WORLD WAR TWO AMERICAN SOLDIERS FIND EMACIATED ESCAPEES FROM SS

 (Two Americans fighting with Polish Partisans are returning from a mission when they find escapees from the Nazis.)

After fifteen uneasy minutes of quick-footed hiking, Steve opened the case, turned the radio on, found his frequency and transmitted Piotr’s message. The men sat on a fallen tree trunk drank water and ate the sausage and bread Flora had packed. The silvery birch-tree leaves reflected dappled sunlight around them as they waited for the reply. It soon came. Steve thought: Good fist as he copied.

   Using landmarks seen from vantage points, a compass and Rick’s solid dead-reckoning skills they descended toward the farm. A little under a kilometer from the foothill base they paused fifteen meters beyond a shaded glen. The forest around the glen was dense, and the men were naturally cautious as they watered the bushes. Just as they started out again, they heard a “Psst” type of sound and dropped to their knees while drawing pistols and wishing they were deeper in the woods. Nothing more was heard, and they decided it must have been the wind soughing through the leaves or a bird or ground animal accidentally mimicking a human expression.

Just as they started walking, they heard it again from the woods across the glen, louder this time, more urgent. Steve and Rick looked at each other, squinted and shrugged their shoulders. What the hell should we do, run, call them out?

They pulled their pistols again. Rick opened one palm to Steve who nodded. Rick shouted, “Drop your weapons and come out into the clearing with your hands up.” Jesus, I sound like a movie cop.

Two bedraggled, barefoot men stumbled out of the woods. They tried to raise their hands but got only one hand chest high. One of the men held the other up. The stronger of the two croaked in foreign-accented English with British intonations, “Please do not shoot us.”

Rick thought he sounded a bit like Henrik, his Danish friend from Northwestern. In the highly unlikely case that it might be a ruse, the Americans stayed out of sight. The emaciated men’s sunken eyes stared out of black-ringed sockets. Their tattered prison-like garb hung like scarecrow’s rags that had been picked at and shredded by angry birds. The Americans had never seen anything like this and didn’t know quite what to make of it.

 “Who are you and what do you want?” Steve asked. The weaker of the two unfortunate men sank to his knees and put his clasped hands before his chest in a pleading gesture.

His partner said, “We escaped SS, help us please” and keeled over as his companion rolled into a fetal position.

Rick and Steve approached them with guns drawn. Infantry combat had hardened Steve making him suspicious of anyone unknown. “Lie on your backs with your arms out to the side.” The two cadaverous escapees stank, their feet black and their body skin soot-like with some small patches of white where ulcers and other festering sores were most visible. No flesh, just bones were felt as they were searched for weapons. As they put their guns away, the Americans were torn between pity and repulsion. They took the men’s upper bodies in the crooks of their arms and gave them sips of water. “Let’s not give them too much, might make them sicker.”

Rick asked, “Where did you escape from?”

“Auschwitz.”

(This vignette was excerpted from the novel WW11 Soldier Flier Prisoner Partisan: Missing in Action and Presumed Dead.  The book was inspired by the exploits of an unsung American hero.

http://amzn.to/19QmSVH