Chad Thumann - The Undesirables

“Why are you laughing?” Petr asked.

“You wouldn’t understand.”

Petr nodded. “Probably not.” He looked at her in silence. “You know what I’m thinking?”

“What?”

“I’m thinking there’s a reason there was so much macaroni.”

“And what reason is that?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if there were wild mushrooms, too, during the summer.”

“It isn’t the summer.”

“But there are deer.”

“You think?” Karen said.

“There would have to be, wouldn’t there? Why else would someone build this shack? It’s a hunting shack—a shack built for hunting.”

Karen peered at Petr, suspicious. “What are you planning?”

“How many bags of noodles are left?”

“About a half dozen.”

“If I could find a deer, we could cook it with meat.”

“How could you find a deer?”

“By hunting it.”

“You know how to hunt?”

“Yes.”

“In the winter?”

“Yes.”

“Then what are you waiting for?”

Petr smiled and climbed to his feet. “Come on, Duck.” The Alsatian wolf dog somersaulted to his feet and bounded for the door. Petr held it open, and the dog leaped outside. “Don’t start a fire. The Germans might see the smoke.”

“I’m not an idiot.”

“I’ll see you soon.”

“Good luck.”

Petr slammed the door behind him, and Karen continued to lie where she was, imagining the meat. It would be so good if Petr really did find a deer, if he really did manage to kill it. Karen wondered how much meat one deer could provide. A few days’ worth? A week’s worth? She had no idea. Even if it were only a few days, that would be a few days of heaven… a few days of not having to march, of not having to survive… a few days of just relaxing and eating and regaining her strength. It was so tempting. But she couldn’t afford to give in to that temptation. She had to stay strong.

Karen could hear Petr outside, trudging farther away from the shack. She sat still and silent until she couldn’t hear him anymore. And then she sat still and silent for ten more minutes. Finally, when she was sure that he was gone, she got up, carefully crossed the squeaking floor, and opened the door just a crack. No one was there. She opened it wider and stuck her head out so that she could look in every direction. The clearing was empty. She shut the door and moved back to the crates. She rifled through them and found the one with the macaroni. She grabbed two full bags and stuffed them in her pockets. She stuffed another bag in the hem of her skirt, and a fourth under her hat. She couldn’t carry any more, and four bags of dried noodles ought to last her long enough to reach Tikhvin, anyway. Besides, she still wanted to leave some for Petr. She didn’t dislike the boy soldier, and she didn’t wish him any ill will. She certainly didn’t want him to starve to death. She just wanted to leave him, to escape. So she took out her train tickets, unfolded the one she had extra, and left it in the crate for him secured between the two remaining bags of noodles. See? She wasn’t a killer, after all.

Karen then opened the door and stepped outside. She looked up at the sun to get her bearings, turned southwest, and plunged into the woods, alone.

Unteroffizier Oster kicked the trunk of a birch tree in an effort to knock the crusted ice from his jackboot. He resented having to leave the village to patrol the woods, even if the tiny cottages that his platoon used as their winter quarters were awful. They were cramped, filthy, and infested with vermin. Never would Oster have believed he could live in such squalor. He thought of his own home in Bavaria, and his wife. She was not a beautiful woman—not by any objective aesthetic standards. She was plump and ruddy and even a bit hairy. But she was his, and he was hers. That was the worst part of the army, being separated from the woman he loved. He’d been serving on the Eastern Front since before the invasion in June, and he was due some time off. He wasn’t just any Unteroffizier; he was a full sergeant and squad leader, after all. When spring came, he was sure, his unit would be rotated out of the line, and he would return home for two weeks’ leave—two blissful weeks of peace.

He was not a rich man. His home, a shepherd’s cottage, was not much bigger than the Russian building he lived in now. But it was much cleaner. He took pride in keeping his home whitewashed, replacing the shingles, and maintaining the grounds. His wife took pride in her cleaning. Not like these filthy Russian Bolsheviks. Thanks to them, he had lice. Thanks to them, he’d contracted parasites so that he could no longer have a meal without immediately having to defecate. Thanks to them, his uniform and beard and hair were filthy. No wonder the German leadership had declared them “undesirables.” They had no pride, not in themselves or in one another. They deserved to starve to death. Such was official German policy: Don’t feed the undesirables. Let them die out. This land would be better off under the stewardship of German, not Slavic, families.

But despite the squalor, the discomfort, and the humiliating filth, Oster had grown to love his Russian village. Because as dirty as the cottages were, they were warm. The woods, to the contrary, were freezing cold.

As Oster’s reconnaissance squad patrolled the woods, many of his men gathered too close around him, raising the Unteroffizier’s ire. “Don’t just laze about,” he commanded. “Spread out. Watch out for the enemy.”

“There is no enemy, Herr Unteroffizier,” replied Gefreiter Krause, slapping his arms across his chest in an effort to stay warm. Oster swallowed his disgust. He knew soldiers like Corporal Krause, soldiers who Oster believed would never amount to anything. They shirked every duty, including combat. They’d joined the army before the war because they liked the prestige a uniform afforded them. That prestige grew after the battle of France, no thanks to them, and until the winter of ’41, they’d thought soldiering was eating three square meals, marching in parades, and kissing a pretty Fräulein. In short, soldiers like Krause were a thorn in Oster’s side, but the Unteroffizier didn’t believe he’d ever be rid of the slacker.

Of course, Krause wasn’t the only slacker in the Unteroffizier’s squad; he was just the worst and most obvious culprit. It was an unpublicized fact that only half of any rifle squad did any actual fighting. When things got nasty and bullets began to fly, much of the squad simply shot their rifles into the air instead of actually aiming at the enemy. For some, like Krause, it was an act of cowardice: aiming required lifting one’s head and exposing it to enemy fire. For others, it was an act of misguided compassion. They simply couldn’t bring themselves to kill another human being purposefully, so they intentionally missed.

In France, Unteroffizier Oster had learned that most of his job as squad leader was identifying the cowards, the compassionate, and the killers. He armed and deployed each accordingly. The cowards were worthless, so, much to their dismay, he deployed them in the most forward positions. There they could act as decoys, drawing fire away from the more combat-ready members of the squad. And if they ran, they would have to run right past Oster, who would threaten to shoot them himself if they didn’t hold their line. The compassionate were somewhat less worthless. They were unreliable in an assault, but they could hold their positions and defend themselves. In fact, if they survived an enemy attack, they overcame their natural inhibitions against killing. Once they faced the prospect of “kill or be killed,” practicality prevailed over their Christian upbringings, and they began to aim for the enemy’s heart.

The most important members of Oster’s squad were the killers, and Oster’s most ruthless killer was a man named Pfeiffer. He was small and scrawny, but he enjoyed fighting and sought out conflict, be it in a beer garden or a field of battle. Pfeiffer was the type of thug Oster would have avoided in civilian life. But in a combat squad he was invaluable. This was why Oster had assigned Pfeiffer his squad’s most important weapon: the heavy machine gun. The MG-34 was, perhaps, too large a weapon for the diminutive Pfeiffer. Many leaders assigned the heavy gun to their largest and strongest squad member. Pfeiffer looked comical dragging around the big weapon. He preferred not to sling it over his shoulder like a rifle, since the strap dug into his flesh. So he carried it behind his neck, both arms propping it in place, and as he marched he looked like he was affixed to a cross. It was an ungainly posture, and in a firefight, valuable seconds were often lost while Pfeiffer untangled himself from the gun before setting it up. But Oster didn’t care. He felt it was more important to have a killer like Pfeiffer manning the gun than someone stronger but less dangerous.

The MG-34 was the weapon around which every German infantry squad was organized. The only purpose of the rest of the soldiers was to support the machine gun. Their bolt-action rifles only served to keep the enemy pinned down until the deadly fire of the machine gun could kill them. For that reason, the other killers in Oster’s squad were given extra machine-gun ammunition. So long as the machine gun was operational and was constantly fed linked belts of ammunition, it didn’t much matter what the rest of the riflemen did. Pfeiffer was the one causing casualties among the enemy.

“If there’s no enemy, why do you think we’re patrolling the woods?” Oster asked Krause.