Futile

Frame the room in neglected wood and faded paint. Wash it with the cold light of a hopeless dawn, and paint on shadows from the soot caked window pane. The only brightness to be seen is the crystalline gleam of an empty bottle reflected on blued steel. Focus on the man slumping on a narrow bed, hard beside the small table where the remnants of his life reside, and wonder how this came to be.

Roll the years away, ten of them, back into the closing days of the war when the once mighty Third Reich had crumbled from retreat into defeat. In that final bitter season look closely, and you will see the man again, although the contrast then to now is extreme. You see then a very tall man, sharp eyed and stern at the age of 27, the survivor of a dozen battlefield promotions. He is standing the soil of his childhood home.

His survival has come bringing a double edged blessing, for gathered around him are perhaps five hundred men who have attached themselves to this young officer whose eyes still burn with determination. These are tired men, desperate men, dangerous men, the remnants of two dozen units. Those from the west tell of overwhelming force approaching. Those from the east bring stories of barbarism. He has heard of the Russian army and it's ways. He looks about, at the villages and farmlands of his home, and with the weight of a thousand eyes on him makes a decision.

Using authority beyond his rank he opens the gates of a POW camp, setting his former captives on the westward paths. The commander of the prisoners is brought to him. "Beg Patton hurry," he says as the enemies exchange salutes.

What does history record of this last offensive of the German army? Not much. That the forty kilometers east to the river became blood soaked ground, seeded with the dead, one German for every ten Russians? Barely a footnote. That when the Americans rolled up to the river the bridge was still held by a handful of desperately outnumbered Germans? No matter.

What history does record, in surveyors detail, is the apportionment of Germany. In the end it is enough to know that heroism fell futile to the stroke of a pen.

Return to where we began, in 1955, in the little room in the Communist state of East Germany. Look again at the man on the bed. Notice how the blood from the exit wound becomes rusty brown as it puddles.

***   ***   ***

 
Written many years ago for my daughter, who was complaining loud and long over a word limit on a homework assignment, to prove to her that yes, you can tell a complete story on one page.