Date: Sun, 17 Dec 2006 12:44:32 -0500
From: carl_mason@comcast.net
Subject: JOSEF'S FORGE - 3

JOSEF'S FORGE - 3

Copyright 2006 by Carl Mason with Ed Collins

All rights reserved.  Other than downloading one copy for strictly personal
enjoyment, no part of this story may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, except for reviews, without
the written permission of the authors.  However based on real events and
places, "Josef's Forge" is strictly fictional.  Any resemblance to actual
events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.  As
in real life, however, the sexual themes unfold gradually.

If you would like to read other Mason-Collins stories, please turn to the
listing at the end of this chapter.  Comments on all stories are
appreciated and may be addressed to the authors at carl_mason@comcast.net.

This story contains descriptions of sexual contact between males, both
adults and teenagers.  As such, it is homoerotic fiction designed for the
personal enjoyment of legal, hopefully mature, adults.  If you are not of
legal age to read such material, if those in power and/or those whom you
trust treat it as illegal, or if it would create unresolvable moral
dilemmas in your life, please leave.  Finally, remember that maturity
generally demands that anything other than safe sex is sheer insanity!


CHAPTER 3

(Revisiting Chapter 2)

The weather was as foul as the guards' tempers.  Cold rain poured down
endlessly.  It was as if they had reentered earliest spring, and they
shivered as they hadn't since March in the holding camp.  Needless to say,
they were relieved as they came off the lower reaches of the Urals and
immediately approached a great industrial city.  Its furnaces belching
endless clouds of pollutants into the air, Sverdlovsk [today known as
Ekaterinburg, its pre-Bolshevik name, the city when Czar Nicholas and his
family were executed early in the Revolution] was a major stop on the
Trans-Siberian Railroad from Moscow to Vladivostok on the Pacific Coast.
It was here that prison cars would take them deeper into the Siberian
wilderness.

(Continuing Our Story - Sverdlovsk)

Avoiding the city center, the guards marched the long column through an
industrial district on the southern side of town.  There was little to be
seen other than decrepit factories that were, nonetheless, in full
operation.  They were not allowed to pause until they reached a rail siding
that evidently was used primarily for shipping supplies directly to the
front.  There, between an enormous industrial complex and the rails, they
were herded into a roughly paved field surrounded by a high security fence.
Sitting huddled together on the ground in a dark, misting rain, nearly 4900
men were given their first and only meal of the day, a small piece of khleb
and a cup of thin vegetable-top soup made with foul-tasting water.  Other
than two of their number who were left behind, It wasn't long before the
guards withdrew to an open shed some distance down an alleyway in the
complex.  One could see the glow from fires they had built in at least two
barrels.  The fence was electrified; no one was going anywhere.

Sometime during the night, Josef awoke from a light doze to see two men
speaking with one of the guards who was patrolling the gate area.
Something, probably money, changed hands.  The rain had stopped, though it
was still cold and raw.  Simultaneously, the word was passed down from
their older sergeants: "We are about to be attacked; get any sick/injured
men to the center of the yard; sit shoulder to shoulder; resist, but don't
break ranks for any reason until the guards reappear."  Men were awakened
soundlessly, some were helped into the center of the group, and the group
tightly compacted.  Josef and his buddies watched the two guards disappear,
the gate open, and a large group of men slowly filter into the compound.
They appeared to be young, powerful, and carrying knives, clubs, chains,
and other weapons.  Here were the "hoodlums" - the young men who had turned
feral as parents were themselves in labor campus...or off to war...or
working long hours in war plants.  Feared by nearly everyone in Russia,
they were sometimes used by one power group or another to do its dirty
work.  The NKVD guards, for instance, couldn't murder large numbers of the
hated Germans with impunity, but hoodlums could...and often did.

With grunts and muffled yells, the first wave of invaders threw themselves
onto the outer ranks of the German POWs.  They made surprisingly little
progress against the weakened men; indeed, several found their weapons, a
leg, or an arm grabbed as they were dragged, flailing, into the German
phalanx.  Sharp, gurgling cries suggested that they weren't greeted as
brothers.  Quickly, their weapons were passed to the outer ranks.  The
hoodlums paused; the strong resistance hadn't been expected.  On a signal
from their leader, they attacked again en masse.  POWs fell, but attackers
were falling as they slowly penetrated the German ranks.  Increasingly,
they found their rough weapons turned against them from every direction, as
well as knees that found their balls and hands that sought their throats.

Suddenly, wild bursts of automatic rifle fire exploded on two sides of the
compound.  As the guards reappeared, the hoodlums simply melted away into
the darkness.  The word came down from their sergeants: "Get rid of the
weapons!"  As clubs and chains were tossed onto the outer reaches of the
yard, several knives found their way into the backs of fleeing men who had
attacked them.  The POWs resumed their tight, seated formation...silent,
under discipline.  It was over in minutes.  As several searchlights were
turned on, guards reentered the compound and searched the Germans.  (Two
who had kept their knives were shot.)  Under guard, 49 bodies of German
prisoners were stacked near the fence.  Twenty-seven bodies of those who
had attacked them were dragged outside the compound and loaded onto a
truck.  A furious NKVD commander summoned the senior German non-coms and
marched them off.  (The eight older sergeants never reappeared.)

As weak and tired as they were as they sat silently in the blood and gore
of the battle, the adrenalin of Josef and his brothers was slow to
dissipate. Few had slept as a watery sky brightened in the East and they
saw long lines of red-painted cattle cars being pushed onto the railroad
spur by a yard engine.

(Prisoners in Transit)

After being fed nothing more than small quantities of soup - so nauseating
in its smell and texture that most of the men could barely force it down -
the men were loaded onto the cattle cars.  The cries of the guards were
unremitting: "Stand closer...CLOSER, you bastards!"  No sardine can had
ever been packed so tightly!  At least one hundred men were jammed upright
into each car.  As Josef's cheek pressed tightly into Gerd's stubble, the
irreverent thought passed through his mind that the boy really ought to
change his toothpaste - or at least use a mouthwash!  Had he not been so
dreadfully tired, he would have grinned!  Finally, as the guards pushed
against those closest to the car opening, the heavy gate was slammed shut
and padlocked.

The car must have sat on the siding for at least three hours.  Body heat
alone soon had them sweating.  The stench was something that they
remembered as long as they lived.  Other than a small hole in one corner of
the car, there were no sanitary facilities.  (Had there been, few would
have been able to reach them so crowded was the car.)  You just did what
you had to do where you stood - and, for the young Germans, that was so
very difficult to take.  Wolf actually broke down as the urine poured down
his legs and pooled on the rough floor.  There was a fair amount of
grunting and cursing as the boys rearranged themselves, but they all
managed somehow to embrace Wolf and comfort him.  Though the tears
continued to stream down his crimson cheeks, he finally shook his head,
whispered his thanks, and got it back together.  He wasn't the last to give
way before that damned train lurched off to the east, but in every case the
mortified lad found that his buddies were there for him.  Strange that
pissing your pants was felt to be so degrading or that the bashful touches
of your Kameraden [comrades or buddies] could mean so much, but that's the
way it was.

In real terms, the journey to the East was rather short, only around 350
miles, but it turned out to be a nightmare.  The two trains that
transported the entire group of POWs spent more time on sidings than they
did underway.  Jammed together over towards the side of the car, the boys
were able occasionally to peer through cracks and see long trains of troops
and flat cars that carried tanks, artillery, and God knows what else on the
their way west.  They were concerned for their comrades still in the field,
but, surely, the Wehrmacht would emerge victorious...wouldn't it?  When
they reached their camp and later had a chance to speak with older Soviet
prisoners, they could scarcely believe the stories of journeys to camps
that lasted four, five, and six weeks.  Such trips were sometimes described
as worse than the camps themselves. The crowded wagons were practically
unheated in the winter and unbearably hot in the summer. Inadequate food
and drinking water and sanitary arrangements caused great suffering and a
high death rate.

The train guards, from the so-called convoy troops of the NKVD, were
particularly brutal and negligent. During transport to the camps, the
NKVD's regulation mania was not even formally observed when it came, for
example, to rations. The rations gradually got smaller and smaller, and the
guards started failing to distribute them at all. Even the water to be
provided was often forgotten for a day or two.  A Soviet woman writer
complained of the suffering caused by the provision of only one mug of
water a day for all purposes on the long run from Moscow to Vladivostok.

As the first day came to a close, the boys were suffering terribly from the
heat, lack of sleep, and the crowding, as well as from the lack of food and
water.  Again, they found themselves on a siding - only this time the gate
was opened.  Several of the prisoners set up a cry, telling the guards that
men had died.  Almost reluctantly, the guards ordered the bodies to be
passed forward.  The emaciated forms were simply thrown onto the
embankment.Twenty-one German soldiers in the boys' car had perished on the
first day of the journey alone.  Josef's squad was still alive, though
Heinz was in bad shape.  Some cold soup - evidently left over from the
morning - was passed into the car.  After forcing his own portion down,
Josef managed to get most of the boy's portion into the slight redhead.
Throughout the night, as long trains rumbled by headed west, one after
another of the squad crouched down beside Heinz in the space vacated by
those who had died and held him in his arms.  Josef was not the only one to
kiss him gently on the forehead and to wipe the sweat from his feverish
face.  By morning, Heinz had recovered considerably and even managed with
Josef's help to stumble over to the hole in the wagon floor and relieve
himself.  On returning to the squad, Josef went to Gerd, Thomas, and Wolf
in turn, laid his hand on his shoulder, and stared intently into his eyes.
Each young man felt as if his sergeant had just awarded him the Knights
Cross of the Iron Cross with oak leaves!

For the remainder of the four-day, 350 mile journey, the far end of the car
was given to the seriously weak and/or ill.  Different men took turns
ministering to their needs.  All, including the older men, acknowledged
Josef's leadership in providing for their comrades and treated him as they
would have treated their own trusted sergeants.  The boys in the Squad
looked upon him with great pride and affection - especially when he just
continued to be...Josef.  There wasn't anything that he - or anyone else -
could do about the conditions or the food which deteriorated during the
last two days.  When the guards deigned to feed them, the fare was usually
a sliver of bread and a small piece of salt-cured fish.  The fish, of
course, only made the prisoners' thirst that much greater.  Unfortunately,
they also knew that not eating it meant starvation and death.

Eventually, the journey had to come to its end.  In this case, it did in
late morning at a siding some miles east of Tyumen.  The Trans-Siberian
continued on its way to Omsk, a larger city that lay on the Irtysh, a major
tributary of Western Siberia's great River Ob.  Perhaps due to the fact
that so many men had died in the cattle cars, especially during the
previous two days, the men were minimally fed and watered before departing
for their new camp.  Strange as it may seem, the thin, hitherto
unappetizing soup was almost a relief.

By late afternoon, a fleet of open trucks had been assembled at the
beginning of a rough-hewn road built by prisoners that led north into the
great taiga forests.  While it didn't reach as far north as Tobolsk (also
on the Irtysh, though far north of Omsk), it did allow access to the
untouched forests lying west of the Irtysh.  ("If logging this wilderness
be our fate," an older German soldier muttered, "God have mercy on our
souls.  They call it dry execution' in these parts!")  Again, they were
packed into the open trucks as they had been packed into the cattle cars .
Fortunately, though very humid and rather warm, it wasn't raining.  Without
stopping, they lurched north throughout the evening, the night, and into
the afternoon of the next day.  (Axils would have snapped like toothpicks
had they tried to drive much more than 20 mph per hour at any point.  In
fact, they had to crawl at a much reduced speed in many sections where the
spring run-off had turned the road into a thick, gelatinous mass that
clutched at tires until it promised to suck them off their rims.)

Would that the circumstances had been different, Josef thought idly.  The
moon rising over the great forests, shining through the conifers, glinting
on ponds, and turning the whole landscape into a fantasy in silver and
midnight green was uniquely beautiful.  He had never seen anything like it,
even in the Alps.  He sat with his arms around his buddies' shoulders,
their heads occasionally resting on his chest.  Heinz's head rested
childlike on his thighs throughout most of the evening and the night.
Occasionally, one of the youths would grunt, roughly curl a big hand around
the back of his neck, and guide his head down upon their chest.  He wasn't
particularly "religious," but for a moment he felt like a priest whose
calling it was to serve as a conduit for God's love and power.  Had the
circumstances only been different...

(Labor Camp 618-T)

It was already two o'clock when the trucks reached the camp.  The camp?
There WAS no camp!  All that anyone could see was an immense, partially
cleared area.  A stake held a simple, roughly lettered sign..."Labor Camp
618-T".  There wasn't even a fence or barbed wire!  But, then,' Josef
thought, who could walk out of this soggy green hell and live to tell about
it?  And when the short summer was over and the swirling snow covered the
land in great drifts... and the temperature fell to -65 degrees Fahrenheit
(-54 deg. C.)...what then?'  For a moment, Josef's courage left him and he
wanted nothing more than to drop down and bawl like a little three
year-old.  He was not alone.

The horror of the moment was interrupted by the convoy guards rousting the
POWs out of the trucks and onto the floor of the "camp".  On every hand
they were confronted by yelling, swearing starshi (camp) guards who stared
at them with death in their eyes and waved their Tommy guns menacingly.
Many of the guards barely controlled snarling, straining dogs whose
enormous fangs glinted in the afternoon sun.  As far as Josef was
concerned, they looked far more like wolves than any dogs he had ever seen.
As one Russian later wrote, "We were spread out and formed into a big
polygon all over the field, facing outward so that we shouldn't see each
other. Then we were ordered down on our knees, and told to keep looking
straight ahead in front on pain of death. Then the roll call, an endless,
humiliating business going on for hours and hours, and all the time we were
on our knees. Then we got up and two other groups were marched off in
different directions, all except ours. We were told: Here you are. This is
your camp.'"

Food that day came only as the light was fading from what they could see
through the heavy tree cover.  Perhaps it was best that they couldn't see
it clearly, for all that was provided was raw rye flour, kneaded with
water.  At that point, the German sergeants and other noncoms took their
devastated troops in hand and set them to digging pits in the muddy ground
and covering them with branches and earth - branches that they had to
break, and earth that they had to move, with their bare hands.  Throughout
the evening, the camp guards moved among the prisoners, beating them
without rhyme or reason.  One of the younger Germans, a beautiful blond kid
from Wuppertal who had won the Iron Cross as the Sixth Army approached
Stalingrad, could take no more.  Hysterically, he cried out, "No!  No!
No!" as his buddy was being savaged.  They stripped him, dragged him over
to a small boulder, and spread his ample genitals out on the rock.  Slowly,
held fast by three husky guards, the guns of their fellows at ready, one of
the guards crushed the boy's balls to mush under a heavy jackboot.  The
fear that spread over the field was as heavy as the billowing, acetic smoke
that they had seen pouring from factory chimneys in Sverdlovsk.  Dazed, the
boys of the Squad spent their first night in Labor Camp 618-T huddled
together in their pit, holding on to each other for dear life.  No one
slept much and when he did, it was a feverish, disturbed sleep that gave
little rest.  Sometime during the night, Heinz fell over on him and lay
suckling on his thin uniform coat.  Thomas noticed and nodded
compassionately before he fell back asleep.  Sobs punctuated their tossing
and their turning as the screams of the young lad from Wuppertal echoed
endlessly in their ears.

In the morning, they were again gathered in the cleared area.  Following
roll call, ringed by guards and wolf dogs, they faced the camp staff - a
starshi Major, several Lieutenants, and another man who was clearly a
political officer tasked with turning this Nazi scum into avid Communists.
The Major's comments were brief and to the point: "Your heroic mission is
to replace the building materials that you destroyed on your way across the
Rodina.  The wood you cut will replace that which was lost to fire and
shell.  Believe that other German swine will take the wood and use it to
rebuild public buildings and homes.  If you work, you will eat.  If you
don't work, you will be shot.  Frankly, I don't care either way, for other
prisoners will be arriving at this camp in droves, prisoners who will be
glad to have a chance at life.  Before the logging can begin, however, you
must build the camp - the stockade [an enclosure made of posts and stakes,
built more for psychological reasons and to keep wild animals out than to
keep prisoners in], the barracks and other buildings, the punishment cells,
and the watchtowers.  Let hands that drip with the blood of our people be
put to better use.  There will be work quotas.  Fall below them and you
will not eat.  Exceed the quotas and you will dine on more than rye flour.
Rather, you will enjoy soup and bread...and you will live.  The choice is
yours.  Within ten minutes, your sergeants will meet with Lieutenant Ivanov
and receive building plans and locations.  Those not so involved will be
issued needed tools.  DISMISSED!"

Within less than an hour, Josef had rejoined the Squad.  It was already
growing warm and the humidity hung heavy in the air.  His boys - and
several other groups - would be building the first of the barracks.  With
no little regret after the night past, he realized that it would be for the
guards.  There was no heavy equipment...not even horses.  The men would go
into the forest, cut down trees and trim them into logs with hand tools,
and manhandle them back to the construction area.  At every point, they
were surrounded by cursing guards who slashed at them and demanded that
they work harder and faster.

In some ways, the most vulnerable group was comprised of 20 year-olds who
still retained some of their youthful strength.  Invariably stripped to the
waist and showing off what remained of their proud muscle - when the smoke
from burning scrap wood kept the mosquitos at bay - they violently threw
themselves into the work.  They intended to have that soup and bread - and
they received it: twice a day rations of one- third of a liter (11 oz.) of
thin soup, and once a day about half a kilo (1 lb.) of bread.  Nothing
their sergeants or those older could say would convince most of them that
they had to pace themselves.  Josef had a terrible time restraining Gerd
and Wolf who moaned and muttered as their peers slurped the soup and
munched on the bread while they tried to force the dampened rye flour down
their throats.  Reluctantly, they finally accepted their sergeant's firm
orders and maintained their discipline.  It was just as well.  After months
of vicious combat, inadequate rations, and their experiences in the holding
camp and on the way to the camp deep in the Siberian taiga, the youngsters'
strength was illusory - more a memory than a reality.  Within a week, they
quickly weakened, fell ill, and died to a man.  They were not alone.
Before the basic elements of the camp were finished towards the end of the
Siberian summer, fully one-third of the 1500 men in their camp had
perished.  The Major could have cared less.  As the Wehrmacht weakened and
retreated west before the growing strength of the Red Army, hundreds of
additional prisoners arrived weekly up the broken road from the rail
siding.  As 1942 (and later years) progressed, Stalin delayed shipments to
his troops at the front in order to insure that the hapless prisoners were
transported to labor camps throughout the Soviet Union, but especially in
Siberia.  All were ready to assume their duties as lumberjacks within less
time than the Major had been allotted to complete his troika of three labor
camps.

Josef sprawled exhausted on a mattress full of heavy, hard-packed sawdust.
He had barely had the strength to climb into the middle bunk in the dark,
dank barracks.  He saw clearly what Stalin ("Uncle Josef" himself, he
thought wryly) was trying to do - and, thus far, with considerable success.
Gathering up the raw materials of battle, he was attempting to forge the
human debris into a mindless, terrified labor force that would work itself
to death.  Being hammered continuously, undergoing heating and reheating,
the men were slowly losing all vestiges of their humanity.  Uncle Josef's
forge...  Yeah...that was it.

What countermeasures were open to him?  How could he forge a far different
outcome?  Even though the rations had finally improved, no one could change
his or her physical strength overnight.  Nor one could acquire a skill
overnight, learn Russian immediately, or get used to the horrid Siberian
climate.  No one could be accepted in a support group such as the Squad
without the process taking time. All of these factors would increase the
chances for survival - but there was precious little time. One variable,
however, COULD be developed: the will to survive. Those determined to
survive, and willing to make all the needed adjustments through compromise
and adaptation, had a chance to survive if all other factors - luck and
skills - were also in their favor.  How, Josef thought, could he forge a
determination to survive in the four boys whose lives he had accepted as
his responsibility?


(To Be Continued)


                DATES OF LAST POSTING IN NIFTY
       Archived in Gay/Historical Unless Otherwise Noted


OUT OF THE RUBBLE (32 Chapters): 10-22-04.
CASTLE MARGARETHEN (9 Cs):  12-24-04.
THE PRIEST & THE PAUPER (12 Cs):  3-10-05.
HIGH PLAINS DOCTOR (12 Cs):  4-25-05.
FOR GOD AND COUNTRY (9 Cs): 6-13-05.
HOBO TEEN (12 Cs):  8-23-06.
YOUNG JEREMY TAYLOR (9 Cs):  9-25-06 (posted in Sci-Fi/Fantasy).
STREETS OF NEW YORK (10 Cs):  12-06-06.
JOSEF'S FORGE  (10 Cs): Posting.