Leyla’s Tale (Part Two)

     It took many years to track down the Hunters who took my parents. 

     World War 2 slowed down my search.  Certain high ranking Nazis were Hunters and used the resources of Nazi Germany to find Hidden Ones throughout Europe.  I was part of a guerrilla band of Hidden Ones operating in occupied Europe.  We were from the younger generation, average age around a hundred years.  Being in my mid sixties (and looking like a teenage girl) put me at the younger end.  Our oldest member, Ricardo, was the leader, a dour man of two hundred.  Each one of had lived and traveled in Europe for decades and knew multiple languages.  I spoke fluent French and German and was knowledgeable in most Central and Eastern European languages. 

     Our band of Hidden hunted the Hunters.  The random violence of war and occupation provided an excellent opportunity for settling old scores.  We also found others of our kind and smuggled them out of Europe.  Because if the Hunters found them first, Hidden Ones would end up in the camp.  Besides the large camps for Jews, Roma, and other undesirables, there was a smaller, more secret camp holding Hidden Ones.  There were enough Hunters in the Nazi hierarchy to quietly set up this camp in an isolated part of Bavaria. 

     Ricardo wouldn’t even consider attacking the camp until very late in the war.  It was too well defended and we had neither the numbers nor the firepower for a direct assault.  He changed his mind in 1945 when the Allies were invading German soil from east and west.  We needed to get our people out before the Americans racing through Bavaria found the camp.  There would be too many questions about what was going on and who the prisoners were. 

     We gathered in a cellar we were using as a temporary headquarters to plan. 

     Stephan, our intelligence specialist, spoke first.  “We’ve been cautious about gathering information because we don’t want them to get suspicious.  There are about fifty prisoners inside and about a dozen guards on duty at any time.  The off duty guards have barracks there so we’ll have to deal with them too.”

     “They can’t all be Hunters,” said Katya, a blonde about my age.  I had lived with her family after my parents were taken. 

     “No, they’re not,” Stephan continued.  “As far as I can tell, the guards are simply SS troops.  I don’t think they’re aware of the special nature of their prisoners.  The camp Kommandant is another story.”  He held up a photograph of two men in SS uniform. 

     “On the right is  Sturmbannfuhrer Erich Vogler, a known Hunter.  I have confirmed sightings of him on Hunter raids all the way back to the 1920s.  He knows what we’ll do to him if we get our hands on him so expect him to fight to the death.  The other man is the camp physician, Doctor Ernst Frobicher.  As you can see, he is also an SS officer.  His presence bothers me.”

     “Why?” I asked.

     “He’s not some doctor who comes by occasionally to treat the guards.  Obviously he’s not there to treat the prisoners.”  Our kind doesn’t get sick and heals rapidly from injuries.  There was not much need for an onsite doctor to care for us.

     “He lives at the camp and has his own building there,” Stephan continued.  “There’s no record of him being a Hunter but it’s highly probably he’s the one who harvests blood from the prisoners as well as harvesting the organs of any dead.  But even that job doesn’t require him to spend so much time at the camp.  I want to know what he’s doing in that building.”

     Stephan unrolled a large sheet of paper on the central table.  It showed the layout of the camp with many of the buildings labeled with their function.  “I’ve identified the guard barracks and prisoner quarters.  I can only guess about the other buildings.  This one is probably the kitchen and mess hall.  The others are probably for storage.  We won’t know what’s in them until we raid the camp. 

     “There are four guard towers with machineguns, one in each corner between the inner and outer fences.  Each one has a clear line of side inside and outside the camp.  The towers look like they have sandbag reinforcement so taking them out will be difficult.  But as long as the Germans control the towers, they control the camp.  Eduard?”

     Eduard was our best tactician.  He was dark haired and growing a thin fuzzy beard to look older than his late teen appearance (he was more like ninety).  He lit a cigarette as he approached the table.  “We picked up a lot of equipment at that German depot we raided last week.  We’re going to need it.  This will be the kind of stand up fight we’ve always avoided.”

     “This will be a tough battle,” Ricardo said.  “The plan is risky and we will almost certainly lose people.  But the objectives are worth the risk.  We need to get our people out of there.  The Kommandant, Vogler, can’t be allowed to get away.  I want him alive if possible. He can identify other Hunters for us.”

     We worked well into the evening going over the plan, preparing equipment, and doing a quick walkthrough.  Eduard wanted another day to get ready but Ricardo was adamant about attacking as soon as possible.  The Americans were rapidly approaching and could reach the camp any day.  The next morning we moved out.

     At midmorning a Horch staff car drove up to the entry gate of the camp.  Up front were two of the older guerrillas dressed in Wehrmacht uniforms.  The gate guards would probably notice the bullet holes and bloodstains on the uniforms.  They didn’t have any identity papers to bluff the guards with either.  But the car would at least get to the gate.  The SS guards might be leery of the Wehrmacht visiting but they wouldn’t open fire on an approaching military vehicle without provocation. 

     In the back of the car Katya and I were hidden under a blanket along with two other guerrillas.  We popped up and opened fire with submachine guns when the car stopped.  All six of us scrambled out of the car and ran past the gate.  We split into two teams of three, one heading to each of the two nearest towers.  From the woods behind us machineguns opened up, laying suppressive fire on the towers. 

     I sprinted as fast as I could as bullets from the far towers struck nearby.  Katya and Mikhail, one of the uniformed guerrillas, were with me.  We reached the base of the tower.  My companions sprayed rounds at the other towers as I climbed the ladder.  I pushed on the trapdoor over my head.  It was latched from the inside.  I jumped over to one of the tower support beams.  I shimmied up until I could see through one of the openings.  I pulled out a grenade, armed it, and lobbed it into the tower.  After it exploded I crawled up and tumbled into the tower.  Both guards were laying on the floor with multiple shrapnel wounds.  I made sure they were dead then grabbed the machinegun. I let loose a long burst of fire at the guard barracks then opened fire on the next tower as Katya and Mikhail sprinted towards it.

     They were caught in a burst of machinegun fire from the tower and fell about halfway across.  I swore and poured more rounds into the tower.  The other team had taken their towers.  I saw one of them sprint towards the last tower.  With the three other towers laying down suppressive fire, he knocked out the last tower without difficulty.  I looked back and saw the rest of our band coming out of the woods and running to the entry gate. 

     I threw open the trapdoor and hurried down the ladder.  I ran over to where my friends lay.  Mikhail was stitched with bullet holes from crotch to throat.  He was clearly dead.  Katya’s legs were a bloody mess but she was alive.  Her body was already healing and she would be fine in a few days.  I ran to join the rest of my band in clearing the guards out of the camp.

     The battle for the rest of the camp was short and violent.  The guards fought as fanatically as we feared and none surrendered.  One guard had managed to get to a prisoner building and gun down everyone inside.  We found 37 of our people undernourished and weakened but alive in the rest of the buildings.   Sturmbannfuhrer Vogler took his own life rather than let us capture him.  Dr. Frobicher wasn’t present at the camp.  We found out he had left at dawn on an errand of some sort. 

     What we found in his laboratory sickened all of us.  The lab was clearly set up for medical experimentation.  There was a blood stained operating table and neatly labels jars containing various body parts filled wall shelves.  Dr. Frobicher had kept meticulous notes of his experiments in several notebooks.    

     We grabbed all the journals for later study.  They were loaded along with the freed prisoners and our casualties into trucks we had brought with us.  We were just about to light the lab building on fire when the Americans showed up.

     About two dozen vehicles, a mix of jeeps and halftracks, roared up to the entry gate and several soldiers disembarked the vehicles.  They were shouting in English and pointing their rifles at us.  None of us understood English so we pointed our weapons at them.  It was an odd picture - a group of soldiers in a standoff with a bunch of armed civilians, most whom looked to be teenage children. 

     Two of the Americans stepped forward.  One of the men was tall and lean.  Unlike the others, he didn’t wear a helmet.  He also had different patches on his uniform.  The other was dressed and equipped the same as the rest of the soldiers.  I guessed they were both officers.

     “Put down your weapons,” the tall man said in German.  “If you fought the guards then we are not your enemy.  I am Major Paul Jenkins of the Office of Strategic Services.”

     Ricardo stepped forward.  “Let us leave with the people we’ve rescued and we won’t be a problem.”

     The tall American gave us a tight smile.  “Well, that may be a problem.  I’m here to recover the prisoners for the U.S. government.  I’d also like to know what happened to Sturmbannfuhrer Vogler.”

     “The Kommandant is dead.  Like all of his kind, he was too cowardly to face justice for his actions.  But I suspect you know all about his kind, Major.  We will not turn over anyone to you.”

     “That’s unfortunate for you.  The troops with me don’t understand German.  Captain Talbert,” he gestured to the officer next to him, “will accept my version of this conversation.  I will leave here with the prisoners.  You can turn them over and leave here alive or I will have Captain Talbert’s men shoot you.  The choice is yours.”

     I took a desperate chance.  “Captain Talbert,” I called out in French.  “Can you understand me?”

     Talbert looked at me and nodded. 

     “The major wants to kill us and take these people we just freed,” I blurted out.

     Jenkins glared at me then looked over at Talbert.  It looked like he didn’t understand what I had said to the captain.  Jenkins and Talbert spoke to each other in hostile tones for a moment.  Talbert called something out to his men and turned his weapon on Jenkins.

     “I don’t know what’s going on, Miss,” Talbert said in heavily accented French.  “Major Jenkins says you’re some kind of German guerilla band.  He wants us to open fire on the lot of you.  But I’m not shooting a bunch of kids.  You’re killing German soldiers and that’s good enough for me.”

     “What are you going to do with Major Jenkins?” I asked.

     “I’ll figure that out later.  Tell your friends to leave now before I change my mind.”

     I translated for Ricardo.  His French was spotty and he hadn’t followed what was said.  We quickly finished loading vehicles.  Talbert looked upset when Ricardo set the lab on fire. 

     “Bad things were done in there.  We’re cleansing the ground,” I told him. 

     I checked on Katya, who had been loaded onto one of the trucks.  She was still unconscious but I could already see signs of healing.  I went back to the staff car and climbed in.  We rolled out of the camp past the Americans while Talbert and Jenkins were having another heated discussion. 

      Paul Jenkins was almost certainly a Hunter.  He must have had some serious support behind him to commandeer an infantry company for a private mission like that.  We were going to have to find out a lot more about Major Jenkins.

     Doctor Frobicher disappeared after the camp was liberated.  We had destroyed the evidence of his crimes at the camp but he had also been conducting medical experiments on prisoners at other Nazi camps.  Like his colleague Josef Mengele he was considered a war criminal.  We were also after him for our own justice.  His notebooks detailed experiments on Hidden Ones to determine healing ability.  Prisoners had limbs amputated to see how quickly they were regrown.  Others were subjected to increasing levels of injury to see how much they could take before being unable to heal.  The Hunters were most likely hiding him.  His knowledge of our physiology made him useful to them.  It was quite possible the Hunters were supplying him with test subjects. 

     I picked up a few leads on my personal quest during my time as a guerrilla.  After the war, I was able to follow up on them.  Katya recovered fully from her injuries.  She and many of the other members of the guerrilla band stayed in contact.  We had all lost someone to the Hunters and we helped each other track them down.  Our experiences in the war had taught us to not just hide like our kind usually did.  We were going to take the fight to the Hunters.