The Flight. Bryan Malessa
the highest-ranking official in the league, talked endlessly about commitment, discipline and personal strength. Later, each new recruit took an oath under the flickering torches: ‘I promise that, in the Hitler Youth, I will always do my duty, with love and faithfulness, and help the Führer, so help me God.’
Afterwards the hall reverberated to the boom of drums, the boys’ faces glowing orange in the torchlight. Soon they were singing again – a thousand boys in harmony – ‘Forward, forward …’ The sounds echoed in Karl’s mind long after he had returned to Germau.
In July he went camping with his group to Palmnicken where they pitched tents on a plateau above the Baltic. On the first night after the leader had told everyone to go to sleep, Karl felt the hand of the boy to his left slide across his belly and downwards. Startled, he pretended to be asleep. Soon he felt a new and pleasant sensation, one he’d never experienced before, between his legs. He turned over – and the boy on his right kissed him on his mouth. Karl tensed, and the first boy whispered that he would report him if he didn’t join in with their game.
The next morning, the three behaved as if nothing had happened. Karl climbed out of the tent and walked over to where the ground fell away to the sea below and watched two men in a pit carrying a burlap sack filled with amber. When he turned back to see the other boys coming out of their tents, he wondered if they were harbouring a similar secret.
That afternoon the leader took the boys through the woods and across a field, beyond which the blue-green waters of the Baltic stretched to the horizon. At points along the western edge of the peninsula, steep sandy cliffs fell as much as ten metres to the beach below. The leader announced that to earn a dagger, each boy must run at top speed to the edge of the cliff and jump out as far as he could.
‘What if we’re killed?’ a boy asked.
‘I’ll give the knife to your mother.’
Laughter erupted.
‘It’s only sand, idiot,’ a boy near the back yelled.
‘But my cousin broke his leg falling from the cliff in Rauschen.’
The leader told them that each boy would run and jump, then get up, move out of the way and remain on the beach with the assistant, who was already down there. ‘If you do break your leg don’t scream. You don’t want to be captured by the Russians, do you?’
He pointed at a terrified-looking boy. ‘You first. Run on the count of three.’
‘But—’
‘One. Two—’
The boy started running.
‘I said on the count of three!’ shouted the leader. ‘Faster!’
The boy’s pace increased and the group held their breath when he neared the edge of the cliff, expecting him to stop. But he didn’t hesitate. He ran forward, his eyes on the horizon, until the ground fell from beneath his feet and he disappeared. They heard him scream, and the distant roar of breakers.
The sixteen-year-old leader walked back to them grinning. ‘Let’s hope he’s not dead.’
This time nobody laughed.
‘Anyone scared?’
The group were mute.
‘I’m going to stand here and watch until every one of you has jumped off the cliff. Anyone who slows down before he jumps doesn’t get his dagger.’
As Karl waited, he looked over the tall grass to the cliff’s edge, feeling as if he had been called to a duty greater than himself. That spring the leader had come to his village only for him: no other local children had gone to the castle at Marienburg. He felt an epiphany of quietness as he prepared for his jump – and dismissed the fleeting thought that last night’s illicit adventure might have contributed to today’s confidence. He pictured himself walking into Germau with his shoulder strap across his chest and his new dagger on his belt.
When the leader signalled to him, he started to run and felt himself stride, with a sense of supreme confidence. As he neared the edge of the cliff, his eyes rose above the horizon – he leapt as high as possible, aware that his body sailing into the sky towards the sea created a silhouette seen by the leader and boys who still waited their turn. Airborne, he squeezed his eyes shut. He wanted to remember for ever how it felt to float over the earth, the air above coalescing with the water below, whose merging currents buoyed him as he floated outwards into its transmuting body.
When he got home two days later, Karl didn’t tell his mother what had happened in the tent, but he showed her his new knife. She wasn’t very interested; he decided she hadn’t grasped its significance. However, he would always have been the first in his village to join the youth group, which no one in Germau would forget. The children were already asking him about his adventures.
Ida took the dagger from him and read the inscription, ‘Blood and Honour’, then handed it back. ‘We have enough knives. I wish they’d given you something useful.’
‘It is useful.’
Ida didn’t argue. ‘It’s time for your piano practice.’
‘But I told everyone I’d go back out after I’d shown you the knife.’
‘All right then, just for a little while. But I want you to practise before supper.’
When Karl opened the front door the children had gathered round the tree at the centre of the square, waiting for him.
‘Can I hold it?’ Werner asked.
‘In a minute.’
The children followed Karl up past the church to the field beside the cemetery, where he pulled the dagger from its sheath and sat down in the grass. ‘Don’t cut yourself,’ he said, as he held it out to Werner. The knife went round the circle. Even the girls were fascinated.
‘Did they make you kill anyone?’ Werner asked.
Karl looked at him with contempt. ‘You’re such an idiot. Why would we kill anyone?’
‘I’m just asking.’
‘They made us jump off a cliff, though.’
‘Did anyone die?’
Karl ignored him. After he had put the dagger back into its sheath, he suggested they play Search and Destroy. They stood up and milled about for a while, deciding on the names of the units they would pretend to be in. Karl told them the best was called Das Reich. ‘You can do anything you want in it,’ he said. ‘Not even the regular army can tell you what to do.’ He had heard that the élite SS unit couldn’t get into trouble for anything – even killing people.
Paula, who would be ten next spring, said, ‘The Jungmädel is better than Das Reich.’
The boys laughed: the girls’ youth group better than Das Reich? Ridiculous!
Karl tried to imagine Paula riding on a tank as he chose sides for the game. Suddenly the girls realised he was only picking the boys.
‘We’re playing, too,’ Paula demanded.
‘Fetch us some food if you want to join in,’ one of the boys shouted.
‘And don’t forget to wash the dishes,’ Peter added.
Any semblance of order broke down as the girls ran at the boys, who raced off in all directions across the field. When Peter caught a girl at the far end of the field near the woods he said, ‘Pull your pants down and maybe we’ll let you play.’
‘You first,’ she said.
‘The leader doesn’t go first.’
‘Then I shan’t.’
For no apparent