when the unthinkable, unspeakable happens

when the unthinkable, unspeakable happens

On the Loss of Courage in the Elderly/ repost, edit 1

Fiction
Edward W Pritchard-Draft 2

Germany in October 1935; this story takes place in Nazi Germany which had once been a prosperous and civilized Country.

start

The old postman blushed to himself as he hid in a crouch in the weeds and bushes as the railway cars thudded to a stop about 400 feet away, and with the noise of the railway train for cover the old man risked a few slaps at the clouds of mosquitoes feasting on himself. The old man was hiding from the soldiers.

This old postman had been shot at point blank range in the face by the pistol of a French officer in the Franco-Prussian war and later had been wounded three times again by the French in the trenches in WWI. Never before had the Postman been afraid and the blush was partially in shame for he had been raised a good Prussian Hegelian as a youth and knew he was defying his government and forsaking his Country's philosophy by hiding from his duty. But the blush was also partly from confusion for in truth the old soldier now the village postman had never felt this type of fear and he didn't know how to proceed.

The old soldier couldn't remove the bodies from the train again. Glancing toward the west, toward the elevated train track, along the river he noticed there were nearly twice as many shining new metal cars. Most of which he surmised were full of German citizens, the ill, the infirm, but mostly the mentally ill; who were being secretly shipped to be executed in special camps. The Postman and the other town's people in this obscure mountain village were for the third week in a row being rounded up by young soldiers to remove the dead from the cars, dead who had died prematurely on route to their planned deaths. They were to be executed by the State.

Soon the Postman and the townspeople would again carry the bodies from the rail cars to the dried up canal next to the river and place the corpses in the canal bed and throw a couple of feet of dirt and shrubs and debris over the bodies with the expensive new metal shovels supplied by the soldiers. It was an unthinkable and unspeakable thing to do and the old Postman was about to do it for the third time in three weeks.

The job must be done thoroughly; it was understood that no one else in Germany should hear of the culling of the German genetic stock. At least there was to be no evidence, for this occurrence would be unbelievable if retold second hand without direct proof. No one would believe that even the Nazi government would execute it's own handicapped citizens.

The old postman's brother, a party member, when the postman told him what had happened the last two weeks, had assured him the program would stop soon, because it was unpopular, even among party members, and besides some things shouldn't be done, not even in Nazi Germany.

The young soldier nudged the shaking old man, as a professional courtesy, gently with his rifle. The young Nazi soldier remembered the old man from last week, and remembered the telltale soldier's scar of a bullet wound across the left side of the old man's face. The young soldier nodded to the old ex soldier.

The tall erect young soldier  marched the old Postman almost politely toward the smell, toward the new high metal railway cars. The old man who knew everyone in the village from his postal work, done since WW1, kept his eyes toward the ground meekly and began to sob as he fell in line walking with the town's fellow citizens toward the railway cars.

 As he walked the shaking sobbing old man gripped the new shovel tightly as if trying to squeeze the unthinkable unspeakable deed he was about to do from his consciousness.