Theobald was doing his best to fight on, but he was growing weaker and weaker by the day. It had been two months since food supplies had been able to enter Stalingrad, and he had already seen more of his comrades than he cared to count perish from cold, starvation or the relentless bullets of the Red Army soldiers. He had also noticed increased grumbling in the ranks, about how the Führer was crazy to have sent them here, to their deaths. Despite also feeling the hunger, Franz was continuing to profess undying faith in Hitler, and attempting to rally the men with shouts of "For the Reich! For the Führer!", but fewer and fewer of his fellow soldiers were listening to him. Though he did not like to say so, not wanting to turn Franz against him, privately Theobald was thinking the same thing: how foolish he and his fellow Germans had been to listen to this man. Thanks to Hitler, the man who had promised Germany a glorious future, Theobald was now starving to death hundreds of miles away from Gertrud, their warm, comforting fire, and her loving embraces. And also, he thought bitterly, he had driven away Herman, the friend who had always been there for him since childhood, the one who had always cheered him up in hard times, who had even saved his life in the Great War. It had been a truly wonderful friendship, and he had squandered it for . . . this.
Then he gave a strangled cry and fell to the ground: he had been shot in the chest. Franz grabbed him by the arm, and together with several others, dragged him into a nearby building, abandoned by its owners roughly two weeks ago. They laid him down on a rough carpet, and Franz tore off part of his trouser leg to use as a tourniquet, but the wound was too large and too deep. There was nothing more that could be done, with supplies not able to get in.
"How stupid we all were", he gasped. Knowing that his life would soon end, Theobald was past caring about Franz's reaction.
"What do you mean?", said Franz sharply.
"To follow . . . him. Hitler.", said Theobald.
Franz looked outraged.
"You traitor!", he shouted. "I always thought you believed in our Führer, and now . . ."
But Franz suddenly broke off his diatribe: Theobald looked so pitiful that he could not carry on with it.
"And, please", said Theobald, his voice fading with every breath, "remember me to Gertrud. Tell her . . ."
He said no more. Franz crouched down over Theobald's lifeless body, howling with grief.
It had been three and a half years, but finally Herman and his family were released from the enemy alien camp. Lena was furiously complaining that the authorities had not seemed to understand that they were Jewish victims of Nazism. She was also worried about the rumours about what was happening to the Jews in the rest of Europe. Herman paid little attention to her. He was happy to be free, and to finally being able to build a new life in his adopted country. But he also wondered what had become of Theobald.
