Early in World War One, a young Canadian soldier is wounded and trapped behind German lines. He uses quick thinking and ingenuity to evade capture, then deeper into enemy territory, he meets a young woman who recently lost her father and brothers to...
David leaned back against the slope and let his eyes wander up the trunk of the tree, thinking of his immediate options. That so easily could have been me. Need to slow my heart. Slow my mind. Need to act, not react.
Careful not to crack the dry twigs underfoot, he moved back up the hill, found his cache in the tree hollow, and changed back into his uniform. Still occasionally trembling from thoughts of the near miss, he sat on the log to regain focus and consider options.
Continue along the road? How do I explain the delay? Stepped into trees for a piss – a crap? No, I'd risk rousing their curiosity. Not wise to meet them again. Particularly after the two shots.
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To distract his thoughts, he looked at the watch on his wrist. Ten past five. Approaching twilight. Unaccustomed to having one, he removed it to wind it and examine it more closely. The dial read: Hans Wilsdorf Geneva. On the back was engraved:
on Retirement to Major Corcoran O'Byrne from the officers of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers 30 August 1912
Seems Josef is a watch thief, a grave robber. But now, so am I. Perhaps the Major re-enlisted. Or perhaps he gave it to a son before sending him off to Belgium. When I get out of this, I'll send this back to its proper home.
He strapped the watch back onto his wrist, took the atlas from his rucksack and looked at his surroundings in the dim light. He was in the southwestern corner of Germany, in the Schwarzwald, a broad region of hills and low mountains rising, it seemed, to just under 1500 metres.
Feldberg's the highest I see, marked at 1492 metres, could be 1493. Difficult to read the small print in this light. Whatever, it looks like the highest point on the map.
He pulled out the postcard with the picture of Müllheim. The labelled peak, Belchen, is 1415 metres – almost as high as Feldberg, but I don't see it on the map. Maybe unnoteworthy because of its mundane appearance.
The mountains were framed by the right-angled bend of the Rhein, where it turns from flowing west to flowing north past Basel. Along the margin of the map, the latitude read 48º directly beside a large town named Freiburg. The main body of the range looked to him to be about a degree square. Remembering Conrad telling him that a degree of latitude is 60 nautical miles, or 111.1 kilometres, he found himself wondering what Conrad was doing now. Five years in Canada – likely long enough not to be considered an enemy.
Dismissing his thoughts, he examined the Schwarzwald mountains on the map. Lower than the Columbia Ranges and the Rockies. Less than half the height. More like the ones on southern Vancouver Island, and they're at almost the same latitude. The hachures on his map showed rather gentle hills cut with streams. Then, it became too dark to see the map comfortably.
