The Farm

By Randy O'Brien

A timely debate on women's rights and abortion. A unique and nostalgic study of Southern America following World War II. A dramatic mother/daughter conflict.

In The Farm, Olaf "Ollie" Weber, a wounded Nazi prisoner of war, escapes a POW camp in Tennessee intent on assassinating President Truman. Ginger "Snaps" Wright accidentally helps Ollie elude prison guards, and when confronted, he rapes and impregnates the wannabe actress, who must then choose between Hollywood and motherhood.

Finally, after years of shortages and suffering, it's time to dream big, and the Wright family, "Snaps," her mother Mary Lou, Uncle, and sisters Millie and Anne face tumultuous societal and economic changes. But the family must also grieve the loss of Millie's hero husband, Stanley, and help her find a way to find new meaning in her life. A battlefield medic, Stanley was one of the eighty-four victims of the Nazi war crime; the Massacre at Malmedy.

The Farm is an exciting new story from the author of the critically acclaimed literary historical novel Gettysburg by Morning

• Language: English
• Publisher: Addison & Highsmith Publishers
• Release date: Nov 21, 2023
• ISBN: 9781592113354

Book preview

Dedication

Thanks to my editor Dr. Kurt Brackob for his support and professionalism. Thanks to Diana Livesay for being thoughtful and for her intellect. Thanks to Dr. Elizabeth Taylor for her insight into Camp Forrest. Thank you to my grandmother and my aunts for their love and guidance. Thanks to my mother and father for their belief in me and to my sister Cindy for her continued support and love. Thanks to Deb Scally for her photographic skills. Thanks to my daughter Molly for bringing light and happiness and to my darling wife, Beth, who brings joy and laughter into my life.

Chapter 1

Olaf made the slightest movement with his hand as it rested on the blanket. He had turned it over so the palm pointed to his cot. He moved it back and forth, parallel to the floor. It was a gesture he hoped the medic standing near him would take as a sign of surrender.

The SS soldier had been in pain for hours and was ready to die. He had sworn an oath to the Fatherland and believed in his heart that it was his duty to serve until death took him to Himmel, the German word that translated to both Heaven and sky.

But there was too much noise and commotion in the makeshift hospital, and he could barely speak. The doctor, the nurses, and Stanley, the medic that had tended to Olaf on his journey from the battlefield to this makeshift hospital, all failed to notice Olaf’s gesture.

Stanley pointed the triage doctor toward the boy’s open wound, likely caused by a bayonet. The young medic watched the doctor pull his scarf tighter around his neck against the temperature that had hovered well below freezing for the last five days. While the cold caused severe trench foot and frostbite cases for some men, Stanley knew from his experience in the field that the below-freezing temperatures had likely saved this boy’s life. His blood had left his extremities and slowed the flow to his wounded thigh. Dirt and blood covered the boy’s uniform, and Stanley could smell sweat, vomit, and the coppery aroma of blood.

Stanley saw a tattoo on the inside of the soldier’s right forearm. Black ink and his pale skin made the three interlocking triangles of the Valknut appear in stark contrast with the brown blanket.

The medic had no idea that wearing this symbol on Olaf’s body was a family tradition. German pragmatism and Olaf, sometimes called Ollie by his friends, believed in family honor and wisdom gained through experience.

Olaf was an uncommon German first name. He’d been called Olaf after his Swedish mother’s grandfather. This caused him to be teased at school, but he knew he was German, through and through, no matter the origin of his name.

Earlier, Stanley was one of the stretcher-bearers who had carried him from the bomb-pocked field. Stanley’s job involved dodging bullets and bombs as he and his friend, John, dashed around battlefields and through foxholes.

He wore the red cross on a white square on his helmet and armband, but no bullet respected that symbol. He’d felt the ‘whizz’ of rounds overhead and once fell and dropped a man as an aerial bomb landed thirty feet to his left. John temporarily lost his hearing in his right ear during that run. The boys tried to perform the ‘worst job’ in the Army with skill and precision, but it wasn’t easy and, most times, impossible.

Olaf had felt every bump and turn but wouldn’t let his enemy know he was in pain as his rescuers ran through the rough terrain. Later, Stanley and John strapped the soldier to the back of a jeep and drove to the abandoned church that had been commandeered as a field hospital.

The church initially had four spires. A few days ago, Stanley crouched near the altar, head covered, when a Luftwaffe bombing run took down the steeple on the south side. Today, the remaining spires on the north side waited for the early morning sun to melt off the night’s latest snowfall.

Stanley knew cold weather from growing up in Tennessee, but he’d had a warm coat, hat, and gloves there. Unfortunately, the Army failed to provide such materials for soldiers during what was eventually determined to be one of the coldest winters on record in Europe.

John and Stanley took the soldier from the jeep through the tall, open door and deposited him in front of the altar. Stanley saw wounded men covering much of the floor, many wrapped in thin, gray blankets. He watched a doctor go from man to man, diagnose each soldier’s condition, and determine his place in line.

On the jeep, Stanley had watched Olaf’s sandy blond hair flutter in the icy breeze. His high cheekbones and blue eyes made him an example of the personification of the Aryan race advocated by the Fuhrer. He had been severely wounded and captured just miles from here. What was the name of the town? Malmedy. Stanley had no idea where the township was or was familiar with the name, only that it was in Belgium.

Olaf considered Belgium captured territory and believed in protecting the Fatherland and its assets with his last breath. He knew what he was fighting for was pure and true. He challenged the notion that the Nazi attempt to conquer the world was ending and the war would likely be over soon with Germany’s victory. He wanted to lay down his life for his Fuhrer. He hoped the gesture he’d made to the doctor, his movement indicating surrender to his fate, would allow this to happen.

Stanley had never seen such a signal where a patient wanted to refuse treatment. Still, he’d seen so many strange and unexplainable things during his service as a medic that he knew this refusal of treatment wasn’t an option. Stanley had taken an oath to help relieve suffering and to aid in natural healing whenever and wherever he could, without regard to race, color, or an enemy of America.

Stanley Comer saw the gesture even though the surgeon didn’t. Still, he was serious about his commitment to saving lives less than ten miles from what would later be deemed the Battle of the Bulge, and he wasn’t about to break that commitment now. But the action shocked him, and Stanley thought he’d seen just about everything in his time as an Army medic.

The medic knew he would never be able to clear that from his memory. He began to work on his patient, motioning to the nurse that it was time to put the prisoner under anesthesia.

What is your name? Stanley asked. A puzzled look crossed Olaf’s face. He had picked up a few English phrases during the war, but this question had somehow never come up. The medic pointed to his chest and said, I’m Stanley.

He saw the soldier frown with comprehension. Olaf Weber, he said slowly between tight lips, Ollie.

All righty then, Stanley said. He motioned to the nurse, and she poured ether over the cotton mask.

Stanley caught a glance from the surgeon two tables over. He tipped his chin toward the vaulted ceiling as if indicating that death had claimed another soul to Heaven. The gesture had become the signal that he was about to move to his next patient. He raised his chin, and Stanley saw the disappointment in the surgeon’s eyes, indicating that he’d lost another patient.

Stanley’s gaze moved from the doctor to the nurse at the head of the table. She was tall, slim, and attractive, with shiny black hair. Just weeks before, she had lived in England as an Italian refugee, and now she was using her nursing skills to help save lives. She was frightened by the assignment but wanted to assist in the war effort, and she knew nurses were needed. Everyone, no matter their talent or skill, wanted to help. Moreover, she believed she was being sent to a ‘safe’ place, given the terrain and the fact that the German army was unlikely to move through the Ardennes Forest. She was wrong.

The triage doctor had assured Olaf in German that the wound in his leg would likely require amputation. Still, he would live and return home someday after the war.

Beginnen sie mit zehn neun acht sieben, Stanley said to the soldier as the nurse approached with the ether. He was using one of the few phrases in German he’d picked up in his time at the hospital, begin with ten, nine, eight… but patients rarely needed to count down past seven.

Dr. Harold Jones was one of a handful of Black surgeons in the medical corp. He’d worked with Stanley, a brave young man with a soft Tennessee accent, for several weeks. Unfortunately, Harold’s efforts were occasionally met with sneers by his fellow soldiers. You might think that someone trying to save your life might help keep your prejudice in check, but on more than one occasion, a wounded man would rebel against a ‘nigger’ doctor working on them.

This was Harold’s first German soldier, and he expected a representative of the master race would reject his efforts to aid him. Ollie wanted to die for his country, and any doctor would be met with the same rejection as Harold. Meanwhile, Harold just took the glare as Ollie looked up at him from his cot as something akin to the hatred he’d fielded from the American soldiers. "This boy’s feelings don’t matter, Harold thought, my job is to fix what’s put in front of me."

The surgeon remembered he had read an article in a journal a year ago. Yes, he had that kind of memory. It was about a new surgery technique that might save the boy’s leg. But, of course, it would probably be something he should run by his superior. Still, he remembered a saying from his favorite biology teacher at Howard, It’s better to beg forgiveness than to seek denial.

Stanley worked alongside the team of three nurses and the surgeon deep into the night. In the distance, he heard muffled explosions as tanks rumbled through cobblestone streets just outside the ancient stone building.

It was moments when the action seemed closest that Stanley would think of home. He remembered the strong chin and large, brown eyes of the wife he’d left in Tennessee. The beautiful Millie had promised she’d be waiting for him and that when he returned, they’d start the family they both had talked about with enthusiasm and hope.

Harold looked at the gaping wound in the boy’s leg. Given the field conditions, he wondered if the surgeon could pull off this medical miracle. Dr. Jones took a bit of blood vessel from the uninjured left leg and sewed it to the sheared-off piece of artery currently clamped and throbbing. Stanley knew Harold would save the leg if he could stretch the tissue.

Throughout history, battlefield medical marvels born of necessity created new techniques for the surgeon’s repertoire. Harold liked the idea that his name might become synonymous with the new procedure. He had been inspired by his father, a plumber. He’d worked summers with the old man and had seen him create wonders when the materials were either the wrong size or wouldn’t fit. For example, he saw his father use ‘C’ clamps, rubber tubes, and welding to fix seemingly impossible leaks.

Would that translate to his son working as an Army doctor? Time would tell, and in the case of this German soldier, probably in two or three days. Harold looked down into the opening and marveled at the intricate stitching and the delicate connections. Then, he would let Stanley sew up the leg.

Stanley stood, hands steady and eyes fixed on the wound. He had impressed the surgeon. Harold would suggest over chow that night that the young man pursue medicine as a profession after the war. He might even write a letter of recommendation if Stanley thought it might help.

As to the patient, once his condition stabilized, he’d be processed and eventually end up in a prisoner of war camp, likely in England or possibly America. Then, if all went well, Olaf would be shipped off for healing and rehabilitation in forty-eight hours.

Of course, there wasn’t a holding facility for that kind of help here on the front, so, ironically, the German would get a ticket to America. It wasn’t fair, and, in Stanley’s mind, it was ironic that the one person that likely didn’t want to go to America was the one who would be first on the boat.

Chapter 2

Snaps stood in front of the full-length mirror in the upstairs hallway and sang softly into her hairbrush. She had already finished her morning ritual of one hundred strokes through her coal-black hair. It was something she’d seen her mother do every night, and the practice was passed down to the next generation.

She didn’t want to wake up her sisters, who slept in the next room or the rest of the house, but she knew that her mother was likely already awake and preparing for the day. So she put the hairbrush on top of her dresser.

Snaps, a loving nickname given to her by her father, had a magnetic personality. Her real name was Ginger, and she was a spicy young woman who radiated her own kind of light when she was on stage. Whenever the spotlight hit her, she felt like she’d finally found her place in the world.

She placed her feet a bit wider than her shoulders and stared at her reflection. She had big, expressive brown eyes and arched brows. Her cheekbones accentuated her wide smile and bright, white teeth. She would jut her chin out on stage, believing it elongated her face and projected her features to the back row of the theater.

She had played various parts as an actress and singer in the past, and tonight, she’d lead the cast through a dress rehearsal. Her mother and sisters would be there to support her on Saturday, but she knew they wouldn’t be there on stage with her, and it was up to her to tell the story, sing the songs, and entertain the crowd.

The stage was her calling, her reason for living. She’d performed for the family since she was a small child. Laughing, joking, singing, dancing, doing impressions of family members and voices she’d heard on the radio. She taught herself tap dancing after reading a book. She memorized poetry and, with help from a loving freshman English teacher, Mrs. Northcutt, soliloquies from Shakespeare’s famous plays.

Snaps knew Hamlet’s speech asking the most crucial question in life and performed it frequently. She’d found the perfect natural proscenium near a meadow on the farm and often practiced to the stream and trees on the back property.

To be or not to be, she asked the resident rabbits and squirrels. Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them.

She would stand on the limestone outcropping that was her place of solitude and reflection. Birds would leave the sky and look for a limb to sit on so they might enjoy the show. Crickets quieted and rested on blades of grass, guaranteeing they, too, would have a front-row seat.

To die, she said with a sly and envious smile, —to sleep, no more; and by sleep to say we end the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh…

She turned and plucked at the skin of her forearm.

is heir to ‘tis a consummation devoutly to be wish’d.

She closed her eyes and let the dying sun wash over the contours of her face. To die, to sleep; with no dramatic pause this time. To sleep, perchance to dream, her large eyes flew open and darted around the small grassy meadow leading to the water’s edge and said with a sly smile, —ay, there's the rub:

She slowed her approach even more, allowing a dirge-like cadence to pace her delivery as she said, For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come?

It was the question she knew there was no answer to yet. She had asked it in Sunday school, and the teacher fell into the standard Southern Baptist line of sitting at the right hand of God in Heaven forever. But that answer had never been enough for Snaps.

She continued, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, must give us pause—there's the respect that makes calamity of so long life.

Her elocution studies, again from a book she’d found in the school library, told her to open her mouth and enunciate. For who would bear the whips and scorns of time? she asked. The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, the pangs of dispriz'd love, the law's delay, the insolence of office, and the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes.

She slowed again and turned as if imploring an adoring crowd of listeners. When he himself might his quietus make with a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear, to grunt and sweat under a weary life, but that the dread of something after death, the undiscovered country, from whose bourn no traveler returns?

She allowed an upward lilt in her voice to encapsulate her delivery as she said, Puzzles the will and makes us rather bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of?

A small laugh as she recited, Thus conscience does make cowards of us all, and thus the native hue of resolution is sickled, she mispronounced, o'er with the pale cast of thought, and enterprises of great pitch and moment with this regard their currents turn away and lose the name of action.

She took a bow, ended the soliloquy, and removed an invisible hat. In her imagination, it was most likely adorned with long, colorful peacock feathers, and she let it sweep the top of her perch.

She listened to the water gurgling and a light wind rustling the trees. Was there another sound? She turned, squinted her eyes, and let her gaze sweep the small meadow and the gurgling waters below her. Was it a bobcat? There had been sightings in the neighborhood. Was it a bear? Too far from the Smoky Mountains for that. She chuckled and leaped from the rock.

It had been three days since her performance, and her tender, twisted ankle reminded her that she shouldn’t take a leap like that again.

She stared at her image in the mirror and turned, her ears straining. To be, or not to be?

She heard her mother as she gathered the milk buckets just a floor below her. The clanging was muffled as much as possible because Mary Lou was a good mother who wanted to let her girls sleep. Momma, Snaps whispered.

Chapter 3

Millie lay in her bed and listened as the noise of the milk barrels faded toward the barn. Anne snored in the bed next to the door. She had read her new book from the library deep into the night, and Millie knew it would be some time before she was up and ready to perform her daily duties.

The eldest girl and the only married one wasn’t fond of the chores on the farm, and she really didn’t like cows. She’d help when it was her turn, and the other girls were too busy, but she had grown tired of farm life. She had the bright lights of the city in her eyes, and, in her mind, she was just months, maybe weeks, away from her husband coming home from the war. She believed he’d take her away from all this, and she’d never cut hay, weed the garden, or milk cows again.

As the oldest of the three girls, it would seem she would be the leader of the next generation, but that role had somehow fallen to Snaps. She made plans, delegated tasks, and expressed the sisters' needs in times of trouble. Anne was the negotiator and expressed outrage and support when the situation called for it.

But Millie married her high school sweetheart, Stanley Comer, just before he shipped off to Europe. She was the first to walk down the aisle, just weeks before Daddy passed away. She felt lucky he’d seen at least one of his girls marry, and to a young man he liked and respected.

Daddy was an infantryman in the Great War. While he had plenty of stories to tell, the girls had asked many times, he constantly checked with Mary Lou first, and she always shook her head no. Now that father was gone, Millie wished she’d insisted on hearing about his life in the trenches and how that had shaped his world view. Sometimes he exploded at the slightest little upset, an odd sound, or an unexplained shadow. Still, Brother was usually there, and Daddy calmed down.

Millie turned over, pushed the sheet and quilt from her body, and forced herself out of bed. She knew time was wasting, and chores like house cleaning, cooking, and laundry, had to be done. Today, she would shoulder much of the burden of the truck garden in the morning and feeding the cows in the afternoon.

The garden, nearly an acre and a half behind the house, was the neighborhood's most productive and well-regarded plot. The family incorporated a variety of vegetables into the mix, rotating the crops. The process ensured the rich, black earth would not be depleted and would continue to provide nutrients to the plants. They specialized in tomatoes and corn, with green beans and butter beans second in the population. In addition, cucumbers, peas, squash, watermelons, and cantaloupes grew in carefully measured and cultivated rows.

This morning, as soon as the dew burned off the grass and soil, Millie would haul out the push plow and break up the ground between the rows. The rain from two days before dampened the ground, so some areas would be more mud than dirt, but Millie was strong, and while she might feel the effects of the task later in her shoulders and back, she knew it had to be done.

She sighed as she moved the big wheel up and down the rows. Bugs flew around her legs, and she swatted at them but kept pushing. She knew how important it was to keep the soil around the plants aerated and weed-free. Her family depended on the sale of the harvest, and while that was weeks away, she knew diligence now would pay off later.

As she pushed, she gritted her teeth and thought of Stanley. She had known him for years in school and watched him emerge from his awkward years into the handsome and caring man he was today. She remembered their wedding and their wedding night. She was glad they’d