All Men Will Become Brothers...

Elga came back soon after. When she came up the ladder, I was sitting on the bed. She laid her wares out on the table, then looked around.

"Woher ist Hans?" she inquired, uneasily.

The sad look in my eyes said everything. "Wehrmacht," I answered - the German army - pointing up the road.

With an anguished cry, Elga collapsed to her knees, her head in her hands, bawling piteously. I knelt with her and hugged her, then lifted her stout body and laid her on the bed. She cried herself to sleep. That evening she was dejected and gloomy, with none of the usual vivaciousness that I'd come to expect from her. She made dinner, and we ate silently. We went to bed, and she cried until she fell asleep again, curled up in my arms. We didn't make love.

Sometime in the night, I heard a thump. I started, sitting up and clasping my hand over Elga's mouth. Someone - or something - was downstairs. Silently, avoiding the creaking boards I'd come to recognize, I found the knife on the table and made my way to the ladder opening.

Then I heard the familiar, whistled strains of "Chattanooga Choo-Choo".

"Hans!" Elga screamed.

We scurried down the ladder and both of us hugged our dear friend. He had a real splint and bandages on his arm. Elga saw it, and it frightened her until Hans explained - in German - what we had done. Elga threw her arms around me and kissed me, then did the same to Hans, again and again.

It took a while, but we finally got him up the ladder with his broken arm, and Elga took him straight to bed, pulling off his trousers and mounting him, riding him energetically and repeating his name reverently.

Leaving them to their reunion, I leaned against my old, familiar post, and nodded off, only to be awakened later with a rubbery teat tickling my nose. Elga and I rolled back and forth over the dirty, wood floor, kissing and making whoopee. I withdrew, turned her over and pulled her up to her knees, and took her like a doggie to finish. Afterward, she led me back to the bed, and we all slept until well after sunrise.

It was early the next afternoon, and Elga had just returned when I sensed something wasn't right. It was too quiet. I walked outside in time to see a covey of quail suddenly take flight a few hundred yards away to the west. I scurried up to the loft and motioned to Hans. He sat on my shoulders and I helped him down the ladder. He grabbed his gear and slipped through the opening in the back of the barn. I pointed toward the path that led to the graves and, staying low to the ground, he ran a hundred feet or so, then dove into the scrub at the side.

Putting my fatigue pants back on, but with only my t-shirt and my rifle at my side, I took Elga with me into the yard and waited.

I could feel their eyes on us, watching. Elga hung on my arm, shaking.

"All's clear!" I shouted, laying my rifle on the ground and holding my hands up. "Nobody here but us and Kilroy!"

A young GI with a Browning stepped out of the brush, watching me nervously and scanning for any signs of an ambush.

"Wh-what's your name, soldier?" he asked.

"Corporal Paul DiCenzo, from the Bronx. This is Elga. She's been nursing me since I got injured."

A dozen more soldiers appeared from several directions, their rifles swinging wide at the ready. Their sergeant - Sgt. Lewis - strode up to me, his Thompson hanging loose by its strap.

"What's going on here, son?"

I explained how I'd gotten separated from my squad after the Rhine a few days before, how Elga had beaned me, thinking I was a thief, and how she'd been taking care of me. It helped that I still had bandages on my head.

The sergeant said, "We got a runner, told us that some lunatic GI was dancing around outside naked as a jay, trying to flag down some fighters."

I grinned, "Yeah, sergeant. I guess that was me. Didn't want them to put any extra holes in my little hospital here."

He nodded to his men, and several soldiers went inside to search the barn. I was sure they would do a better job than the krauts had done, and was glad I'd sent Hans into the weeds.

"We also been gettin' word about Fifth Columnist spies dressed like GIs," the sergeant said, a thinly disguised threat. "Give me one good reason I shouldn't shoot you on the spot, Corporal DiCenzo, or whatever your name is."

"What do you want me to tell you, sergeant?" I asked, shrugging, but growing uneasy. "I can give you unit numbers, but we both know the krauts could already have that info. I could give you the names of the guys in my squad, but you probably wouldn't know 'em from Adam's off ox."

From the back of the pack of soldiers, somebody shouted, "Just freakin' shoot the poor bastard, Sarge. Whatever you do, don't give that dumb Wop a hand grenade, though. He'll throw it at the wrong guys."

"Wyzanski, you stupid Pollock!" I yelled back, recognizing the voice of my childhood friend. We had played football in the streets around E. 163rd. He'd moved to Rochester, and at the state championship, we were on opposing teams. He intercepted my 48-yard pass and ran it back to win the game.

Everybody calmed down after that. All the guys ogled Elga, but I told them what she'd done for me - well, some of what she'd done for me - and they all left her alone, respectfully. I showed the Sarge the tracks from the German personnel carrier that had come by the day before, and he said that they'd been tracking it for a couple of days, and it had been toasted by a P-51 that morning. It was all I could do to keep from breathing a sigh of relief, thankful that Hans had gotten away.

While I got back into battle gear, Elga gave everybody a drink of fresh milk and a small bite of the shnecken we would've had for lunch. I hugged Elga goodbye, but refrained from kissing her in front of everybody. She was crying and waving as I marched away.

We headed north to Dusseldorf where I joined up with my old squad, then because of my new familiarity with the language, we were assigned to liberate a women's concentration camp in Lippstadt, to the east. I cried to see the emaciated condition of the women, several of whom died before we could even process them. I saw things, horrible things that people did to each other, worse than any battle, that still haunt me to this day.

We shipped out from Kiel a couple of months later, and I never got a chance to return south and find Elga. Back in the US of A, I earned a teacher's certification under the GI bill and married a nice, well-endowed Italian girl, who presented me with three, lovely little black-haired daughters. We moved upstate, near Albany, where I taught high school English and coached football. I even started a European 'football' team, but there weren't a lot of other schools to play against.

As soon as I returned to the states, I had looked up the lyrics to Beethoven's Ode to Joy. I found the line that Hans had sung to me: "All men become brothers, under her gentle wing..." was the translation. As soon as I read it, my face dropped into my hands and I cried. I made a point of attending every performance of the Ninth that I could get to.

In late spring of 1954, I returned for the ten-year anniversary of D-Day. After the celebrations and hoopla, I rented a car and tried to find the farmhouse. I had been lost, and wasn't entirely sure where it was. I drove up and down hundreds of miles of back roads for most of a day before I finally spied the barn, near sundown. It had been painted red and sported a tin roof now. The old farmhouse had been torn down, and one of those new, pre-fab two-story modern houses was in its place.

A blonde-haired man was in the side yard, playing their 'football' with a young girl, maybe five or six years old. A blonde toddler ran around them, giggling. The man was quite skillful, and from the footwork, I was pretty sure it was Hans. With the screaming girls around him, he didn't notice when I pulled up in the drive. I got out of the car and began walking toward him.

My heart jumped into my throat when I heard Elga's voice calling me to come: "Pohl! Pohl! Komen sie!"

She was leaning out of the door, but she hadn't seen me – she was looking toward the barn instead. Suddenly the barn door swung open and a, slim young boy came running out. He was eight and a half years old. I knew that instantly, because his mop of sleek, black hair was just like his father's.

"Pohl?" I heard Elga say. "Pohl?" she said louder, coming out of the door, this time in my direction. Then when I waved, she began running, screaming deliriously, "Pohl! Pohl!"

She beat Hans to me by a few steps, and they both hugged me, jumping up and down and crying. The children crowded around my legs, hugging me too, although they didn't know why.

They invited me for supper, and I sat by my son, admiring him. He was at the top of his class in school, they said. We didn't tell him - yet - who I was, or why he had black hair like mine. That would come in time. I wondered how I would explain to my wife – I would love to have him visit us.

Elga was older, more matronly, and had gained weight, but she was as beautiful as ever. They had all learned enough passable, though heavily accented English, so our conversations over several pints of fine German beer were much easier. We reminisced about the war, carefully skirting around the particulars of our few, brief days together, at least while the children were present.

I begged Hans to sing, and his marvelous voice belted out the Ode to Joy. Tears clouded my eyes, and when Elga saw me, she shed a few herself. I hugged him like the brother he had become to me.

At Elga's instruction, young Paul and his oldest sister, Issa, cleaned the table off while we chatted, then played in the den with their younger sister, Carla. Elga and Hans kept glancing back and forth, in that unspoken language that people learn after they've been married for a while.

At a lull, Elga asked, "You will leave us, go back to America, Pohl?"

"My flight is the day after tomorrow, out of Bonn."

"Ach!" she said, with a pleased smile. "That iss not far. You can stay with us."

"Um, I already have a hotel room in Bonn. I should be going soon, or I'll never find my way out of here." Although truthfully, I wasn't relishing the idea of driving back on all those twisty roads in my inebriated state.

"No," Hans said. "You must stay here tonight. Vith us. Please, Pohl."

Elga laid her hand on top of mine, "Please, Pohl. Say that you vill stay."

I shrugged, "My luggage is at the hotel. I don't have anything to sleep in."

"Ve haf toothbrush," Hans said, with smiling eyes. "That iss all you vill need, Pohl."

I got a clear impression that the night could be whatever I wanted it to be. However, one thing I'd learned from my experiences returning to America after the war was that you can never go home. It is never quite the same.

Blatantly fiddling with my wedding ring, I told her, "I'm married, Elga. You two are married now, too. I'm not sure that's a good idea."

She looked down at her ring, twisting it thoughtfully. Then she pulled it off, laying it in the center of the table. She gave Hans a look, and he did the same. She said, "For this special night, Elga and Hans, ve are not married."

Then she held my hand, her fingers pinched on my ring. "I'm sure your vife, she iss a very nice lady, Pohl," Elga said. "She vill understand." She waited, her lovely blue eyes pleading with me. With a heavy sigh, I held my hand out, opening my fingers, and she slid the gold band off, laying it alongside theirs.

Soon afterward, Hans put the children to bed and Elga made a short phone call, then she pulled me up the stairs to their bedroom. We undressed each other, taking our time, enjoying the joys of patience and titillation that maturity brings. She lifted a breast to me, and when I suckled at that familiar, pink nipple, her breath drew in and suddenly my mouth was filled with rich, sweet milk. I drank greedily from one, then the other.

"Clara stopped nursing only short time ago," she explained, "but another one iss coming soon." She rubbed her noticeably protruding belly. "He iss another brother, I think. A mother, she knows. He vill be called Jurgen," she said happily.

I smiled and kissed her. The circle was finally complete.

I laid Elga back on the bed and knelt between her legs, treating her golden and scarlet cunt to the pleasures of my eager and knowledgeable tongue. It was a thrill to again hear the tiny squeaking noises she made before she came, like the tweeting of a tiny bird, and then a tense silence, followed by that long, mellifluous moan as she settled back down to earth.

Hans joined us shortly, and we all lay together in their king-sized bed. As before, Hans held Elga's arms down while I plowed her field just as I'd done in the loft of that barn, letting us forget for that short time the horrors of the war around us. I drove her to another breathless climax, and she smiled, gratified, when my nuts boiled over and gushed their cream inside her.

Then I lay next to her, kissing and sucking and touching her all over while her husband pulled her chubby legs over his shoulders and screwed her with his signature jackhammer thrusts.

We laid in bed for a long time, Elga between us, laughing about the moments we shared, and the aftermath of the war. Eventually, we fell asleep in each other's arms.

In the morning, I was alone, and surprised to find I couldn't move. My wrists and ankles were securely tied to the bed frame with the same type of rope that Elga had used on us in the barn.

"Elga!" I shouted.

In a few seconds, she came through the door, grinning. She was followed by an attractive young blonde girl. The girl smiled bashfully, and rolled her lower lip inward as she spied my condition. Her eyes roamed up and down my naked body a few times, centering on my limp crotch. I was embarrassed.

"Elga!" I said. "What's going on? Who is she?"

"This is Katrina. She iss my..." She looked back at the girl, questioning, "How do you say, Katrina?"

In an only slightly-accented English, the young girl replied, "I am Tante Elga's niece. You are really Pohl, yes? You look just like little Pohl."

Elga told me, "You haf seen Katrina once before, ja? Vhen you and Hans, you followed me to Granpapa's house?"

"The little girl?" I asked, recalling the scene at the cottage in the vale.

"I am not little girl any more. I am nineteen years, yesterday," she said proudly, jutting her sizable chest out.

"Congratulations, Katrina," I said. "But Elga, um, this is a little embarrassing. You've had your fun, now. You can let me go."

Katrina began removing her clothes, staring at me hungrily the whole time. Elga sat on the side of the bed. She gave me a sweet kiss, and her fingers played in the little patch of black hair on my chest.

"Pohl," she said fondly, "You saved my husband's life, and you saved my life. Vhen you appeared, I vas - I vas so tired of the fighting and the death and the misery." She watched her finger with a distant gaze, a tear trickling down her cheek. "I had lost so much, I vanted just to go to sleep and never to vake up. Then you showed me such love, you and Hans together, you showed me that there are gut people in this vorld, people who understand it is better to make love than to make the var."

"Elga..." I said, but she placed two fingers over my lips.

"Vhen you vent avay, and you didn't come back, I vas sure you must be dead. I am not a Christian voman, Pohl, but I prayed that you vould return some day. And..." She grinned through her tears. "And here you are. I can neffer thank you so much for vhat you did for me, and for Hans, and for giving me my own Pohl."

Her hand traced a line down across my stomach, and began stroking me. Behind her, Katrina was naked except for her sexy, white lederhosen. She was as pink and soft and perfect as Elga had been nearly ten years before. She gazed on me seductively as she crawled across the bed, her lush young body straddling my thighs. She rubbed tiny circles at the apex of her wide, glistening slit.

"Elga," I said. "I have a flight back home early tomorrow. I'm married, Elga. I can't..."

"Hush, Pohl," she whispered. "You vill catch your plane tomorrow in Bonn, I promise you. Nothing that happens today will effer leave this house. Please, let us return to you a small part of the precious gifts you haf given to us."

She stood up, and Katrina scooted forward to rub her pink wetness up and down my full hard-on, squeezing her large breasts sensuously and moaning with half-lidded eyes.

Elga went to the door and told me, "Hans is at vork, and little Pohl is at school. I vill take the girls shopping and to the park. I vill come home to make a lunch, and then maybe I come see if you are still alive, Pohl." She winked, and waved her fingers at me with a devilish grin as she closed the door behind her.

"Katrina," I began, but she quieted any objection by leaning over and stuffing her big, luscious tit in my mouth.

"We are going to have such fun together, Pohl," Katrina said as I sucked and nibbled eagerly. "Tante Elga, she has told me what a wonderful lover you are, and I have been waiting so long for the right man."

She raised up and positioned the head of my willy in the slippery mouth of her golden-blonde snatch and lowered herself, engulfing me little by little, her eyes fluttering.

She said, "My two friends, Nina and Gretchen, they will come later in the morning. They have heard Tante Elga speak so much of you, Pohl, and they will want to play with us, too."

"Mein Gott!" I groaned, my eyes rolling back in my head at her incredible tightness.

Katrina settled a little more, and then she gasped when my shaft abruptly bumped against something solid.

She smiled and said, "But my friends, they are not virgins like I am."