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Picture
Meshlik Run!
by Craig Waltman
USA
April 2019


I reckoned nothin’ of the affairs of this world, I…just a simple fisherman of Fraserburgh considered only the whiting…the Pollock…the line, when first my country bade…answering her call did I with fingers knurled by years of laboring the net. As a brisket of kings coal was I thrown into North Africa’s furnace, as a slice of beef into Sicily’s stewing pot, and now here upon this speck of earth just miles away from Bergen-Belsen, the worst of the infernal lot when first I saw Meshlik emerge from a clearing within the spruce…all but a wee youngin’ he was.

​Aye, the young lad had survived the death camps, its endless trek to only die in me arms so light and lean was he nothin’ more than a mere skeleton I held cradled to my heart. Oh, how I wanted to hold him forever, he was in my eye the very image of my own dearly departed son, but was not the grim specter of typhus upon him and all I could muster was a fatherly smile, a warm chest for a pillow to lie on. And with a tenderly ear I ever so softly listened as he faintly whispered between shallow breaths, and his words rang in my ears with the eco of my grandfather and his father’s tongue, as from this Lower Saxony was he born…which as a nipper myself he instructed me of each and every verse. Now fallen under the spell of his fever he recounted his short life as he called out, "Come…come, Sigmund, you’re such a good boy, every trick you mastered…tomorrow I shall teach you more.”

Was to be his last sunny reflections…and then as dark storm clouds a-brewing his mother crying, "Meshlik, run!”

Alas, his wee legs could not carry him swiftly enough beyond men’s hatred, for its arresting hand reached both far and wide touching every lintel…upon every post. Then came the endless toil without ration nor rest circumscribed by only disease and death and the harsh cruelty of guards pitiless of heart more stone than flesh. With callous Gunther and Heinrich being the most remorseless of them, and for reason of an imagined slight and their many barbarisms they had taken the children, little Meshlik, he now numbered amongst the eight were outside the wire not a forenuin prior standing at attention upon the rim of a crater…most sadly their graves had already been dug by our own flying Mitchells and their five hundred pounders. And when haughty Gunther the peacock was flaunting about with his freshly dog, a Great Dane was he…when Heinrich admired, "A fine, strapping mountain…a Harlequin is he?...although he doesn’t look particularly vicious by his stance.”

“It is of no concern,” replied Gunther with a hellish gleam and devilish smirk, "he’ll be if I have anything to do with it, even if I have to beat it into him.”  

When suddenly the Dane’s his eyes fastened upon Meshlik’s for his name was not to be Fritz as Gunther told, but Sigmund now breaking free, dashing towards his child for, alas, no restraints could bar them from their reunion, and with chain still wrapped in hand the jilted guard now fermenting in his own spume began to flog little Meshlik, as Heinrich wrenched his arms as though they felt they were going to break.

But, alas, Sigmund being his protector rightful and true wouldn’t see to his ill-treatment, as pivoted he as if on a coin and set upon his captors as all the babes fled away as they yelled, “Meshlik run!”

But he couldn’t find it within him to leave Sigmund a second he cried. And then his eyes of blue became as shimmering pools of water as he uttered his last words, "The pistol shot…the whimper.”

And the long, quiet pause with Sigmund’s loving eyes stilled by death clasped upon his. And as pouring out his last bit of strength he finished, "Children…barn…over hill…must find…you’re such a good boy, Sigmund, you saved us all…I love you always,”  were his final words to be.

And my tears ran as rivers, what a poor consolation I am…I a corpsman without remedy for this poor child’s sake. Why so many innocent souls must suffer and die for the twisted delusions of madmen…for the murders they conceive in their wretched hearts no priest can tell nor hell hot can explain. And, alas, I found comfort in this truth as surely as the miracle of my own beating heart, that now and forevermore the dog and his child are runnin’ free in heaven with my own son, not from killers or tyrants or the like, but oh, for the simple joy as a boy and his dog are meant to play.

​Now may you be swaddled in all the raptures of heaven where tears never shine…God’s speed to you little fella for we found the wee children just were you said they be. Now I have but one last thing to tell and it is this: If your travels ever bring you to a Lower Free Saxony just look for an elder spruce near a clearing and you shall see the lone graves of a boy and his faithful dog true, which still remains there even unto this very day…well cared for and green. 

 
                             The End
 
I dedicate this to Dr. Fred Bodie of which I have no greater friend or higher respect. For in my life I have seldom seen a man of such character. God bless you and yours forever and always and may your tribe increase.