Southeast Austria near the Swiss boarder, Winter, 1944
The wind speed coupled with the increasing snowfall made it difficult to concentrate on avoiding the 20-meter-tall pines flashing past the glass canopy of the Fi-156 Fieseler Storch observation-and-light-transport aircraft. The rudder swung left as the rest of the control surfaces flailed around, trying to keep the plane’s wings level through the turn. At its controls, Lieutenant Ditter Von Ludger fought against the gusting winds as he banked hard once more, avoiding a majestic pine.
The SS general sitting in the back seat directed him to fly even lower, as the forward vision diminished. Ditter didn’t like to be told how to fly, but the general was right. The night was fast approaching and the visibility quickly faded with every passing minute. By flying low he could keep an eye on the countless granite boulder tops peeking out through the snow-covered stream that followed the valley below. According to the general, this stream would eventually lead them to a runway.
“Wir sind aus zehn kilometer,” said his passenger.
“Schließlich, 10 kilometers left,” Ditter whispered under his breath as he banked the Storch. It was dangerous for him to fly so low in an unknown area, but it was exhilarating at the same time.
He shivered as he adjusted his body on the seat. “Verdamnt, it is cold!” Ditter’s body had yet to acclimate itself to the frigid Bavarian winters from his time serving in Africa and the Mediterranean. He had served with the Wüstennotstaffel rescue squadrons in the North African Theater and flown more than 100 wounded men, two at a time, throughout an intensive battle, before his injuries sustained in that encounter earned him the Knight’s Cross. That accomplishment alone gave one of those wounded men, who was now his commander, the idea to reinstate him to another, and much safer, post.
Ditter had been sitting with a few Messerschmitt pilots earlier in the week when he saw the plane carrying his present passenger do a ground loop after its main gear had collapsed on landing. The SS passenger was physically shaken, but like most SS soldiers, he took it with a grunt and continued with his High Command orders.
He was at the wrong place at the wrong time when his commander volunteered him to fly the general the rest of the way. The flight itself wasn’t the worry; it was the military non-disclosure papers he’d had to sign that concerned him most. The papers stated that he was to remain silent as to his destinations. He was not to solicit information to or from other officers, and he was to remain as the general’s pilot until final release papers were signed from the High Command.
At worst, Ditter thought, he would have to put up with the Nazi general for a while; at best, he was not in the line of fire anymore. Either way, he was flying.
Ditter picked out the runway before the general called it out, but the increasing wind and low visibility would make landing a challenge. The Storch came down at a high rate of descent toward the snow-covered field. He began slipping the aircraft onto the short, snowy runway, knowing that the aircraft’s small tail would make it difficult in the crosswind. It was the only fault the lieutenant found with his plane. Ditter flared out the plane at the last possible moment, and the skis attached to the landing gear sank into, then slid forward on the fresh, powdered snow, coming to a stop 25 meters from where the skids first touched the ground. Ditter took a moment to calm his nerves, relaxed his grip on the stick and looked around the makeshift runway.
The field he had landed on was the size of a typical football arena. To his left were a few tents, three troop transports, a bus, and what looked like a hangar. To his right were two fuel trucks, a Kubelwagen staff car, and another Storch tied down and covered in a camouflaged tarp.
A soldier on the ground directed them forward and to the right, between the two fuel trucks. Ditter pushed the throttle, giving just enough forward momentum to slide the plane into its designated tie-down area. The man in front of the plane crossed his wrist as the aircraft nestled itself neatly between the two trucks. Ditter pulled back on the throttle, which in turn stopped the plane’s forward momentum, but kept the propeller lazily rotating at idle as he went over the shutdown checklist. He then pulled back on the red knob of the mixture control lever and starved the engine from the fuel supply. The engine complained as each cylinder went quiet and the two-meter-diameter, two-blade propeller gave one last turn before stopping in a vertical position. Ditter reached out, turned both magnetos to off, and then switched off the main battery supply.
“When can we depart?” the general asked as he removed his headset.
Ditter looked out through the generous glass canopy and sighed. The snowflakes began to fall at a greater rate as the cloud cover thickened. “Doesn’t look good. We are lucky that we found this place when we did. Another 10 minutes and we would have spent the night camping.”
“I didn’t ask for a commentary, just an estimate of when we could head out,” the general said with the usual arrogance of the Nazis who had crossed Ditter’s path.
Asshole.
“Well, tomorrow if the weather lifts. If not, then we wait until it does.”
“Fine. Grab your gear and come with me.” It was an order, not a suggestion.
The mountain air was crisp and cold as the two of them crunched their way through the fresh snowfall to a waiting Kubelwagen staff car. Heavy with its new passengers, the rear wheels sank down and gripped the hard-packed snow as the car accelerated off the field and onto a winding gravel road that disappeared up into the mountain. Ditter looked back at his plane as they drove away, watching as the flight crew finished covering the Storch with a gray-and-white camouflage tarp.
Ditter was amazed at the thickness of the steel door they passed through. Beyond it lay a long, upslope concrete tunnel with a thick white line painted on both sides. The tunnel burrowed itself into the mountain as they passed the one-kilometer mark painted over the white lines. Ditter looked forward and saw no end to it. They sped up the tunnel, passing crews working in and out of secondary tunnels that ran parallel to the main one they now occupied. The first dozen tunnel doors were painted orange with a stenciled bomb painted on them, signifying that they were passing through the armory. New tunnels were being carved out of the granite rock two kilometers past the armory.
Ditter didn’t see it at first until they had to stop and let a line of workers drag timber across the main tunnel. He noticed the workers were thin and almost non-human in appearance, and was shocked to realize this particular group was made up of children. He felt sick to his stomach when he saw an SS soldier shove a gun at one of the older ones, push her head forward, and laugh as they took turns shouting insults at them.
“Move faster, you worthless Jew!” said a towering blond soldier as he kicked a small child down. “Get up and move, I said!” His breath condensing in the cold tunnel made him look like an angry bull ready to attack.
The powerless child stood up and shuffled back into line.
Ditter was appalled. He had heard the rumors of Jewish labor camps, but he did not realize that children were being utilized as forced labor.
He knew better than to show any emotion as to what was occurring around him. Any hint would mean, in the eyes of the general sitting behind him, that he was disapproving of their leaders’ orders. If this were to happen, he’d be digging tunnels alongside the prisoners.
The TEN KILOMETERS stencil passed by as the Kubelwagen pulled out of the concrete tunnel and up a small embankment, passed a guardrail, and parked in a designated parking space alongside a cargo truck and KDF wagon. Its engine hesitated to shut off as the driver removed the key from the ignition, and popped once more before it fell silent, allowing the tunnel’s sounds to fill in the void. Ditter heard electrical transformers humming from a well-lit cavern to his right beyond the parking area. The sounds of impact hammers rumbled away into the tunnel they had just driven through.
Ditter stepped out of the car, grabbed his bag, and followed the general.
Jesus....
He looked around at the massive room. He could clearly see the transformer station with its thick electrical wires strapped to the ceiling, running out of the cavern and radiating out like a spider’s web. One of the wires provided power to fans the size of airplane propellers attached to steaming copper tubing mesh above his head. It was some sort of rudimentary heating system trying ineffectively to warm the air circulating through the tunnel system. To his left another massive, thick steel door stood ajar.
What is this place?
A lowly sergeant stood behind his metal desk and saluted at the sight of the general. He had the typical gray army uniform with a lime-green patch sewn above his upper left chest pocket.
“Heil Hitler!” the sergeant said as he stood stiff as a board, his right arm outstretched.
The general raised his right arm at the elbow. “Sergeant, this is my new pilot,” he said in his deep, authoritative voice. He gave Ditter a quick look, took a moment, and seemed to have made up his mind. “See to it that he gets a blue pass, and a room for the night.” He handed over his orders to the sergeant. The sergeant in turn handed him a multi-colored card on a lanyard, which he hung from his neck.
“Lieutenant,” the general looked down at Ditter, “have me called when the weather clears.” The general walked around the desk and through another steel doorframe. Beyond the frame lay another corridor and a red steel door flanked by two armed SS guards, who saluted. He waited as one of the guards opened the door marked RESTRICTED, RED PASS ONLY. Ditter got a glimpse beyond the door. The general purposely walked into a concrete semi-circular hall lined with gauges, tubing of different colors, and small control stations manned by people wearing white lab coats. The scene was abruptly cut off as the red door slid closed with a resounding thud.
Ditter looked down at the sergeant shuffling paper. “Excuse me, Sergeant, can you provide me with a car so I can run the corridor to the outside tomorrow morning?”
The sergeant spoke as he slid papers into a folder. “No need for that, Lieutenant. You’ll be staying up in the castle. In one of the private suites.” He looked up from his desk and gave Ditter a quick glance. “Consider yourself lucky that General Kammler cleared you. He usually puts his pilots down here in the tomb.” The sergeant gave a small laugh. “Probably let you sleep up there due to the Knight’s Cross.” He briefly pointed to the black and silver cross pinned to the left chest pocket of Ditter’s flight suit.
“What do you mean?” Ditter asked as he touched the cross.
“The general has great respect for men of combat, especially one who has earned the Knight’s Cross.” He sighed. “I have not been in combat, thus my position at this desk in the middle of this mountain.”
“If you don’t mind telling me...” Ditter looked around and at the two SS guards to see if they were listening. “Where are we? And what is this place?”
The sergeant’s eyes narrowed. “That is classified information, Lieutenant, and if I were you, I’d not ask anybody else.” The sergeant was all business again. “Sign here.” Ditter pulled out his fountain pen and signed the thin blue book, taking up three lines with his elaborate signature below the general’s signature. The sergeant gave him a nasty look. “Nice signature,” he said sarcastically. “Here is your blue pass. Keep it with you at all times...if you do not wish to be shot.” He paused and pointed to a truck-sized door opposite the red door. “Go to the top floor. Once there, you will be escorted to your room.”
Ditter took the pass from the sergeant, thanked him, and walked past the desk and through the steel doorway. To his left were the two sentries guarding the red door. To the right of them was the elevator gate, but what caught his attention was the massive corridor he stood in. It stretched out into the distance for over a kilometer. He could see two Tiger tanks rumbling down the concrete tunnel, itself over 10 meters in height. He walked forward, looking on as the Tiger tanks turned and disappear from sight.
A third SS guard stepped out from the elevator and spoke, “Lieutenant, if you will come with me.”
Ditter turned and followed the guard into the elevator.
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The metal gate in front of him rattled as the elevator picked up speed. He grabbed hold of the windshield on a white-striped Kubelwagen occupying one-third of the space in the freight elevator. By its size, Ditter figured that even a truck could be lifted up to God knows where. He looked down; the floor was steel-plated with embedded rail tracks bisecting it.
As the elevator rose it passed a tunnel, its bare concrete walls painted with a horizontal yellow stripe. The SS guard to his right began to speak his rehearsed lines. “You are allowed in the white and blue zones in Meckler Castle.” His accent was clearly Austrian. “The white zones are common areas, the blue zones are lower-ranking officer areas. You are not allowed in any other areas marked any other color. If you are found within a restricted area, you will be detained for questioning. The dining hall is a white zone. The officers’ sitting hall, library, and upper sleeping quarters are blue level areas. You will take your meals between zero five hundred hours and zero seven hundred hours for breakfast, twelve hundred and fourteen hundred hours for lunch, and seventeen hundred to nineteen hundred hours for dinner. The officers’ common area is open at all times.” The guard looked him up and down, drawing a conclusion, and continued, “You are allowed outside in the hangar and runway until twenty one hundred hours. If you are found outside after that time you will be detained. You will have a telephone in your room, but you may not use the telephone for personal calls.”
Runway?
The small, incandescent bulb dimly lit the elevator. Past the iron gate the rough-cut granite wall of the shaft flew on by as they rose up. The elevator operator slowed the lift down as they approached what looked like another level. A solid green door aligned with the elevator’s gate as it stopped. The elevator operator slid the iron folding gate open and at the same time the green door split apart vertically, revealing an endless cavern cut into solid granite rock. Countless dim lights hung 20 meters above the floor, illuminating rows of crates stacked 10 meters high, which stretched away into the darkness.
A mechanic in a greasy jumpsuit, wearing a green-and-gray rectangular tag on his upper left chest, rushed in from the cavernous warehouse to retrieve the car inside the elevator. He jumped in and started the engine. The car popped at a lazy idle as the mechanic struggled to find first gear. After a few moments of crunching the transmission into gear, the car leaped forward, leaving a blue cloud of exhaust as it accelerated out of the elevator and into the maze of crates.
The elevator operator waved his hand, trying to dissipate the fumes as he reached up and pulled down on the upper half of the door. The lower half came up, meeting its twin in the middle. He then slid the elevator’s gate closed, and shoved the control handle up. The elevator rattled once again as it climbed higher up the shaft. A few moments later they came to a shuddering stop. The SS guard slid open the metal gate, pushed aside a wide white door, and gestured to him. As soon as Ditter stepped out from the elevator, the gate shut behind him and the SS guard and his elevator were gone.
A corporal approached Ditter. “Sir, if you would come with me I will take you to your room.”
Ditter nodded and follow in tow into Meckler Castle.
Ditter checked his aviator’s watch: 10:30. All he wanted was to sleep, but he was kept awake by a constant, low humming noise that had begun a few minutes after dinner had been served. The monotone sound engulfed the castle, but all the officers around him seemed to ignore it.
After a hearty stew dinner, Ditter took it upon himself to go search out the secondary runway. The night had come quickly as the snowstorm engulfed the castle grounds. Once outside, the windswept virgin snow made it impossible to see farther than a few meters ahead. Ditter walked through the whiteout and startled an SS sentry making his rounds. The frozen soldier questioned him before pointing him in the right direction toward the far end of the castle.
Ditter would have felt more comfortable walking the small runway; that way, he would know what to expect if he were to return and land there at a later date. The runway lay parallel to the castle, and ran less than 100 meters south, where it ended at the cliff’s edge. Ditter stood at the edge looking down into the abyss, its bottom obscured by the rising cloud cover below.
Satisfied, he turned back from the edge and walked north until he ran into what the sentry had told him would be the observatory tower. There was a corrugated, 10-meter-wide white metal door at its base, able to open wide enough to fit a plane through. It rattled as a strong gust blew against it. Ditter walked up to the man-sized door embedded within the larger structure and peeked through. Inside, a few mechanics pored over another Storch. Parked up against the far wall was the Kubelwagen that had ridden up the elevator with him earlier in the day. Next to it was another opening, its concrete sides painted green. Ditter assumed that the opening led to the cavernous warehouses he had caught glimpses of on his elevator ride.
Ditter pulled open the thin metal door and walked into the hangar. A gust of wind caught hold of the door and slammed it closed behind him, alerting the mechanics to his presence. The taller of the two mechanics looked over Ditter, who was still dressed in his flight suit and sporting the blue tag. He nodded, and asked him to grab a tool roll from the Kubelwagen against the far wall.
Ditter rummaged through the car and produced an oily canvas roll, heavy with tools, and walked to the Storch.
“Danka. Can you do me a favor and put these in the car?” The mechanic looked at his watch after handing Ditter two heavy parachutes. “It’s 10 till. Better get going, Lieutenant, or you will get shot.” Both mechanics laughed.
Ditter gave them a half-smile and walked away, parachutes in hand. He placed them in the car’s back seat, took one more look around and hurried out the hangar and back to the castle to get some much-needed rest.
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Ditter reached out and turned on the nightstand light. He got up from his bed and walked up to the dark-stained, wood-paneled wall and put his ear to it.
Where is that noise coming from? Better yet, when will it stop?
He moved along the cold wall, listening as the humming intensified the closer he got to the armoire. He stopped when he felt a cool, faint breeze escaping from one of the joints in the wall.
Looks like a hidden door.
Ditter spent the next few minutes working out the problem of how to open it, but it was a futile attempt, so he walked back toward his bed and fell face first into the mattress. The bed felt wonderful as he adjusted his body into the plush mattress. He rolled over and put the pillow over his head, trying to block out the humming, but to no avail. Defeated and tired from his trip, he gave in.
I am just going to have to live with it.
He reached over to the lamp jutting out from the elaborately carved wood wall, felt around for the switch, and pushed it.
The constant humming sound increased in decibels as a clicking and scraping sound resounded through the room. He took the pillow off his face, lifted his head, and looked at the armoire. The room, which was still lit from the weak bulb nestled within the metal arm lamp, got colder as stale air entered from a dark, ominous, rectangular hole where part of the wood-paneled wall once stood. It took him a few moments to register that the opening was a doorway. He looked to his left and discovered the wood knob now embedded within the decorative scrollwork carved in the wall. He ran his fingers over the switch and looked back at the ominous black hole a meter from the foot of his bed. Brushing aside the childhood fear that something might jump out of the hole, he got off the bed and walked to the opening. He peeked inside it, trying to adjust his eyes to the darkness within, and managed to make out the shapes of steps leading downward.
The tight, cold, musty passage looked to have not been used in years. Ditter decided to risk his little curiosity, and got redressed into his one-piece winter flight suit. He looked twice at the blue tag and decided to take it with him. He’d left his torch inside the Storch, but his American Zippo lighter was full of fuel, so that became his source of light as he stepped through the opening.
Ditter saw a lever to his left inside the passage. It was embedded into the cold concrete wall just past the opening. He pushed it up and the hidden wood panel slid closed next to him. Ditter took a moment to study the contraption. Satisfied that it would reopen if he pulled on it, he stepped deeper into the tunnel. The thin, claustrophobic hall turned 90 degrees right and then went on down, and turned once more into a gentle right-hand curve. Ditter managed the uneven steps and went down deeper into the structure, his lighter’s weak flame only illuminating a meter of the passage in front of him at a time.
He navigated through the ever-thinning tunnel and squeezed his body through a narrow opening into a two-person-wide space. He moved his lighter around the space, illuminating the enclave, and noticed a semi-circular groove carved into the stone floor. A meter and a half above it and to the right was a rectangular metal door the size of a five-mark banknote. He reached up, unlocked the latch, and swung it open. Two rays of light shot through the small openings in the wall. Ditter looked through and stared into the library that was next to the sitting area, where earlier in the night he had leafed through a National Geographic magazine after dinner.
He deduced from his narrow and limited view that he was close to the gray-marbled fireplace opposite the entrance to the room. He looked around the best he could and held his breath, trying to listen for human sounds. The room seemed empty, so he closed the small opening. Two steps forward he found a lever within an indentation in the wall. He studied it, and guessed as to its function after noticing the odd spacing of the joints on the wall. He wrapped his gloved hand on the lever, and with some effort, pulled it out and away.
Clunk.
Click, click, click.
One of two Doric columns in the library that flanked the right side of the fireplace mantel swung inward, making a crunching sound as its metallic wheels rotated over some loose gravel in the groove of the floor. A moment later, Ditter emerged into the library. He looked around, and to his relief, the room was empty. One of the mantel’s surface decorations had tilted out from its perch, revealing the mechanism to open the secret hatch from within the library. Ditter looked around the circular library. It was two stories tall, ending in a wagon-wheel rafter ceiling. A crystal chandelier hung from the center, hovering parallel to the upper balcony floor. The walls were lined with leather-bound books of all sizes; some old, others looked relatively new. There were eight leather high-back chairs facing each other and corralling a knee-high circular table in the center of the room. Ditter walked to one of the chairs in which someone had left an English version of a Life magazine. He picked it up, looked at it, then folded it into his chest map-pocket on the flight suit for some late-night reading. Ditter gave the room a quick last look and slipped back into the fireplace. Moments later, and back in the secret tunnel, the column ground back into place with a resounding thump, sealing Ditter back into the secret tunnel system.
The tunnel now split in two. To Ditter’s left it led to another peephole, which gave an overall glance at the Great Room. Its high ceiling and dull granite walls absorbed what little light came from the clear glass sconces along both its sidewalls. The room was devoid of furniture, save for the crystal chandeliers that hung in the darkness of the rafters above the marbled floors, giving the castle an eerily abandoned feeling. To his right the tunnel led to two more peepholes and secret doors, one each for the dining hall and kitchen, where the tunnel system abruptly ended.
Disappointed at the stale outcome of his adventure, he went back up the tunnel, passed the hidden dining room and tripped over an uneven floor cobblestone, slamming into the opposite wall. As he pushed off the wall he felt it shift slightly.
What is this?
Ditter studied the wall in the dim light. It was different from the surrounding stone in that it was smooth. He crouched down and ran his hand on the floor over the raised stone, studied it for a moment, looked back at the smooth wall, and then pushed down on it with the palm of his hand. The cobblestone gave way and slid into the floor a few millimeters before springing back, but nothing happened. He then placed his boot on the stone and pushed down with greater force. The stone slid back into the floor and gave a resounding click. A half a second later the smooth wall slid into the rock to reveal yet another tunnel leading down into darkness.
The new tunnel’s granite walls were rough and cut in a semi-circular arch, a few centimeters higher than him, and three times as wide as the previous passage. Ditter counted his strides as he headed down. It was built on a downslope and the farther he went, the colder it became.
Two hundred sixty steps later the weak flame from the Zippo illuminated evidence of a change ahead. He was at the end of the tunnel looking down at a circular flight of stairs cut into the granite. He noted the time and stepped down.
Five minutes later there was no end in sight. He looked back up, then made up his mind to keep on going. It took another 10 minutes before he stepped out off the claustrophobic spiral staircase and into another tunnel running left-to-right of his position. He took two deep breaths, relieved to be out of the stairway, and looked around. To his left he could see a wooden door, and to his right an ominous steel door. He chose the wooden door.
It was unlocked. Ditter unlatched it and pushed. A cold breeze blew past him and into the hall, replacing the stale air of the tunnel. He moved forward, and after a dozen steps, the tunnel opened onto a precarious ledge. The entrance to the tunnel from the outside was well hidden within a massive vertical crack on the cliff face. A thin path on his left disappeared into the thick cloud cover. From what he could see of the path, it was carved out of the rock face. Ditter put his back to the cliff wall and sidestepped down the path, where he came upon an old pulley mechanism. Taking in his surroundings and calculating his 15-minute descent, Ditter figured that he must be a few hundred meters below the castle’s perch. The falling snow and cloud cover obscured everything else around him beyond the pulleys. Ditter, not wanting to risk slipping and falling to his death, decided to head back toward the entrance into the mountain.
He began to think about the pulley system and figured that it must have been a way to transport goods from below, although that spiral climb must have been hell on the castle’s workforce carrying whatever was needed up top. He closed the wooden door behind him, passed the spiral staircase entrance on his right, and went to the steel door. Its rusty surface looked haunting in the semi-darkness. He put his ear to it, hearing the ever-present humming sound that now seemed to engulf the whole mountain. The door didn’t have a handle, but next to it was a lever that jutted out from the rough-cut granite wall. He pushed it down and part of the steel door swung in.
Ditter was taken aback by the pungent smell of formaldehyde. He covered his nose with his wool scarf, turned off his lighter, and peeked through the opening. What lay in front of him looked much like the tunnels on the mountain roads back home, but this one was four car widths wider and stretched out roughly a football pitch in length. He scrunched down, squeezing himself through the one-meter-square opening, and stepped down onto a metal grate floor. The tunnel had the same lighting fixtures as the green warehouse. Below him the lights, and mirrored on both sides of him, dozens of evenly spaced square concrete cisterns, walked down toward the far end of the room. Ditter turned back to see that the opening he had squeezed through was part of a wall lined in steel panels. He looked around for some sort of mechanism to open the hatch if he were to close it, but found none, so he left it open and approached one of the cisterns.
It, along with the next dozen, was empty. Ditter walked up to the next one and froze as he made eye contact with a man submerged in a smoky liquid. It took him a few seconds to realize what he was looking at, and he was sickened by the number of human body parts floating around the severed head. He looked up and counted at least 40 more cisterns. Each looked to be filled with the foul-smelling liquid. A few seconds had passed after the gruesome discovery when the whine of dozens of electric motors spinning filled the space.
Ditter looked up at the ceiling; it was covered with manhole-sized openings. Inside them fans began turning. He felt the rush of fresh air coming from below him through the iron grate floor. It was an air-circulating system, keeping the room safe from excess fumes.
As the air-circulating system picked up speed he heard a metallic creak behind him.
“Scheissen!” Ditter grumbled as he sprinted toward the opening.
The pressure within the room was changing and was forcing closed the hatch he had used to gain access into it. Ditter could see the metal door slowly rotate on its hinges. He dove the last few meters, his hands outstretched, trying hard to reach the edge of the opening. But it was too late, and with a resounding thud, Ditter slid hard into the steel wall, locked out of his exit.
He desperately felt around the door for a latch or switch, trying to move the exposed rivets, but the ones he touched stayed in place. He stepped back from the wall, and looked it over once more.
“Idiot,” he muttered.
The only way out beckoned from the other side of the room. Ditter turned, took a deep breath of the semi-clean air, and walked down the long corridor, catching glimpses of severed arms, legs, torsos, and the occasional half a face looking back at him. After the 20th cistern, he just focused on the door at the end of the corridor, trying hard to keep his eyes from wandering. He stood for a couple of tense seconds in front of a red door wide enough to drive a car through, before reaching out and turning the metal door handle. The door opened a few centimeters. Ditter took a peek at what lay on the other side.
It was yet another tunnel, taller and wider than the one he now occupied, but it looked familiar. The tunnel was well lit and its curved, bare concrete structure reached all the way down to the smooth concrete floor, which was lined with a rail track. It had a yellow stripe painted on its walls. Ditter figured it was most likely the first tunnel he had passed on the elevator ride up to the castle.
He stepped through and closed the red door to the cistern warehouse. Above the door the number 5 was stenciled in white paint. The tunnel ended to his right, so he turned left. His footsteps amplified, echoing off the walls as he walked through the tunnel. Every hundred strides he would come across a yellow steel door. The numbers stenciled above the doors in white paint receded in order. As Ditter approached each door, he would open it and peek inside. Warehouses 4, 3, and 2 were storage caverns piled to the ceiling in boxes and crates. The contents within the boxes were written on the sides. Warehouse 4 and 3 contained canned food; warehouse 2 had clothing, shoes, and the like.
Ditter stepped back out from warehouse 2 and looked down the tunnel. In the distance he could now see part of what looked like the elevator that had taken him up to the castle.
How the hell am I going to get back up without them taking me in for questioning?
Between him and the elevator was another warehouse carved out of the solid granite, the number 1 stenciled above the frame. If logic served right, it was the last storage cavern before the elevator. He was cautious since its door was open, and he could hear men hammering and dragging objects within. Ditter sidestepped inside and maneuvered around rows of trucks, Volkswagens, and BMW sidecar motorcycles arranged in single file. He took position behind a Schwimmwagen (an amphibious, Volkswagen-based four-wheel-drive car), and watched as a few men in overalls, sporting yellow-and-gray tags on their chests, unloaded crates from a forklift onto the floor.
A yell from afar caught his attention, followed by the sound of crates falling, which led to a sudden and deadly explosion. Everything happened at once—an alarm sounded, red lights began to strobe through the dense black smoke, and he heard yelling and the screams of an injured man. Ditter ran toward the fire and found five men battling it with metal fire extinguishers. One man dropped his empty extinguisher and ran past Ditter toward a fire hose next to the entrance. Ditter stepped behind him and helped unroll the hose. He stood by the valve and ordered the man to stretch the hose out toward the fire.
“Turn it on!” the man yelled as he grabbed hold of the spigot.
Ditter turned the valve to open, and the onrush of water made the hose rigid as it flowed through and out the nozzle.
Another man jumped in and helped control the nozzle, sending water out at a phenomenal rate. The two of them manhandled the hose as they started to move side to side, spraying the fire. Ditter walked forward to see how else he could help, just as an onslaught of armed SS soldiers came in from the main tunnel. A major leading the troops ran to Ditter and asked him what had happened.
Before Ditter could answer, he was looking down the barrel of the major’s nine-millimeter side arm.
“Halt! You are not cleared for this area. What are you doing here?”
Ahhhh...how do I explain this?
“Sergeant, sequester this man!”
The storm troopers surrounded Ditter, MP 40 machine guns raised at the ready, when the concussion and heat from a secondary explosion engulfed them. They all scattered from the incoming flames. Ditter ran for the entrance and dived as a wall of fire chased after him.
“Don’t shoot!” Ditter stepped out from behind the door.
The major put out flames on his uniform’s sleeve, looked at Ditter, and raised his weapon. Ditter raised his arms in response. Then the major yelled at his men, “That’s the saboteur, shoot him!”
Ditter was in shock as the first bullet grazed his shoulder. He quickly came to his senses and dove sideways away from the warehouse entrance and into the main tunnel. Another barrage of bullets followed, smacking into the far concrete wall behind where Ditter had stood. He rolled, and once on his feet, began to run away from certain death. As he rounded the curved tunnel, the elevator came into view.
Ditter saw the SS elevator guard whip up his MP 40 at the sight of the blue tag, but he was not quick enough. Ditter jumped forward and tackled the soldier, knocking him off his feet. They both fell. The SS soldier’s head impacted the bumper of a Kubelwagen that was parked inside the elevator, breaking his neck in the process.
“Scheissen!” Ditter exhaled as he felt for a pulse and found none. He turned his head as rounds of bullets flew past him, ricocheting off the elevator’s steel mesh walls. As quick as he could he shut the gate and reached out for the elevator lever and pushed it up, but not before another round of bullets came at him, bouncing around the elevator’s inner metal structure. One of the bullets found its mark, finishing its path in Ditter’s forearm.
Ditter winced and grabbed his forearm as the elevator shuddered and climbed up the shaft. He stood up and looked around, trying to figure out what to do next, when his eyes fell upon the Kubelwagen. On closer inspection, he noticed that it was the same car that had been in the hangar earlier in the night. This gave him an idea.
The first part of his plan failed as he stopped the elevator a bit late. The elevator was halfway between the opening of the green warehouse door. He slammed the control handle down and the elevator jolted to a stop as the power to it was shut down. Now he could hear commotion below as SS guards made their way up to him through the auxiliary elevator shaft ladder.
Ditter considered his options once more, and deterred from the original plan. He managed to force open the gate, jumped down onto the shaft edge, and pulled up the green warehouse door as a few more bullets ricocheted off the metal grate floor above his head. He climbed back up into the elevator, jumped in the car, and started the engine. Reaching up, he unhooked the soft top and pushed the hinged windshield forward, put the car in first gear, and floored the accelerator.
The metal windshield snapped right off as the Kubelwagen squeezed through the gap left between the elevator floor and the opening of the warehouse entrance, and fell six feet down. The front of the car took the brunt of the fall, crushing on impact. To Ditter’s good fortune, he was still able to steer the car. He sped off into the maze of crates and toward a ramp at the far end of the green warehouse.
Ditter kept the accelerator floored, constantly looking back at the hunting party that was sure to come. He turned the car right, sliding it sideways on the smooth concrete floor, then shot up the ramped path where he flew the car through the truck-sized open warehouse door that led into the hangar. He stopped the car next to the Storch the mechanics had been working on a few hours before, jumped out, and ran to the main hangar control panel on the far wall and pressed the button that opened the hangar to the outside. The metal door squeaked, and inch-by-inch began to slide open. Ditter ran back across the hangar and jumped in the Storch, said a small prayer, closed his eyes, and hit the starter button. The propeller turned and the cylinders popped as the engine came to life. He laughed out loud as he moved the throttle forward. The plane shuddered, then began to roll toward the receding hangar door as he increased the throttle to take-off speed.
His grin faded as the front windscreen erupted under a hail of bullets that tore through the plane. Two of the bullets found Ditter. He winced in pain from his shoulder and thigh wounds as he felt the plane pick up forward speed, and went to push the throttle to full, but the whole throttle lever was missing.
He looked back into the hangar and knew he had one option left as he reached to open the hatch.
The plane gained speed and the tail rose as the sergeant commanding the barrage of bullets screamed to his men, “Destroy the plane!”
The bullets ripped through the cabin, wings, and fuel tanks. The heat from them ignited the fuel just as the plane left the ground.
The SS guards scattered as the fiery plane dove into the crowd of soldiers and exploded. Those few SS guards who were spared the misfortune of their comrades managed to catch a glimpse of a Kubelwagen crashing through the debris, wheels on fire, heading toward the edge of the runway. Two guards got to their knees and opened fire on the burning vehicle as it went over the edge of the runway into the dark abyss below.
Ditter knew they would be looking for his body once the weather cleared, so he folded up the parachute and threw it back into its pack. He couldn’t help but laugh from the adrenaline rush he was feeling. He had no chance to escape in the Storch as it was being shot to pieces, so he had jumped out and run back toward the car, all under a hail of bullets. By some miracle he hadn’t been hit in his mad dash. He dove and landed inside the car, strapping on one of the parachutes that he had dropped on the passenger’s seat earlier in the night, all while driving through the hangar door and toward the flaming Storch as it crashed down into the SS guards. He knew it would be risky to jump from the cliff’s edge, not knowing its exact height, but with the help of the car he figured he could manage to put enough distance between him and the rock wall, allowing the parachute to fully deploy...hopefully, before meeting the ground.
Ditter looked up into the thick cloud cover, listening for danger, but all he could hear was the wind blowing up and around him. He unzipped his winter flight suit and studied his wounds. The idea of surviving the following days seemed almost impossible. Ditter took out his utility knife and cut some of the parachute silk to dress his wounds. Once done, he zipped up, shouldered the parachute on his good shoulder, looked down at his compass, and began to limp south toward what he hoped would be the Swiss border.