Date: Wed, 27 Dec 2006 23:41:33 -0500
From: carl_mason@comcast.net
Subject: JOSEF'S FORGE - 6

JOSEF'S FORGE - 6

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 6

(Revisiting Chapter 5)

Walking from his office to a nearby barracks, Voroshilo had been shot and
killed.  (He, too, had apparently forgotten that there's no such thing as a
free lunch!)  A guard in one of the watchtowers - a man who had previously
worked in the Records Office - was arrested.  Subsequently, a court martial
refused to convict him.  The word was "Insufficient evidence"...or
something like that.  Rumor had it that the Commandant had him immediately
transferred to an NKVD unit on the liberated Crimea.  "Nice beach duty -
and it's warm," a straight-faced Josef had grunted enviously, though Erich
was almost positive that he had seen the beginnings of a grin!  When the
Squad entered the Office on the next day, a new lieutenant was in charge.
Although it took him several months to warm up to his young German staff,
he knew his business and he was a fair man.  Who could ask for more?

(Continuing Our Story - "Meet the New Boss . . .")

One might think that there'd be few differences between the NKVD guards who
were assigned to the camp.  After all, as The Who maintained in their
album, Won't Get Fooled Again, "Meet the new boss, Same as the old boss."
Or we might generally follow Shakespeare and note that the rain (and snow)
fall equally on everyone, that the mosquitos bite everyone - in short, that
Siberia is no paradise for anyone.  Solzhenitsyn spoke of "the Bluecaps
whose training required only a willingness to carry out orders exactly and
be impervious to suffering.  Motivated by a greed for power and a greed for
gain..."  He also admitted, however, that "among . . . camp jailers it was
possible to find some human beings.  Every prisoner encountered more than
one in his career.  In an officer, it was virtually impossible."  The human
beings among the officers had simply had too long a time to be identified
and removed.

All things told, the experience of Josef and his squad was not all that
different.  True, the Major had proved to be something of an exception.
Nevertheless, such exceptions were probably few and far between.  On the
other hand, most of the guards posted to this wilderness over the years
were in it for what they could gain - the good food available for personal
consumption and/or theft and sale, avoiding being posted to the front, and
the like - and ALL of them were motivated by a need to exercise power over
other people.

Any guard (or officer) who desired to use prisoners sexually could satisfy
himself - as long as he wasn't blatant or didn't push it too far as had
Lieutenant Voroshilo.  To be sure, Josef and his squad members were
occasionally singled out by guards due to their being younger and their
being in better physical condition due to their program.  (Inasmuch as
homosexual activity in the NKVD was officially punishable by death, this
did not happen often or openly.)  When it did happen on rare occasion, they
submitted and, after the Voroshilo incident, were able to rationalize their
submitting.  It was also the case, of course, that homosexual activity was
at least psychologically possible for half the group - Josef, Erich, and
Heinz - as long as it wasn't forced on them.

Life in the Records Office had taken on a comfortable pattern.  The German
boys did their work, and they did it well.  At times, they even suggested
improved procedures to Lieutenant Kuznetsov, their new superior - and, as
he became more comfortable with them, he often implemented them.  In
return, previous "benefits" were continued - with the exception of the
shorts that were replaced by gray trousers and shirts captured from the
Germans.  By design, everything that went on in the Records Office was
designed to make the Lieutenant look good.  An intelligent human being, he
gradually came to realize this and life in the Records Office became more
easygoing.  For instance, a terrific uproar took place in the camp on the
seventh of May 1945.  Guns were being fired; every signaling device in the
camp was sounding; horns on trucks in the vicinity were blasting; Russian
soldiers were literally dancing in open places. The Lieutenant went to a
window, but could see no reason.  He shrugged and signaled to Josef that he
could take a look.  Josef understood enough of what he heard to realize
that Germany had surrendered, a fact that he transmitted to his superior.
A great smile crossed Kuznetsov's face and he even took a little hop step.
Josef simply barked, "Achtung!"  When his squad had snapped to attention,
he said, "Germany has surrendered."  With a remarkable show of
self-control, the Lieutenant returned to his usual bland "accountant's"
demeanor, saying, "Well, men, shall we get back to work?"  Within days, it
became widely known that no one was going home in the foreseeable future.
The Russians saw Germany's blood debt to be too great.  It would have to be
reduced before the first combatant returned to the West.  After the first
few weeks of wishful thinking, Germans realized that most of the men would
never see their homes again, and a deep depression settled over the camp.

It wasn't long before the depression began to turn into something extremely
ugly and dangerous.  Where before there had been grudging obedience based
on the hope that it might lengthen their lives and their chance to return
home, now there was a generalized atmosphere of rebelliousness.  The Major
immediately cracked down, increasing supervision and enforcing the letter
of the law.  More Germans were punished during that month than had been
punished during all previous months of the Major's administration.
Needless to say, as production dropped appreciably, the Commandant realized
that it would not be long before Moscow would be taking action.  He wracked
his brain, trying to come up with something that might reverse the
direction of events.  During the second week of June, he called Josef into
his office.  Quietly he summarized where things were now and how vulnerable
they were to a return to more typical NKVD administration of the camp.
Though he sketched a few possibilities, his basic message was that if Josef
could work with him (to the extent possible for a loyal German soldier), he
would be most grateful.  The sergeant said that he would talk with his men.

(The New Project)

Josef quickly sketched the Major's analysis of the situation - with which
he and Thomas basically agreed.  Were the situation to change appreciably,
the attention of the men would have to be diverted from their feelings of
hopelessness to the excitement and rewards of a new project.  Were the new
project sufficiently in line with its perceived needs, this would also
divert Moscow's eyes from that which the Major believed was a temporary
drop in production.  Any workable project would have to restore the
provision of building materials to those involved in repairing the terrible
destruction in European Russia.  Josef also mentioned one possibility
suggested by the Commandant.  Namely, since he had arrived, Moscow had been
screaming that the production of many camps west of the Irtysh river in the
West Siberian Lowlands was unacceptably slow in reaching European Russia.
The first part of an answer seemed to lie in building a heavy railroad
freight line between Tyumen on the south and Tobolsk on the north.  Thus
far, the project had resulted in utter failure.  As they had observed on
reaching the camp from the rail siding on the Trans-Siberian, the low,
marshy land presented immense problems.

The squad agreed that inasmuch as the war was over, there was no defensible
reason for trying to slow production.  Going back to the old NKVD approach
to camp administration was definitely not in their interest!  Conversely,
the Major had proved throughout his stay at the Camp that he was a fair man
and, more, that his reforms gave hope to many men that they would see their
homelands again.  This project might allow them to leverage even better
conditions for all the men.  Wolf had experience in surveying that might be
of service; Thomas had actually worked for the railroad that provided
international service across northern Germany into Berlin.  When they
informally surveyed the Germans at the camp, they found that a fair number
had railroad and engineering experience.  Thus, they decided to share their
findings with the Major and to offer their services to the project were the
decision to go forward.

When Josef next saw the Commandant, he was a happy and an excited man.  The
railroad project had obviously been an albatross around the NKVD's neck,
and the career of many an officer had died with its several failures.
Moscow was DELIGHTED that someone would agree to take this burden from
their hands.  They even shared the news that a German railroad had been
taken for war reparations.  Complete with rolling stock, it was at that
very moment being shipped east.  (The Soviet idea of "war reparations" was
not only to take the contents of the factory, but the bricks of the
buildings in which they were housed!  On more than one occasion, they even
scooped up the workers - including workers who lived in Central and East
European countries that had not supported Hitler.)  The current NKVD
officers, labor teams, and supplies currently at the railhead were put
under the Major's control.  He was told to move and that he would be
watched closely by those in Moscow.  Even Comrade Stalin, he was told, was
interested and promised resources.

Within days, the Major, an NKVD guards detachment, an older German Colonel
who had been one of von Paulus's chief engineers arrived at the rail siding
that stood at the southern terminus of their road.  The Squad (which, for
some reason, the Commandant seemed to regard as his "good luck" charm)
accompanied them.  All was in chaos.  Many of the supplies had been picked
through and/or stolen; the few Russians who were around, including their
commanding officer, were drunk; the foreign labor teams simply waited
miserably in the rain.  Where was there to go - and who would not shoot
them on sight if found wandering across the countryside?

The Major immediately took firm control of the situation.  The drunken
office in charge was detained.  (He was later shot in Moscow, as were his
staff members.  Many of the lower ranks were sent to prison, although a few
were reassigned.)  The foreign workers were fed and given what shelter was
available.  Wolf and the Colonel engineer, supported by several handpicked
NKVD guards, were charged with finding a route that would avoid the worst
of the marshes.  When they returned in a week's time, the news was not
good.  Most of far-western Siberia, i.e., that portion between the Urals on
the west and the Yenisey river on the east appeared to have been a great
inland lake that had an outlet into the Black Sea - and not too many
thousands of years ago.  The major rivers flowed north from the mountains
of Central Asia into the Arctic seas.  At that time, however, mammoth
glaciers prevented their water from reaching the sea.  The Colonel and his
party found this great mosquito-infested basin to be a land of vast
marshlands, slow-flowing rivers, and mixed evergreen forests - with an
admixture of deciduous forests as one moved south.  It was also the largest
expanse of peatlands in the world.  The Colonel engineer added that only
God knew the extent of the mineral wealth and, perhaps, more that lay
beneath the surface.  In any case, the consensus was that building a
railroad through this morass would be hideously difficult and unbelievably
expensive - but it could be done.

Comrade Stalin ordered that the railroad project be put into high gear as
soon as possible.  He again promised the German railroad, first labor call
on the 900,000 ethnic Germans (Saxons and Swabians) whom the Red Army was
moving out of the Balkans, any NKVD supervisory personnel needed, necessary
funds, and support for other needs as they developed.  "I think we have
diverted Moscow's attention from our recent troubles," the Commandant
chortled quietly and with a wink.


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): Now posting.
PROFESSOR KENYON (10 Cs):  In queue.