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See Amid The Winter’s Snow
Yet with the woes of sin and strife
The world has suffered long;
Beneath the angel-strain have rolled
Two thousand years of wrong;
And man, at war with man, hears not
The love-song which they bring;
O hush the noise, ye men of strife,
And hear the angels sing.
—“It Came Upon the Midnight Clear”
Now to the Lord sing praises,
All you within this place,
And with true love and brotherhood
Each other now embrace…
—“God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen”
25. December, 1943
“Well, my parents did say we were invited for Christmas if we happened to be here,” Moffitt explained diffidently in the wee hours of Christmas morning. “And we are here, after all.” Better late than never, what?
“Who’s ‘we’? Troy asked, unintentionally asking the same question that Captain Dietrich had once asked him. “That doesn’t include the lieutenant, or Fritz, does it?”
“I’d be honored, gentlemen,” the lieutenant replied, demurring, “but a few of us from the 51st have made arrangements already.”
The English sergeant sighed, apologetic. “I’m afraid not. After all, we’ve gone to considerable effort to make sure Dad and Mum don’t even know Arnheiter’s here.” He was beginning to think that possibly his father might have an inkling about the team’s collective secret, but as the elder John Moffitt had said nothing about their fifth man, the younger one didn’t plan to.
Troy considered for a moment. “Better count me out, then. Nobody should spend Christmas all alone. At least last year Fritz had the other POWs to celebrate the holiday with; if we all go to visit your folks, he’ll have no one. You can tell them I’m waiting for a call from my mother or something...”
But the next morning over a Christmas breakfast, Arnheiter shook his head as he stirred a spoonful of tinned condensed milk into his reconstituted coffee. “Go, please, Sergeant Troy, you are invited. They want to share the feast with their son’s friends. I am all right here. Do not concern yourself about me.”
“Hardly a feast, old boy,” said Moffitt deprecatingly, hoping that the three Americans weren’t expecting anything like the bounty they would remember from prewar holidays at home. “I understand there’s not a goose or a turkey to be had between here and Glasgow... with luck and some bribery, they might have got hold of a chicken or two. And with sugar rationed so strictly, I wouldn't count on any plum pudding.”
“I don’t know… that doesn’t seem right, leaving you here,” said Tully Pettigrew. “You sure about that, Fritz?”
The young German nodded. “Yes, I am sure. It is OK to me, and much better than last year.”
“Better?”
“Yes. I am not in a prison camp, and not in hospital.” As far as he was concerned, Christmas this year was as good as it could get, under the circumstances. I have a parcel from home, and a letter from Konrad’s parents, and a letter from Erika too. “And the law says I may not go in anyone’s house, nor can anyone except soldiers speaking to me.”
Moffitt sighed. “Got a point, there, unfortunately.” The laws against fraternization between British civilians and German prisoners were quite explicit and strictly enforced. They had hoped that his decision to help M.I. 6 would make a difference, but his legal status had not changed— as far as the Foreign Office was concerned, Arnheiter was still considered as a prisoner of war because he was, after all, still a member of the Wehrmacht.
“That just isn’t fair,” said Hitch, frowning. “You’re working for us, right? That should make you not a prisoner.”
“No matter.” Arnheiter shrugged. The concept of “fair” as these Americans understood it was still something he found difficult to grasp. “I am a soldier, and a Deutscher, so I am a prisoner. That is how things are.” He made a gesture as if he were waving them away. “Go, please. It is not needed to worry about me.”
Presently, the four Rats departed for a debriefing meeting with Major MacDonald, after which they would go to visit with Dr. and Mrs. Moffitt for Christmas dinner. Troy frowned, dubious, as they departed in the taxi sent for them. “Did any of you get the feeling he wanted us to get lost?”
Moffitt nodded. “Yes, rather. I wonder why?”
“Probably nothing,” Tully remarked. “You worry too much, Sarge. Bet he just wants to read his letter and open his package without us hanging around. Have some peace and quiet or something, and not have to speak English all day.”
Once he was sure they were really gone for some hours, Arnheiter got to work. He had meant to spring his surprise the day before, on Heilig Abend— Christmas Eve, but he had been too agitated by their delay in returning to be able to do anything the way he had planned.
Several weeks earlier, he had realized to his dismay that it would soon be Christmas and he had nothing to give to anyone. Even if he had had actual money on his person, he was under house arrest, and forbidden to leave the premises except under guard. They all tacitly made an exception for his working from time to time in the librarian Mrs. Wainwright’s garden, as it only involved going through both garden gates and crossing the narrow lane between their back garden and hers, so he was not technically on the street unsupervised. For all intents and purposes, it was not much different from POWs working on farms in the vicinity of their camps.
As Arnheiter had no way to purchase anything for anyone, he had realized that any gifts he gave would have to be made with whatever was at hand. He had puzzled over what he could possibly give to the four Allies until he saw that they were making no attempt to decorate or trim the house for Christmas, not even a tree. That is what I will do for them, he had said to himself in the middle of November. We Germans gave the Christmas tree to the world, after all... Since that time, he had quietly been making secret plans of his own.
He went out to the back garden by way of the kitchen door and made his way to the back gate. Leaving the crutch propped against the fence so he would have both hands free, he opened their gate, crossed the narrow lane, and opened the gate into their neighbor’s garden. Opening the potting shed as she had directed him, he was delighted to see a number of evergreen branches standing there in a pail of water. Their neighbor, librarian Helen Wainwright, had explained that a lorry driver had missed a turn in the blackout and crashed into a fir tree on the library lawn. The trunk and main branches had been salvaged for much-needed firewood, but the smaller branches had been given away to the library staff to decorate with for Christmas.
She wanted the longer ones to bend into a wreath, but she had told him he could have the shorter ones if he liked. He selected several of the shorter and bushier branches, tucked them under his arm and returned to the house he shared with the Rat Patrol.
His surreptitious exploration of their cellar had revealed a number of useful things belonging to the previous owners of the house. A small painted tin pail had been pressed into service to hold the conifer branches, after he had shoveled earth and gravel into it. Lugging the pail into the sitting room, Arnheiter placed it near the window and far from the fireplace, and arranged the evergreen boughs in a pleasing form. It wasn’t a proper Tannenbaum, but it was very much better than nothing; the room already looked more festive. The cabinet radio on the mantel provided a fine selection of traditional English carols as he went about preparing his surprise. Unexpectedly, he found himself humming along with a number of the songs— the words were unknown to him, but the melodies to many of them were the same as some of the Christmas songs he knew in German.
Decorating his ersatz Christmas tree had been the next dilemma. Because it wasn’t the shape of an actual tree, there was no possibility of trimming it with tiny red candles on the branch tips, as was customary in his home. But he had remembered the cutout paper birds with open wings his grandmother had taught him to make in his childhood, and in the last month he had created more than twenty, all painted differently to represent the real birds of the forests he knew from his youth. Also from paper he had made folded stars, and other traditional shapes to dress the tree. The tip of the tallest bough received an ornately paper-cut angel that he had been working on for days, little by little, using a razor blade to make the cuts in the style of traditional Scherenschnitte. Normally he would use scissors, but he had found none in the house small enough for the purpose.
Satisfied with the Christmas “tree”, he went to his room to bring out the second part of his gift, the thing he was proudest of.
Christmas dinner at the Moffitt household this year consisted of a roast chicken and a tinned ham. To go with the meats, there were potatoes, peas, Branston pickle, and later there would be a carrot pudding laced with brandy and studded with raisins.
“This is excellent, ma’am,” Troy said to Alice Moffitt appreciatively. “We haven’t had anything this good in a long time.”
Hitch nodded, with a chuckle. “You can say that again, Sarge. Last year Christmas dinner was canned Spam and yams. Complete with sand.” No matter where they had gone, there had always been a certain amount of sand in everything.
It was a pleasant afternoon although everyone present was aware of the one thing that no one spoke of— that it was the Moffitts’ first Christmas since the death of their younger son Giles. The Americans discovered the English custom of Christmas ‘crackers’— tiny pasteboard cylinders wrapped in fancy paper, which popped open with a crack! when both ends were tugged apart, causing a minute puff of gunpowder to explode. Inside the crackers, there were little toys, festive paper hats, and riddles printed on slips of paper. “Huh... Kind of like Cracker Jack prizes, along with a bubble gum riddle,” commented Tully, fishing the last trinket out of the cracker he had pulled open, which turned out to be a tiny spinning top made of painted wood. “Surprised they’re still making these with the war going on.”
Dr. Moffitt raised an eyebrow. “They’re not. Those were made before the war, and put by in the attic where I found them the other day. No idea there was a whole box of them, still kicking around, what? Seemed like a good thing to use them up. I take it they don’t pull crackers in the States, eh?”
“No, sir. That custom didn’t make it across the pond, I guess.”
Back at the house, Arnheiter had nearly finished his furtive preparations when he was startled by a knock on the door. Who would be coming here? Perhaps they were at the wrong house by mistake. He went to the door and peered out through the tiny hole, and saw the amiable Sgt. Alec Morison waiting on the step.
“Ein Moment, bitte,” the young German called out, fumbling as he unlocked the door to let the Scottish sergeant come in.
“Merry Christmas, my boy... mo chreach!” exclaimed the brown-haired Scotsman as he entered the house. “My word, what have you lads been up to? I saw all the paper snowflakes pasted in the windows and thought I’d come to the wrong house.”
“I have nothing to give them for Christmas gifts,” said Arnheiter, abashed, “except for what is in my head and my hands.”
“What a splendid idea…” Morrison looked about at the jury-rigged Christmas “tree”, with its decorations of birds and more paper snowflakes, and then he paused to admire what was on the table in the sitting room. Arranged there was a very traditional manger scene, with a stylized stable built of twigs, with the figures of shepherds and angels, sheep, goats, oxen, and the Holy Family— Mary, Joseph, and the Child Jesus— in the center, all made from paper. “Did you do this yourself, lad? It’s wonderful...”
The fair-haired corporal smiled. “There are many paintings and sculptures of this,” he explained. “I have seen some in books.” And of course there had been the two-thirds size plaster figures set up in the village church every year in his childhood, much loved by everyone. “But you are not here for this, I am sure.”
“No, I am not.” The Scottish sergeant’s grey eyes twinkled with good cheer. “I am here to bring you home to Christmas dinner. My wife was beside herself thinking you were here all by your lone on Christmas day. And she gave me no rest until I got leave to bring you home to our table.”
“It is so kind,” Arnheiter replied, taken aback. He had not expected anything like that. “Yes, I will come.”
“Good, good. It’s no feast, you understand, not like the old days, but you’ll not leave hungry, I say. One thing I should warn you of, though...” Morison said, thinking of his young son.
“Ja?”
“Young Donnie is at the age where he wants to know how mechanical things work, and his greatest joy is taking things to pieces... we’ve not yet found all the bits of the hall clock!” Both men laughed. “So, if I were you, lad, I would not let him find out about your hardware there. He’ll want you to show him how it works...” Morison gestured toward the younger man’s prosthetic leg.
“Ich verstehe. I shall remember that.” As he was getting his coat, Arnheiter was struck with an idea. “How many years is he?”
“Donnie is eight, now.”
The young German smiled. Perfekt. “Wait a moment, please...” He went back into the radio room where he slept, rummaged about in the desk drawer, and came out again, stuffing something into his pocket. It looked like a bundle of wires. “All right.”
At the Moffitts’, once dinner was finished and the dishes had been cleared away, they all moved into the parlor. Dr. Moffitt brought out from a cupboard a bottle of brandy, saved “for special occasions”. He poured out a small glass for everyone while they listened attentively to the broadcast of the King’s annual Christmas address.
Once King George VI’s speech had concluded, Dr. Moffitt senior got to his feet in response to Joseph’s whining and pawing at his knee. “You’ll have to excuse me briefly, gentlemen,” he said. “It’s time for Joseph’s afternoon outing. We shan’t be long, though. Care to come along, Jack?” he added in a casual tone.
Moffitt nodded and got to his feet. His pater’s tone had been light, but he recognized it as something more significant than it appeared to be. Father wants a word with me, he thought, and in private. “Certainly, why not?” He put on his khaki jacket over his black rib-knit woollen pullover and accompanied his father and the family dog to the door. “Back in a jiff,” he said as they departed.
This left the three remaining Rats and Alice Moffitt. If there was anything out of order, she did not show it as she rose from her seat near the fire. “I shall make up a fresh pot of tea,” she announced, “and when they come back, we shall have pudding.”
Christmas dinner at the Morisons’ house consisted of a shank cut of lamb, with roast potatoes, mashed turnips, and Brussels sprouts in butter. “I don’t know that you’ve had lamb before,” said the sergeant’s wife to their German guest. “We don’t usually have it at Christmas, but there were no geese or turkeys at all in the shops.”
“Lamb is very good,” said Arnheiter appreciatively. “Especially with bashed neeps,” he added, showing off his meager command of Scots.
“You know about neeps?” Mrs. Morison was surprised.
“Oh, aye,” he replied, surrounded once more by Scottish folk as he had not been since leaving the camp. “We had them two or three times a week in Dalcorrie. Kohlrabi is better, but neeps are good.”
Once they had finished dinner, young Donnie got down from the table, eager to show his new treasures to their visitor. He came back with a toy Land Rover lorry, and a Spitfire aeroplane, both carved from wood and polished to a high gloss. “Wunderbar,” said Arnheiter, impressed. “Who made them? Those never came from the shops...”
“My uncle made them,” Donnie answered with evident pride. “He can make anything!”
“That’s my brother,” the sergeant explained. “He’s a cabinetmaker, but at Christmas he makes toys for all the wee ones in the family.”
Donnie was already down on the floor, making engine sounds as he ‘drove’ the transport lorry across the woollen rug. Then he looked up with a smile. “You could drive the Land Rover, if you want, and I’ll fly the plane,” he said, inviting their visitor to join him in his make-believe play.
His father was about to put him off, but Arnheiter nodded. “Danke, I will,” he said. “Just wait a minute, then.” He pushed back the chair and got down onto the floor, using one hand to move the artificial foot back behind him as he slid off the seat of the chair onto his knees.
After a few minutes of playing, Donnie Morison looked up, eyeing the fair-haired corporal. “It’s true what Dad said, then...” he began. “You really are a German, a soldier.”
“Ja, it’s true. Anyone can see that, hmm?” Arnheiter said, touching his own nose. “And hear it, too. There’s nothing else I could be.”
The sergeant’s son absorbed that, thinking. He had heard about German soldiers, of course, but this one didn’t seem like what he’d heard. “But...,” he said, puzzled, “then what are y’ doing here, then?”
“Here, in Britain, or here, in your house?”
“Both.”
Arnheiter looked up and caught the father’s eye, who nodded silently. “Well, I am here because the British captured me last year, along with many other men. At a place called El Alamein.”
Donnie considered this. “Is that what happened to your leg?”
“Ja. It was a long fight, days and days. That is how I came here, and I was a prisoner in Scotland until June.”
“What happened then?”
“Then...” This was going to be the difficult part. Children think in simple terms, he reflected. Everything to them is black or white, not grey. How to explain his own defection to a mere boy? “Then I came to London to help your papa and the Major and these crazy Americans win the war. I work for them now.”
“You’re fighting your own country? Why?”
“It is a little hard to understand...” That was putting it mildly. It had taken him some time to understand it himself, even after he’d made the decision to do what he was doing. “What they do is wrong. When I was small, like you, things were hard and we were very poor, but we were free men. Now our country is in the hands of bad men. Very, very bad men, but they have the power and we have none. Do you understand?”
Donnie nodded. “Hitler.”
“Yes. And many more who help him. But not all Germans agree with what they do. Some of us want to stop them.” The boy was looking at him, enthralled. “Like my captain, they are very, very good men,” he went on, his throat suddenly growing tight with emotion. “But they are not strong enough to stop the bad ones all alone. So some Germans like me are helping your King defeat the Führer. We want our country back some day, the way it was when we were young.” That was as simple as he could make it, but it was time to change the subject. “I’ve brought you a surprise for Christmas... do you want to build a radio?”
The boy’s eyes grew wide with astonishment. “A radio? For my very own?”
“Yes, all your own. And you will make it yourself, with my help.”
With the middle-aged spaniel tugging on his leather lead, Sergeant Moffitt reached behind him to close the wrought-iron gate. His father stood a couple of feet away, lighting his pipe. The two men walked for some minutes in a companionable silence, while Joseph sniffed at fence posts and pillar boxes along the street, cheerfully wagging his short white tail.
“I gather,” said Moffitt as they waited to cross a street, “there was something you wanted to talk about in private?”
“Oh, nothing so serious, my boy. Mostly to satisfy my own curiosity, so to speak.”
“Ah. What about?”
His father eyed him, quizzically. “There are five of you, I know. You fellows have tried to conceal that, but not well enough. Why? And why didn’t your fifth man come? You were all invited... but I daresay he could have had other plans.”
“No, it’s not that...” Moffitt hedged, trying to decide which of those questions to respond to. Then he realized that both questions had the same answer. “It’s true. He is rather shy, poor devil, so he might not have come in any case...”
“But...?”
“But it’s not simple,” the younger Moffitt stated. “What Troy said a few months ago was no joke. One needs a security clearance to enter that room in our house.”
“I have one, you insolent young rogue,” said his father, in a playful tone. “In case you’d somehow forgotten.”
“But Mother doesn’t. Nor do your neighbors.”
“What has that to do with inviting a chap to dinner?”
“Everything. He said it himself— the law prohibiting fraternization is quite strict. He could not have come even if he had wished to.”
“Fraternization?” This was making no sense whatever. They were now skirting a tree-girt park a few streets from the house. “With whom, for the love of—“ John Moffitt demanded, and then stopped short as an awful thought crossed his mind. No, it couldn’t be…
“With prisoners of war,” his son replied quietly.
~~~~~
Mrs. Morison emerged from the kitchen, with an old wooden spoon in her hands. “Would this do?” she asked. “I’m not using it now, it’s too worn and cracked.” She offered it to the young German seated on the carpet with her son.
Arnheiter turned it over in his sturdy square hands and smiled. “Perfekt,” he said. He turned and handed it to young Donnie. “Now take that copper wire,” he directed, “and put it around the spoon, the straight part, as far as you can... aye, like that.” To the radioman’s approval, his host’s son began wrapping the copper wire firmly around the spoon. “Each turn of wire beside the next, not on top.”
~~~~~
“Good God,” exclaimed Dr. Moffitt père, appalled, though keeping his voice low enough to not alarm any passersby. “He’s a German!”
“Yes,” his son replied. “And a defector. That’s why he’s working for us—he loathes his government every bit as much as we do, probably more.” The two men walked a few minutes in silence before he went on. “Now you see why we couldn't tell you, or allow you or Mother to see him.”
The older man nodded slowly. With that missing piece, everything else fell into place. “What does he do, this tame Jerry of yours? He must have some special qualities.”
“Not especially. But he’s a radioman, and that was what we needed... someone who knows German radio protocol, and who sends code their style. In Africa, we used voice communications mostly over radio, but we can’t do that over there,” Moffitt explained, inclining his head toward the southeast and the Continent. “The distances are much greater, so we’re back to using Morse code. And Hitch is our best man on a telegraph key, but he sends code exactly like a Western Union operator because that’s who trained him. So with our...assistant..., at least the messages coming to us sound like any other German radioman sending them, and don’t attract as much attention among all the other radio traffic.”
That made sense. “Protective camouflage.”
“Yes.”
“I had figured out that your gardener was a German, or perhaps a Pole, but I presumed he or she must be a refugee... I daresay it’s this fellow, then.”
“That’s right—he and Tully look after the victory garden. But what gave it away?”
“In the summer we were out in your back garden for tea that day, and I noticed the plant labels. No English speaker from any nation spells ‘carrot’ with a K.”
Moffitt winced, as Sir Joseph paused to anoint a nearby juniper shrub by a neighbor’s garden wall. “I say, I hadn’t spotted that.” It was true, though— the third row had a hand-lettered sign, Karrot.
“But surely your own neighbors have seen him. What about that?”
“They’ve been informed. Major MacDonald went the rounds with a photo of him before he arrived, just to make sure they know he’s with us and not to ring up the Home Guard every time he’s out in the garden. Anything else?”
The professor took a draw from his pipe and blew a cloud of smoke into the cold damp air. “If this Jerry of yours is the gardener and the fellow in the locked room, then who is the chap with the wheelchair?”
“What?” Moffitt was taken aback. “How...?”
“It leaves marks on the carpet. I presumed it might be your commander or one of the M.I. lads.”
“No, that’s the same fellow— he lost a leg at El Alamein. Our new CO, as it happens, is a tall thin lieutenant from the 51st Highland Division, by the name of Cameron. One of the younger cousins of Lochiel[1], I believe; he escaped from a German prison and walked home, more or less, with help from the resistance.”
“Ah.” They walked on and crossed a lane. “Wait a moment... I say, you’ve left him, your radio chap, all alone on Christmas Day?”
“Well, he couldn't come, as I was saying — and even if he could have done, he wouldn't.”
“Wouldn’t?”
Jack Moffitt shook his head. “No, he wouldn’t. He knows about... about Giles, you see. I had told him earlier. And he said that his being here would distress you and Mother, and he didn't want that.”
His father sighed heavily. “I suppose it would. He really said that?”
“Yes.”
“Decent of him.”
“He is.”
“Are you lads... no, never mind.”
“Go on, Father...”
The elder Moffitt turned to look his son in the eye. “Are you lads quite sure you can trust this chap? He could change his mind... couldn’t he?”
“No fear of that. He’s safe as houses.”
“How are you so sure?”
There were several reasons, in fact. Moffitt considered which would be the most convincing. “Because his fellow prisoners, or some of them, tried to murder him at least twice that we know of, for being against the Party.”
“Murder?”
Moffitt nodded, gravely. “Because threats and even breaking his arm didn’t work. The last time they tried, in April, they set fire to a Nissen hut with him inside it— it was the camp’s tailor shop.”
His father’s eyes widened. “And he a cripple...”
“Quite so. They assumed he wouldn’t be able to get out.”
“‘Strewth! Bloodthirsty lot.”
“Indeed. And besides that, the High Command abandoned the Afrika Korps to perish out there in the desert. He wants to destroy them with his bare hands.”
“Well, the man has a point... Can’t say I blame him. Suppose we should head back. Sorry to plague you with questions, Jack, but...”
“It’s all right, sir. I suppose it did look dashed odd.”
“And then some. Couldn’t imagine what you lot were trying to keep hidden.” Dr. Moffitt senior was quiet for a few moments. “You like him, don’t you.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yes. We all do, rather. He reminds us that there is... “
“Another Germany?”
“Yes. He’s not the only one; I’ve met a few others.” Luden, Dietrich, Seidel... so few. “They are what the rest of their countrymen should have been.”
“Even if Vansittart says there’s no such thing.”
“Vansittart is a fool,” Moffitt replied with uncharacteristic vehemence. “And I have good reason to know it. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be here now.” If not for Hans Dietrich’s rigid sense of morality, that is. He sighed. “You won’t say anything to Mother... about our fifth Rat?”
“Certainly not. She would not take it well. Your secret is safe with me, son.”
~~~~~
“Now, put this in the ear, and listen.” Arnheiter handed the earphone to the boy after connecting the wires one to another. “It will be better to put the long wire, the antenna, up to the roof or in a tree. Now it just hangs out the window. But you can hear something nearby, I think.”
Excitedly, Donnie inserted the earphone and listened intently, but soon his expression faded. “Och,” he said, crestfallen. “It doesn’t work. All I can hear is ffffffffff...”
“That’s called static,” said his father, calmly. “It means you’re between frequencies. Just take that wee wire— we call it a cat’s whisker— and move it just a wee bit one way or the other, and listen again.”
Donnie nodded, and he adjusted the cat-whisker again. The delighted look on his face told them he’d found a signal.
The fair-haired corporal looked up at the two adults. “There are much better crystal sets in the shops, already made. But I thought he would like to make one with me.”
“Don’t apologize, my boy. It’s marvelous.” Alec Morison offered Arnheiter a hand to help him up from the floor, but the young German shook his head. Instead, he got back onto his hands and knees, and then used a nearby chair to push himself up to stand. Observing him, Morison added, “I didn’t know you’re able to do that, get down on the floor and back up again with no help. Well done.”
Arnheiter shrugged. “Herr Doktor MacNèill made me learn how— how to fall, and how to get up afterward.”
Mrs. Morison had gone into the kitchen a few minutes earlier. Now she came out with a domed cake plate. The family had carefully saved by enough sugar, butter, and egg powder for the traditional Christmastime Dundee cake, with its dried cherries and sultanas, and with almonds arranged on top in a pretty pattern.
~~~~~
“There you are,” said Alice Moffitt as her husband and her son returned with the family dog. “I was beginning to think you two had wandered off to a dig site or something.”
“Nonsense, dear. It’s only been twenty minutes— the nearest Roman wall is much farther than that,” the older man chuckled. “Sorry to be so long, boys,” he said to the three Americans as everyone returned to the chairs around the table, and his wife began to pour tea and serve slices of the steamed pudding, fragrant with cloves and cinnamon. “Sir Joseph is not keen on cold weather.” He patted the spaniel affectionately.
Troy nodded, but he also exchanged glances with Moffitt, who answered the unspoken question with a barely-visible shake of his head. Not here, not now...
~~~~~
“I see they aren’t back yet,” Sgt. Morison observed as they returned to the house that Arnheiter shared with the Rats. It was not yet full dark, so they had managed to get there before the blackout; however, Morison was eager to return home while there was still enough twilight to see by. There was no moon at all that evening, so it would be truly dark before long. “You’re all right by yourself, lad?”
“Ja. It is not the first time I am here alone.”
“No, I suppose not.” That was the nature of the young man’s job, after all, manning the radio while the Rat Patrol was across the Channel on a mission. At least M.I. provided a guard on the house at those times since as a POW, Arnheiter was not permitted a weapon. “Well, good night then, and Merry Christmas to you.”
“And also to you. Thank you for invite me.”
Once the Scottish sergeant had departed, Arnheiter once more had the house to himself. He put a few finishing touches on his handiwork, and made his way into the kitchen. There was still some coffee left from that morning, and he set about warming it on the stove.
Tired from the day’s activity, he stood at the kitchen window, looking out at the softly falling snow, with his cup of hot coffee in his left hand and his right hand occupied with one crutch. He had not yet opened the letters or the parcel from home, but he would do it soon. Perhaps the four Rats had stopped at a public-house on the way back from dining with Sergeant Moffitt’s parents.
Presently, he went back to his room, and sat down on the bed. He reached under the bed for the parcel that he had received a few days earlier from home; he had decided to wait until Christmas day itself to open it.
With his pocket knife, he slit open the gummed paper sealing the box. Inside, he found mostly what he had expected: Lebkuchen wrapped in waxed paper, a small paper packet of shiny black liquorice buttons, a packet of sheets of drawing paper and a set of fresh Staedtler drawing pencils. Under those was something soft wrapped in paper. He unfolded the paper and found a pair of knitted grey socks, and a cap. At least, he thought it was a cap until he took a closer look and realized that Tante Trudi had knitted him a sock for the stump of his right leg, to fit inside the prosthesis socket. He found himself rubbing at his eyes suddenly, as he read the note pinned to it in his aunt’s writing. One of our new neighbors is a nurse, and she told me how to make this. If it is too small or too big, write and let me know, and I shall make another. It should be soft and warm for you in the cold English winter. It was different from the regular socks, and then he recognized why— that particular bluish-grey had been a shawl of his grandmother’s, knit from a blend of finest lambswool and silk, which she had always cherished as long as he could remember. Oma gave up her best shawl, which Opa gave her when they were courting…
There was something more in the bottom of the small parcel, also wrapped in paper. He took it out, began to remove the paper, and then exclaimed in surprise. Years ago, while he was yet a schoolboy, his aunt and grandmother had woven and sewed a coverlet for his bed in grey wool with star patterns on it in dark red, and also made a cover for the bed pillow in the same woven cloth. What he held now was that pillow cover. He put it up to his face— certainly it was the very same one. Onkel Helmut’s pipe and Tante’s perfume... For a few moments, it was like being home again.
He carefully folded it, blinking back tears, and placed it in the drawer of the dresser with the new socks and the rest of his clothes.
Arnheiter was working at the desk in his room, testing the vacuum tubes in the radio set one by one in the tube tester, when he heard a car arrive outside in the street followed by the familiar voices of the four Rats outside. Suddenly seized with his old shyness, he wondered if perhaps he shouldn’t have done what he did with the house. But, whether they liked it, or didn’t, it was too late to regret it now. He went on testing vacuum tubes.
~~~~~
“Wait a moment,” said Moffitt, frowning as he and the three Americans came up the walk. “I say, is this the right house? But...” I haven’t had that much cider! There were no snowflakes here before.
Hitch, watching the ground carefully as he was on crutches to protect his injured ankle, looked up in surprise. “Hey, that’s right. Those weren’t there.” Each of the front windows facing the street on the ground floor had an elaborately cut snowflake pasted to the glass, and the window nearest the door held a glass with a red candle inside though it was not burning due to the blackout regulations. “Guess you were right, Sarge... he did want us to get lost... holy smokes!” he exclaimed as they opened the door.
In the several hours since they had left, the parlor and sitting room had been utterly transformed. A welcoming fire crackled in the hearth, and a collection of evergreen boughs in a pail tied with a ribbon formed a surrogate Christmas tree, trimmed with more snowflakes, lifelike winged birds, and tiny red candles adorning the branch tips—all made from paper, as was the snow-white angel on the highest branch tip, folded and cut from regular office-issue writing paper.
But festive though the proxy tree was, it was simple in comparison to the paper Nativity tableau on the sideboard. There were more than a dozen figures, of shepherds and animals, angels, and the Holy Family, all in their proper places. The three Magi were there too, their crowns gleaming in bright colored foil, salvaged from shiny toffee wrappers. Halos of gold foil adorned the Virgin and Child.[2]
All the figures had been drawn in ink and painted in watercolours on stiff paper, then cut out and folded at the base so they would stand, like paper dolls— but paper dolls from an art museum. One of the shepherds carried a lamb in his arms, while another had one over his shoulders. The paper manger, filled with painted yellow straw holding the Christ Child also contained a diminutive tabby cat keeping him warm. A small red-furred fox peeked inquisitively around the edge of the doorway. An ox, two ewes, and a few goats stood about as well. Another stubby red candle on a borrowed kitchen saucer was in front of the crèche.
“Wow…” said Hitch, “That’s… that’s…”
“That’s really something,” Tully Pettigrew said, finishing the sentence for him.
Moffitt said nothing, just looked. They do say, he reflected, that still waters run very deep.
Troy shook his head, exasperated. “What am I gonna do with him?” he said, and strode purposefully to the door of the radio room. I can hear the hum of that vacuum-tube tester, so I know he’s in there… hiding. He rapped sharply on the door. “You! Get yourself out here… front and center, on the double!”
“Jawohl,” the young German replied sheepishly, responding to the tone rather than the words. They heard the chair scraping across the floor, and then Arnheiter opened the door and came out, abashed. I knew it. I should not have done this without asking. Sergeants don’t like surprises… He looked down, not meeting the American sergeant’s eyes, expecting to be reprimanded.
“What the— what have you been doing?” Troy asked, still taken aback by what Arnheiter had created in their absence. “When? How did you do all this?”
“I am sorry, Sergeant,” the fair-haired corporal answered, growing red in the face. “I will take it away at once.”
“Like hell you are,” Troy growled. “This is… beautiful.”
“It is? You… you like it?”
“Yeah, we do. It’s wonderful,” the wiry American added. “I just don’t understand how you did it. Or why…”
“It is a gift for you, ein Geschenk,” Arnheiter explained, realizing that he wasn’t in trouble after all. “I have nothing to give you all, but something from my own hands.”
“Thank you,” Troy said. “This must have taken you weeks to do. And where’d the tree branches come from?” They were all settling down in the sitting room, having taken off coats.
“The branches came from Frau Helen,” Arnheiter answered. No matter how he tried, he could not pronounce ‘Mrs Wainwright’. “And it was not so long, since November. See, it is something we do, always. We call it basteln…”
“It’s customary, you mean,” Moffitt added. “Traditional?”
“Yes. We do not buy things for the house at Christmas— everyone makes things. At least in small towns like mine. My uncle made from wood a big Rentier once when I was young after he found branches the right shape,” he added, using his hands to pantomime the form of a deer’s antlers. “It is a meter tall or more.” I could sit on it like a pony, he remembered.
“Rentier?” said Hitch, frowning at the unfamiliar word. “You mean a reindeer?”
“Ich weiß nicht. But a Rentier is a big animal like a deer with horns like branches. A ‘running animal’, that means.” He chuckled. “Die Kinder think der Weihnachtsmann, Father Christmas, comes to us by driving a team of them.”
“Sounds like Santa’s reindeer to me,” Tully commented with a grin. “So how was your afternoon? Hope you weren’t too lonesome without us.”
The radioman’s expression brightened. “No, it was very good. I was making the tree there when Sergeant Morison came. He brought me back to his house with his wife and his son for dinner, and we were playing together…” He stopped, suddenly catching a glimpse of a twinkle in Troy’s blue eyes. “You knew about it, I think.”
Hitch grinned. “Sarge didn’t just know about it, Fritz… he arranged it. He rang up Major Mac and the sergeant once we got to Whitehall.”
“Yeah,” Pettigrew added. “We’re your friends… you don’t think we’re just gonna leave you all alone on Christmas Day with no dinner, did you?”
“That’s our gift to you, old boy,” said Moffitt, who had been uncharacteristically quiet since their return from his parents’ home. “Or part of it anyway.”
“And the rest of the presents are downstairs in our room…” Hitch reached for the crutches again and started to get up, but Tully waved him back.
“Stay put, I’ll get ‘em. You’re supposed to stay off the foot, Doc Carey said.”
“Last night when you came back, no one told me what happened to you,” Arnheiter commented. “Was ist passiert?”
“It’s embarrassing,” Hitch said, rolling his eyes. “We were headed for our rendezvous, to board that train, and I stepped in a hole. Nothing’s broken, though Carey said I sprained it good.”
The German eyed his friend’s heavily bandaged ankle dubiously. “That’s not good, that’s bad, I think…”
“Oh, never mind. It’s too hard to explain.” The door from the cellar stairs opened and Tully entered carrying a large cardboard box.
“Can’t wait to open this,” he said cheerfully. “The whole room down there has smelled like chocolate for a week and a half.”
Troy had gone into the kitchen to make coffee, only to find that Arnheiter had already done it before they arrived. Of that, at least, there was no shortage as coffee wasn’t rationed the way tea was. He brought back five cups and set them on the low table in the sitting room, then went back for the coffee pot. “Too bad there aren’t any cookies,” he said. “That’s what we did at my house when I was a kid—the kids playing with their toys by the tree, and the aunts and uncles having coffee and cookies with the radio on.”
“But there are cookies,” said Arnheiter. “Die Tante send me Lebkuchen, enough to share.” He got up and went into his room, returning in a few minutes with the box of spicy molasses ginger cakes. “Like she did last year.”
Hitch was opening the box that had arrived from his home in New York. “Okay, I got something for everybody in here,” he said, with an irrepressible grin. “But my kid sister Barbara did all the shopping, so I don’t know for sure what it is…” The first thing that came out of the box was a pasteboard envelope box wrapped tightly in waxed paper and cellophane tape; clearly, it was the source of the chocolate aroma. He opened it with a chuckle. “Barbara has the recipe for the chocolate butter cookies from the Toll House Inn[3]. They put it in a magazine. She made us three dozen,” he read aloud from the note inside the box. “That’s seven cookies apiece, and the extra one for me, she says.”
The box of golden-brown cookies studded with tiny bits of chocolate went also on to the table. The three Americans had had chocolate chip cookies before the war, but neither Moffitt nor Arnheiter had ever heard of them, much less tasted one.
Barbara’s baking skills were duly praised, and Hitch went on. “The way we do presents at my house is from oldest to youngest, so that makes you first, Sarge,” he said with a mischievous grin, passing to Troy a flat box which turned out to be a Detroit Tigers pennant, which had the lettering, “1940 — American League Champions” below the team’s emblem. “Where did you find that?” exclaimed Troy, delighted. “I just told Barbara and Mom that you were a big Tigers fan, Sarge... they took it from there. Next one’s for you,” he said to Moffitt, and passed a flat box to him as well, but this one looked quite a bit heavier.
The English sergeant carefully opened the paper, and withdrew from the packaging a heavy dark-brown leather book. “Excavations at Deir El Bahri, 1925-1931, Herbert E. Winlock,” Moffitt read aloud from the title page. “From the bookshop at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This is splendid— thank you!”
For Tully, who was musically inclined but had no instrument to speak of, Hitch had had shipped to him a two- octave Hohner harmonica, the best one made. Finally, last of all, he reached into the box and fished out a stack of three colorful flat boxes tied together. “And those, Fritz, are for you. Frohe Weihnachten!” The flat boxes were picture puzzles with photographs of American landscapes: ‘Grand Canyon, Arizona’, ‘Crater Lake, Oregon’, and ‘Turning Leaves, Vermont’. “At least you can see little pieces of America,” Hitch told his friend. “I told Barb to find good scenery ones.”
Arnheiter admired the three picture puzzles, and the landscape photographs that made them. “Ausgezeichnet,” he exclaimed, quite surprised and pleased. He hadn’t done that sort of puzzle since he was a schoolboy, but he had always enjoyed them, hunting for pieces that had just the right shape, and matching the color at the edges. Even better, it required no English.
“Gives you something to do while we’re gone,” Tully joked. “In case you’re not busy enough, you know.”
“That’s not quite all,” Moffitt added, closing the book about the excavation of Queen Hatshepsut’s temple. “I’ll be right back.” He got up and went upstairs to his own room, taking the stairs rapidly with his long legs.
When the English sergeant returned to the sitting room, he had a small flat case in his hand, and Troy nodded, remembering it. “It’s like this,” Moffitt explained to Arnheiter as he sat down again. “Back in October, you recall, we had a mission in a town called Hildesheim.”
“Ja,” said Arnheiter. “I remember...” His brows knotted, perplexed. What did that have to do with anything?
“We were to meet our contact in a stationer’s shop. He wasn’t there yet. And we couldn’t just stand about waiting for him, you see—it would have looked suspicious. So we had to buy something to make it look like we were ordinary customers... so we all chipped in, and got this. It’s for you.” He passed the flat box to the German corporal. “It’s got an accountant’s nib, so I daresay it would be jolly for drawing with.”
Arnheiter opened the box, hesitating. “A Pelikan 100!” he exclaimed, shocked. It was a grey pearlized piston-fill fountain pen, model 100— he had never owned such a pen in his life. He wasn’t sure whether to be overjoyed or appalled. “But... but..., ” he began to protest. “I— I don’t...” His English vocabulary failed him, and he had to say it in German.
“He says it’s wonderful, but he doesn’t deserve it,” Moffitt translated.
Troy rolled his eyes, exasperated. “Figured you’d say that. But you do deserve it, Fritz. You do everything we ask of you, and then more. Merry Christmas.”
“Besides,” Tully added, “we kind of figured we could make it up to you a little bit for them taking your watch and pen when you were captured.”
“It is a wonderful pen,” their radio operator said slowly. “Thank you, all of you.”
Tully turned to Hitch. “What about the picture? Where’d you hide it?”
“Oh! Right…” He explained briefly, and Tully went to go get it.
He came back upstairs in a few minutes, carrying something behind his back. “Fritz, there is one more thing for you. We found this a while back in a charity shop in the Tottenham Court Road. We thought you’d like it.” He withdrew the framed picture from behind his back, and gave it to the young German. It was a photograph of a small clear lake surrounded by rugged snow-capped mountains. In front of the photo, inside the glass, was a small rectangle of paper with typing on it. It read: <em>“The mountains are calling me and I must go.” —John Muir</em>
On the back, which was covered with brown paper, someone had written in pencil, Bear Lake, Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado, U.S.A. “It seemed like a good fit,” Hitch added, remembering that Tully had said to him, ‘Does this sound like anybody we know?’
Arnheiter was reading the typed words on the front, and nodding. “Yes, this is very good.” He smiled. “It fits me well, thank you.”
Later, after a hot bath and making ready for bed, Arnheiter sat at his desk, drafting his next letter home. He had been using the pen he had before, but then he decided to try out the new Pelikan. It wrote like a dream—wie ein Traum. Thinking of what to write, he was nearly at a loss for words. It was a strange thing— that day had been one of the best Christmases he could remember. But there is so much I cannot say now, perhaps can never say... what do I tell them?
There was a quiet knock on the door. “Arnheiter, are you still up?” It was Sergeant Moffitt.
“Ja, I am. Kommen Sie herein.”
The door opened and the tall Englishman entered. He saw the corporal writing with the new pen, and smiled. “What do you think of it?”
“It is excellent, a beautiful thing. In every way.”
“Good. I am glad you like it.” Moffitt paused a moment, choosing his words. “There was something else that I wanted to tell you,” he said.
“Yes?”
“My father took me aside this afternoon, and asked where our fifth man was.”
“Wie, bitte? How did he know?”
“Apparently he saw a few things, and guessed at a few more. We weren’t as careful as we ought to have been, I suppose. In any case, he had deduced enough that I thought I had better tell him the rest of it. Once he got past the shock, he was quite impressed that you stayed here alone, on Christmas Day, out of a wish not to cause my family further distress. He says to thank you. And gave me these for you.” He withdrew two bottles from his jacket pocket and set them on the desk. “It’s English hard cider,” Moffitt explained. “Apple beer, I suppose you would call it.”
Arnheiter considered. It was an odd gesture for the sergeant’s father to make— after all, as a prisoner of war, he could not have come in any case. He was not permitted to leave the house except under guard and with express orders. But he dimly grasped the idea that somehow the older man was expressing appreciation for something that he had done, or said. “Yes. In Hesse they make Apfelwein. It is almost the same, I think. Thank you, and thanks to him also. Will you share it with me?”
“I would be honored,” said Moffitt. He went back to the kitchen and returned with two short glasses. He took out his penknife and pried open one of the two bottles. “What shall we drink to?” he asked as he poured one glass, then the other.
Arnheiter looked once more at his half-finished letter. “To the end of the war.”
The Englishman nodded. “And… Next Christmas at home?”
“Perfekt. Next Christmas at home.” There was a soft ting as the two glasses touched.
After Sergeant Moffitt had bid him good night and departed, Arnheiter went back to writing the letter home.
Liebe Familie, he began,
It has been a very good Christmas, this year, he said to them, and paused. The men in charge here made certain we prisoners got a good Christmas dinner. There was lamb and potatoes, and good brown bread.
Near where I am now is a camp of American soldiers. They brought us some Plätzchen from their home, ‘cookies’ they say, made with butter and tiny bits of chocolate mixed in. Those were very good.
We have a Christmas tree that I and some others made out of broken branches. It isn’t a real Weihnachtsbaum, but it is pretty to see all the same.
Thank you, Oma und Tante, for the new socks, and Onkel Helmut for the paper and pencils. I hope that the next Christmas we will be all together once more…
[1] “Lochiel” is the traditional title of the chief of clan Cameron.
[2] Using foil candy wrappers to represent crowns and halos in this way was inspired by the novel, The Kitchen Madonna, by Rumer Godden.
[3] Toll House cookies date back to 1938. Many thousands of them were baked and sent to American servicemen during the war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chocolate_chip_cookie.