Throwback Thursday: ‘The Man in the Long Black Coat’ by JJ Lee

I don’t remember if Mother’s eyes said it or if she spoke the words, “He’s just a boy.” I do remember feeling anger and burning shame. I was eleven years old, the eldest.  Father had been gone for years. The weekly newsreel Die Deutsche Wochenschau showed boys my age working in factories, making shells and gun parts. In school we were told to be “slim and strong, swift as greyhounds, tough as leather, and hard as Krupp steel.” I thought I was until I saw Mother’s eyes that night in the winter of 1944.

Herr Mundt didn’t care. He had arrived from the larger, Lower Silesian town of G______ in search of what he called ‘recruits.’ He dressed in the makeshift manner of the Volkssturm, the People’s Army. He wore scuffed and muddy railroad boots, brown breeches, and an armband over his grey coat sleeve. On his collar, Herr Mundt had pinned officer pips. He topped his head with the kind of hat a butcher would wear. His attire was theatrical, ersatz, outlandish, wildly officious, and, because he seemed so out of control, menacing. From his gaze I wanted to hide.

“He has five minutes to gather warm clothes and boots, if he has any,” said Herr Mundt.

He stepped back into the snow and shadows and strode off in the direction of the neighbours. Mother shut the door. My legs trembled as I climbed up the stairs and went into the bedroom. I took off my pyjamas and folded them. I tucked them under my pillow. I began to put on as much clothes as I could. I stuffed more warm things into a canvas bag. I went to the other side of the bed and leaned down to kiss Lena, my sister, on her forehead. Her eyes opened.

“You should be asleep,” I said.

“Where are you going?”

“I don’t know.”

“Take this.”

She pulled from under the covers a tin soldier, my oldest, most treasured toy.

“Where did you find it?” I fought the urge to snatch it from her and I held out my hand. She put it in my palm. I saw the chipped paint on its shako, the blue on its tunic nearly worn through from play, the bent rifle, and the blankness of its face. It made me think of Father.

“Keep it until I come back.”

I tucked her in, kissed her again, and went downstairs. Mother said, “You can hide in the forest.”

“I don’t think they will let me.”