war

A Traitor Lay Dying – a short story

12 March 2021 by villia Leave a Comment

The nurse closed the curtains as the old man struggled for breath. He’d been transferred here two weeks earlier, and the nurse had noticed nobody ever came to visit the man. She arranged the unread magazines next to his bed and filled the galls with water. He moved slightly, and she looked at him as he gestured her to come closer. ‘I need to tell you something,’ he whispered. ‘I have a confession to make.’

‘A confession? I’m not a priest.’

‘Somebody must hear this before I go,’ he whispered.

It was in early spring 1943. Marloes collected a few breads at the back of the bakery and wrapped them in cloth. Her father nervously looked at his watch. ‘Fifteen minutes.’ She smiled and hung the bread basket on her bike.

It wasn’t far from here. The point where they would drop their cargo. She biked along the canal and over the dike until she came to an open field. It was chilly, and she pulled her coat over her ears. She’d done this often enough, but every time it gave her the chills. The distant drone of the engines grew louder, and she looked to the sky. A single airplane appeared from the distance and as it came closer, it dropped the load. A small crate parachuted to the ground. Marloes walked across the field, opened the crate and removed the contents.

The weapons fit nicely under the breads. Someone else would collect the crate after she’d gone. You couldn’t leave these things out here. The Nazis couldn’t be allowed to find it.

Marloes quickly biked back to the village, past a couple of Nazi soldiers that gave her that look only a young woman needs to fear. One of them whistled, but she ignored him. They couldn’t know she was hiding weapons for the resistance in her basket. They never stopped her, never checked. The baker’s daughter was just doing the rounds.

Reaching the outskirts of the village, she followed a path to the windmill. She laid the bike against the fence, took the basket off and walked around to the back, lifted an old wooden hatch and put the weapons down. Someone would come for them after dark.

She closed the hatch and as she stood up, she heard a door open. Turning around, she saw five soldiers approach, pointing their rifles at her. In German, they asked what she was doing. She couldn’t say anything. She froze. Dropped the basket, raised her arms into the air.

‘I am picking up flour for my father.’ Her hands were shaking and the sunny sky seemed to crash down on her.

The soldiers pointed their rifles at her while the officer opened the hatch. She closed her eyes as he reached down. Knew he’d found the guns and ammunition. He stood up, a British gun in his hand, and walked over to her. Stroked her chin and let his finger run down her neck, to her breasts. ‘What a waste,’ he said and smiled.

The nurse looked at the dying man, heard him struggle to speak. ‘She died a few months later in a concentration camp somewhere. I don’t even know which one.’ The old man could hardly breathe, but he had to get his story off his chest. ‘Nobody ever knew I was the one that told them.’ He tried to cough before continuing. ‘I thought I was helping. I really believed their lies. And Marloes, I loved her, but she never even noticed me. I don’t know why I told them, why I betrayed her.’

The nurse said nothing. She stood up, opened the curtains and left the room. He would die alone.

‘I have lived with this ever since,’ he said as she closed the door.

This story is the thenth installment in the Moments series

19 February 1916, 8:07 A.M. – a short story

19 February 2021 by villia Leave a Comment

The distant rumble of bombs and artillery never seems to stop. Every moment of every day, it penetrates my mind. I have been at the front for almost three months and it’s driven me insane.

Sleep didn’t come this night. What good would that do, anyway? While insomnia allows me to experience life, for as long as that lasts, it gives me no pleasure. It’s dark and cold here. What day is it anyway? 12^th of February, I think. I’m not sure. I fear the dawn. It will arrive too soon.

I tried to count the days as I lay awake. 19 years, five months and sixteen days have I been in this world. Should I count the seventeenth day? Tomorrow? 365 times nineteen, add the leap years, I lost count. Try it again. There is nothing else to do.

I tried to look at the photo in my hand, tried to see her face as she smiled at me. Does she worry about me? How will she react when she hears the news after tomorrow? Will she cry? I wish I could hold her in my arms. That’s all I wanted. I wanted to get away, get back to her. Have a normal life, away from this madness.

Will she find someone else?

Dear mom. I’m trying to read the letter you sent two weeks ago, but it’s too dark in here. You were so proud when you saw me in uniform, said I was a real man now. It doesn’t feel like it. The uniform turned me into a monster, not a man. Running away was me trying to get away from this hell, I don’t want to turn into them. There is no sanity in the trenches, just madness. Grown men cry. There is nothing but noise, mud, insanity and death. I was fully expecting to die here, but wasn’t it supposed to be a German shell or a bullet? It wasn’t supposed to end like this.

I see the faint glow on the dirty window above me. I would welcome it, but this dawn brings no sunshine, no warmth, no future. I read the letter again. Posted two weeks ago, but they only gave it to me three days ago. I almost didn’t get to see it. Who knows what else I will miss? Charlie is doing well in school, father had the flu but is getting better. Grandma is worried, but assures me we’ll meet again. Poor soul. I hope she won’t be too sad.

Mr Gilbert also sent a letter a while ago, saying he looked forward to seeing his boy again. Hopefully soon. The bookshop is doing well, considering everything, and he hopes his apprentice comes back shortly to pick up where he left off. He says war makes no sense, the only one I ever heard talk against it. I wish I could walk in through those doors now, smell the old books, wish I could complain about how early in the morning it is and how I don’t want to end up listening to wannabe poets that hang around all day, hoping to gain inspiration by being surrounded by old books, and lonely women looking for fantasy romances as they have none in their lives. I miss Mr Gilbert and would give up everything to be there now, to be tired and grumpy, arranging Shakespeare in chronological order again. I wish my life was boring, as it used to be.

The first rays of the sun light up the dirty glass in the window. They are late. Have they changed their mind? Have they pardoned me? I jump up on the bed to see the outside world. The dead trees, the wet ground. I hear them. Footsteps coming my way. I jump down from the bed, so they won’t think I was running away again. Then I wonder why it would matter. It’s not as if they can give me a harsher sentence or sentence me to death again. The door opens, the Sergeant enters. He is holding a piece of paper, states my name, looks at me. His eyes are cold, like my cell.

‘It is 8:07 A.M.’ He looks at his watch as if to verify that what he’s just said is correct, then he looks at me. ‘The court has charged you with desertion and your sentence is death,’ he states.

I say nothing. Can’t say anything. Two men standing behind him wait until he gives them a signal, then tie my hands behind my back. We then proceed out into the chilly morning. The first rays of the sun kiss my face, but have no warmth to offer. Like the heavens are trying to say goodbye but not caring enough to show emotions.

It’s not that I wanted to run away. I genuinely wanted to fight for king and country, but after months of bombs going off around me, officers that treated me like scum, I couldn’t handle it anymore. I had to get away. Get back home, to my girl, to the bookstore, to the family. I wanted this war to end, to have a family of my own and loved ones around, exchanging presents at Christmas, celebrating another birthday. I hadn’t planned on leaving the trenches when I did. There was heavy fighting and as I lay there, sheltering myself from the flying dirt and bullets, I couldn’t take it anymore. I sat in the knee deep mud, crying. The rain was pouring down, and I was cold, shocked and drained. An officer kicked me and called me a coward, pointed a rifle at me and told me if I didn’t get up he’d shoot me himself. I got up and aimed my rifle across no-man’s-land, fired in the general direction of the enemy. I wasn’t sure who this enemy was and as soon as the officer got a bullet through his head and fell dead next to me; I started crawling away. I got out of sight, stood up and ran. I ran all day until dusk. I was alone in France, no way to get home, but I wasn’t at the front anymore.

They found me the following morning, sleeping in a barn next to cows. The trial was quick, and the general had no problems passing the sentence. They let me rot away in a cell for a week, allowing me time to understand my fate.

‘Cigarette?’ the sergeant asks.

‘Please.’

He unties my hands, warns me not to run. I stand there, in the courtyard, smoking. Trying to make it last as long as possible. This cigarette is the timer, the clock, it shows how much time I have left. I look at the wooden pole, at the holes in the wall behind it. I’m not the first and I won’t be the last.

He smiles sadly as I finish the cigarette, gives the soldiers the order to tie me to the pole. I want to see the sun, but it is behind a wall. I realise I will never see it again. Never see my girl, the rest. Nothing and nobody will come and save me at the last moment. A soldier puts a bag over my head. I try to refuse, but it is procedures.

I try to pray but can’t find any words. Don’t know what to ask for.

‘Ready!’ My heart is beating so loud I can hear it.

‘Aim!’ A dreadful feeling fills my body and mind. Not fear of death, but the thought of the people, my people, the ones I will never see again. My mom that will get a letter saying how sad they are I’d been lost in action. Or will they do that? Do they treat it differently with deserters? Traitors? Will they add shame to her sorrow? Or have I shamed her? My girl…

Or will I become nothing more than a statistic?

‘Fire!’

During the Great War of 1914-1918, almost a thousand soldiers were executed for desertion and other crimes. Around 600 French soldiers were shot at dawn, 306 British and Commonwealth, including 22 Irishmen, 23 Canadians and five New Zealanders. 18 German soldiers were executed. On average, five soldiers were executed every week. Many charges were flimsy and wouldn’t stand up in court. Some are also said to have been framed by officers or fellow soldiers as revenge. Many of the soldiers were as young as 16 or 17 years old. Many deserters suffered from mental breakdown and shell shock – known today as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder – caused by constant bombardment and poor conditions. In many countries, still today, the executed soldiers are not given the same respect as others. They are still seen as traitors.

This story is the seventh installment in the Moments series.

Blood and Rain is (almost) here

1 February 2017 by villia Leave a Comment

It’s taken a while. It always takes a while. Writing a novel is an exercise in carefully selecting the right words. 50-100.000 of them. I could probably do it faster if I didn’t have a family and a job, but no matter. This is a milestone. It is a huge deal to write a novel. They say everyone has a story in them and if you’re lucky enough to be able to write the words, you may possibly end up with a coherent story to tell.

Doing it again is another matter altogether. Your story has been told. Now, come up with another one.

Blood and Rain - paperback — Blood and Rain – paperback

Blood and Rain was born out of two things. I wanted to see if I could do it again and I was curious about the Spanish Civil War. Like most, I knew very little about it. I knew it had happened, but little more. So I started digging. I imagined the people stuck there, in that time and place. We are all prisoners of the times we live in, but what was it like to be there at that time?

The horrors revealed themselves. The massacres, atrocities, people’s endless thirst for a good life and just society. I saw how women were embraced, how they gained equal rights, how the oppression of the church was broken back, but also how the churches were burned and priests murdered, how internal squabbles destroyed the dream of an anarchist utopia. I learned to appreciate Federico García Lorca and other characters caught up in the war. I learned about Guernica and how Spain was used as a testing ground for weapons to be used during the Second World War.

I had to create a character and put him in there.

Research is a wonderful thing. I learned about Biblia del Oso, the Bible of the Bear. The first Bible printed in Spanish, by a man that had escaped the Spanish Inquisition.

Heck, this project has inspired me to start learning the language.

Blood and Rain was a labour of love. I fell in love with Spain, Barcelona and the people of Catalonia. I hope the novel will be read and I dream of it being translated into Spanish some day.

Blood and Rain will be published on 3 March 2017.

Berlin – 25 Years of Freedom

9 November 2014 by villia Leave a Comment

Growing up in the shadow of the atomic bomb was an odd experience. I remember sitting in a sand box, playing with a plastic shovel. Possibly eating the black volcanic sand. Another kid said the Russians had more bombs than the Americans. That was scary, because the Russians were the enemy. He said they could wipe out a whole city with one bomb and they had thousands. I probably took a mouthful of sand at that moment. It was the first time I realised that life was dangerous and that the world could actually come to an end.

Later, in my teens, I would read the back of the phone books. They had instructions on what to do in the event of a nuclear attack. Paint the windows they said, then stay away from the windows, cover yourself. Afterwards, see if anyone needed help. They explained how to treat burn wounds and avoid radiation. I wondered if the best thing wouldn’t be to go outside and enjoy the fireworks. Better than survive and die of burns or radiation sickness.

I remember a story from the Cuban Missile Crisis. Someone apparently sat down on the sofa, TV turned on. Gun and a bottle of whisky. Prepared to drink the bottle in no time and use the gun if they announced that the bombs were on the way. Better be gone before the blast got you.

That was the paranoia. The fear. Thankfully, we have been spared this madness for 25 years now. When the Berlin Wall fell, the cold war fizzled out and we could become friends with the east. We could finally accept that Russians were people too. It has been a bumpy ride, ups and downs, crisis here and there, but the threat of nuclear war vanished shortly after 20.000 people crossed Bösebrücke, 25 years ago today.

But there are two things bothering me tonight, on this great anniversary. The first, and most obvious, is that we seem to be heading for another cold war. A pointless and unnecessary confrontation between east and west.

The other thing is that the wall probably wouldn’t have come down, had the east German politburo not made the mistake of telling people they were free to go west. People rose up after being told it was OK. The time had come, communism was crumbling, Poland was experiencing martial laws due to civil unrest, the borders between Hungary and Austria were already open, making the Berlin wall mostly obsolete, but people gathered and the border guards gave up on the day authorities said they could.

What if Günter Schabowski had not said the borders were open? How long would it have taken for the public to denounce their oppressors? How long would the GDR have survived?

The Berlin Wall fell, South-Africa denounced apartheid, but one major wall of shame remains. The one keeping Palestinians trapped. Will they ever be free?

And will we ever be free of the invisible walls we are trapped by? The fear of doing what we think is right? The fear of standing up to authorities that treat us like subjects in a George Orwell novel? Hopefully, some day, we will break down our own private walls of fear. Then the rest will follow.

Happy anniversary, Berlin! See you in three days.
(Photos in this post are taken from my film that will be shown at the Berlin interfilm festival next week)

History is Fiction?

14 September 2013 by villia Leave a Comment

The end of WW2 is fascinating. Much more twisted and less clean than most will imagine. A simple search into most historical events reveal details that completely change our perception.

History is indeed written by the victors.

So, here is a short example of clean cut events that turn out to be anything but straightforward.

– Patton was an American general and wiped out nazis in France after D-Day.
– Wanting to advance into Germany in 1944 and beat the Russians to Berlin, he is stopped by Eisenhower, the supreme commander. Denied fuel, so he was stuck. This allowed the Germans to regroup and the winter of 44-45 became the bloodiest of the war. Patton’s plan would have prevented eastern Europe falling under communism.
– In spring 1945, the German army was captured. Eisenhower ordered that they get no food, water or shelter. Thousands died of starvation, dehydration and exposure. It was concentration camps all over again, but nobody ever talked about it. Patton was furious, defied orders and freed POWs in his area. Eisenhower was not pleased.
– Patton was planning to report on mismanagement and atrocities on return to the USA.
He never got around to it as he was injured in a car accident in December 1945. Other passengers escaped unharmed, but Patton broke his neck. Years later, a man came forwards and said he’d driven an army truck into Patton’s car. He also shot him in the neck with some projectile. He was following orders.
As Patton seemed to be recovering, he died suddenly. Same man says the Russians poisoned him. A Cadillac expert from Detroit has said that the car in the Patton Museum in not the car he was in during the accident.
– Five documents regarding the accident are missing from the US archives.
– Eisenhower became president in 1953. That would never have happened, had Patton lived.
– One of his first acts was to have a democratically elected government in Iran removed, installing the shah, a dictator. It set the course for the next decades, destablising regions of the world.

When you connect enough dots, you start seeing a picture. What you see usually makes the official version of events look pretty cartoonish.

9/11 and the Peace it Brought

11 September 2013 by villia Leave a Comment

I remember 9/11. My mom called me from another country and told me to turn on the TV. Turn on the TV? She didn’t have the same stations I did, so I was confused. What station, I asked? Any. Doesn’t matter, she replied.

The image appeared on the screen just in time to see the first tower collapse. Then the other. I saw them coming down more often than I care to remember. Endless replays of the collapse of western civilisation. I didn’t understand why, but I did understand that the world would never be the same again.

Afghanistan was attacked shortly afterwards. Nobody was surprised, nobody saw anything wrong with it. What happened next surprised everyone.

The president called for a worldwide summit on peace. Every nation on earth was invited. Religious and humanitarian organisations were represented. As thousands of delegates arrived in New York in the summer of 2003, we didn’t expect much. We’d seen too many peace talks go wrong. There was the Israel/Palestine thing, the Al-Queda thing. Clashes of civilisations and religions. Surely, this would fail like any previous attempts at world peace. But it didn’t.

It succeeded because we had seen the horrors of war and hatred.

A massive plan of redistributing wealth, basic healthcare worldwide and clean water was laid out. It was a huge undertaking, but the effects are clear. With world hunger almost eradicated, we have managed to remove the reasons for people to radicalise. The world isn’t perfect, there are still clashes here and there, but there are no wars between nations. No civil wars.

The road to global prosperity is long and winding, but we are on the right path. Thanks to politicians that chose peace in the early weeks of 2003. Just imagine what the world would be like if 9/11 had been used to justify endless wars, like some conspiracy theorists were predicting at the time.

The text above is wishful thinking after the fact. Naive, some may say. But if we stop dreaming of peace, we’ll never have it. Let’s hope that the ultimate legacy of 9/11 will indeed be peace and understanding, not endless wars.