Opening Moves

The scraping effect of her smashed canopy slowed the aircrafts passage but held no advantages for Budanova. She died a painful but reasonably swift death, broken, crushed and suffocated in her cockpit by the heavy press of gathered earth. She did not feel the heat when the now stationary aircraft started to burn around her.

Too late to fight in the war, she had merely become a statistic in the peace but was the catalyst to something that had very far-reaching consequences.

Chapter 31 – THE OPPORTUNITY

The secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.

Benjamin Disraeli

2155 hrs Friday, 3rd August 1945, Soviet POW Camp, Ex- OFLAG XVIIa, Edelbach, Soviet Occupied Lower Austria.

Uhlmann and Braun stood closely together sharing a cigarette and talking about Braun’s wife to be. Krystal Uhlmann, Rolf’s sister, had been immediately attracted to Braun, and the feeling was mutual. For conventions sake, the relationship had been kept secret or Braun might have had to leave the unit, but neither man permitted their future ties to interfere with their professional soldiering or relationship.

Now, whilst they enjoyed a quiet smoke away from the rest of their comrades, they could relax and talk about the future as friends. It was very necessary for everyone in the camp to talk about the future that they imagined for themselves, even though their immediate future held no great promises.

“And of course you have strictly honourable intentions don’t you?” teased Uhlmann.

“Obviously, or I wouldn’t have proposed to her Herr Sturmbannfuhrer,” couched in the disrespectful tones such as these two friends often used when alone together.

“And obviously she is smitten with you for reasons that presently escape me,” stated Uhlmann enquiringly.

“I rather suspect she fancied having a genuine military hero in the family for a change,” which riposte was accompanied by a huge grin as the point was scored.

“Asshole NCO’s. My life has been ruined by asshole NCO’s,” and Uhlmann aimed a playful swipe at Braun’s head careful to miss the still dressed site of his most recent wound.

“Seriously Johan, where will you both live once this mess is all resolved?”

“I rather suspect England, Rolf”

“England?”

“I have family there and it may be that Germany will not be a place for us in the years ahead.”

“Yes but England? Near your sister, I suppose. And yet you take my sister away from me?”

“Whoa friend! Don’t imagine that it is me imposing my will on your Krystal will you? You know she knows her own damn mind and if she wanted to go to the South Pole it would be me following her like an obedient dog!”

A nodding Uhlmann saw the opening and went for it, grinning like a Cheshire cat. “I’ve often thought of you that way myself Johan”

The draw acknowledged with a shared smile, a second cigarette was brought forth and passed between the two.

Their comfortable silence was interrupted by Braun who held up his hand, obviously listening hard above the sound of rain and wind that relentlessly buffeted the lean-to in which they had secreted themselves.

Very quickly Rolf too became aware of the sound of a low-flying aircraft, and became uncomfortably aware that it was certainly very low and getting a lot closer.

“Aircraft, and damnably low at that,” Rolf confirmed to Braun.

Before either man could really react, the sounds of the aircraft became more urgent and loud, and then quickly changed into the recognisable sounds of destruction and death that accompany crashes at speed.

‘Schiesse! Its hit the camp” shouted Rolf and they sprang forward into the driving rain.

As both men ran in the general direction of the noise, they were too late to witness the demolition of the guard hut and swift unheralded death of its occupants. They did manage to see the aircraft flipping over and the subsequent destruction of over one hundred and fifty metres of fence before the wreckage ground to a halt and started to incinerate the hapless occupant.

Neither man was ever slow to act but the enormity of the possibility presented to them took a few seconds to sink in.

“The fence is gone Rolf”

“The guard hut is too. What do we have to lose? Let’s do it!”

It was an opportunity to seize and they both ran and shouted for all they were worth, desperate to rouse their comrades to the risky, yet tantalising possibility that had literally fallen from heaven.

Prisoners magically appeared, running hard, the spectre of freedom driving every man. Some brave souls strangely attempted to rescue the pilot although they quickly realised it was a fool’s mission.

Still others overpowered the two guards that remained transfixed by shock at the main gate, missed by about two metres when the Yak drove in.