Alpine Hideaway Magic Ch. 04

It was surreal. We were lying there on the blanket watching the show knowing that high above and far away, men were now fighting for their lives, both sides determined to do the other in. Death at a distance is something that does not immediately draw and emotional response to the uninitiated and therefore it is easier to detach oneself from the grim reality of it all.  From our vantage point, miles away, we saw a particularly brilliant flash at the head of one contrail.  The contrail then began to drop away from the formation.  I saw how it changed from puffy white, to now coal black and I knew from being an anti-aircraft crewman what had happened. One of our fighters had struck-home in its attack and crippled a bomber; which was tumbling out of the sky, undoubtedly with a terrified crew inside it struggling to get out if they were not already dead or too wounded to help themselves.  

  As it fell, we saw there was now a bright light glowing like a welders torch-lite from the plane as it trailed its inky black plume straight down.  The plane was on fire and doomed.  Now we saw puffs of white appear in the sky behind the stricken plane at as it descended on a final return back to earth. The crew had bailed out and their white parachutes were caught by the afternoon sun against the blue backdrop.  We watched the plane descend for a few more seconds, then there was a dramatic flash of light followed by a huge explosion and shockwave as the payload on the plane exploded.  The sound took several seconds to reach us, but when it did- our ears registered a cataclysmic explosion that bounced off the hills and mountains in our valley. 

  Presently we noticed other planes arriving on that scene of great carnage above in the skies, all in silent graceful sweeps of contrail punctuated by flashes against the blue.  The Ami's fighter escort was now attempting to engage our jets.  The bombers plunged forward towards their destination leaving their straight lines as the fighters twisted and dodged and jockeyed for position. 

I now witnessed something very peculiar in the next valley, fifteen kilometers to the north of us. There was another fighter base there but the Luftwaffe pilots as they took to the skies headed east and away at just a few hundred meters off the ground, disappearing from sight between foothills.  From between a pair of the towering puffy white clouds about five kilometers from the airfield, we saw two fighters plunge out of the sky diving to in the direction of the airfield.  They were American P-38 Lightning's, the fork-tailed fighters that had wreaked so much havoc for our pilots for the last three years.  They were swooping in for the kill on something but we could not see it from our vantage point at first, then we saw a hapless Messerschmitt 262 Jet Fighter clawing its way into the sky as it broke cover between the foothills. It was trying to get itself airborne and away. 

Apparently the Ami's had swooped in at just the right moment in the jet's takeoff, and had been peppering it with machine gun bullets as it attempted to climb out. One of the jet's engines was smoking badly and although the pilot pushed the plane's throttles to the limit, the jet was not going to fly straight out and away in a successful escape.  The pilot made a decision and turned the hapless jet out to the south and over the edge of our valley with the Ami's both in hot pursuit, their guns blazing.  The jet shuddered and rolled over. We saw a flash as the pilot ejected and plane tumbled from the sky to crash into the other side of one of the hills just north of the edge of the valley. A colossal explosion followed! The telltale parachute opened up high above the hills and the pilot floated down gracefully to the forest below, and then out of sight. The two Ami fighters roared down our valley at a height of 100 meters before climbing back up into the sky and turning north and east to rejoin the bombers.

"Looks like the war goes not so well for us again today," said Oma to the rest of the group. Katarina agreed.

  "The Americans will be here soon! Perhaps this fuck here today will be good practice when the Ami's are running through the town looking for food, drink, and leg," she said to no one in particular before she added, "better the Ami's and the Tommies than the Popovs!"  The other three solemn heads of our group nodded in agreement.   

   "What will we do?" asked Anka with a worried look.

   "Oh I know!" answered Oma, "We shall open the biggest brothel these mountains have ever seen and make money to the clouds!" She attempted to break the tension with her joke for the benefit of everyone within the worried party, but it was a weak one even for a witch.  Everyone else in the group let out a nervous laugh but nobody really laughed too terribly hard. We finally rose to our feet.  Oma and I walked across the meadow through the sheep grazing lazily in the afternoon sun to find our clothes, as well as the bag of herbs and supplies.  We dressed and got back across the meadow to our two friends. When we arrived at the far side of the meadow, Kat and Anka were finished dressing and were packing up the basket and blanket. They were going to take the sheep to the higher meadow a half kilometer up the mountain to get the last of the grazing in for the day before retiring to a shepherds hut they were using on the mountain. Oma had a similar one much higher on the mountain and on the other side. 

   "We will see you later again Hilda?" Kat looked at Oma with a smile of happy intimacy.

   "Ja," replied Oma as she threw her sack over one shoulder taking me by the hand, "I have to get this one down the mountain and fed before I put him straight to bed!"

    "More likely - get him IN YOUR BED," was Anka's accusation as she gave me a giggling wet kiss and a playful poke in the ribs before she joined her tante.

     "We will see you soon! I will be taking my flocks up the mountain for summer pasturing soon," said Oma as she started down the slope with me in hand. "I will bring my young stallion to provide you both with a thorough breeding!"

     "You can depend on our wine, our food, our bed, and our legs around you!" shouted Katarina with a wicked smile and a cheerful wave.  We headed down the slopes to the valley floor.  It was about mid- afternoon now.  We got to the bottom of the slopes without turning an ankle or dropping our belongings, and then cut across my grandmother's lower pasture at the bottom of the valley. We soon were at the house. 

  When we got inside the kitchen, Oma began unpacking the sack of holding and placing the items on the kitchen counter and kitchen table.  Some items, she sent me overhead with to store in the loft; all of them things that were drier and would keep, but she was quite particular as to where they would go and stipulated in great detail where she wanted them. Other items, she set about preparing for pickling or preserving.  She got a hot pot of water going and we spent a good portion of the afternoon pickling and canning items, stopping only for a bowl of ration soup at suppertime.  The irony was that Oma was a witch, but for some reason she was very frugal about food during times of crisis and would use rations sparingly- just like everyone with non-magical powers. We ate our meal, and afterwards Oma found us some beer with the help of her powers and some clean mugs.

We canned until about seven that night and then we chopped up a few forest mushrooms for drying. Oma had me light a fire in fireplace as it was getting cold and the woodstove could only heat so much. I went out to feed and water the animals and when I returned, Oma had produced a radio from a cabinet and some schnapps from the shelf. She also used her powers to refill the mugs. Now gentlemen let me give you the advice of a man who has seen a great deal, ...if you find a woman who fucks, and who can refill a beer mug, and brings women to your bed to share, trust me...MARRY HER – LOVE WILL COME LATER! Don't worry.

Anyway, we turned the radio dial. There was a lot of Reich's Ministry Propaganda and patriotic mush music designed to inspire the half-wits who were still thinking victory was just around the corner, (all because the half-wits in Berlin were saying that same rubbish from the safety of a concrete bombproof bunker). We found a couple of stations playing classical music and we listened to Beethoven and then Mozart for a while until Oma began fiddling with the dials while I sipped my schnapps. She again leveraged a magical trick and found just the right tweak to get an Allied radio station from someplace in France. Listening to forbidden radio stations carried a severe penalty in the Third Reich but after all that had happened that day, I didn't bring that fact up.

We heard a man on the Radio speaking in three languages; first English, then French, and then in German, that the Americans were now pushing across southern Bavaria. He made a plea that all Germans recognize that the war was lost and that if they only put out white flags in their windows, they would not be harmed so long as they did not resist and that they must follow the instructions of the advancing Allied troops. I did not know what to make of it.

"Do you think it is a trick Oma?" I asked.

"I don't know. It's hard to tell. I think they will behave better than the Russians for certain!"

"The Reich's Justice Ministry and the German Radio have said that all Germans who surrender are cowards who will be hanged. Can we accept that risk?"

"Again, I don't know. What I do know is that I am tired of worrying."

"So what will you do?"

"Wait for the Americans I guess, Stephan. That is the only thing we CAN do. Let's stop worrying. I told you, I would not let anything happen to you, and I mean it! I told you before up in the meadow!" We drained the schnapps bottle and drank more beers, then we headed off to bed. Oma suggested a good fuck would both do us some good. We got out of our clothes and into the sheets. As I turned around getting beneath the covers, I saw Oma had transformed herself again into the young woman. We made passionate love that night and I bucked and fucked and moaned and spritzed my anxieties away into Oma, who responded in kind with her own wanton buckings, moanings, and cursing-bawling crescendos!

Finally spent and placid, we cuddled in the darkness illuminated by the glow of the fireplace and the dimmer glow from the open kitchen stove. We listened to the radio; big band music on the forbidden radio station adding to the soothing release of consciousness that began to take over us. The last thing I remember from that night was the drone of hundreds of bombers someplace off in the very far distance. They headed in the darkness towards an unnamed target in the German countryside while the American swing music slowly lulled us to sleep.