Blue Flame

Four ‘Moles,’ Opel Maultier trucks loaded with cargo and troops pulled up alongside them. Hans and his men climbed into the back of one vehicle for the short journey. The night sky was quiet, but everyone on the vehicles knew at any moment things could change. All the troops looked on edge as they listened for the sound of aircraft.

They arrived at a jetty at the port of Farge, pulling up alongside a sleek U-boat, where two young SS officers met them. “Heil Hitler!” said the fresh-faced youngsters, snapping to attention and raising their arm in salute. Hans returned their salutes, marched past them, and boarded the U-boat, followed by his commandos.

Previously, pity was not in Kruger’s nature, but after the unnerving events he’d witnessed at the cottage, he could not help but feel sorrow for the two young officers. He knew there was no room on the U-boat to accommodate them, so they would be a disposable loose end.

The other troops got out of the trucks and started offloading the cargo into the U-boat. Several of the U-boat crew came from below decks and assisted. They loaded small heavy wooden crates, marked with a large black stencil:

PRODUCTO DE ARGENTINA

MAQUINARIA AGRICOLA

Argentine agricultural machinery.

Captain Viktor came on deck, while the rest of his officers stayed below supervising the storage of the heavy cargo. Several other trucks arrived during the night with storage containers that dockside cranes hoisted into watertight compartments. Other trucks arrived with smaller crates they loaded into the conning storage area within the vessel. Several hours into the offload they all ran for cover as allied bombers flew overhead, dropping their payloads onto the nearby town of Bremen and the Valentin submarine pens close by. The bombing was brief and once over they continued with the loading. By daybreak, the U-boat’s crew felt exhausted.

The Captain stood on the conning bridge and watched his men load the last of the cargo into the U-boat. He felt angry, because not only was his crew’s complement less than half, just twenty-eight men but also they had to work tirelessly loading the boat. He, along with the rest of Germany knew they’d lost the war and knew they were transporting looted- treasure.

Kruger and his men came out of the U-boat, now attired in black S.S. uniforms.

The sailors just milled around on the jetty.

The Captain thought that with the U-boat now loaded, they should soon be underway. He wanted to get back out onto the familiar ocean, maybe for the last time. Karl always hoped that he would die at sea, a maritime warrior.

Hans issued an order to his men and they rounded up the U-boat crew at gunpoint and ushered them aboard. Hans then ordered the Captain to join his men. Captain Viktor clenched his fists, angry about getting orders from an S.S. murderer, but he had no choice; his orders had come from the top.

The SS commandos locked the crew in the hot forward compartment of the vessel with the six remaining torpedoes.

“What’s happening sir,” asked a submariner.

“I don’t know but we’d better rest,” said the Captain who sat on the cramped steel floor, rested his head on his knees, and thought about his wife and kids.

The jetty was now silent, except for screeching seagulls and the groan of twisted wrecks, buffeted by the waves.

Hans Kruger and the two young SS officers stood on the jetty. Kruger looked at his watch, satisfied that everything had gone according to schedule. All he had to do now was wait for the Füehrer.

* * *

With the battle raging outside, a grisly sight greeted S.S. Officers Otto Guensche and Heinz Linge, as they entered Hitler’s quarters within the deserted Füehrer bunker. After hearing two shots and seeing an SS officer leaving Hitler’s drawing-room, they carried out their orders.

Adolf Hitler, dressed in his beige uniform and Eva Braun in a blue floral skirt lay dead in what appeared to be a suicide tryst. Their faces contorted with blood staining their clothes, floor, and furniture. Wispy smoke drifted from the barrel of a Luger pistol lying on the floor beside Hitler’s body. Both he and Braun had white powder around their lips, with a bottle of cyanide capsules, and an empty carafe of water overturned on the table. Small gunshot wounds on their heads still smouldered as Otto and Heinz, glanced at each other, smiled, covered the bodies with plain woollen blankets, and lifted them onto trolleys. They wheeled them to the bunker’s elevator and took them to the surface. With no ceremony and little respect paid to the corpses as Heinz, Hitler’s former valet, and Otto, spat on the corpses before wheeling the bodies outside and dumping them into a bomb crater within the gardens of the chancellery. Artillery shells and gunfire exploded around the buildings as the two S.S. Officers’ removed the cap off a large tin drum and poured a pungent-smelling liquid over the corpses. They ignited the fuel, and with a whoosh, the two bodies erupted into flame.

The two men watched as the corpses incinerated in the inferno. Otto noticed something strange as Hitler’s jacket dissolved in the flame. He nudged Heinz and pointed to Hitler’s forearm. Heinz looked and shrugged.

“The bastard isn’t dead,” said Otto.

Heinz sighed as the inflammable incendiary mix took only minutes to incinerate the flesh from the bodies, leaving only ash and bone.

“We can say nothing about this,” said Otto sounding concerned.

Heinz nodded, and the pair walked away from the cremation, heading away from the bomb-wrecked gardens and toward the sound of battle to surrender.

The following day, newspapers around the world headlined the news: Adolf Hitler is dead. They reported that he and Eva Braun committed suicide. The word celebrated as the war in Europe was over.

Neither Otto nor Heinz ever mentioned what they saw on Hitler’s body as it burned at the war crimes trial in Nuremberg. They told the court that they had seen Hitler and Braun’s corpses, along with the cyanide and Luger. They told prosecutors that their orders came directly from SS – Grupenfüehrer Heinrich Műller Chief of the Gestapo before he fled Germany with his whereabouts unknown.

Otto and Heinz went to their graves without ever telling anyone what they saw tattooed on Hitler’s forearm; the concentration camp serial number of its Jewish resident.

While Germany burned, Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun sat drinking cognac in their cabin, as the U-boat headed towards its final destination. They laughed and joked as they discussed their future together, seemingly unconcerned about the fate of war-ravaged Germany. Hitler knew with his cargo he would rebuild his shattered Reich, either in this life or the next.

8

You never can tell whether bad luck may not after all turn out to be good luck

Silence fell over the capacity crowd at the Sheffield arena, where minutes earlier the raucous sound of cheering and yelling coursed through the stadium. Two boxers had stood toe-to-toe in the centre of a ring, slugging it out for the European middleweight crown.

The popular boxer from Sheffield had dominated the first few rounds of the fight and the crowd cheered him on. Now in the sixth round, he knew by looking at his bruised opponent that he could finish the fight after feeling less power coming from his punches. Although an earlier clash of heads left a minor cut on his eyebrow that the last punch opened but he ignored it and thundered a shot into the fighter ribs. He grinned as the fighter winced, dropped his hands, and left the way open for a clean left hook to the jaw which he knew would end the fight with a knockout. He was about to deliver the haymaker when his body juddered and with a shocked expression, collapsed to the floor.

The cheering stopped, and the audience looked stunned as the referee pointed and the other fighter went to stand in his corner, shrugging and shaking his head. The referee knelt and checked the fighter.

“It’s a bloody fix. He never touched him,” yelled someone in the audience, followed by jeering and booing that echoed around the arena.

The referee stood up and looked shocked as he beckoned the ring doctor.

With their hometown hero now lying motionless in the centre of the ring, the crowd went silent watching the ring doctor examined the fallen fighter.

Pandemonium ensued as the doctor ordered the ring cleared. Corner men and the other fighter who looked shaken left the ring. Everyone in attendance knew the situation was dire, and the fallen fighter now had another fight to win, the fight for his life. The ring announcer reassured the audience while the doctor and the fighter’s trainer performed CPR on the splayed-out boxer.

Paramedics arrived on the scene and went into the ring with their portable monitors and lifesaving equipment. A paramedic set up an Ambu-bag and intubated the boxer, then squeezed the bag to get air into his lungs. Another paramedic charged up a portable defibrillator, and when the gauges reached 100 joules, he shouted, “Charged.”

The doctor placed paddles on the man’s chest. “Clear,” instructed the doctor as he pressed the button, sending a powerful surge of electricity coursing through the boxer’s body, arching it off the canvas floor.

They watched the portable monitor showing the man’s heart rhythm as a flat line, so the doctor increased the voltage to the maximum 300 joules and shocked him again. The paramedic handed the doctor a syringe containing Epinephrine, which he then injected into the boxer’s chest.

The medics continued CPR several for minutes until the doctor checked the boxer’s pupils and confirmed the information on the monitor.

“Fixed and dilated,” said the doctor. “And it’s reading flat line on the monitor.” He looked at his watch and said, “Time of death, 19:05.”

The medical team lifted the boxer out of the ring, put him on a gurney, and wheeled him out of the arena, with the sound of crying and mourning filling the stadium. They put the body in the ambulance and covered it with a sheet.

The ambulance drove away, heading to the Hallamshire hospital. The doctor, a medic, and the boxer’s trainer sat in the back, along with the body.

Gus, the trainer, held his head in his hands, and after several minutes, mumbled, “I don’t know what happened. One minute he was winning, the next he…”

A loud belch emanated from the corpse, making them jump.

“It’s just a reflex,” said the doctor as the boxer sat bolt upright and the sheet slipped off.

“What round is it Gus?” asked the boxer.