Undying Love - Brian Hesse (best non fiction books of all time txt) 📗

 Warsaw (West)

The bells of Saint Alexander chime softly through the thick black smoke, charred smoldering rubble, and piercing shrieks of the dying. How many times have I heard these very same bells on clear sunlit mornings blanketed by serene blue skies? Days filled with the chitter chatter of the young students sprawled lazily across the University lawn. The same University of Jagiellonian, I once proudly called home as a distinguished Prof. of poetry. How I can still see dozens of Poland’s brightest stars, lying on the freshly cut grass, some talking philosophy, some mathematics, and some just silently falling in love under the non-threatening dome of world peace? But the skies are no longer peaceful, just as the world may never know peace again. The German Luftwaffe blackens the sky like a horde of locusts hungrily devouring everything of value my beautiful country has to offer. I hear that their beloved Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler needs Lebensraum, (living space), for his great Germanic race. How can such a supposedly educated and cultured people blindly follow such an outdated racial philosophy? How can an entire Nation support the subjugation of an entire people as slaves? Am I inferior? I think not. I was never one to rest on my own laurels but, I am willing to bet that I am educated beyond most of the very same brutes on their way up the slope in front of me. They wait behind the thick trees and brush just outside the city, like rats poised to swarm on my country, and spread their plague of insane hatred.

 I write these words in my journal because I fear that I may not survive the coming onslaught. Yes, we Polish soldiers are a brave lot, but we are unequivocally unprepared to defeat the German Panzers, striking as fast as lightening through the rolling country and city and towns, as I write these very words. My heart is heavy because I may never feel the soft lips of my brave Anastazja. A sadness squeezes my heart as if in a vice as I try to imagine never tasting the forbidden sweetness of those soft full lips. Yes, I said forbidden. You see Anastazja is my adopted sister, but that is another tale for another time. A time when I may still be alive and well, sitting with my beloved drinking wine in front of our fireplace, feeling the warmth of the fire on my face and, the warmth of Anastazja against my naked body. My heart grows heavy with worry as I think of her bravely defending the city with the First Women’s Civilian Rifle Battalion. My heart then grows light with pride as I imagine her dawning her grey uniform, holding her rifle at the ready, and shouting patriotic words of encouragement to her fellow sister’s in arms. Well, here come the German Panzers over the top. I will now ride my horse around their tanks to strike at the infantry cowering behind their steel beasts. A suicide mission for sure.

 I am Aleksander Walczak, Major in the Mazowiecka Cavalry Brigade. September 5, 1939. God save Poland.

 Warsaw (South)

 Anastazja Walczak gazed across the Southern Warsaw plains shivering with anticipation of the inevitable German infantry attack. The field, now bare and pock marked with large craters, reminded her of the surface of the moon. She closes her eyes and remembers days of playing in this very field with her step-brother Aleksander. Carefree days so far removed from the screeching Stuka dive bombers and the ground rumbling relentless push of the German Panzer tank. Anastazja was transported back to a simpler time of crawling between the stalks of bright golden wheat. Her skin tingles, sending another shiver deep within her spine, as she remembers the silky wheat tops gently brushing against her ten-year-old skin. But this was twenty-five years ago, 1914, when the world still ignored talk of a coming war. She thought to herself, who would have thought that the death of just one Archduke in Austria would cause the world to plunge into the depths of a war so horrible in scope, would cripple a generation and form scars, both physically and mentally, that would never fully heal.

   “It was that little World War that gave rise to the failed artist maniac in Germany today,” she stated with a barely audible whisper that floated through the small gaps of silence created between the still falling bombs directly behind her.

     “Captain, hit the dirt for God’s sake,” cried a screeching feminine voice below her feet. She jolted back to reality, half expecting to see the radiant golden stalks of wheat of her childhood. Fear quickly replaced nostalgia as she viewed once again, the broken landscape of her beloved land. She looked at the crumpled figure now grabbing at her feet like an infant embracing the soft warm skin of a Mother absent for too long.

       I must show these girls my bravery, she thought, as she bent down and gently pried each rigid finger from her thin tired ankles.

“There, there, my dear, be brave and remember that if we do not fight, we will surely die as slaves of the German dog.”

Anastazja brightened with pride as she perceived just a small ounce of courage rise in   the pale cheeks of the young peasant girl, just recently drafted into the Women’s Civilian Army, the last line of defense before all was lost.

Anastazja’s lightened mood quickly darkened as she listened to the familiar steel track of the German Panzer 35(t) grind deeply into the frozen Polish soil. She, and every woman at her command, understood the hopelessness of the situation. The M1895 rifle is the standard infantry weapon of the Polish Army, as well as the German infantry. The 8X56 cartridge, straight pull-back bolt action, and firing capacity of thirty-five rounds per minute, makes the weapon a very formidable foe to the advancing infantry. However, Anastazja, knows that any small arms rifle is as useless as a pea shooter against the Panzer’s armor. She gazed around her hopelessly, looking for the regular Polish Army troops and five-hundred tankettes for support, but to no avail. The bulk of the Army suffered horrific casualties during the first few days of the war in the face of the German blitzkrieg. The defense of Warsaw was now in the hands of brave, but untrained, women, and a handful of old men and boys protecting the Western edge of the city, she thought with a growing depression.

She thought of her step-brother Aleksander, feeling deep within her soul that he was still alive, but facing certain death.

“I will not crumble. I will not crumble,” she stated softly, straightening her back and forcing her facial expression into one of stoic bravery, like an ancient Greek statue of a long-forgotten warrior.

“Here they come troops,” she shouted in her best command voice, as every woman watched in horror as ten Panzer 35 (t’s) approached their position. Anastazja watched five women immediately jump out of her hastily built trench and run toward the smoldering ruins of the city. She did not attempt to order the women to halt their retreat, knowing that each poor dear would meet nothing but death, or worse, capture, within the burning city.

“Keep steady ladies,” she said calmly, as the tanks stopped at a close enough distance for her to see the dreaded skull and cross-bone insignia of the SS tank commander in the lead tank.

He won’t shoot at a group of fifty girls, she thought with a mixture of thankfulness and embarrassment.

Aanastazja is considered a modern woman at the University, to the sometimes chagrin of her male counterparts. She faced expulsion from her teaching seat on more than one occasion for organizing women’s equality protests and strikes. She knew that this is one reason why Aleksander loved her so much. He was also considered quite the rebel amongst his fellow intellectual class. She recalled one of his poems depicting the love between two men. Anastazja closed her eyes for just a moment to remember the beautiful words of her Aleksander’s poem. A poem of forbidden love. A poem for their kind of love that nobody would ever understand.

In secret I call to you, as the night does so surround,

Envelop me with deep despair,

I dare not make a sound.

I gaze at you from afar, as the sun does shine so bright

I worship you in the dark, and then my heart does always ache,

Until that long-awaited night,

When my heart no longer breaks.

Anastazja opened her eyes and smiled with a renewed surge of courage coursing through her veins, like a dam finally broken, allowing the waters of courage to come rushing through. She thought about the courage it required for her Aleksander to recite this poem to her. She laughed lightly as she also considered how he was always better at teaching poetry than creating verse.

“Let’s show these Nazi pigs what women ca do,” she shouted above the bestial roar of the tank engines. Anastazja gave the order to fire. The sound of the large caliber rounds bouncing off the Panzer tank armor sounded to her like hail bouncing off the tin rooftop of her childhood home. The same home now a pile of smoldering rubble. The same home she laughed, played, and fell in love with her Aleksander. Just before the wooden building behind her position exploded from an 80MM tank shell and, just before her world went pleasantly black, she watched the round of her M1895 rifle strike the young SS tank commander in the head causing a fine red mist to dissipate into the cool Polish air.

Life in the Nazi Ghetto

   Aleksander walked the streets of what was once the flourishing city of Warsaw. With head held low, to avoid eye contact with the German guards, he walked the perimeter of the cold grey wall, constructed primarily to keep food from entering the ghetto. To intellectuals, like him, the purpose of the ghetto became glaringly apparent in his malnourished mind. He nervously surveyed his surroundings and quickly slipped through the open doorway of a small two bedroom home now occupied by no less than thirty Jews. The smell of rotten potatoes, unwashed bodies, and urine filled his nostrils, making his stomach twist and cramp. He considered how even now, after one month in the ghetto, he could still not adapt to the foul odors of the city. He peeked his head outside the doorway one more time to fill his mucus clogged lungs with as much fresh air as possible before walking to the back room of the crumbling building he now called home. His personal space consisted of just six-foot square in the far-right hand corner of the dismal room. The room was hastily cleared of debris just one month ago by the current inhabitants. Fallen plaster, broken glass, and splintered wood from the bombing was now replaced with human debris; emaciated bodies lying on make shift beds of urine stained straw now littered the floor. He was certain that he would never get used to the smell of the place but, he thought with a hint of triumph that he has already gotten used to the sounds. The low guttural moaning of the sick and dying no longer brought horror to him during the dark cold nights. He remembered his first few nights lying on the dirt covered floor listening to the horrific moans of the dying, causing his brain to conjure dark shadows that creeped across the wall just above his head. The high-pitched shrieks of children feeling the vengeful stabbing pain of hunger in their bellies, screaming for just an ounce of proper food. Aleksander reached into his dirt stained suit coat, tattered and crawling with lice, and took out his journal. He made a promise to himself