The Engineer

By Deutsch L.W.

This story contains the horrors of the Second World War committed in Nazi Germany. A stigma at the time was that all Germans were Nazis but this story renounces that belief. The Engineer is the ageless story of good versus evil, light versus darkness, and the triumph of the human spirit. A man of great Christian faith named Wolfgang Spreitzel is given the impossible task of freeing people from certain death at the Dachau concentration camp. As a train engineer for the state run railroad he has delivered people into Dachau and watched in horror as these people were unloaded from cattle cars to certain death. It is after one of these trips that God begins to reveal a plan for Wolfgang to follow. As Wolfgang follows God's instruction he is given some of the most unlikely partners to accomplish it. These steps of faith lead some to God's amazing grace, the road to redemption, love for the unloved, and hope for the hopeless. This novels believable characters defy the Nazis and begin to free captive people from the death trains. This is accomplished by a man on a mission from God. He is simply known as The Engineer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 31, 2014
• ISBN: 9781493162802

Book preview

Copyright © 2014 by L.W. Deutsch.

Library of Congress Control Number:      2014900666

   ISBN:   Hardcover   978-1-4931-6279-6

                 Softcover     978-1-4931-6278-9

                  eBook         978-1-4931-6280-2

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Rev. date: 03/06/2014

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Contents

Chapter 1: GENESIS

Chapter 2: RECONSTRUCTION

Chapter 3: THE ENGINE

Chapter 4: THE RETURN

Chapter 5: HELGA TAKES A TRIP

Chapter 6: DEITZEL’S DAY

Chapter 7: THE LETTER

Chapter 8: THE BEGINNING OF THE WAR

Chapter 9: THE SCHUTZSTAFFEL

Chapter 10: THE BIG DAY

Chapter 11: TIMES ARE CHANGING

Chapter 12: THE ROOKIE

Chapter 13: THE GREAT REALITY

Chapter 14: BLOODY HANDS

Chapter 15: THE VISIT

Chapter 16: ALBERT COMES HOME

Chapter 17: LIFEBOAT

Chapter 18: FIRST OF MANY

Chapter 19: TOO CLOSE

Chapter 20: THE FINAL DAYS

Chapter 21: THE BIG DAY

Chapter 22: THE REUNION

Chapter 1

GENESIS

Mr. and Mrs. Spreitzel were delighted to have their son Wolfgang on a warm spring day of 1892, especially after having lost two children prior, so this birth is a miracle for them. Wolfgang was born into a farming family that has plowed this section of earth since the 1600s, which will be his home for life. The farm was located in the town of Kieser, in southern Germany. During Germany’s rebuilding after the First World War, Hitler began to build all types of massive public works, including the state-ran railway that built a new station in town. Across the way was the Rhinehart family. They were good friends with the Spreitzel family, and their property of several thousands acres was connected to each other at the furthest ends next to the forest. Several months after Wolfgang was born, Helga Rhinehart was born. Both families were ecstatic. The children became friends fast even as infants. As little children, they would run about the farms, playing all types of childhood games. This friendship would continue to develop over the years. It wasn’t till their early teenaged years that the relationship turned romantic. They had become high school sweethearts, and both sets of parents were delighted with this notion. They seemed like a natural match. Wolfgang was a handsome young man who was very physically fit, with blue eyes and blond hair. This was all due to his being raised on a farm. At an early age, he was in the fields doing manual labor, rolling hay and other harvested crops for the market.

Helga lived a life similar to Wolfgang’s, and at an early age, she was responsible for milking the cows plus taking care of all the livestock. Lifting pails of milk and water gave Helga a toned and fit body. She also had the looks that would stop any man in his tracks. Dirty blonde hair with eyes so blue they emulated the sky. A courtship lasted through their teenage years until they settled on a wedding date with a small ceremony for the spring of 1910. Both families contributed land from their farms as wedding gifts. The land was fertile, so they built a small cottage at the far end of the land for privacy, with a long dirt road leading toward it. The cottage was small with two bedrooms upstairs, one for them and one for their future children; and downstairs was the kitchen, overlooking the driveway, with the study room with a fire place in it, while the exterior was of cement and stone. The kitchen windows faced the driveway, and all the windows had wooden shutters. The kitchen table was of solid oak with a cast-iron wood-burning stove off to the left with an oven and four handled removable cooking tops. They had one massive barn that held their animals and stored their grains. Wheat was a steadfast crop for them, but he also liked to make his own beer that he sold to the local beer hall the Knickerbocker, giving him some extra income. He would go there once a week for the company of some of the First World War vets that were there while he has a meal with a glass of milk.

Wolfgang would tend to the fields, while Helga maintained the livestock. Then she would sell some milk, eggs, and produce in the town square. Helga knew most of the people in the town square, including the Rosenbergs, for most of her life and was close to them. The Rosenbergs happened to be the only Jewish family in the town, and she always enjoyed Mrs. Rosenberg’s words of wisdom and genuine love of life, which shone through in everything she did. Wolfgang and Helga were both raised in the Christian faith, attending services together every Sunday morning at nine, and going to church was also part of their social lives. They would stay afterward, talking with other farmers, sometimes inviting them to dinner at the house. The dinner conversations revolved around any current events or what was said in the sermon that morning. There was always a Bible in the house, and they would read it daily. Years of use made the cover cracked and brittle to the touch. Like most of their possessions, it has passed its prime a long time ago.

Their greatest joy came at the birth of their first child in autumn of 1913. It was a boy, and they decided to name him Deitzel, after Wolfgang’s grandfather. He was a spitting image of his father, with very blond hair and blue eyes along with the chubbiest little body. When she teased him about Deitzel’s physique, he would laugh it off and say that he has to grow into it. Boy, did Deitzel grow and quickly. Their second greatest gift came in the form of a little girl that they named Eva. Eva was born in the early summer of 1914. Their baby girl had dirty blonde hair and eyes that were ocean blue. Wolfgang knew from the start that young men wanting to date her were going to be a situation, to say the least. That was a long time away, but she would always be his little angel. Like Deitzel, when she was dedicated to the Lord, they had invited two of their closest friends. In attendance were John and Erna Schmitt, whose children had immigrated out of Germany to the United States, and Hershel and Edna Rosenberg, who were both in their later years, looking forward to retirement. On this Sunday after-service gathering, they were listening to the radio when suddenly the broadcast was interrupted with an urgent message stating that today Archduke Francis Ferdinand was assassinated by a Serbian nationalist. Wolfgang’s world was now in shambles because he knew it was just a matter of time before war would break out in Europe. He thought to himself, What does a God-fearing man do in this type of situation? Just pray was all he could think of. With the war clouds on the horizon, he knew he had only a couple of weeks at tops to help Helga learn about crop farming and how to harvest the grains and what prices the crops should sell for.

The German army had the most superior weaponry compared with all other European powers. The feelings of patriotism were high, and there was a belief that if there was going to be a war, it will be over very quickly; and in the summer of 1914, the First World War broke out. It was not long after that when Wolfgang was drafted into the German army. It would be almost four long years before he would see his family again. Wolfgang went off to boot camp along with many other young men filled with so much patriotism it overwhelmed him, but that did not last long for him because he knew what war meant. Wolfgang kept to himself for the most part until he found a man in his regiment who was just as devoted to his Christian faith as much as Wolfgang was to his. As fate would have it, they became brothers in more ways than one. His name was Hansel Herman from the city of Cuxhaven, a rustic fishing port in northern Germany, where he was a dockworker whose face was withered by the strong winds and raging seas’ mist. Hansel was a family man, whose family consisted of his wife, Sylvia, and their two small children.

In March of 1914, Germany had declared war on France, which would later ground on to become the dreaded war of the trenches. Some men were gung ho and just itching to make their first kill, while Wolfgang could not reel himself up to the notion of killing another human being. Hansel agreed with Wolfgang about taking another person’s life, but how does one attempt to do this during a war? They would have to figure out that part and do it quickly. Most of his company arrived in force, willing to fight the French from town to town, but Wolfgang did not care much for knowing what town he was in because after a while, it all became the same to him. Then on April of 1914, Britain declared war on Germany, while Canada also declared war, thus marking the beginning of the First World War. On the other hand, the frontiers began in skirmishes, and this was to be Wolfgang’s first experience at war. He would be glad to get them back compared with upcoming battles he will partake in. In August 1914, the French advanced toward German trenches, and in one day, the French and English lost twenty-seven thousand men. This was to be Wolfgang and Hansel’s first battle together, and they managed to lay low, running back and forth through the trenches. They ventured out onto the battlefield the next day only to feel their boots sinking into the ground and making that suction noise when they pulled them up to take another step. To their shock, it was not mud they were stepping in but the blood and remains of dead French soldiers. The one person Wolfgang counted on the most was Hansel. It is amazing how war could bring men together, so they made a pact then and there that if one of them should be killed, the other would take all their belongings back to their family in person. Wolfgang and Hansel thought they had survived the most horrifying first encounter of the war.

What were once rolling farming fields have now become known as no-man’s-land, with so many craters it resembled the face of the moon. Wolfgang had heard in November of 1915 that Germany had captured the capital of Poland, Warsaw, which was to become the longest and largest battle of the war. Wolfgang was glad it was not his battle to fight; however, Wolfgang’s battle was just over the horizon. In the summer of 1916, the British began the Battle of the Somme, causing the British military to suffer its greatest number of casualties, a staggering sixty thousand men. That was to be the British’s last major offensive of the war. The British had secretly developed a new weapon to which the Germans had no defense, and it was simply called a tank because it appeared to be a large water tank having caterpillar tracks with weapons placed all over it. The war was becoming more and more violent as the days turned into weeks and weeks into months and months to years. In April 1917, the German forces had finished their withdrawal to the Hindenburg line, causing the German government to contemplate that the war was unwinnable.

In November 1917, the Bolsheviks overthrew the Russian czar, replacing it with the Communist party led by a man named Lenin. In December 1917, a German/Russian armistice was signed by the new Russian government, which freed up a massive amount of men that can now be moved to the western front. Whenever he could, Wolfgang would write to Helga, telling her that he was well. She would also send him letters about how the children were growing and asking when he was going to return home. How he longed to smell the morning dew, but instead, there was the sound of men moaning and the smell of death. Wolfgang would tell Hansel all about his latest letters, showing him pictures that Helga sent him, and Hansel would also do the same, sharing updated information about his family. Their relationship was more like that of brothers. They thought in a way that it would hopefully not allow them to take a human life; so when they would enter into battle, they aimed their guns above the heads of the charging men, hoping not to hit anyone. Or if they had to shoot at someone, they would always try to shoot them in the legs. This strategy served them well for many battles and kept their souls at some sort of peace. The news reached them that the Americans had joined the war and landed in France on June 1917. While the war kept on taking its toll on the German army, the soldiers’ morale had become that of a defeatist type. They had planned on keeping in touch after the war, but that was not meant to be because during a charge at the enemy’s trench, Wolfgang saw Hansel fall. He was not out of Wolfgang’s reach, so he immediately dropped to his stomach, and crawled over to Hansel. Rolling him over, he witnessed the most horrific sight to date imaginable. His brother was staring death in the face. Hansel was moving his mouth ever so slightly but could not utter a sound. There and then, he felt anger unlike any that he felt before, making him now know only one emotion; and that was rage. Wolfgang’s only friend and brother was now gone. They fought together for nearly three years; and with the war almost at its end, Wolfgang felt the greatest pain, as he dragged Hansel’s lifeless body back to the trench where he was passed by soldiers yelling to retreat. The next conflict was going to be different for him because he was now fighting with a rage in his heart or perhaps it was revenge for Hansel. He now had to gather Hansel’s possessions, not wanting to go to Cuxhaven, but an oath is an oath.

There were still several spring offensives that the German army had planned for spring of 1918 against the French at the Battle of Marne. This was to be the last major German offensive on the western front before war’s end. Wolfgang was now at an emotional, psychological, and spiritual bankruptcy. During those last days of the spring offenses, he had a choice as before to kill but now he wanted to shoot to kill. For his only known kill—the French soldier was close enough for him to see his face—caused him to see an expression on the French soldiers that would haunt him for the rest of his life. Afterward, he realized that he took a human his life; and with the rage gone, it was replaced with great regret, sorrow, and remorse. This shook Wolfgang to his spiritual core. Just then he realized how powerful human emotions can be. Emotions destroy the intellect, he thought to himself. Finally, in November 1918, negotiations for an armistice were reached, and hostilities ceased at 11:00 a.m. Wolfgang then found himself making an unwanted journey to Cuxhaven. On the train ride there, he constantly thought about what he was going to say. When he reached Hansel’s house with the package, it felt like a ton of weight was on his soul. The walkway was only twenty feet or so, but it might as well have been a mile. He rang the doorbell, and Hansel’s wife, Sylvia, peeked through the window next to the door; and she knew right away that he was Wolfgang because Hansel had given her a picture of them. There were no words exchanged between the two of them, and all that happened was a period of eye contact, until Wolfgang just turned around and left. He wept the whole train ride home.

Helga was keeping up the home front like a true champion. She would rise just as dawn broke over the horizon. She had developed a system early on to take care of the livestock; gathering the milk and eggs was first order while the children still slept at this early time. Helga would wake the children up after her rounds to get them ready for school. The Schmitts would watch the children for Helga when she would go to the town square for the morning. Edna Rosenberg would also watch the children when she brought them to the market. Edna and her husband, Hershel, owned the tailor shop in the town, and they enjoyed each other’s company over coffee and the joy of motherhood. Helga was extremely proud of her children because they were exceptionally intelligent. They, like most Germans, knew that the war was lost; and she could only pray that he survived the last months. In 1918, her prayers were answered; Germany had surrendered, but the terms were harsh and left Germany devastated.

Wolfgang was on his way home to his beloved family in the town he called home. When he walked down the dirt driveway to his house, Helga saw him and ran at full force to greet him almost knocking him off his feet. Following like little ducklings were Deitzel and Eva. They latched on to his shabby pants with a viselike grip. All Wolfgang could do was to hold them all in as close and as tight as possible. They walked up the path to the cottage; this filled his eyes with tears. He was surprised that he even had any left since leaving Cuxhaven. He could not wait to have his first home-cooked meal in years; and she made his favorite sauerbraten, red cabbage, and potato pancakes. After giving God thanks, he ate it all without even coming up for a breath. He would come up for a gulp of milk. Oh, how he had missed it all, and he would never take anything for granted again. He could not believe how fast the children have grown. After his meal, Wolfgang went upstairs, took a shower, and slept for two days straight. After his short hibernation he went straight back to working the farmland. He would praise Helga for the amazing job she had done in his long absence. Wolfgang took from his duffel bag each and every letter she had written to him. She noticed the ink was smeared on one and asked him if the letter was wet from rain. Wolfgang explained to her that it was wet from his tears. After a couple of days home, the warm, fuzzy feeling was replaced with the horror of war because while in war, he had no chance to think about war. She noticed that he was becoming cold and aloof while she would tiptoe around subject of the horrors that his eyes had seen. She knew it would be a long journey toward his recovery, if that was even possible. He did not return to church or read his Bible, and he seemed to have forsaken all the things that brought him joy, including her and the children. Something has drastically changed him. And eventually she would receive bits and pieces of information about the war—he would give her tidbits as to not overwhelm her at first. Deep down, he knew that he had to come clean with God and then her, so now was the time of healing for Wolfgang; and the biggest of all wounds was disobeying God’s commandments. He had seen the carnage of war, some men with their limbs severed, killed from enemy snipers, and the possibility that one of his stray bullets did send someone to the grave. First, knowingly taking a human life in addition to losing the man that was the closest to having a brother was the second hardest event to wash away from the war. Removing the face of the man he killed from his memory was almost impossible do, but he had no control of the nightmares that haunted his sleep. He knew he had to emotionally bury Hansel, and as for most people who served in the military during war, trying to assimilate back into civilian life is a major challenge. With her love, devotion, softness, and nonjudgmental way, little by little the man she loved returned to her. The years passed too quickly with the children, and their inquisitive minds amazed him, but their ability to retain knowledge kept them ahead of the class. There was a sister-and-brother rivalry between the two, which he would help develop through encouragement for the two of them to debate each other on topics ranging from local news to biblical topics. They were only ten and nine years of age and were bewildering their teachers, while she has always said that they were gifts from God. The instructors said that they could be anything in life; whatever they choose to be in life was within their grasps. This made them so proud.

The one thing that had remained with Wolfgang was the structured life that the military had drilled into him more so than he was. She was concerned by his military characteristic, but if this is the worst of what had happened to him, she was more than willing to adjust to it. Having him return to church on Sundays was a key goal for her, which came to pass because she kept on leaving the Bible on the kitchen table opened to some of his favorite passages. She