Dulce et Decorum Est

Those were the last coherent words I heard from Jane for the next forty-five minutes. She collapsed flat on our little daybed, frantically humping the air as I struggled out of my clothes. She was obviously not interested in the subtleties of romance. She was so hot that her hands disappeared between her legs. she was going to get right down to the main event -- with, or without me.

I actually had another one of those weird hesitations when I asked myself, "How could somebody so reserved be so abandoned?" Thankfully, my little voice said, "Stop dithering you pussy and fuck her!!!"

I moved between her legs. She grabbed the back of her knees and pulled them into an exaggerated "V", elevating her hips in perfect position to be penetrated. All the while she was silently fixing me with the hottest stare. It embodied both arousal and challenge in a single look.

I plunged into a mass of velvet lava. She let out a shriek of pure pleasure, slammed her legs around my waist and ground her heels into my ass -- in effect pulling me deeper inside of her.

Then the age-old motion began. This was fucking without tricks. It was pure primal mating. Jane was making extreme effort noises, Ugh-ugh-ugh-oh-oh!!! When she wasn't doing that, she was moaning and crying out with unbridled lust.

She was soaking wet, and her sex pheromones triggered something at the base of my lizard brain. It felt like my adrenal glands dumped at once. In fact, I was in such an adrenaline-fueled frenzy -- that I was pounding her without even thinking about whether I was hurting her.

All that did was inspire Jane further. She had her arms in a death grip around my neck and her legs were clamped to my waist while she made deep feral growls and screeches like a mating cat. We just beat on each other snarling and yowling for at least twenty minutes.

I had never lasted that long -- at least at the outrageous speed we were humping. It was like a high-frequency machine going kachunk-kachunk-kachunk at a super-fast rate and Jane took everything that I was dishing out and begged for more. The odd part was that I didn't even think about cumming. The sensations -- the sounds and the smells were just so profound.

Finally, Jane began to spasm like she was having an epileptic seizure. Her mouth contracted in a rictus of pure sensation as her passage went nuts around me. She uttered a high-pitched shriek that probably only dogs could hear, and abruptly slammed he legs down hard on the bed. Her heels beat a tattoo on the mattress as she processed through the orgasm.

Jane's contractions felt like she was milking me with her hands, not her pussy. And while all that was going on down there -- the rest went completely limp. And I still couldn't cum. So I dragged her dead body roughly over to the edge of the bed and laid her face down and reentered her churning passage.

She moaned weakly. I began to pound her incredible ass in all of its jutting springy glory. She was making weak attempts to raise it to give me more leverage, which flamed her desire again. Then, it was like somebody lit the proverbial match in the fireworks factory.

While I was walloping on her, she began to grunt with effort and push back as hard as she could. Her moans were continuous and so loud that I was afraid she would wake Peter up. She had a grip on the sheet like she was trying to tear it in half.

Jane was whipping her thick mane of hair back and forth in a frenzy and urging me on with wails of, "Come - Come in me PLEASE!!!" Then the sheet actually ripped as an orgasm of epic proportions rocketed through her and she emitted an unearthly scream of -- "OH MY GOD!!! CUMAGAIN!!!"

My orgasm hit at that point. And it felt like it started from somewhere over the rainbow. I came so ridiculously that I saw the proverbial stars.

The next several seconds were more like a near-death experience than a post orgasmic recovery. I slid limply down her well-muscled but very sweaty back and landed on the floor. I feebly turned and propped myself against the bed. I was panting so hard that I was sure that I was going to pass out.

It appeared that Jane had actually lost consciousness - since she was lying there as if she were dead. I finally got some sanity back and stood up to attend to her. She was face-first in a big puddle of drool, breathing hard, her arms extended in front of her -- hands still clutching the ripped sheet.

I was just leaning down to her when she popped one eye open and said with wry humor, "I imagine that shocked you. It certainly astonished me. I've never been that wanton in my life. You have to understand that when I love, I commit everything. This is the gift I give to you."

Then she added casually, "So, I guess that puts us on the path to marriage if you want me.

Want her!?? Seriously?!! I said equally dryly, "Well then... get me to the church on time... TOMORROW."

We were married early the next morning. It was in the aptly named Our Lady of Victories church around the corner on the High Street. We weren't Catholic but Father Brown had been in the trenches in the Great War. So, he understood our predicament and he waived all of the Church's requirements. It was just Jane, me, the Father, his ward Bunty, and Mrs. McCarthy the parish secretary, as witnesses.

Jane and I shared a "Best Man" who also happened to be the most capable nine-year-old in captivity. Peter was in his "church" suit, his shining helmet of blond hair neatly combed and his beautiful little face a study in romantic chivalry as he presented me with the ring. I had purchased it a mere three weeks after I'd FIRST met Jane, because I knew that this moment would eventually arise.

Peter gazed worshipfully at me as he did it. He just radiated inherent joy. I didn't think my love for him could be any greater. Peter must have been a very lonely little boy, without a father.

Jane was gorgeous in an understated but expensive Jersey blue dress. It clung in all the right places on her hard little body. We had bought it in anticipation that she would eventually need something formal to wear. This particular event was what we had in mind.

For all the time that I was slipping the ring on Jane's finger, she was staring intently at me with her golden eyes. They were communicating her intense dedication and devotion to me. I tried to reflect back to her how much those gifts meant to me.

Then it was over. In less than a year I had gone from "lone-wolf newshound" to "married man with a family" and I couldn't have been happier, or more content.

We had a celebratory lunch at the Goat Tavern and then we went back to the house to get my things. I had splurged on a taxi to take us down to the Pool of London, where my ship was loading. It would take Jane and Peter back home once I'd boarded.

I was going to be in Berlin for an indeterminate time. So, our situation was no different than the last time Jane had seen a man off to war. She knew that I would move heaven and earth to get back to her. But she still looked terrified.

Peter was struggling to live up to the courageous standard that he always held himself to. But when it was his turn, he started to weep. I embraced my brave little man and said, "I'm coming back. So, keep your mother safe in my absence."

Peter dried his eyes and gave me a guardsman's stalwart look. He said, "Certainly," and then he hesitated and said shyly, "Is it alright if I call you Father?"

That brought a tear to my eye. I grabbed him in a hug and said, "There will never be a man prouder to be called father by you - son."

We both hugged for a few seconds and then the intelligent and gracious soul that inhabited that little boy's body took back control. Peter straightened and said, "You can count on me Father." Ivanhoe himself couldn't have looked more noble.

I picked up my gear and trudged up the gangplank. I turned at the top to wave back one last time. They were standing together looking as steadfast as ever. They waved back and then the two of them turned back to the taxi. The last I saw of them was the cab disappearing behind a warehouse with Peter's face pressed against the back window.

*****

The Berlin that I arrived in was like Imperial Rome with swastikas. The buildings were monumental. The atmosphere reeked of self-importance and spectacle and the Nazis had turned the entire city into a personality cult.

Pictures of party luminaries, particularly Hitler, were everywhere, and red, white, and black flags decorated everything. The legendary thoroughfares like the Unter den Linden and Friedrichstrasse hummed with traffic and excited crowds were going about their business like there wasn't a war going on. Even the Tiergarten was open.

I arrived at the Anhalter Bahnhof on a Wednesday morning after a long and unexpectedly comfortable overnight ride from Munich. The Associated Press had booked me into the Hotel Kaiserhof on the Wilhelmplatz because it was just a hop-skip-and-a- jump over to the Reich Chancellery.

Howard K Smith, who was one of Murrow's boys, and the United Press's Dick Hottelet were there too - more-or-less. Hottelet had actually been in the nearby Moabit jail for most of the time prior to my arrival. He had started reporting the things the Nazis were doing to the Jews and in response Himmler locked him up on an espionage charge.

FDR eventually got Hottelet out and Dick then departed for more civilized climes. But the stories he told about the time he spent at the pleasure of Herr Himmler and the Gestapo served as a clear warning to me to NOT get caught wandering out of bounds. The Nazis had their ways of dealing with free thinkers.

I was a new arrival carrying Associated Press credentials, which got me an audience with the Minister of Propaganda, Josef Goebbels himself. I walked into a huge ornate office that featured floor to ceiling windows. There was a desk with what appeared to be a kid in a miniature Nazi uniform sitting behind it. Thank God I didn't laugh because it was the Reichsmarshall himself.

Goebbels was a shrimp at five-foot-four. So, he stayed behind the desk to play down his lack of physical impressiveness. He also seemed to be sitting on a phone book, or something, to make him appear less comical.

Our meeting was an hour long. During that time, the demented little goblin haranguing me about the Nazi's "final solution" for Jews, communists, and anybody else who wasn't properly "Aryan." I didn't remind the wee fellow that he, Hitler, Himmler, and that fat pig Goering weren't exactly the Nazi ideal because I had heard from Hottelet about the "camps" that people who spoke the truth got sent off to.

It was high summer in the Third Reich, both in terms of the weather and also the way things were breaking for the Germans. They had truly surprised the Russians and, by their own account, were eating up the miles to Moscow. And the Reich's Chancellery was on a mission to convince the people in the U.S. that they should stay out of the war.

Hitler had been in the front lines in World War One and he knew what had happened when the Yanks showed up. So, I got daily briefings about how powerful the Wehrmacht was and its many easy victories. I didn't bother sending that crap to Wechsler, since I knew it was all part of the Big Lie.

Hitler coined the term in his book Mein Kampf. But it was Goebbels who sold it. The Big Lie works because of its absurdity. You claim something that's so nuts that no sane person would even THINK about making it up. Consequently, it must be true. Then, you reinforce the lie by having the Gestapo haul off anybody who says otherwise.

It was a masterpiece of brainwashing on the most hideous scale. And it's the reason why regular Germans were able to live next door to death camps and not think twice about what was going on inside them.

But still, I couldn't file the things I actually saw. The Gestapo read everything I sent down the AP wire and of course they'd feel obligated to "correct" any mistakes. They were also making the point that they were monitoring my personal mail and listening in on all of my phone calls. So, I could either write Nazi propaganda, or find another story.

I'd kept the fact that I spoke German to myself. It gave me the advantage of being able to listen in on conversations, because it never occurred to the Germans that an American was adept in their language. But I wanted to do some actual reporting. So, I used my fluency to get back to my old human-interest days and I began interviewing regular citizens.

I had the idea that ALL Germans were Nazi fanatics. Instead, I learned from my interviews in the cafes on the Friedrichstrasse that Berliners were no different than the folks in my little Wisconsin town. They just wanted to live their lives. And since Nazi rule held no negative consequences, they didn't care who was running things.

Berlin was still lit up like a county fair at night. Sure, the RAF would appear once in a while to drop a few bombs. But those were minor annoyances compared to the destruction that the Luftwaffe was wreaking on London. None of them could foresee the smoking shell their city would turn into in four years.

I'd made a few acquaintances over the six weeks I was in Berlin and one of them saved my life. Kurt Ediger was a translator for us American newsies, which actually meant that he was a low-level Gestapo functionary assigned to spy on us.

He'd been a Berlin cop prior to the Nazi takeover and his transition to the Gestapo was an administrative maneuver, not ideological. In fact he hated his bosses.

I was just waking up one bright day in the middle of August when there was an urgent pounding on my hotel room door. I staggered over to open it and there was Ediger. He pushed me back, stepped inside and quickly closed the door.

He said in German, "You have to get out of here!! They're coming to arrest you."

I was still foggy. I said, "Whut??!!"

He said, "It's those interviews. They know you speak German."

It took me a second to realize that he had just said that in German. We'd always communicated in English before, since that was supposedly all I spoke. Then it hit me right between the eyes. One of my interviewees had grassed me to the Gestapo!!

I thought anguished, "What in the world was I doing??!! They're going to think I'm a spy!!"

I dressed hurriedly and hustled downstairs to find a cab. I didn't bother to take anything with me because I knew that I had to get out of Dodge fast. I was hatching a plan as the taxi made its way through morning traffic to the Berlin Hauptbahnhof.

The Gestapo would find me gone. So, they would be watching every train headed to Switzerland. That was the way Americans normally exited the country. Hence, I had to come up with a different way out, which reminded me about Denmark.

That country was one of the Nazi "protectorates" meaning the King was still nominally in charge and the Gestapo didn't have the authority that it had in the Vaterland. The ride to Copenhagen was a lot shorter than taking the night train all the way across Germany to the Swiss border. So, it was a no-brainer.

As soon as I got to the Bahnhof I strolled casually up to the counter and bought a ticket on the morning train to Hamburg. It was leaving right away which was an advantage. But it was mostly full. So, the best I could do was second-class. That meant that I would likely have to stand.

Nevertheless, standing up all the way to Hamburg certainly beat being interrogated by the Gestapo. So, by running along the platform I just managed to hop on the last car as the train was starting to roll. The ride to Hamburg was a half day. As I'd suspected, the car was packed. I stood for a while. Then a seat opened, and I beat a fat burgher to it. Sherman said it best, "War is hell!!"

The trip to Copenhagen originated at Hamburg and I managed to snag a first-class ticket. It was the middle of the night, and I was snoozing as the train reached the Danish border. It came to a jolting stop and there was some loud Teutonic shouting and a lot of blinding steam. Then it started up again.

I didn't need to be a genius to figure out that the Gestapo was on board. They were working their way through the cars as we pulled into the outskirts of Padborg on the Danish side of the border. As soon as the train slowed to walking speeds, I opened the door of the carriage, jumped out, and rolled down an embankment.

I could hear my companions in the first-class cabin yelling for the Gestapo. But I had already slipped off into the railyard and it was still dark. It was a huge place and as I worked my way across the yard I looked back and could see flashlights crisscrossing the area where I had last been.

I hid out in a switch house next to a road until I could see well enough to find a bus stop near the station. I had plenty of Reichsmarks and they spent just fine in Denmark. So, it was a short hop over to the main bus station in Padborg and thence on the early morning coach to Copenhagen. It had been a remarkably easy escape, probably because they expected me to run in the normal direction.

The Gestapo didn't monitor the phones in Denmark, and I was able to get ahold of Wechsler on the AP line, collect. I explained my problem to him, and he told me to wait while me made some calls. I called him back a couple of hours later and he gave me the name of an American freighter in Copenhagen harbor.

The trip back to London took a couple of days. But Jane and Peter were waiting as we docked. I was delighted to see them. Wechsler must have told them that I was coming because there was no other way they could have known.

Any form of communication except telegrams was tough in those days and with the war on it was almost impossible to call long-distance. The AP had a dedicated transatlantic circuit, being a news organization and all. But short of breeding carrier pigeons there always was a two-week delay getting news to any regular person. That lag time turned out to be significant factor later on. But I digress.

Neither Jane, nor Peter, were into unseemly displays of public affection. They were English after all. So, they didn't rush up the gangplank to greet me. But I could see that Peter was literally prancing with eagerness and Jane's face was a mask of tears.

I hugged her hard little body to me, and we kissed deeply. Then I dropped to one knee and hugged Peter. I said, "I had to leave a little suddenly. So, I didn't bring you anything. But I DO have some interesting stories to tell."

Those stories were the unfiltered scoop about the main topic of conversation of the day, which was, "What's going on in Nazi Germany?" I mean -- I'd BEEN THERE and seen it firsthand. So, my reports were front-page news both in the U.K. and in the U.S.

People in the States were afraid that the U.S. might get sucked into the morass in Europe and my observations about the conditions inside the Third Reich generated massive circulation.

More pertinently, I'd become part of the story itself due to my sudden, and rather unorthodox departure from the Reich. Everybody wanted to know the details of my daring escapade. So, I got a contract from the AP to do a series of articles about it.

That put me and my family on easy street. It wasn't Hemingway, or Fitzgerald money. But it was a substantial sum. The first thing I did was set aside a large chunk of that for Peter.

His tests kept coming back "genius" and we wanted him to get the best education possible. We weren't going to send him to Eaton or Harrow, even though I could afford it. But we lived a short distance from Imperial College and there were plenty of starving graduate students who we could hire to tutor him.

Peter was very special to me. He might have been another man's kid. But he clearly loved me, and he was so eerily similar to me that the old adage about nurture over nature seemed to fit.