A Letter From Munich by Meg Lelvis

Author:Meg Lelvis [Lelvis, Meg]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781684334476
Publisher: Black Rose Writing
Published: 2020-04-08T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 21

Journal Entry

Ariana, I needed a break, so I put this away for a few hours. But now I’ll write on.

The boxcars were crammed with bodies, like I wrote. Some had been crushed and suffocated, many starved to death. We found out later they had been stuck on the train for days without food or water. There were rumors of cannibalism but thank God I never saw any evidence.

We kept searching from car to car looking for survivors. Shit, what we witnessed, you should never have to see, Ariana. No one should. And all the while the stench. Human waste along with rotting corpses. One guy’s head was bashed in, his brains oozing onto the ground by the tracks.

Me and Bill got to the 5th or 6th boxcar and looked inside. At first, it didn’t dawn on me what the hell I saw. I asked Bill what it was.

Bill started to talk, then quit.

A bald skeleton of a man, head bent, sat moaning. I couldn’t understand what we saw at first, but he sat beside two decaying bodies and another man who was barely alive. Bill asked the half-dead guy what happened to the man who kept groaning. Looked like he had some of his leg gone, lots of blood and seeping crud. Bill understood more German than me. Sein Bein wurde amputiert. Wundbrand.

Bill turned pale, gasped. His words are still in my head. ‘Jesus, Bailey, his leg was amputated.’ He guessed he had gangrene from frostbitten toes and feet. After everything I’d seen in combat, never saw anything like this. The guy kept wailing. The other man kept talking. Er hat es selbst abgeschnitten.

Bill covered his mouth and gagged. He translated that the guy somehow amputated his own leg. He had covered the stump with old paper he’d found somewhere. Clotted blood and brown, yellow pus turned the paper a greenish black color. Stunk like sewage.

I damn near gagged myself. I still can’t get that sight out of my mind. We couldn’t figure how the poor bastard got something sharp enough to cut off his own leg. Then somebody figured the gangrene had rotted away the skin and bone, so he just used his own hands.

We looked around, saw a few buddies. I hollered for help. Two guys came to the car. They damn near puked when we tried to lift the poor man up without hurting him more. He screamed like a banshee. I remember one of our GI’s yelling that the leg was falling off. It was coming apart all over the soldier’s arms as he tried to carry him. The paper was coming off the stump, looked like skin was crumbling, falling on the ground.

The rest was a blur. I may have blacked out. We finally got him in the truck. Someone said later the poor son of a bitch guy ended up in a makeshift hospital tent. Never found out if he survived.

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