01 September 2003

My son called from college yesterday. I had told him he had to check in once a week and Sunday was a good day for him to do it. He said he had been out looking for a bike, since the distances on his campus are vast and he does not like to walk. He said Michigan was a place where they take their Labor Day Holiday seriously. Everyone was gone and campus was dead.

I told him there was a reason for that. "Everyone was out enjoying the last day of summer, Son, because Winter starts on Tuesday . There was silence on his end of the line.

Today the crowds are headed south out of the Northland, the season over. They are passing the exits on the big four-lane highways crafted for speedy and efficient travel. The gas plazas are laid out so you can pull into the deceleration lane and with a flick of the wheel arrive at the pump. E-Z off, E-Z on. Of course that does not include the time it takes to register shock at the prices. They have gone up since the long holiday weekend began, and since no one has a choice about going to home, I suppose we will all pay it. Gas is still cheaper than milk, measured by the gallon, so I suppose things are OK. Imagine if you couldn't get it, and you really had to be somewhere? I just read something about that. I'll tell you more in a minute, but the work things is looming large for us all. I'm out of the Navy at midnight, tonight, 26 years and 168 days, but who is counting.

Work is looming for us all. I start a new job tomorrow and am OK about it. I start new jobs all the imte. This will just not have the Uniform Code of Military Justice associated with it. All the kids have school to deal with, the merchants have to deal with the loss of their cheap summer labor. The news this morning trumpeted the fact that Americans are the most productive laborers in the world. Maybe that's true. But I think the Germans best exemplified theend-of-summer back-to-work ethic when Hitler issued an official proclamation at 5:11AM on Labor Day of 1939. He was an early riser, going back to his days as a housepainter and a private soldier. He wrote the following to his army, perhaps unknowingly paraphrasing Nelson before the Battle off Trafalgar:

I'm not going anywhere today, or at least not to Poland. So I will enjoy it for what it is, the last day of real summer, when time stands still. The new digital world reminds us that time is linear and constant. But the human mind can see a summer day as timeless. I will be down by the pool today, but on this anniversary of the beginning of Hitler's mad global adventure, it is worth remembering what our fathers sacrificed. I just finished a marvelous and literate account of the war from the view of a Panzer commander, a strange perspective for an American to read. It is only by the luck of the draw that I am an American, after all, and not Irish or German or any of the other nationalities whose blood runs in my veins.

Colonel Hans von Luck was a Prussian, not a Nazi, but he obeyed his Fuhrer and led his men into Poland sixty-one years ago this morning. Then he was transferred to the West, and raced to the Channel with Irwin Rommel. Then was transferred East, and rode with the tide of Operation Barbarossa into Russia. His tanks made the last forward bridgehead toward the Moscow subways before the long retreat began. Rommel wanted him in Afrika, and he went there and was wounded fighting for the Desert Fox against the British Desert Rats. Then that continent was lost and he found himself defending-in-depth in a place called Normandy. The retreat continued, back through the Maginot Line and into the Reich itself. A last transfer to the front east of Berlin to confront the flood of advancing Russians. So much courage, so many lives and so much youth wasted.

I doubt if von Luck is still alive. He was one of the youngest Colonels in the Wehrmact, but there are few senior leaders left. If he survives, he would be in his mid-nineties. He won the Knight's Cross and the German Cross in Gold. He disparaged the latter as a Hitler medal. The Knight's Cross to the Iron Cross was something he took a great deal of pride in. The noted historian Steven Ambrose was astonished by his career when he interviewed him for a book he was doing on D-Day, and he encouraged him to document what he experienced. He contributed an introduction to Panzer Commander- (Bantamdell, 1989).

One of the most amazing interludes was being locked in battle with the American 7th Army (mostly the 79th Infantry Division) in a village called Rittenshoffen. They fought, cellar to cellar for the better part of the month. The Americans realized they were being encircled by a last-ditch German offensive toward the Moder River. They pulled out of the village one night undetected, and there was the eerie awakening as the Germans found themselves alone in the village they had fought hand -to-hand to hold. Walking cautiously in the streets that morning they began to realize the battle was over. Von Luck found the village church shattered. He looked through a gaping hole and saw that the altar was destroyed but the organ miraculously was intact. He called for a lance-corporal to operate the bellows and climbed up to the seat. He began playing the Bach choral "Nun danket alle Gott" as the villagers who had been trapped in their cellars by the fighting came out and asked if they could now begin to bury their dead.

There was nearly another five months of fighting for von Luck before he found himself and his tanks east of Berlin, encircled by the Red Army. Out of ammunition, out of fuel. No off-ramps available. Just destiny to confront. He was in a pine forest, on foot before his enemy. There were no more rabbits to pull out of the hat. No reinforcements and out of any idea except to run blindly through the trees. Finally von Luck and his men came to a lake that barred the way. The Russians were close behind and the Colonel gave his last command as an officer of the Reich. "Weapons in the lake!" he shouted, and then he turned and became a prisoner of the Red Army.

He then spent five years of slave labor in the service of Herr Stalin. Many Germans died there, having survived the war only to die in the peace. It was a matterof luck and cunning to see if you could get enough food to live. Von Luck's capture was a halfway point in time between the march into Poland and when he would finally be repatriated to the American Sector of West Germany. His girlfriend waited for him, correct and German, having maintained a room for him in her apartment. But there was emptiness between them when they met. She had been faithful but there was nothing left. Luck of the draw.

He had lost everything, almost. In all the years of captivity he managed to conceal his Knight's Cross from the Russians. It was not until 1950, eleven years after he rolled into Poland, that his room was burgled and it was stolen.

Only then was everything truly gone.

Copyright 2003 Vic Socotra