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or the usual soldierly
     hardships of a
     winning army, up until that point where he gave his Mustang a
     dirt bath in a
     German field.
    “Cal?” Greta said. She still had her hand on
     his wrist and
     stared at him with those big blue eyes. Her lower lip trembled,
     but there was
     strength in her posture, and a determination in her eyes he
     hadn’t seen before.
     “You will not leave us to die.” It was more a statement than a
     question.
    “Fine. Let’s get back on that farm road.”
    “That is no good. It ends at the millpond
     four hundred
     meters past the horse barn.”
    “Can’t stay here or we’ll have commies or
     Nazis on top of
     us. Maybe both. Could be a battle on this very spot by the end
     of the day. So
     what’s it going to be?”
    Greta spoke to her parents for a minute, then
     turned back to
     Cal. “We have a handcart. It was loaded with some food and
     clothing and Mutti’s
     best dishes before the soldiers threw us out. We could join the
     refugees on the
     main road, and you can hide underneath the blankets. We’ll leave
     the rest of it
     behind. Then, when we get to American lines, you can climb out
     and make sure
     they do not hurt us.”
    Cal didn’t like the idea of hiding in the
     handcart while
     Nazis marched by on the other side of the road, but he couldn’t
     very well
     travel in the open, either. Not in his flight uniform and his
     C-1 vest. And if
     he changed, they’d think he was a deserter. A shouted order,
     then a roadside
     execution when they learned he didn’t speak a lick of German.
     They’d kill
     Hans-Peter and his family, too, for giving aid and comfort.
    “No towns, we stay to the countryside,” he
     said. “Are there
     any forests where we might hide out the day?”
    She spoke to her father. “Vater says fifteen
     kilometers.”
    “That far? Fifteen kilometers is what? Nine
     miles? That’s a
     long time to steer clear of your friends with guns.” He turned
     it over in his
     mind. “No choice, I guess. We’ll make a run for it, and then
     hide until night.”
    “And we must worry about the Tiefflieger ,
     too.”
    “Tieff-what?”
    Her father made buzzing sound like an
     aircraft and then held
     out both his index fingers, pistol-style, and let out a machine
     gun rattle.
    “Ah. I don’t think the... Tiefflieger are going to
     bother us today. Not with the Russians breathing down our
     throats. Come on,
     let’s move it.”
    #
    Minutes later, Cal found himself wedged
     between an empty
     trunk, two sacks of potatoes, and another of onions, with
     clothes smothering
     him from above. Hans-Peter grunted and picked up the handles of
     the cart, which
     he dragged around the back of the house and toward the main
     road.
    Soon, Cal heard the sound of other refugees.
     They trudged
     along, coughing, and speaking quietly in German. Dozens of
     voices, perhaps
     hundreds. The clomp of hooves every few minutes, and the crunch
     of wheels, but
     mostly feet. He pictured the sluggish current of refugees in his
     mind’s eye,
     imagined the target they would present to a callous pilot like
     the Brit in the
     Spitfire yesterday. Or to the vanguard of the Soviet army,
     hungry for revenge
     for the brutal actions of the Germans on the Eastern Front.
    He was uncomfortable back here, feet tucked
     up, the wool
     blankets smothering him in the rising heat of day, the
     oppressive smell of
     onions, and the wooden wheels jarring on every rock and rut. The
     pace was
     maddeningly slow; from the sounds of it, the river was flowing
     around them,
     passing them. About an hour later, the wounded caught up to
     them—women moaning
     from the backs of creaking carts, a child screaming and a mother
     trying to
     comfort.
    “ Mein Gott, ” Greta muttered after the
     child had
     passed. Then, in a low voice in English, “You are better in
     there. The things I
     am seeing. You cannot imagine.”
    Cal could imagine plenty of awful things,
     lying beneath