Please enjoy! Feel free to send me any comments or questions. This is just the first chapter in a potentially longer piece.
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The Surplus Women
or
Foreplay During Wartime
April 5th, 1945
Kristiane Becker walked away from the noisy marketplace, with her canvas bag filled to the brim with groceries. It was a beautiful spring morning, and the sun shone through the holes and broken windows of Frankfurt am Main's jagged ruins. The wind tossed her blond hair around gently, as her lips curled into a cautious smile. The availability of food was one of the many benefits that arrived with the columns of American tanks and trucks. The relentless bombing had ceased, people were finally getting the medical attention that they deserved, and the shadow of the Gestapo had finally been torn away. Kristiane finally felt free from her dread, and started to notice the nicest new benefit of all, The American soldiers.
For years the only men who weren't off at the front were old men, and young boys. Now all of these undraftables had been sent eastward to halt the advance of the Soviet Juggernaut. She didn't consider the bureaucrats and Nazis who ran things to be men at all. They who were endlessly concerned with their rules and regulations, and hid their cowardice behind thick glasses and party slogans. These were the ones who had started this war. The war that had cost Germany everything, the war that had ruined most of Europe, the war that had destroyed her life.
Seeing the trucks full of broad-shouldered young men had awoken feelings that had lain dormant in her for so long. The kind of feelings that hunger dulls and which cannot exist deep in a dank bomb shelter while endlessly waiting for the all-clear. The only emotions she felt then were fear and despair, but now the Americans with their boyish smiles and rugged uniforms had brought her back from the dead. She had missed the way it felt to have eyes gaze upon her with manly desire, the sound of their deep voices, and the feel of strong hands and arms guiding her across the dance floor. But above all she missed her husband Walther.
In her mind Kristiane easily re-built the shattered buildings and covered them with bright paint, and as they grew so did the memories of her husband who had once inhabited these streets. His beautiful blue-eyes and his sunny blond smile, leading her by the hand, pulling her through the bustling crowd to Hochstrat, to listen to the orchestra play under the mighty Swastika. Now instead of a Swastika there was an ugly hole torn from the wall, and an unsorted pile of rubble at the base of the regal old opera. No bands had played there in ages, not since 1941 when the country was still lined with fat. Now the musicians are all gone, drafted and dead.
The dreary memory of Walther's sweet pipe smell pulled her past the opera, and onward to the park. What had once been a tree-lined path was now broken with the massive craters of British bombs. The nights were terrible, and the British bombed with the fierce anger of revenge. After grueling days the bombs made sleep impossible, only to face another day filled with work and sorrow. She had worked as a typist for the Wehrmacht during the war, typing the many notices to inform loved ones of the death of a son, a father or a brother. She would often tarry on her way home from work and sit alone in the park at dusk, glad that Walther's name didn't appear in her pile. As she walked into the entrance of the gated park, she wondered whether she would ever see him again.
She tried to convince herself once again that Walther wasn't dead. Back when the war began, he would send her letters every time that he could. He sent her pictures of Brussels, and of men smiling in a warm bunker. He wrote her long letters praising the military conquests of the Fuhrer, and describing his life. That all changed after his unit was transferred to Russia. He was promoted to Captain, and was placed on the front lines of Operation Barbarossa. The letters quit coming as often, and when they did the content was superficial and disturbing. His praise of the Fuhrer was louder than his feelings for her, and he wrote frequently of the viciousness of the Russian soldiers. Gradually his letters became shorter and shorter as the content grew more repetitive. And then they stopped coming entirely.
Her initial inquiries met with an unexpected answer. He was alive and well and commanding a company of the 324th infantry in Czechoslovakia. The letters that she sent were met with no reply, and she was left entirely in the dark.
Then tragedy split her life in two. Her parent's home on the Altstadt took a direct hit during a bomb raid. Her parents were in the basement and were crushed by the burning rubble. She was alone. Her only hopes in the world pinned to her distant husband. Although only 26 years old, Kristiane felt as though she had lived through a century of sorrow. After her parents' death she had moved in with her friend Margarethe whom she worked with at the condolence office at Wehrmacht headquarters. Together they waited out the worst winter of her life. Food was scarce, and nothing less than total determination to the German war effort was tolerated. The Gestapo became an ever present ear waiting to overhear every whisper. No one spoke of the dread growing in their hearts as the Soviet Army rolled ever closer, and the men began to disappear at an alarming rate. Accounts of Russian atrocities were used to stir up desperate resolve. Stories of women being raped by entire platoons of Russian soldiers arrived with the endless streams of refugees headed west. Kristiane prayed that the Americans would reach Berlin first, and protect Germany from the Red Army.
In the middle of winter, at the depths of Germany's despair she received a memo about Walther. He was missing in action. An M.I.A. from the East Front is just as good as an admission of death. When it arrived she couldn't eat for an entire week. She thought about killing herself, but didn't have the courage. Her grief was almost unbearable, and she continued her work as an unfeeling automaton. Her fingers and eyes worked together numbly, typing up endless form letters of death. Wilhelm Schnieder, Heinrich Gruner, Johann Meyer, Albert Finck....., a never ending list of dead names. Each of these was a man with a face, and a life which had been sacrificed for the failed vision of the Fuhrer.
By March, the Allies were besieging Germany proper and the armies of the Fuhrer were falling to pieces. The thunderous roar of the front line moved closer and closer until Frankfurt itself became the battleground. After a failed counterattack, The Wehrmacht could only put up a nominal resistance against the Americans. Unorganized gangs of young boys with missile launchers were Frankfurt Am-Main's final defenders. Kristiane had remained in her shelter for three excruciating days, waiting for the fighting to end. When she finally left the shelter, Kristiane felt completely numb. Dazed and exhausted, she stumbled home and slept for two days strait, a deep healing sleep that couldn't even begin to undo all of the damage that the war had inflicted upon her.
When she awoke, it was the tantalizing aroma of coffee and eggs that pulled her into consciousness. Walking to the kitchen, she found Margarethe over her skillet with a steaming mug of coffee in her hand. At that moment Kristiane was so filled with joy that she couldn't help but burst into tears. She had survived and for her the war was now over. Despite the loss of her family, her husband, and her country she felt happier then than she ever had felt before. Margarethe gave her a giant hug, and together they sat down to a wonderful breakfast.
That had been three days ago, and now Kristiane faced a new world, filled with uncertainty. The war continued, and everyone knew what the outcome would be. The Americans were pouring eastward across Germany, and the Red Army was pounding on the gates of Berlin.
