Das Bierkeller - 1943 Germany

[Amman d Stazia]

Ralf sighed as a gust of cold air followed the motorcycle despatch rider down the steps.  His muddy boots skidded briefly on the flagstones, worn mirror-smooth by hundreds of generations of drinkers. 

"Achtung!" Shouted Ralf, suddenly alert.  In the far corner, the low tables where the 'other ranks' had their habitual seats, the men stilled their sullen muttering.  Standing, Ralf beckoned to the despatch-rider.

"Over here, sonny.  And we're all off duty here, so you're excused salutes and other formalities."  He glared briefly at the enlisted men.  One raised a stone tankard in mock salute, and grinned at him.  The loud hum of conversations and banter made any words pointless, but the tension was gone and he sat down again.

The rider stood in front of Ralf, drew himself to attention, and flicked his arm out - A grip of steel forced it back down again.

"Thanks friend." said Ralf drily.  The burly civilian shrugged and released the man's wrist.  Ralf eyeballed him coldly, and felt little satisfaction when the youngster wilted under his gaze.

"You haven't been in a civilian bar before, have you?  Maybe a barracks watering-hole, or Party restaurant....  This is different.  Half the guys in here would roll you over just for those cuff-tabs.  The SS are very unpopular in Frankfurt area right now.  Two weeks ago, some Waffen-SS veterans went on a recruiting spree at Hitlerjugend meetings.  About two hundred families have just sent their teenage sons to the war effort.  Families and friends of the men here in this bar.  So keep your coat buttoned up, don't go throwing any Party-Salutes, and for God's sake keep your head down."

The youngster nodded, and hurriedly buttoned the dirty leather greatcoat, and tugged at the sleeves so that they hid his grey SS uniform.
"I'm looking for a Luftwaffe Oberstleutnant.  The gatehouse at the airstrip said I'd find him here?  Is that right?"

"You just found him."  Ralf slapped his identity card on the bar beside him, and reached out his left hand for the despatches.  The youngster handed them over, then threw up a quick military salute.  Ralf's lips twitched in a moment of amusement: He had learned fast, this SS youngster.

"Thanks, Gefreiter.  Give my compliments to Albrechtsstrasse, and goodnight to you."  Ralf turned back to the bar, and his drink.

The despatch rider gaped for a moment - Albrechtsstrasse was the headquarters of the SS, and this half-Colonel threw the name around like it was his holiday retreat!  He stood briefly to attention before hurrying back out into the cold night, returning to his lonely motorcycle journey.

Ralf licked his lips, and savoured another mouthful of Trudi's finest Grappa.  Trudi received two Luftwaffe petrol coupons a week to keep half-a-dozen bottles of the precious spirit out of sight.  When they were finished....  He'd just have to volunteer for the Italian front, and hope for the best.
It couldn't be that bad anyway - Christ, if the SS were scraping teenagers from the Hitlerjugend, to send to Russia, then Italy must be a walk in the park by comparison.

Some of the other regulars glanced at the thick pile of envelopes that he had received.  It was not the done thing to bring work into the Bierkeller, but every so often it happened.  They were curious what was so important for a Lieutenant-Colonel to be tracked down in a pub, in the middle of the night, and yet he was taking his sweet time to even glance at the documents...

 

[Majhudeen]

Ogan seemed to look ahead at the lonely lights illuminating the area around them, the dark night sky a near blackened indigo. The lights seemed to only brighten up a portion of the blackened veil of night itself. Stars shown up above like the proud dignitaries, veiwing huskened souls below.

The war had been raging for over 4 years now. Ogan remembered each year very well, his crispened eyes glaring as he went down memory lane from time to time again.

He trotted along, puckering the ground with his two crutches, his strong arms lifting him up as he swung his one good leg over in front of him, bracing himself to balance. It was atedious process, especially so late and dark.
Few people were on the street, just a few open windows with some lamp lights still burning, and the few electric lights glistening like forgotten orbs. Electricity had been shallowed during the course of the war all over Europe.
He hobbled downwards, and there it was.

The pub.
His vision gleamed towards the doors, some men stood out, drinking their bears or smoking cigerrates, and the life from inside seemed to flow through the windows and open door. Chatter emulated across the vicinity, and Ogan walked in.

Now, Ogan was a heavily built man. Bearing brute like qaulities including a potruding jaw and an overall muscular, if not giant build, he was made for the army. Strong, and what the German army wanted. The German army however, was waning.
His body held it's past in a visible, but mysterious, chilling manner. Ogan seemed to bear greivous wounds on his face, his whole left jawline, cheek and lower eyelid all a burned mesh of flesh. Darkened by some hellish fire, and stump of a left leg, which awed in a nonchalant manner that seemed to embow a sense of painful trauma, given the line of seperation.

He wore relatively, non militaristic garbs. He wore simple green suspenders, with a flap on the left leg rolled, and held up by a belt. A blue ruffled shirt covered him with common farmer's boots. Onyl one item seemed to harken his former military experience.

A dusted out, and charced, Afrika Korps cap.

With a relaxed, and calm stare with weathered almond eyes, he looked at the stool in front of him, 2 seats from an auspicous man who seems to be overveiwing some papers. After boggling himself down and leaning the crutches against the barkeeps counter, he looked up at the old woman.

"Just a quick swig is all I need Tabitha, thank you."
She nodded, and then swayed over to fill his glass.
He looked over his shoulder, and he saw the man silently, if with paranoia, examining charters.

"Hello, my name is Ogan. Ogan Bruan. And you are Herr sir?"
He looked with a layed back expression towards the man, and Ogan could almost smell he was an officer.

 

[Amman d Stazia]

Ralf glanced at the one-legged, scarred veteran, and flicked idly through the first envelope - routine stuff that had obviously hitched a ride with the SS express courier.  His fingers froze, and he slowly turned his head.

"You remind me of a young man that climbed into a glider on a hot summer day in Greece.  A lifetime ago..."

Ralf's mind hazed for a second as that terrible day came back.  He had been a Captain then, and his commander had detailed him to assist a Fallschirmjaeger staff Major in briefing the massed troops on the airborne assault that they were about to make.  Hundreds of NCOs and junior officers has stood ramrod-straight, sweating in the afternoon sun, and he had assumed the Paratroop officer would deliver the briefing, turning to him only for technical details.  Instead, he had introduced himself, and Ralf, and then stepped down.  Ralf had been caught, and delivered his briefing off the cuff.  As such, it had been pretty short and very technical.

As the shadows lengthened, he had walked the long lines of Junkers and Dorniers, making sure that each infantry and paratroop unit was lined up by the correct aircraft.  Approaching his own aircraft, the first in line, he had been fronted by two Gebirgsjaeger, one a man-mountain, the other a dapper little Colonel with a monocle and a silk scarf at his throat.

The Colonel had smiled politely, and asked in a soft voice,

"Is that the first time you've briefed such a large assembly, Captain?"  He had flicked a hand to dismiss any reply, "You are very knowledgeable, the technical aspect was quite brilliant.  In a way it was even.... refreshing, to be spared the rhetoric of blood and thunder, Fuehrer and Vaterland, death or glory....  Unusual though.  You don't mind if I ask a few questions?  My friend here will make sure we are not disturbed."

He had indicated the massive bull of a man that stood a respectful pace behind him.  The man who Ralf had been reminded of when the one-legged Afrikakorps veteran walked in.

It had turned out the Colonel was not asking questions, so much as giving Ralf a few pointers - had he talked in a different tone, it would have been a lecture, but as it was he dropped references to Ovid and Caeser, made little jokes about Prussian verbosity, and ended up by opening his attache case and spreading a large map out on the ground.

Ralf had recognised the drop zone in the white glare of his Junkers-52's running lights.  The Colonel had squatted down, and put a finger on the map.
"This worries me, Ralf.  An airstrip, with a soft hillside to the West, and a steep ridge curving from East to South.  We are meant to aim the gliders for the airstrip, but my military mind tells me that the English will have anti-aircraft guns around an airstrip.  Guns that will destroy a glider quite easily, yes?"

Ralf nodded.  The same guns, he had already realised, would pose a significant threat to his towing aircraft.

"Ralf, can we go in very, very high, and overshoot to the South?  If you release the gliders south of the target, will we have enough time to circle back around and approach the airfield from the other side, sheltered by this ridge until the last minute?"

Again, Ralf had nodded, but then shook his head. "That's a thousand metres, and two kilometres back from the airstrip.  You'd never make it.  These crates can drop five hundred metres in a kilometre.  If you go over the ridge with any kind of room, you'll overshoot the DZ.  And you need to leave plenty room - trees, buildings, infantrymen with rifles, you need to leave two hundred metres or so - and then you end up overshooting the airstrip by half a kilometre."  The Colonel had grinned, and suddenly he had looked quite dangerous.

"That's what I thought - so the Brits won't expect it either.  We'll risk the treetops, and go scraping in across that ridge, with all the big chaps like my friend here sitting at the front of the glider."

 

[Majhudeen]

The grizzled man raised a his one eyebrow, then he turned a bit and smiled with a smug look on his face.

Ogan scrolled his eye's back to the man.
"I always did fancy what it'd be like to see pigs fly, me being such a old boar I am..."

He chuckled a bit, and it came swooshing back. Back when he "volunteered" for the Afrika Korps. Back then it seemed he had no choice, his farmstead wasn't making any progress, nor was anyone else looking for a man of such a brute stature such as he.

The gruntled farmer of who was Ogan, found and still found he didn't care for the radicalist idea's he was constantly approached with. Nor did he care for the master race and the vision of what was the Nazi's parties perfect world ruled by the superior race. Before what happened in Spain that is.

He remember when he stood in line once again, the familiar grouping of soldiers, all in formation being inspected and assessed by the resident sergeant of the time.

"be proud" he had said. Be proud of your heritage, of your nations former and approaching glory. Of a reborn reich, and a new chance at German dominance and prominance.
Silently Ogan laughed to himself. Ideals were nothing more then a hindrance to his days of where he used to tend with a true passion. A passion of where only he, god and the soil had. The only battlefeild he enjoyed, the rows of crops and patches, and the fleshed out soil.

But times had gone and he turned to his neighbour of present times, and cleared his throat.

"So, what brings you here? I can tell it's not entirely to drink down some lovely memories."

 

[Amman d Stazia]

Ralf couldn't help a grin as he raised his glass.

"Between here and the Alps, there is not a drop of Grappa.  Just this, Trudi's last bottle.  And I'm drinking it."

He took an appreciative sip, let the fiery, spicy liquid roll across his tongue and warm his cheeks.
It stung briefly at the back of his mouth where the tiny shell splinter had ripped out three teeth, and with just a tinge of regret he let it trickle down his throat.  Then he laughed.

"Well, actually, this is the only place I know of that we old salts can have a drink and ***** about the ****ty state of the world today, without having to look out for the Gestapo, or the Dogs of the Feldgendarmerie.  And believe you me, Kamerad, the world is in one ****ty state."

And you?  You're here for the sexy barmaids, the latest jazz-band, and the selection of premium French wines?"  Ralf flicked his thumb in turn at the stout, ageing Trudi, broken gramophone, and empty shelves where little circles in the dust proclaimed that wine bottles had once stood.

 

[Majhudeen]

Ogan chuckled a bit more at the commanders response, and he glanced aimlessly then shot his eyes at the commander.
Plenty of the high class officers he had been through, and many over zealous of their Aryan heritage to give a **** about anything other then being a snob. But this one seemed to have his head screwed on just right, which was pretty damned loose.

" Well thats true I'd guess. Trudi is very much a fine lady and all. Such a fine lady to get my swig and all, right Trudi?"
he swarthed a old hack of a laugh as he had a flop of a flirt with the old barmaid.
She merely turned her head, rolled her eyes and shook her head slowly.
"Well aren't you a knight in shining armour Ogan? Mabye you'll accept my glass slipper at 12 at midnight?"

She grinned as she made the silly comeback at him, and passed him the glass slipper.
Ogan held the small glass in his hand, and he drank a bit.

"I've always wondered how the Gestapo always have such nice uniforms, all prim and proper like fine ladies. Mabye we should put the navy in corsets now..."