Read The Major's Daughter for Free Online Page A

assistance.”
    â€œGood-bye,” Collie said to them all. “It was a pleasure to meet you.”
    Then with a slight grinding of gears, they departed.
    â€œLovely girl,” Henry’s father said. “She must have quite an impact up at the camp.”
    â€œIt’s a wonder the Germans don’t rape her,” Amos said. “Ugly bastards.”
    â€œNot every German . . . ,” Henry started to say, then stopped. It was no use.
    â€œBack to work,” Henry heard his father say. But Henry’s eyes remained on the jeep, the blond hair receding like a soft, yellow blossom.
    Â â€¢Â â€¢Â â€¢Â 
    It was a day for it, August thought as he watched the twitch horse heave against the traces in order to drag the raft of logs to the landing an eighth of a kilometer below. The flies swarmed fiercely and surrounded his ears with sound, but the sun shone brilliantly and the smell of pines drifted everywhere. It was the sort of day that his father might declare a
wandertag
,
a day to wander in the Black Forest, backpacks and staves at the ready, afterward a visit to a
heuriger
for a meal of sausage and cheese and the bright happy singing of the accordion. It felt something of a dream that such an outing had ever been possible. But the weather at least was as fine as what they had known in Austria before the war. It was a spring morning and the birds had become crazed with its luscious warmth.
    With Gerhard, one of the team members, driving the horse down to the landing, the men took a break. Two guards stood above them on the hillside, their rifles held lazily across their chests. Even the guards, August realized, could not resist such weather. At first both had stood guard resolutely, their faces locked in a neutral expression, their eyes alive to treachery. Gradually, however, the increasing warmth of the morning, the dull snore of the two-man saw working back and forth over the logs, had softened them. By midmorning they had devised a system where one of them would sit while the other remained alert. It had taken time, but the guards, August understood, had eventually realized that their captives would not flee into the woods at a moment’s inattention. Escape
was
possible, certainly; that had become clear almost immediately. Too many men moving in all directions, combined with the horses, the odd Coca-Cola trucks filled with reporters, the newness of the daily routines, all held countless opportunities for flight. In the barracks the men had laughed at the security system. It was their duty to escape if they could, and some of the men already had plans to do so, but other men, men tired of the war and of hardship, had cautioned against it. It was one of the many threads of talk the men had engaged in freely, because the Americans, they soon understood, had no knowledge of German. The prisoners had tested the Americans many times over on the first few days, speaking a vile epithet to get a rise from them, but the Americans had been deaf to everything out of ignorance. The older German men, especially the hard core of Nazis who had already assumed command of the barracks, had ridiculed the Americans ceaselessly, calling them ignorant pigs.
    But his cutting crew, at least, had no grudge against the Americans. August had already served as a translator to ask questions of the American guards: when did they think the war would end, and what did they miss the most from their wartime privations, and girls, what were American girls like? The questions had been lighthearted for the most part, and the Americans had slowly warmed to both the questions and the crew. Now isolated in the woods, at least two kilometers from camp, August felt at ease, though his hands had already blistered and his arms and shoulders ached from dragging the saw back and forth and limbing the trees with an ax.
Eine klafter pro kopf,
one cord per man per day. That was the camp’s motto.
    â€œAll