country and, I had been assured by high command, was true and was repeated as a deterrent. The story went that a young German boy earned scraps of food at a U.S. base near Heidelberg shortly after the fall of Berlin by shining the shoes of the base commander. He was seen running out of the commander's tent with a pair of shoes in his hand and was shot by a sentry who didn't know of the arrangement. Just beyond where he fell was a rock on which the shoe polish and brush were neatly arranged. He had just decided to shine them outside rather than inside the tent that day.

Deterrent perhaps, but it choked me up each time I thought of the cruelty of war. I knew I could have shot the young German scavenger two nights previously—and that perhaps some of the men would have expected me to do so and would think it weakness that I didn't. That was probably why I only told who I had to about the incident. So, part of me was relieved that he had escaped.

But now he was back, and under control, if I understood Cook correctly.

"Yes, sir, I have him locked in the storage room."

"Well, I guess we'd better attend to him, then," I said, with a deep sigh. "Let's not let the whole camp hear about this, though." I had absolutely no resolve to shoot the young man. After trying to discern how he was getting into the camp, I'd send him on his way. I was still struggling in my mind whether to send him away with food or not. If I fed him again, I knew he'd be back. If I didn't feed him, maybe he would realize this was a blind alley for him. What I was really struggling with in my mind, I knew, was whether I wanted him to come back again—and where that might lead. I hadn't been able to get him out of my mind.

When the storage door was open, I was torn between crying and laughing. The young man was sitting on the floor, in the dark, and had found and torn into a sack of raw potatoes. He was munching on one. He looked up at me in the doorway with a panicked look on his face, but he was holding onto to half a raw potato as if his life depended on it. I didn't think he was going to give up the rest of the sack without a fight to the death either. And, as he looked even more emaciated than he had two nights previously, it's possible that his life did depend on it.

There was nothing else I could do. I turned to Cook. "Is there still stew in the pot from the evening's meal?"

"Yes, sir."

"Dish up a bowl of it—and a chunk of bread and some coffee. And bring it to our guest in the mess hall. And, Private Green," I said, turning to the assistant cook, "See if you can rustle up some civilian clothes that will fit this young man. Put them in my room."

I went into the storage room and bent down, and pulled the young man up to his feet. He was as light as a feather. "Kommen mit mir, bitte," I said, hoping my tortured German was understandable. "Sie mussen essen."

He looked at me with glazed eyes, but he allowed me to guide him into the now-empty mess hall. He was still clutching the sack of potatoes under his arm and I made no move to take it away from him.

After he'd polished off the second bowl of stew and I motioned that any more would probably make him sick and he'd lose it all, I attempted to communicate with him again. "Konnen Sie sagen mir—?"

"Perhaps we should speak English," he suddenly said. "I appreciate your attempts at German, but . . ."

I was too shocked to speak in any language for a few seconds. "You speak English. And I mean English English, and your accent is impeccable."

"Thank you. I have lived in both London and Paris."

This just made it all the more tragic for me. He was educated and spoke with a refined accent. And he'd been brought this low.

"What are you doing here then? And are you English?"

"I'm German. I was painting abroad when the war started. But I had to come back . . . for my family."

Ah, I was right. An artist. He was a painter. "And did you find your family?"

"No," he said softly. "I'm Jewish. My family was gone by the time I returned."

"Oh. My name is Trent. Yours is—?"

"You can call me Jake. But I see that you are a captain. So I must call you captain."

"OK, then, Jake. You can call me Captain Carter. I've asked that some cleaner clothes be found for you and you can come back to my room. I have a bath. You can shower there. I take it where you live doesn't have washing facilities?" Of course I wanted him to tell me where he lived and how he was able to get in the camp without being seen by a sentry—and possibly shot.

"I couldn't possibly . . . but thank you for the meal. I should go now."

We both rose from the table. "Are you going to leave that sack of potatoes here?" I asked. And when he looked lovingly at it, I said, "You can have the potatoes, Jake. But you have to stop coming into the camp. We are supposed to shoot anyone who does that."

"Being shot is not the worst thing that can happen here in this time," he said simply, his eyes downcast. But he picked up the sack of potatoes.

"Winter is going to be bad here," I said. "We should only be here for another month or so, but if you promise not to come into camp to go through the trashcans again—and if you don't tell others of it—I will see to it that you can have some food left for you every evening."

He stood there stolidly, with down-cast eyes, although I discerned a slight tremble in his body that might have be caused by emotion. I was struck with how beautiful he was, even in this condition, and my body was stirring.

"The food must be left outside the camp, though. Do you know of the track up the mountain from here, and the religious shrine about a 100 yards beyond the main gate at the side of the road—the one with a closed wooden container at its base?"

He merely nodded.

"You will fine food there for as long as we're camped here."

I told myself I wasn't doing this because he moved me to desire—and certainly not because he was German—but because he was Jewish and had been in freedom and had returned despite the danger to find his family. And because he hadn't found them. The war in Europe was over now—justice and humanity needed to be brought back into the world. Even if only in small ways at the beginning.

"But I have a condition for leaving you food periodically."

"What?"

"You must get cleaned up tonight and take a new set of clothes. Those are in tatters."

When he had showered in the bathroom attached to my room—having my own facilities being the privilege of rank and command even if my unit was a small one—he padded out into my room in the nude. His body was perfectly formed and even as thin as he'd become, he retained muscle tone. He was beautifully equipped.

"Are you going to take me to your bed now?" he asked simply, in a low voice, his eyes, with the long, curly dark eyelashes fluttering.

"Excuse me?" I said. I had taken an overcoat I had replaced out of a closet, and I held it between him and me defensively, wondering wildly how he'd know that I'd developed a hard on from the knowledge that he was naked, in my shower.

"I saw you the other night, with the young man, in the forest. I saw that you made sex with men. If you want me clean, it must be because you wish to use me. You may to do. I will lie under you. I am sorry that I am too thin to be desirable now, but you are being kind to me, and—"

"No, please. That's not necessary," I said, embarrassed—embarrassed mostly because all the time he'd been in the shower I'd been fantasizing about fucking him, thoughts that only ran rampant when he came into the room naked. "I assure you that I have no designs on you. Just put on these clothes and go, please. I'll have someone escort you to the main gate. And take the food from the shrine; don't try coming in to go through the trash. You may be shot for trying."

"I am sorry if I have presumed—or if I have displeased you," he said with downcast eyes.

"Not at all," I answered. "I would not dream of taking advantage of you, though."

"It would not be taking advantage," he murmured. "I do lie under men."

This was my opening, but I was too shocked and obsessed with my responsibility to answer. And not having responded at once became the answer.

I stood, quaking, after he'd left. I wanted him even more now than I had before he'd offered himself to me and I had turned him away. It was only after he'd gone that I considered that what I'd told him meant that, under other circumstances, I would want to fuck him.

I hadn't done what I had for him to get my cock inside him. Surely I hadn't. I didn't want to believe that this might have been a motive, even subconsciously. I wasn't that much of a using predator. Thinking on that made me think beyond that. All that time walking from Italy to here. I was in command. I fucked what, five or six of my men regularly. Was that because they wanted it as much as I did? Had I been fooling myself? Taking advantage of my position. Surely the army would see it that way.

It snowed steadily although lightly for the next two days, accumulating maybe three inches of snow, but promising a blizzard in the not-too-far-distant future. I was under the covers—a pile of covers—reaching "warm" for the first time that day in this indifferently constructed group of temporary camp buildings. I was nearly asleep, when I felt the draft of the covers being raised and a body slipping in under the covers.

Earlier, Corporal Hart—Ted—has been with me in my bed. We had writhed against each other on top of the sheets, as we often did, not being able to be satiated enough with the touch, and smell, and taste of each other. As was also often the case, I had speared him in a side split and moved in and out of him deeply until he was putty in my embrace—relaxed and completely open so that he took me to the root, murmuring his surrender to me. I turned onto my back, pulling him with me so that he was full length on top of me, both of us bending our legs so that we could get leverage off the surface of the bed with the balls or heels of our feet for me to thrust up into him and him to rear back into my pelvis to meet the thrusts.

I embraced his chest with one arm, latched onto the lobe of an ear with my teeth, and fisted and jacked off his cock as I pounded his ass. We came almost simultaneously, Ted first spouting toward the ceiling and splashing on his belly and chest, and me creaming his channel deep.

As we lay there, panting, the cold of the room crept in to push away the heat of our sex, and, reluctantly, he said, he left me.

I hadn't called for Ted to attend me; he had come to me on his own in the night. I had felt so guilty about the possibility that the men I fucked only allowed me to do so because of my rank that I hadn't been with any of them for two days. Concerned when yet another body burrowed under the covers with me several minutes after the corporal had left my bed, I moved my hand toward the nightstand where I had laced my service revolver, but a hand gripped my wrist.

"Please, Captain Carter, you said I'd only be shot for entering the camp again if I was going through the trashcans. I came for you, not the trash. I meant what I said when I said it wouldn't be taking advantage."

"I told you . . . you don't need to—" I didn't finish that sentence as I was overtaken by a moan as the mouth of the young German who had told me to call him Jake found and enveloped my cock.

When he had subdued me into an irrevocable want of him, which didn't take long, he lifted his head and said, "Although I am grateful, I'm not here because of that; I'm here because I want you inside me. I have lusted for you since I watched you fuck that young soldier against the tree—and then again just now, as I watched you two through your window. I want your cock. I want what you gave that young soldier just now." He slid his lips over my cock again and, with a sigh, I gave in to his ministrations.

With me on my back, he rode my cock for what seemed to be hours. We lay and murmured to each other as we rested between fuckings.

"You do this like a pro," I whispered. "I thought you said you had a family here you'd come back for. I had assumed a wife . . . and children."

"One does what one has to to survive in wartime. All I had for the last year that was marketable was what the guards of the führer's winter house craved. I acquired, first an expertise and then a taste, and then a need for it myself. Yes, I had a wife and children," he answered. "I think of you as having a wife and children too back in your country. You do have a family, don't you?"

"Yes," I admitted, "I do."

"It's the war. It's the same for both of us, I think. It's just the war. A man has his needs, no matter the circumstances he finds himself in."

"Yes, it's just the war," I answered, as he brought his face down to mine for a kiss. But it wasn't just the war. Not with this man. It was more than that. I couldn't fool myself about that. "We'll be leaving in four more weeks," I said, not knowing why I'd brought it up. But, in fact, knowing why. And then, many minutes later, when the panting and rhythm of the fuck had abated into a mutual flow and we were lying there, recovering, knowing we weren't done, only taking a rest to recover, I whispered, "I will miss these mountains." I couldn't tell him what I'd now discovered I'd really miss.

"You don't have mountains where you come from?"

"Yes," I answered, with a laugh. "I come from the Rocky Mountains, running down the middle of America."

"I've heard about those. Like our alps, but not as tall."

"Yes. I'll miss the tallness of these mountains."

"And I'll miss the longness and thickness of you—the vigor and musky scent of you," he said, after a hesitating. "But we'll have these four weeks, if you'll let me come again."

"Yes, we'll have these four weeks. But then we'll be gone and it will be the middle of the winter. There'll be no more food to put out for you."

"There wasn't food before you came. Afterward I don't think it will be the food I miss from your going."

We fucked again then, tenderly, me holding him under me on his belly, and languidly mining his ass passage.

He thought I was asleep when he slipped out of the bed, dressed, and left. But I wasn't. I still needed to learn how he was getting into the camp past the fences and guards. I quickly pulled on my fatigues and followed him at a distance, aided by watching for his tracks in the recently fallen snow. I followed his footsteps up to the base of the Kehlstein Mountain towering over the camp to the south, but then lost the track where the rock started. Still, it all looked like a sheer rock wall to me. That's why we hadn't bothered to fence it in.

Three weeks and five visits from him later, I discovered where he went and how he got there. I managed that by staking out the shrine where the food was left for him and following him from there. His trek took him up a rocky incline at the base of the Kehlstein and then descending by a circuitous channel with rock walls on each side into the back of the camp. Another, nearly invisible, crevice in the rock was accessible by moving sideways. This passage opened up and ascended the mountainside to a glade of trees. A shack close to collapse was hidden in the trees.

I stood at the door as he mussed with the food over a small table, turned away from me so that he didn't see me for the longest time. The room contained the table, a rickety straight chair, and a cot. The rest of the room was taken up with painting supplies. An unfinished oil painting sat on an easel.

The painting was of the nearby Zugspitz, the tallest mountain in the German Alps. The mountain commanded the distance. Nearly centered in the foreground was a ravine leading down toward the base of the mountain and rising on either side of the canvas. Mist enveloped the floor of the ravine. On the left, rising out of a rock outcropping on the side of the ravine, roots clinging to hard-won crevices in the rock, was a lone pine tree. The branches of the tree were nearly barren, although there was a hint that it was still fighting for life even though its only grounding was solid rock.

Although the painting obviously was of the Zugspitz, upon closer inspection, I knew the painting really was about that lone pine, clinging to the last vestiges of life by tenacious and hopeful roots buried in the crevices of hard, unforgiving rock. The mountain of the painting reminded me so much of the mountain rising above my family ranch in Colorado that it choked me up and I briefly entertained the thought that he'd been to the Rockies. That must have made an audible sound, as Jake turned in surprise.

I expected him to be angry. I had ferreted out his lair, which he obviously had wanted to keep as a secret.

He merely smiled a sad smile though, and started to undress and move to the cot, where I fucked him like the end of the world was at hand.

And for us, it was. I had to inform him that it would be too dangerous for him to visit the camp again, and that I'd now be too busy to break away to visit him here. The orders to pack out had arrived and the last week in the camp would be chaos.

He let me go with a tender kiss at the door of his shack. He said nothing about what this departure meant for him—either in the lost sex or the end to his food supply. And I said nothing either. I didn't want to think about it, and there didn't seem to be anything to say about it. But in subsequent years I was haunted by not having found some way to protect him.

The night before the transport convoy arrived to take us away for the flight home, one of my men came to my office.

"This parcel was left for you at the gate, Captain," he said.

"Who—?"

"It was a German guy, but he didn't give a name. But he's the guy who has been coming into camp at your order." The soldier knew what Jake and I had been doing, of course. All of the men probably knew.

When I unfolded the yellowed, German-language newspaper print away from the parcel, it was revealed to be the painting of the Zugspitz I'd seen on the easel in Jake's shack. It had been finished. In my melancholy at parting from Jake, the lone pine stood out of the painting even more now than it ever had done.

Regardless of what else had to be done, I left my office immediately and, after some fruitless searching, finally found the entrance of the ravine at the back of the camp that led me to the doorstep of Jake's shack. The shack was deserted. I decided that he probably was right—that good-bye was inevitable and prolonging it would only add to the grief.

Since he wasn't there, I told myself that he had gone into the town and would find shelter and sustenance there. I kept telling myself that for some time. I don't think I ever convinced myself that he'd done so, though.