April 5th, 1945. Berlin.

The Charité had been all but destroyed in the bombings. Like most of the great city of Berlin. Lena had been re-assigned to the new field hospital: The Olympic stadium, where Jesse Owens had spoiled Hitler's games.

It wasn't much of a hospital. They had barely any bandages, no antibiotics, basically no painkillers... all they had was bone saws and knives. Whoever came here would likely die a slow, painful death. Doctor Graumann, the head surgeon had walked them all through the facilities. He'd been called out of retirement. He had looked at everything with grim determination and then assigned a designated limb dump.
"What's a limb dump?" one of the younger staff had asked and then gotten sick when Graumann explained. "When we cut off an arm or a leg  or two, you dump 'em here. Won't have time to burn them properly right away and you don't want to stumble over some guy's knee when you're trying to stuff some other guy's guts into his stomach."

They also had guards. Volkssturm. Old men and young boys, some not old enough for their voices to break.

Yesterday, Stettin had fallen. The Red Army was now 130 kilometers away from Berlin. Just 80 miles.

Lena kept glancing at her watch. She had to make sure she'd be at her radio station, waiting for instructions. Quietly, she was hoping there would be evacuation orders.

"Are we keeping you from a date, Fräulein, or are our plans boring you?" Graumann barked at her. The rest of the stadd shifted away from her.

Lena acted like a properly chastised nurse.  She might not make the rendezvous tonight, but if she was going to have a chance it was going to be to try to turn this into something understandable, or better yet sympathetic.  "I am so sorry Herr Doktor.  When I am under pressure... the ticking and the motion of the watch, it calms me.  It is silly I know."

Doktor Graumann furrowed his brow.
"It is not silly at all. It is better than drinking for sure." He sighed.
"Look, I know you are scared. But there is no time for that now. Soon, we'll be up to... well, let's just say we'll be busy. There will be a lot of wounded. We treat who we can. It will fall mostly to me and Doktor Kruger to triage. Anybody who's too far gone to be helped, they go there", he indicated another corner of the giant field, "and you give them water and comfort. Let them die in peace. You'll be their mothers, wife, sister, fathers, brothers... whoever they need to be with in their last moments."

He looked at each of the doctors and nurses in turn. "Have courage and faith. Dismissed"
One of the closest Volksturm-boys raised his right hand and yelled defiantly: "HEIL HITLER!"
Graumann looked at the boy with disgust, but then grinded his teeth and replied. "Of course. Heil Hitler. Everybody, I'll see you individually in my office. Why don't you join me first, Fräulein?" he pointed at Lena
This message was last edited by the GM at 17:16, Fri 10 July 2020.

"Of course Herr Doktor."  Lena wasn't sure how to feel about this.  Graumann didn't strike her as a True Believer, rather an old man who had been asked to clean up a mess, and who couldn't say no because of humanitarian concern.  But that could be horribly wrong.

The operations had been falling apart lately.  As Berlin disintegrated, so did her ability to report.  A lot of her dead drops no longer existed, and she dared not use her shortwave unless she absolutely had to.  Intentionally or not, the Nazis had been tightening the ring around her by losing the infrastructure of their city and their institutions.  When there were no file cabinets to rifle through, she had no opportunity to discover anything, such as who this Doctor Graumann was.

As there were fewer and fewer people to do more and more work, she had to lean into the role harder and harder to not be discovered.  She really hadn't provided any intelligence worth anything for at least three months, all effort went into preserving her cover.

The only upside was there was less and less reason to try to ferret out spies.  At some point her cover would have to be blown or she'd wind up dead.  She almost hoped the hospital would be captured by the Allies; surrendering to the soldiers would eventually get her back to her superiors, who she hoped remembered her existence at this point.

But this was no time for such considerations.  Graumann could be a fanatic loyalist who was suspicious of her for all she knew.  So she followed him.

The office was a small room with a desk, a typewriter, a cabinet and stacks of paper. Lena took a quick glance. The biggest stack was made up of empty death certificates, names and dates empty lines, but cause of death pre-typed as "Succumbed to wounds sustained in combat".

Graumann pointed to a seat for Lena, then followed her line of vision.
"Ah. Everything must be in proper order for these people. They don't even take a shit without the proper paperwork."

He sighed and sat down, taking off his glasses, rubbing his eyes and temples, then looked at Lena and put his glasses back on. For a long moment he didn't say anything.
"You're probably wondering what else there is to say in private, don't you?" He gestured at the room. "You can speak freely, they can't listen in here."

"I am uncertain Herr Doktor, have I erred in preparing for the patients?"  Lena asked, sticking to her role religiously.

Graumann pressed his lips together, shaking his head.

The silence stretched. Then, he seemed about to speak several times without finding the right way to start. Defeated, he leaned back in his chair.

"We are not going to treat patients here, Fräulein. We will ease the passing of the wounded. Anybody who comes here will be too badly maimed or injured to continue fighting. Everybody else... will be thrown right back into the meatgrinder. Fucking children with Panzerfausts."

"Oh Herr Doktor, is it really so bad as this?"  She asked earnestly.  News in Berlin had been mostly rumors for a while now.

He shrugged. "I've served in the Great War. This one... is different."
He sighed again, and pulled something from a drawer in his desk, hiding it in his hands.

"Talk like this can get you killed these days quite easily. Soon, they'll start shooting people, or hanging them. I'm old. My days are numbered, but you have your whole life ahead of you. Keep your head down. If the inevitable comes... I will not begrudge if you were to miss work because you'd have to go visit your uncle and aunt in Aachen."

Aachen. Where the Western Allies were.

He took another heavy sigh. "If you decide to stay to the end, I will appreciate it. But there are... rumors... of what happens to the women in the cities the Red Army conquers. I have always been a religious man, Fräulein. I believe the greatest gift the Lord gave us was free will."
He opened his hand. A small paper bag with a single pill was in his palm and he dropped it in front of Lena.

"If... it comes to this... you should have a choice of... ending the pain. If you bite down on this, it will be over quick."
This message was last edited by the GM at 19:10, Fri 10 July 2020.

Lena was quiet for a time before answering.  "I... I understand Herr Doktor.  Truly I do.  Perhaps then, it is best we speak no more of such things until my poor aunt sends for me.  My uncle, he cannot take care of her."

She slid her hand over and accepted the pill.  She had no intent of using it, but that wasn't the point of accepting it.

He nodded. "Good. I don't know the staff, please send in you you deem trustworthy."


((Alright - so how do you get to the radio?))

Has anyone been assigned as head/charge nurse?

((Well, I guess that's you now, since he asked you into his office first. Plus you do have friends in high places))

Lena made assignments.  She carefully, carefully, set a schedule that left her off of it for a couple of hours without calling attention to the fact, and a note on top of it that directed Sofia to fill in for Anna when she got back because Lena had to momentarily assist with a visit from a quartermaster to explain why she wasn't there.  Her absence would be felt for a couple of hours, but not noticed unless someone went directly looking for her, but they were going to be very busy.

Lena managed to slip away for a bit and made the journey to her radio station: The bell tower of a small church, not too far from here. But these days, any trip further away than a block or two turned quickly into a journey, with people getting stopped on the street, papers to be presented, motives and reasons for being about getting questioned.

She walked hurriedly past the mean and woman hanged from lamp posts. If they ever caught her, she'd be hanging there, too.

When she arrived at the church, she opened the door and listened. There was nobody here. Like a little mouse she hurried up the stairs to the bell tower and the small radio station someone had put up for her. A glance at her watch - 10 minutes before any signal would come. If something came.

Lena kept low.  She dared not turn the device on until it was closer to time, 30 seconds out at most.  Radios made noise.  That was kind of the point.

And she needed to prepare.  She always had 3 writing utensils, they often didn't repeat things, and she made sure she had plenty to write it on.  She needed to listen and move as soon as she could.  This was getting riskier and riskier.

The time was coming, if it wasn't already here, when her nurse's uniform wouldn't make her invisible any more.

Lena waited, but only static crackled out of the small speaker, seemingly louder than the bell itself.

She kept glancing at her watch. Aachen seemed more and more like the most prudent option to take, and sooner rather than later.

Then the static changed.

"The waiter told the guest that the restaurant was out of wine. I repeat: The waiter told the guest that the restaurant was out of wine."

Lena's could feel the hairs on the back of her neck rise. This would be the last transmission she would receive!

"The sparrows will be flying low this summer. There is water in the wheelbarrow. The eagle dances with the lion. The sun rises in Norway.
I repeat: The sparrows will be flying low this summer. There is water in the wheelbarrow. The eagle dances with the lion. The sun rises in Norway."


She furrowed her brow and flipped through her code book. They'd... come and pick her up? But why? Wouldn't it be easier to just leave? And when exactly? And who? The only phrase that wasn't in her code book was the reference to the eagle and the lion - a pretty thinly veiled hint at US and British troops. That could mean anything, though.

"Tell our friend 'Happy birthday'."

Again, not in the code book. But there was one prominent figure who was about to have a birthday. It seemed her rescue team would come on or after the Führer's birthday.
If she lived that long.


"Flowerbed. Apple. River. Moonshine."
It was the end of the transmission.

Well, there was no need to write that down in any way.  Lena swallowed hard.

She reflected on her situation.  As much as she knew her assignment had to end one way or the other, she'd worked so hard on being Lena Vogt the Good German Girl, Lena Vogt the Nurse, it had become weirdly comfortable.  Normal even.  She'd been doing it for years after all.  Pennsylvania was a distant memory.  Were her parents even still alive?

And now that was ending.  And how?  And why?

It was a lot.  She swallowed her anxiety and prepared to return.  She was tempted to scuttle the radio, but they'd not given her instructions to do so, protocol didn't demand it, and it would take time.

She did take a small cloth and a tiny bottle of alcohol and wipe down what she had touched before leaving however.

((Following up on this here))



This message was last edited by the GM at 10:57, Mon 27 July 2020.

In response, Arthur dropped his cigarette, stomping on the butt.

"You'll see, Lena, you'll see! The Reich is not done. We'll get the Führer out of here and we'll have our revenge. Every drop of Aryan blood spilled will be paid paid ten-fold!"

He threw his things into his suitcase.
"I have my orders. I'll be at the Luftfahrtministerium, wrapping up a few things."

He grabbed her shoulder. A little too tight to be comforting, although that was certainly what Arthur was trying to go for.

"I'll get you when I'm ready and then we'll leave. Don't worry, we'll be safe."

Lena smiled and placed her hand over his.  "Of course Arthur, all will yet be well.  These are but the tides of war, the last gasp of desperate villains before they are defeated.  Go, do your duty and I will be fine."