The Hells of Valhalla

The Hells of Valhalla

“Im 19. Jahrhundert war die Nation ein Glaube, die Kunst gab ihr Ausdruck”
"In the 19th Century the nation was a belief. Art expressed that belief."
Jörg Traeger

Exhausted, Lieutenant Alfred D. Lopez of the US Third Army advancing on Kronach accommodated the M1 carbine besides him on the trench. The US Ninth Armored Division had completed the difficult task of passing the Remagen Bridge. The 62 soldiers in his Company, grouped into four platoons had seen an unusual number of casualties. Crossing and capturing Wernberg was even more difficult. The Luftwaffe planes had been excruciatingly accurate in their attacks. The new Hornisse planes had devastating firepower not known before during the war. The platoon he commanded had lost three more soldiers and now only ten remained. They had been disconnected from the rest of platoons so he decided to function as two squads of five soldiers each. Ahead of them lay the hills and forests of Regensburg, then, to the south, the Danube River and even further south, Munich, their final destination. The orders were to capture everything and kill any Nazi opposition they encountered on the way. It was the morning of April 24th 1945.

He was so far away from his beloved country in both time and space, in the end one and the same. He had not seen his native country since leaving on a cloudy morning of May 1933, at fourteen years of age, departing on the cargo Orly off of the port of Bluefields in the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua and sailing to New Orleans where his father had a sister. His father Thomas never married his mother, Janice. Thomas had a family of his own and Alfred did not discover the existence of the word concubine until many years after leaving his hometown. At least Thomas had provided him with a one hundred dollar bill he hid in his right sock before boarding the ship. Only his younger brother Adolph, the accomplice of so many adventures, had come to bid him farewell. There he is on the soiled wood planks of the port not able to lift his hand and wave. A tear slides on his cheek, a tear he quickly wipes with his left shoulder.

“Lieutenant, sir?” asked Private Johnson sitting to his left in the trench, extending his right hand with two cigarettes between his fingers “Yes, soldier” he answered with closed eyes “Care for a smoke, sir? These are my two last ones. I don’t want them to go to waste on some Nazi’s mouth”. After a second he caressed his moustache as if combing it with the thumb and index fingers of the right hand. “Sure, Danke schoen! Thank you very much”. He was completely fluent in German. He had shown ability with languages at an early age while helping Janice with the food and trinkets store she ran from her home. Bluefields had been a British Possession for many years during the eighteen and nineteen centuries and most of the population spoke English only. The three other languages widely spoken were Miskito, Sumo and Rama, the tongue of the aborigines or native inhabitants of the region. A busy port for American and Canadian ships, Bluefields was a mixture of many races and languages. Dutch and German traders, Chinese and Lebanese merchants, Spanish and French engineers, and politicians from both parties that arrived from the capital, Managua, had made of cosmopolitan Bluefields their permanent home. Alfred spoke most of those languages or understood them. Learning German as part of his training in the Army was relatively easy.

Private Johnson lit a match on his boot and moved it closer to Alfred’s mouth, carefully cupping it with his hands. He was a very personable boy from Casper, Wyoming. His bright blue eyes seemed brighter behind his dirty face. Alfred mimicked the same cup with both hands and inhaled deeply, as if getting ready to plunge into The Pool, that darn pond of cold water hidden in the rainforest close to Bluefields. He let the smoke out in an exhalation that lasted as long as the inhalation did, emptying his lungs of all smoke and emotions. Once, as kids, he had to pull his little brother Adolph out of treacherous waters of The Pool. He was teaching him how to swim and encouraged a jump from a tree bending over the water. When Adolph didn’t come out he jumped hurriedly and brought him to the edge semi-unconscious. A group of boys gathered around pushing each other “Is he dead?” As he pressed his chest frantically, streams of water and saliva came out of Adolph’s mouth, between coughs and convulsions. Alfred was the town’s hero after that and people would let him get away with anything. “Hello Alfred! Nein, nein you don’t owe me anything, it’s on me!” said the Dutch owner of the bread store. “Mistel Lopez, Mistel Lopez, pleez tell youl mothel new close line heel, filst two yalds, flee fol hel, to honol you!” said Jin Wang from the clothes store. His eyes were closed again, trying to catch some rest after hours of sleep deprivation. “Death tunes her violin” murmured Alfred eyes closed again. “Sir?” asked Johnson confused. “Death says: I will play an old song that has no end, I will play it in the air, on the earth, at the sea” continued Alfred slowly and then explained in a faster tone “It’s a war poem written by a Nicaraguan poet who fought in World War I”. Private Johnson was puzzled “I didn’t know you were a poet… Nicaragua? Is that where you are from? Where is that?”Alfred lifted his left hand palm facing away from him “This is the USA” then he took the cigarette to his mouth and kept it between his lips. He placed his right hand below the left “This is Mexico, and my right elbow is Nicaragua”. “Ah! It’s in South America!” Private Johnson grinned “Yeah!” Alfred conceded dismantling the map, taking the smoke again with his hand, not bothering to explain the difference between Central and South America. Private Johnson stood up to stretch his back. “The machine guns opened fire” continued Alfred in his head when he heard a whistling and then a deaf thud. Something heavy fell by his feet splashing his face with mud. He opened his eyes to see Private Johnson’s spasms in a pool of muck, blood regurgitating out of his mouth, a nasty hole in his neck also vomiting blood at the rhythm of the heart.

At sixteen Alfred had lied about his age in order to be accepted in the Army. When World War II broke out in 1939 he had been in service for four years already. He had been chosen to study German and soldiers with his skills were in high demand. After helping England with code deciphering he was sent into enemy territory when Pearl Harbor marked the end of American neutrality. “Medic! Medic!” he frantically yelled throwing the cigarette and placing both hands on the private’s jugular artery, blood sneaking through his fingers. “We’ve been spotted sir! It’s a bird’s nest sir. Must be a Maschinengewehr 42!” he heard Sergeant Miller shout from the other extreme of the trench they had excavated. “Everybody keep down! Nazi nest ahead!” he ordered. He could hear the clicks of everybody’s weapons getting ready to respond. Medic Smith arrived almost crawling from the left. Suddenly bullets started falling all over, shrieking above their heads and lifting masses of dirt like mini-explosions, arrows of lead fired from the hill 200 feet ahead of them. “O’Brien is down! O’Brien is down!” yelled Miller again. The bullets came in a second ferocious barrage seeking to obliterate the voices uttering English. It lasted for an eternity. Silence. “Creeping along the mud of no-man’s-land, staying still like a dead tree trunk” the poem kept reeling in Alfred’s mind. He signaled the others to stay down, still and quiet. Smith moved his head left to right while piercing into Alfred’s eyes and covering Johnson’s face with his jacket.

The sun was setting behind the black forest. Alfred had ordered a reconnaissance squad to go around the nest and try to surprise it from the flank. He and the other squad would approach from the other flank in a classical pliers maneuver. As they drew near, they saw a group of four German soldiers whispering among them. A fifth soldier manned the M42. But Castillo in squad two cracked a dry branch with his boot alerting the Nazis who discovered them “Achtung! Amerikaner!” and hell broke loose. It was bullets and yells, running and ducking, “Fire! Fire!” Alfred commanded from the other flank leading squad one. The nest was caught between two lines of fire. The soldier at the M42 aimed his infernal weapon towards Castillo and pulled the trigger. Branches fell, dirt flew, blood splattered, rifles were split in half, “I’m hit, I’m hit!” it was pandemonium, “Feuer! Beschuss Amerikaner!”, “Castillo! Move! Move!”, “Ich moechte leichen Amerikaner!” Alfred ordered “Retreat! Retreat! Pull back! now!” A German grenade exploded close by, Miller’s head was obliterated, his body stood still for a few seconds before falling to the ground, inert. Squad two kept firing, three Nazis fell to the ground, their uniforms thrashed by the bullets, the green splattered with red, “Sein verwundet!” Alfred took O’Brien, who was limping, his right foot missing, by the arm and pulled him away into the forest. Squad two retreated firing from the other side. The M42 was like a dragon breathing on their necks, their fangs wide open throwing flames at their backs.

They reached the trench breathless. A few seconds later Private Green arrived, he was bleeding from his right side. “Where are the others?” Alfred asked. Green started to cry incontrollable “They are dead, sir, all dead...! Fields, Nixon, Crawford, Castillo all dead!” From squad one no one else returned. He was down to three men, including him, two of which were seriously wounded. “I’m no hero” he thought “I can’t even take care of my men”.

“Thrown in the dirt, there are many men vomiting their lungs out, they shudder prisoners of the tremors of death, we the unharmed remain in our positions, wearing no masks, we bless the rum they offer us, with eyes injected in blood we scrutinize the front lines: the poplars are disappeared, our bayonets lost their luster” Walking on his toes Alfred approached the drawer, he pulled it out slowly as to not to wake up a newborn. His mother was next to him taking a nap on her rocking chair. The temperature was 96 degrees and humid, the vertical sunrays of Bluefileds midday were like a hot press grilling everything down. He took two, five, ten cents and left the rest intact. As he was pushing the drawer in a customer came in “Good afternoon Mrs. Leticia!” It was Andy Bowie, the electrician whom Leticia had admonished to do some handyman work. Leticia opened her eyes and saw Alfred, he was caught in fraganti. She said nothing, she stood up, took Alfred by the right ear, he let the coins go, they started to fall, he saw their sparkle in the distance, he saw the small table made of poplar wood pass by, he saw the kitchen and the wooden fire live, he saw his mother move away the stew that was brewing, he saw Leticia hold his right hand by the wrist, he saw his hand forced on the red hot coals. “That will show you!” He never took money from the drawer again. He never touched money with that hand again.

Night fell again and the trench seemed like the most solitary place on Earth. It was a dark cell in the openness of the universe, it was a capsule fired to the moon above, it was a coffin closing in on them, American soldiers in a strange land, on him, a poor boy from Bluefields who would die an unknown soldier. “O’Brien is dead, sir” came Miller’s voice from his left in the dark “I guess the tourniquet didn’t work, uh?” He turned to his right “Green, are you holding up?” But Green did not answer. “We need to go back and look for the other platoons, Miller” decided Alfred like a shot in the dark, “We are done here, this is not our war anymore, the Nazis can have their country, their empire, I’m leaving this stupid war”, but Miller only smiled. Alfred fell asleep.

The hour was undefined, it is that time at which it could be dawn or it could be dusk. “Sir, I found something you’d like” whispered Miller on his ear “Follow me, this way”. He took his rifle. The black forest seemed an enchanted place, like the ones described in the brothers Grimm stories he used to read in school. Forests that are dark but the moon illuminates your path, branches that appear menacing, but you talk to them and they are friendly. They came to an opening in the cloud of trees and saw a tall majestic concrete structure. Thick slabs upon thick slabs, the upper smaller than the lower, like a pyramid. There were stairs hidden behind the slabs to both sides. They merged into a central stair that had over twenty steps. At the end of the stair and on top of the last slab there was a temple similar to the Parthenon he had seen also in books at school. It had nine columns in the Doric style, forty feet in height, supporting a frontispiece with a frieze decorated with human figures. On top of the columns there was a sloped roof. The temple was surrounded by a colonnade. They walked the long corridors and counted nine columns in the front and the back and nineteen on each of the long sides. The front entrance was open, two wooden doors, twelve feet high and four feet wide each, heavily adorned with figures, flowers, and all sort of animals. They entered a gallery that was forty feet wide and eighty feet long, it had a black and white marble floor, the walls were also marble but pink in color. The walls were fifteen feet high and ended in a white marble frontispiece that supported a second floor open to the one below. The roof was pitched supported by gigantic wood trusses. A skylight, fifteen feet wide and twenty feet long let in a magical light that allowed seeing everything inside. All the walls in both floors were adorned with white plaques and busts in marble.
“Sir, look here!” Miller called pointing to a plaque

Hermann (18 BC/17 BC - AD 21) chieftain of the Cherusci, who defeated a Roman army in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest.

“What is this place?” asked Alfred amazed by the magnificence and strangeness of the temple. “Look at this one” called Miller

Alaric I (370 AD) King of the Visigoths from 395–410 and the first Germanic leader to take the city of Rome.

“This appears to be some kind of gallery of personalities. Not all are German, though” continued Alfred curious, this one in Hungarian

Heilige Elisabeth von Ungarn (July 7, 1207 – November 17, 1231) German Catholic saint.

“Willkommen!” they heard a voice behind them. Both turned startled aiming their weapons to the man who spoke. “Oh! Don’t worry, I am not armed” say the man holding his hands open palms up “My name is Ludwig, and I am the keeper of this palace. We have not had any visitors for quite some time. I hear rumors about a great war being fought out there?” He continued not allowing opportunity for a response “Wie schade! Europe has been at war since… well, forever! This palace is a reminder to humanity that the greatness of men and women should be beyond power, war and destruction. You will find many warriors in here. But they had war as their mission”. Alfred asked “You mean to tell me you know nothing about the war?” “I mean to tell you” Ludwig said “that I know way too much about war. That is the reason I built this place”. “I thought you were just a keeper”, asked Alfred. “A keeper, a builder it is the same. Let’s say this is my challenge to conventional reality and values, including the war outside”. Alfred was still puzzled “The war doesn’t come inside?” “The war outside is not relevant inside, it is not relevant in my mind, in my reality. It should not be in yours either” My mission is to not let the war come I. What is your mission?” Ludwig asked. “My mission is to capture Munich” Alfred responded quickly. “But the more I think about it, the more I hate this mission. Why should man kill man? Why should I put a halt to Hitler? Germans should do that themselves!” “You mean Muenchen? I don’t think you are looking far enough, Let me show something” Ludwig started to walk away followed by Alfred. Miller was close behind. The busts and plaques were countless, the diversity of names dizzying: Alboin, King of the Lombards, Beda Venerabilis, monk and scholar, Eginhard, historian, Veleda, prophetess of the Batavian rebellion. There were too many to keep up. Ludwig van Beethoven, composer, Erasmus of Rotterdam, humanist, Anthony van Dyck, Flemish painter, Immanuel Kant, philosopher, the busts went on. They arrived to a sort of workshop that contained different tools for sculpting and several blocks of marble, some intact, other half worked on, a face emerging here, a nose there, an eye here. “This is where we create the next busts and plaques. We all vote every year to add someone or something. Some years there is nothing or no one of value, so we wait another year. We have not added anything for a few years. We are afraid we will have to add a few names after your war is over. You see men and women of all trades here, philosophers, writers, scientists, saints, monks, bishops, kings, and warriors, many, many warriors. But for them war is revolt against the establishment, against Roman occupation or some other despot, not necessarily a means to power and control, but a means to freedom. If you read the lives of these men and women you will find out that these warriors are mystics, and these mystics are warriors. All wars are stupid, yes, but some wars can only be stopped by other wars. You have to fight for the spiritual values you believe in. Do not be afraid to fight fire with fire. Do not waste your time playing other realities, build your own”. Alfred saw a plaque half made, the name Widerstand was fully engraved on it “German Resistance? Against Hitler?” he asked “How do you know…?” Ludwig put his index finger to his lips “Don’t ask too much, I am not allowed to discuss with you any further. Find your mission and carry on. It may be a bloody mission, but it is needed. Remember what your admired poet said: peace is a porcelain doll that men broke to play with cannons and airplanes, submarines and tanks. Peace is a game, war another game. Men will make them another doll to brake when they get tired of peace. Millions of Germans have died fighting Hitler. They need your help, not just French, Jews, Polish, and Russian, Germans too. It is getting late. It is time for you to go back. You should leave Miller behind too, I can use a hand here” Ludwig asked.

It was a beautiful morning despite the mud and the drizzling rain. The sky was painted with light blue colors and a rainbow covered half of the firmament. “The whole world must be feeling what I feel now” the reel came back “I have seen the sky! Isn’t it simple the secret of art? What a discovery, to give yourself to the heat until burning up, that is the secret of mysticism”. He readied his weapon, adjusted his jacket and helm. He bid farewell to the fallen in the mud and gave them a military salute. Then he stood, got out of the trench, and initiated the march towards the hill.