The Checkpoint

It was cold. Even with the sun shining, it was cold. The six men had their greatcoats buttoned tight as they trudged through the woods. Overhead the branches of the trees were bare. They were walking along a small road in a forest.

Several feet of snow lay on each side of the road. The snow on the road was packed down, except for the inch or so that had fallen a few days before. The road wasn't used much, which was why they were on it.

The six men were soldiers. German soldiers. Their unit insignia showed they were from three infantry battalions and a transport battalion. A sergeant led the men. One was a corporal, the others privates. It was an odd makeup for a squad.

Except it wasn't a squad. The men were deserters. They knew Germany had lost the war and also knew months of fighting lay ahead before that fact would be admitted, and the army surrendered. They were doing their part to speed the process by leaving the front and heading home.

The six men had come together mostly by chance. The sergeant and one private came from the same infantry unit. The two had been friends before the war, and coincidence led them to serve together. They had waited until they had been sent to the rear for a few days rest. They were supposed to rejoin their unit for a new assault on the Allies. Instead, in the middle of the night, they slipped past a sentry who was half asleep and headed east toward home.

Only a couple miles down the road, they had almost literally bumped into the corporal. It was a dark moonless night and the corporal had stepped out of the woods right in front of them. He had been taking a leak and assumed he was alone on the road. After suspicious looks were exchanged, there was a guarded conversation. He claimed to be lost. They claimed to be lost. All three claimed to be looking for their units.

The sergeant knew the corporal's transportation battalion was ten kilometers to the south and west. The corporal knew the sergeant's infantry unit was five kilometers to the west.

"I think our unit is that way," said the sergeant, pointing east. "Is your unit that way also?"

With nods and knowing winks, all three continued to head east.

The men slept a few hours in the morning, hiding in the woods. Returning to the road, they found a single infantryman sitting nearby. There were more suspicious looks. Suddenly, they heard the noise of several tanks approaching. With quick glances, all four scattered into the woods.

The tanks passed by heading west toward the front. The four men continued to head east. The sergeant, who was the senior rank, decided they should take a smaller road through the woods. They would be less likely to run into other troops.

Naturally, they ran into a pair of soldiers almost immediately. The two had foolishly built a small fire for heat and to cook food. The sergeant was tempted to leave them behind but decided they would be quickly captured and tell on the others. He had them douse the fire before the six men hustled several miles down the road.

The men looked like a squad, though usually a squad had ten men, not six. But there were a lot of six man squads in the German army these days. Replacements were few and far between. It felt safer being part of a squad. It looked more official - soldiers on their way to perform a task rather than deserters fleeing the war.

For the privates, it felt good to have a sergeant leading them. They were used to taking orders, not thinking on their own. Part of a Germanic sense of order and hierarchy.

It was early on the third day when the sergeant saw a clearing through the trees. He stopped the men about thirty feet back from the edge of the forest and walked forward for a better view.

150 meters away were two farms, one on each side of the road. Each farm was fifteen or twenty acres. Big enough to support a family. On the right stood the remains of a house. The end walls were still standing, but the roof and long walls were gone.

Rubble had been cleared from the inside floor and neatly piled a little distance from the house. Parts of the rubble had been stacked to make a wall a meter high and five meters long. A wisp of smoke rose from inside the house, probably from a cooking fire. The wall blocked a clear view.

On the left were the remains of another house. Only one corner remained upright. The rest of the house lay in a pile of rubble three meters high next to the road.

The sergeant saw two men by the road. They looked like soldiers. This was a good spot for a checkpoint. The open farmland made it easy to see anyone approaching and the rubble created a chokepoint on the road.

The sergeant thought, "This must be a checkpoint meant to find deserters. There is no other reason for it to be here."

The sergeant was trying to figure out how to bypass the checkpoint when one of the sentries began waving his arm and yelling.

"Come out. I see you. Come out and approach."

At that distance, it was hard to hear but it was clear what the sentry wanted. The sergeant sighed. He was tired. Tired of the war, tired of walking, tired of sleeping in the cold, tired of trying to think of the next threat and the next solution.

If he hadn't been tired, he would have gotten off the road before approaching the edge of the woods. He would have stayed behind a tree to take a look. But he was tired. He had been standing in the middle of the road when the sentry spotted him.

Their few days of freedom were about to end unless the sergeant thought of a plausible reason for them to be here. But he was too tired to think.

He waved his men forward. They trudged toward the rubble and the checkpoint. One of the sentries disappeared behind the ruins on the left. That was a bit odd.

When they were three meters away, the sentry in the road held up his hand and commanded them to halt. The sentry told the sergeant to come forward. "Officious jerk," thought the sergeant.

"Orders?" said the officious jerk.

"They fell out of my pocket during the fighting," said the sergeant, making up the story as he went along. "We got lost in the woods and are trying to get back to the front."

The sergeant winced at his last remark. The fighting lay to the west, behind them. The distant sound of artillery could be clearly heard, like the far off rumble of thunder. It was afternoon and the sun was behind them. Even a child would have known they were headed the wrong way. Certainly, a soldier in the German army could figure it out.

The sentry nodded his head without comment and walked back to look over the other men. The sergeant looked around. To the left was the second sentry. He held his rifle casually but the sergeant knew that was an illusion. The weapon could be brought to bear quickly. The sergeant was too far away to be sure but he knew the safety would be off and a bullet would be in the chamber. The sentry could raise the rifle and fire in less than a second. Less than two seconds for a well aimed shot.

To the right was an elderly couple sitting in the remains of their house, not additional soldiers as he had feared. A fire burned between them. A pot hung above the fire. Cooking dinner, the sergeant supposed. He idly wondered how long it had taken the couple to clear the rubble from their house.

He turned his attention back to the second sentry. There was something odd about the man. The sergeant couldn't put his finger on it. The haircut wasn't quite right. It wasn't a German army haircut. The posture wasn't quite right. He didn't have the arrogant stance of a German officer or the subservient demeanor of a lowly enlisted man.

The boots gave it away. The man's pants were tucked inside his boots. German soldiers did not do that but American paratroopers did. What was an American soldier doing here in a German greatcoat? Were they all about to be captured?

Being captured wouldn't be such a bad thing. Maybe it would even be a good thing. The Americans treated prisoners decently. He and his men would be safe and warm and fed and done with the war. It would delay their return home by a few months but they could cope with that.

The first sentry, the officious jerk, returned to face the sergeant. He was definitely German army. The right haircut, the right posture, the right boots.

The sergeant looked closer. The man was a Lieutenant. The insignia was for the artillery.

"What is a Lieutenant doing on sentry duty? Is there an artillery unit nearby?"

The sergeant hadn't heard any big guns firing in the area.

"It seems your men come from many units, Sergeant. It must have been a fierce battle to cause so many units to get mixed together."

The sentry calmly waited for an answer.

"Yes, it was a very fierce battle. It went on for a long time. We just want to get back to the front. Get back to our proper units."

It was another obvious lie. There had been no fierce battle. The guns had been relatively quiet for the last week.

"I'm sorry but none of you will be going back to your old units."

The sergeant knew they were about to be arrested.

"There are new orders for men like yourselves. Men who have gotten lost during fierce battles."

The sentry looked at him with no expression on his face. It was clearly a lie. The sergeant's hopes rose.

"You are to continue east to the Rhine. Forces are gathering there to man defensive positions." The sergeant's hopes dropped. It looked like they would be back in the war.

"Here are your orders." A piece of paper was exchanged. "Follow this road to the east. At the next village, turn left. There is a small track through the forest. It is the quickest way to the Rhine. I'm told there is a small footbridge."

He was telling them how to avoid other sentries, how to get safely to the German border. The sergeant looked at the paper in his hand. They looked like official orders signed by General Model. They ordered his men to a spot 15 kilometers to the east of the Rhine. Well, behind any defensive positions.

The sentry continued to look at the sergeant with no expression.

"Do you understand your orders?"

The sergeant came to attention and saluted. "Yes, Lieutenant. I understand." He glanced at the American. The man nodded once but otherwise didn't move. "We will be going now."

The sergeant waved his men forward and set a brisk pace. Another 150 meters and the road turned as it entered the forest. In less than ten minutes, the six deserters were out of sight.

"What just happened?" the corporal asked.

"I think he had left his post also. I think he is pretending to be a sentry and telling soldiers like us how to get home."

The sergeant looked at the orders in his hand. "Clever giving us fake orders. It will allow us to get past real sentries or at least provide us with a good reason for marching away from the front. It will keep us from being arrested."

He looked back in the direction they had just come.

"The second man was American. What are a German and an American doing manning a fake checkpoint?" he wondered.

He wasn't going to wait around to find out. The sergeant increased the pace until they were more than a mile from the checkpoint.

The German Lieutenant stood on the road until the squad had entered the forest and was lost to sight. He gave the American a thumbs up.

"All clear," said the American.

A woman in a nurse's uniform stepped out. She had been hiding behind the remaining corner of the house. Rubble had been piled to conceal the chair where she had been sitting. Only a close inspection would have found her. A close inspection and a fight with the American.

The nurse was young and attractive. The men coming down the road were all war weary, battle hardened veterans. Many had not seen a pretty woman in months. It was better for everyone if she wasn't seen.

She had arrived almost two weeks ago looking for her parents. Her parents lived on a farm outside a nearby village. When she had heard the village had been bombed, she had gone to check on her parents. She found her parents' home, her childhood home, in ruins.

Neighbors said her parents had survived the bombing but didn't know where they had gone. The ruined house at the checkpoint had belonged to her uncle. It was the last place she knew to look, so she stayed, hoping her uncle or her parents would return someday.

When the nurse had arrived, the German Lieutenant was already there. He had come to the same conclusion as other deserters and left his unit. He was supposed to be with an artillery battery 30 kilometers to the southwest, fighting to slow General Patton's army.

The Lieutenant hadn't snuck away in the middle of the night like the others. He had written fake orders for himself to forage for supplies behind the lines. He had left in broad daylight after showing the sentries his orders. Even with his orders, he tried to avoid other German soldiers. In doing so, he had taken the same small road as the sergeant and his men.

The Lieutenant had stopped in this place for a rest and stayed the night. He remained a second night. It was peaceful and quiet. The elderly couple reminded him of his own grandparents. The German had shared his food with them and they shared their food in return.

The German went foraging and found a mass of bushes that still had frozen berries on the branches. He filled his helmet and brought them back. The elderly woman collected eggs from a few chickens that walked around the yard.

A stray cow was shot with the German's last bullet. He butchered it, burying most of the meat in the snow to freeze it. The German had been a butcher in his previous life, the life before the war. Before he had been drafted into the army.

The checkpoint had come about by accident. When the first soldier walked out of the woods, the German had gotten his rifle. He had no ammunition but the other man wouldn't know that. The soldier saw a Lieutenant with a rifle held across his chest. He assumed the Lieutenant was in charge of a checkpoint looking for deserters.

Like the sergeant, the soldier despaired. But a wary conversation with the Lieutenant showed he had nothing to fear. He had mentioned his assumption before he walked on. The Lieutenant had built on the idea of a checkpoint.

The elderly couple had paper that he used to draw up fake orders. They wouldn't stand up to much scrutiny but they didn't have to. As long as the deserters could say they believed the orders were real, the men would be safe. Sent back to the front to face those risks but not jailed or shot as deserters.

When the nurse had shown up, she had been wary. Her experience with soldiers had mostly consisted of crude comments and unwanted groping. She had fended those soldiers off, but this was different. Here she was alone, except for the old couple. If he attacked her, she would fight back, but she would lose.

But she knew enough German to converse. She watched how the soldier treated the old couple. She watched how he treated her and looked at her. She soon realized the man was not a threat. He was as tired of the war as everyone else. She made a comment about how most German officers were not so kind to people.

"That is because I am not a German officer. I am a butcher. I feed people. This," he gestured toward his uniform, "was not my choice."

The German realized having a young, attractive woman around would be a problem when other soldiers came along. Especially if it was a group of soldiers. He could not protect her from five or ten men when he had no ammunition.

The nurse and the Lieutenant had built a small hiding place the nurse could go when soldiers approached. The elderly couple had provided the chair.

The nurse had been there only a few days when the American arrived. He had parachuted in behind the lines and gotten separated from his unit. He knew where the front was but also knew getting through German lines would be difficult. The American had decided the best course of action was to wait for the Allied troops to reach him. His insignia indicated he was a Captain.

The American had come out of the woods from the east. He had seen the German soldier and had watched long enough to know there was only one soldier. That was certainly odd for any checkpoint. Usually, there would be two or three on duty with another half dozen to take other shifts.

He considered circling through the woods but didn't think it was practical. The undergrowth got thicker the deeper one went in. Circling around might take a couple days if he could get through at all.

The German, the nurse, and the elderly couple were all focused on spotting deserters coming from the west. Nobody saw the American approaching from the other direction.

"Hands up!" he cried, his rifle pointed at the German. The Lieutenant turned around slowly with his hands raised.

The elderly couple left their house to stand near the German. They said something in French that the American didn't understand. But it sounded like they didn't want him to shoot.

The American knew he was in a bind. He couldn't take the German prisoner. He was at least 30 kilometers from the front with no way to tie the man up and no MPs to hand him off to. He couldn't let the German go because he would raise the alarm and begin a search to take the American prisoner. And he refused to shoot the German in cold blood.

A young woman appeared from his right. She had been using an impromptu latrine dug beyond her uncle's ruined house. She moved to within a few feet of the German and said, "Don't shoot him" in English.

The German smiled and shrugged. He knew the dilemma the American was facing. At some point, shooting the German would be the only viable solution, even if it was a distasteful solution. The German held up a finger. The universal sign for "Wait, give me a moment."

His rifle was slung over his shoulder. He mimed removing the weapon. The American watched warily. Very slowly, the German took the sling and slid it off his shoulder and down his arm. Still holding the weapon by the sling only, he positioned it so the barrel pointed off to the side, away from the other soldier.

The American nodded slightly. "Continue," it seemed to say. The German took the rifle by the barrel and raised it in the air. With his free hand, he loosened the clip and handed it to the nurse. She brought the clip to the American. It was empty.

The German worked the bolt. No bullet was there to be ejected. The German opened a compartment on his belt, rooted around with his hand, and came out empty. He slowly took out his sidearm, aimed at the dirt, and pulled the trigger several times. The American could clearly hear the 'click, click, click' of a hammer hitting an empty chamber.

The Lieutenant smiled and shrugged at the American again. The German had no ammunition. He slung the rifle back over his shoulder.

The American's stance eased. He lowered his rifle but didn't sling it over his shoulder. "Now what?" he thought. The German wasn't an immediate threat but the dilemma remained.

The nurse touched his arm. He had forgotten she was there.

"He left. He is not a threat," she said in English.

The German mimed eating and walked toward the house with the elderly couple. The nurse tugged the American's arm and then went the same direction. The American cautiously followed. There was food in a pot over the fire. The elderly woman dished a plate for the American and for the German.

The American sat on a small pile of rubble, keeping his rifle across his knees. While he ate, the German spoke to the nurse and the nurse translated into English. Her German was as broken as her English, so finding the right words took a long time.

In the end, the American slung his weapon over his shoulder. He understood the German was a deserter and didn't want to fight. He was helping the nurse and the elderly couple. He understood that other German soldiers passed through the area.