We Were the Lucky Ones

Addy switches on his headlamp, willing himself to stay positive. It has become easy to think the worst. He mustn’t fall into that trap. And so, rather than imagine his parents and sisters evicted from their home and slaving away in some kitchen or factory under the Wehrmacht’s watch, he thinks of Radom—the old Radom, the one he remembers. He thinks of how springtime in his hometown has always been his favorite time of year, for it is the season of Seder dinners and of birthdays—his and Halina’s. Spring is when the Radomka and Mleczna Rivers flanking the city run high, feeding the city’s rye fields and orchards, and when the domes of the horse chestnuts bordering Warszawska Street begin to leaf, offering shade to patrons perusing the ground-floor shops for leathers, soaps, and wristwatches. Spring is when the flower boxes adorning the balconies on Malczewskiego Street overflow with crimson-red poppies—a welcome reprieve after the long, gray winters; when Ko?ciuszki Park bustles with vendors selling pickled cucumbers, shredded beets, smoked cheese, and sour rye-meal mash at the Thursday market; when the Kurcs’ neighbor Anton invites the children in the building to see his hatchlings, which barely even look like birds, all tiny and dusted in cream-colored down, unable, even, to hold up their heads. When he was a boy, Addy loved watching as Anton’s flock of doves would fly from his window up to the eaves of the building’s steepled rooftop, where they’d coo softly, presiding for a few minutes over the courtyard before returning through the window to the wooden crate their keeper had built for them.

Addy smiles at the memories but is jolted back to the present, the images vanishing as a sound filters into his consciousness. A rustle. He stiffens and halts, lifting his elbow to ninety degrees, palm forward, fingertips skyward. In an instant the soldiers behind him freeze. Addy cocks his chin, listening. There it is again, the rustling, coming from a cluster of elder bushes at the base of a cypress a few meters ahead. He toggles his rifle’s safety to the off position.

“Ready,” he whispers in Polish, resting his index finger gently on the metal curve of his trigger and aiming its muzzle at the shrubbery. Behind him, the soft click of twelve safeties sliding off. The rustle continues. Addy contemplates shooting but decides to wait. What if it’s just a raccoon—or a child?

A year ago, he could count on the fingers of one hand the times he’d carried a gun. When Addy was growing up, his uncle occasionally invited him and his brothers to go pheasant hunting, and while Genek seemed to enjoy the sport, Addy and Jakob preferred to stay back, warm by the fire, finding the whole process of flushing a bird from its cover unappealing. Now, to think about the responsibility he assumes every time he points his rifle makes his head spin.

He and his men train their barrels on the cluster of bushes and wait. After a minute, something small appears at the base of one of the bushes, triangular, black, and shiny. A moment later, a pair of lower branches part and a hound dog emerges. He sniffs at the darkening sky, then glances nonchalantly over his shoulder at the men staring at him, at the thirteen muzzles aimed in his direction. Addy exhales, grateful he hadn’t been quick to shoot. He lowers his rifle. “You scared us there, kapitan,” he offers, but the hound, uninterested, turns and trots along the road, headed east.

“We have a new guide,” Cyrus jokes, from the rear. “Captain Paws.” A murmur of laughter.

“Let’s go,” Addy calls. Safeties are reset and the men march on, the air around them filled again with the steady lilt of boots meeting the earth.

Overhead, the cloud cover is thick. The air is cool and smells of rain. In another kilometer or two, Addy decides, they’ll set up camp, before they lose their light, before the rain comes. In the meantime, he lets his mind slip to Toulouse, thinking of how different his life is now from how it was six months ago.

Addy had reluctantly left his apartment on Rue de Rémusat on the fifth of November and reported for duty in Parthenay with the Second Polish Rifle Division of the French Army, the 2DSP, on the sixth as he was ordered. After eight weeks of basic training, he was awarded an official uniform of the French Army and assigned, thanks to his engineering degree and to his fluency in both French and Polish, the rank of sergent de carrière, which put him in charge of twelve sous-officiers. Addy enjoyed the company of the others in the 2DSP; surrounding himself with a group of young Poles filled a tiny bit of the void that had consumed him since being denied the right to return home—but that was about all he found comforting about the army. While he did his best to mask it, his rifle felt awkward in his hands, and when his captain barked orders in his direction, his instinct was to laugh. During drills, he found himself composing music in his head to distract himself from the monotony of wind sprints and target practice. Despite his distaste for the military, though, he found the days passed more enjoyably if he embraced the routine. After a while, he wore his double chevron stripes with a modicum of pride, and discovered that he was actually quite good at leading his small squad. Good, at least, at the logistics of it all—at getting his men from point a to point b, and in the meantime, discovering their strengths and delegating jobs. When they were on the move, for example, Bartek started the fires each night at camp. Padlo cooked. Novitski climbed the tallest tree in the vicinity to confirm that the lookout was clear. Sloboda schooled his men on how to safely pull the pin on the WZ-33 grenades they carried on their belts, and on what to do should a bullet get stuck in the barrel of their Berthiers in a squib load malfunction. And Cyrus, the best of the lot if Addy had to choose, called out marching songs to kill time. Thus far the favorites were “Marsz Pierwszej Brygady” and, of course, Poland’s most patriotic anthem, “Bo?e co? Polsk?.”

A couple of days ago, Addy’s platoon, among the others of 2DSP, was ordered to march fifty kilometers east to Poitiers. Addy guesses they’ve about twenty more kilometers to cover. From Poitiers they’ll continue some seven hundred kilometers farther by military convoy to Belfort, on the Swiss border, and from Belfort they are to join up with the French Eighth Army in Colombey-les-Belles, a city not far from the German border that lay on France’s Maginot Line of defense. Addy has never been to Poitiers, Belfort, or Colombey-les-Belles, but he’s studied them on the map. They’re not close.

“Cyrus!” Addy yells over his shoulder, in need of a distraction. “A tune, please.”

From the back of the line comes a “Yes, sir!” and after a moment’s pause, a whistle. At the sound of the first notes, Addy’s ears perk up. He recognizes the tune immediately. The piece is called List. It’s his. The others recognize it, too, and join in, and the whistling becomes louder.

Addy smiles. He hasn’t told anyone about his dream of being a composer, or about the piece he wrote before the war, a big enough success, apparently, for his platoon to know it by heart. Perhaps it’s a sign, Addy thinks. Perhaps hearing it now is an indication that it’s only a matter of time before he reconnects with his family. It’s a song about a letter, after all. The knot in Addy’s chest loosens. He hums along with his men, scripting his next letter home as he marches: You won’t believe, Mother, what I heard today in the field. . . .





MAY 10, 1940: The Nazis invade the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. Despite Allied defenses, the Netherlands and Belgium surrender within the month.

JUNE 3, 1940: The Nazis bomb Paris.

JUNE 22, 1940: The French and German governments reach an armistice, dividing France into a “free zone” in the south under the puppet leadership of Marshal Petain, based in Vichy, and a German-controlled “occupied zone” in the north and along the French Atlantic coast.





CHAPTER TWELVE


    Genek and Herta


   Lvov, Soviet-Occupied Poland ~ June 28, 1940




The knock comes in the middle of the night. Genek’s eyes snap open. He and Herta sit up in bed, blinking into the darkness. Another knock, and then, an order.

“Otkroitie dveri!”

Genek kicks himself free of the bedsheet and fumbles in the dark for the chain on his bedside lamp, squinting as his eyes adjust to the light. The air in the small room is hot, stagnant; with the blackout still in effect in Lvov, their curtains are permanently drawn. There is no such thing anymore as sleeping with the windows open. He runs the back of his hand across his forehead, wiping away a film of sweat.

“You don’t think . . .” Herta whispers, but she’s interrupted by more shouting.

“Narodnyy Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del!” The voice outside is loud enough to wake the neighbors.

Genek curses. Herta’s eyes are wide. It’s them. The secret police. They climb out of bed.

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