"Once we have a war there is only one thing to do. It must be won. For defeat brings worse things than any that can ever happen in war." -Ernest Hemingway
Richter and his little brother, Martin always wanted to wear the field grey. It's his family's legacy.
His grandfather, Friedrich Richter, served in the Prussian Army during the wars of unification. Richter had seen old photographs of his grandfather in the spiked helmet and dark blue uniform.
Friedrich had told Richter and his brother many stories when he was a boy. How a soldier served not for himself but for something greater. For the fatherland.
His father, Wilhelm, had followed that same path. He enlisted in 1914, just as the Great War began. He'd marched into France with millions of others, believing it would be over soon.
Wilhelm was a man of few words. He rarely talked much about the war. But Richter had seen the scars and the way his father's hands shook sometimes when it rained, and the limp from the shrapnel that had bit through his leg at Somme.
Wilhelm made it home with an Iron Cross. The war made him bitter, is mother told Richter. He hated the French. Hated the British. Hated the Treaty of Versailles, which damn near destroyed Germany. But what he hated the most was the puppet state, the Weimar Republic.
When he was small, he would often play soldier in the streets with the other boys and his brother. His friends, family, and almost everyone he knew were in awe of the Führer in the 1930s. It seemed only natural that he joined the Wehrmacht. A year later, his brother Martin did too.
Poland fell in weeks. He had been there. Then his unit was pulled to France. From victory to victory, Germany prevailed. It felt unstoppable. It would never end. How could it? Not when the wins came so easily. Germany was finally taking back what had been stolen. What was right fully theirs. The humiliation of Versailles was felt like a distant memory of antiquity.
Then Martin's unit got sent to North Africa.
Richter never saw his brother again.
The letter came in 1942. Martin had been killed at some godforsaken place called El Alamein, fighting the British under Rommel. His body was buried somewhere in the desert. That was all the letter had said. Nothing about how he died, just that he was gone.
He felt sorry for their mother, who had wept for days. His father had gone silent, locked himself in his study, coming out only for meals. At least that was what he had heard from his uncle and from Greta.
By then, he was promoted to command an entire platoon. First Lieutenant Richter, fresh from the Russian front, was redeployed west to fortify the Atlantic Wall before the invasion. His commanding officers noted that he was a reliable, competent platoon leader. The kind of officer with sound tactical judgment.
But somewhere during those last few years, something changed.
It started small at first. Orders that didn't make sense. Supplies that never arrived. Reports of losses that were covered up or sugar-coated. The loss of territory was disheartening and obvious though. It seemed they began to lose it all just as quickly as they gained it.
Then came Hitler's counterattacks. Desperate attempts to turn the tide. Operation after operation, they had watched as good soldiers die. Watched them charge into machine gun fire because someone in a bunker far away had ordered it.
The Normandy landings in 1944 had been the beginning of the end. The Americans and British had poured onto the beaches. The Atlantic Wall crumbled, while Richter was stationed several miles away, guarding against a supposed second invasion that never happened. Greta's letters were what kept him going, but hated lying to her about the state of the war.
By late 1944, Richter and many of the senior officers saw the writing on the wall. They weren't going to win this war. But he kept serving. Because he didn't know what else to do.
In early 1945, he was transferred back to Berlin. His home. The Eastern Front was overextended and undermanned, and was crumbling day by day. The Soviets were coming. And Berlin was going to be their heroic final stand.
That's when he met Greta again.
They'd known each other since childhood and grew up together in the same neighborhood. She was the daughter of a baker. Greta had a calm and peaceful quality about her that he could never put into words. He had liked her even back then, but he'd been too shy to say anything until much later.
When he came home on leave in 1940, he'd seen her again. They were both twenty-one. Children playing at being adults. She'd grown up. So had he. They'd started talking. Writing letters when he was away. And in 1941, on another brief leave, he'd asked her to marry him.
She said yes.
They'd gotten married in a small church in Berlin. Their parents, a few friends, and her sisters were there. Greta had worn a simple white dress. Richter had worn his uniform.
It was a good day. One of the last "good days".
After that, he'd been shuffled across Europe. Russia. Poland again. And France. Greta waited for him. Wrote him letters every week. Told him about her day-to-day life and the bakery, and about the neighbors. In time, her letters turned darker, filled with talk of the bombing raids. And then they stopped coming altogether. None of them had received a letter for months.
He'd sneaked out to see her a few times while he was stationed in Berlin. He'd told her to leave the city to go west, to his aunt's house in Bavaria. Somewhere safer.
But she'd refused.
By March, the fighting got fierce and desperate, and he could no longer see her. They would hold the line for as long as possible.
The Red Army had surrounded Berlin in April. Street by street, they boxed them in. Richter and what was left of his unit had fought in the ruins. They'd win a skirmish here and there only to be thrown back by the sheer weight of the Red Army's numbers.
His last commanding officer had been killed by a sniper. Most of his men were dead or scattered. Richter and a handful of other officers had tried to regroup, tried to find some kind of command structure that still existed. Some fled like cowards.
That's when the Soviets captured them.
They'd been holed up in a basement, planning their next move. The door had burst open, and Soviet soldiers had poured in, shouting and pointing rifles.
They raised their hands and surrendered. As they were being temporarily held in what looked like a former government building, Richter kept wondering if Greta had safely made it out of Berlin.
He hoped she'd gotten away. Found somewhere safer.
He thought about the apartment they shared. The small kitchen where she'd make breakfast. The window looked out over the street. The bed where they'd slept, her head on his chest, his arm around her.
He wanted to grow old with her. Have children and watch them grow up in a peaceful Germany. He was done with war.
The rifles were still aimed at him. The soldiers were still waiting for the command from the soviet captain. The sound of the mouth organ was ringing in his ears.