The Bunker

They hid in a concrete bunker there

While the bombs flew overhead,

Each bomb had seemed to be closer, and

At times, they thought they were dead,

But Karl had held his Griselda close

As she gazed into his eyes,

With a love she wouldn’t surrender

Though the Devil controlled the skies.

 

‘What do they want to kill us for,

They’ve had their pound of flesh?’

‘We’re merely reaping the whirlwind

For disturbing Gilgamesh!’

He kissed her eyes and her golden hair

As the tears streaked down her face,

‘I know I’ll love you forever, though

The heavens destroy our race.’

 

They’d always meant to be married, but

That had been years before,

For then the Wehrmacht called on Karl

And hurried him off to war,

He hadn’t wanted to go away

But he knew he daren’t say no,

There were tears from his Griselda when

She badgered him not to go.

 

He managed to get away on leave

When they came back home from France,

They lay for days in the poppy fields

To renew their brief romance,

‘This war won’t last forever,’ he said

To relieve her morbid fears,

But then they had turned on Russia, and

The end would be not for years.

 

She wrote him faithfully every week

And he read her, in his tank,

She poured her perfume onto the leaves

So the breast of his greatcoat stank,

But the worm had turned on the Russian steppes

When the guns and the half tracks froze,

And the mighty army had turned on back

With the order, ‘follow your nose!’

 

He’d fled back through the Sudetenland

In a battered Tiger Tank,

He knew that the war was over, with

The Generals to thank,

The tank had stalled, run out of fuel

Just outside East Berlin,

He walked in over the rubble there

And looked for his love again.

 

He thought that his heart would burst when he

Discovered her still alive,

‘We’ll have to hide in the bunker if

We’re going to both survive.’

They hadn’t eaten for seven days

And Griselda looked so thin,

‘I’ll venture out and I’ll find some food,

And then I’ll be back again.’

 

Griselda clung, and she said, ‘Don’t go!

You will only come to harm,

I’d rather starve in the bunker here

And die in my lover’s arms.’

But Karl said, ‘Ack! I will venture back

If it takes both tooth and claw,

I need to feed mein liebchen up

So we’ll both survive the war.’

 

The streets were almost impassable,

Incendiaries had been dropped,

And flames were busy engulfing rows

Of houses, Inns and shops,

He raided stores still racked in flames

Found pumpernickel bread,

And a pound or so of cheese, and Schnapps,

Before he had turned and fled.

 

He watched as the Russian tanks went by

And the men with their evil eyes,

Their crazed Mongolian faces made him

Stop, dig in and hide,

But when he had made his way back to

The bunker, forced the door,

He saw the blood where Griselda lay

Quite naked, down on the floor.

 

They’d all had their evil way with her

While his love lay still, and stared,

They’d finished her with a bayonet

While he had foraged for bread.

He cried, and he lay beside her then,

'I shouldn’t have gone,’ he said,

'I'll never be late, my bride, again,’

Then he put a gun to his head.

 

David Lewis Paget

 

Reviews

[Foxemerald]

'There were tears from his Griselda when, she badgered him not to go.' The human aspect here is very moving, a tale woven of two people that never really were able to reach serenity, even in the best times. The pictures that you paint are also very stunning, and starkly refreshing, in their own historical context. The most poignant, moving, and significant passage of all, of course, was the last one, although it was by far the most impressive, the most heart-felt, and the most treacherous. A beautiful clip of emotion. Gorgeous.

[TPK Stories]

So sad an ending but another great story David! :-)

[Onku Ghosh]

Yiu are a very skillful writer and as always done justice to this poem too.Your narration is wonderful and it raises the curiosity in the reader who is eager to know what happens next.what a sad ending.Too good!!!

[Lena M. P.]

You captured the autocracies of that war so well. The plight of the people, the cruelty, the starvation. the length of time it took for the terror to end. It was a truly sad time in history, hopefully not to be repeated.

[Tate Morgan]

Hitlers evil reich is still burning in the minds of the people who lived through it .It created. Such a tale of woe. Just deserts im afraid for the plans that country made.

[Baby Ricochet]

Great story Mr Paget. I particularly like the fact it was a German soldier and his lover. History tends to blame losers for everything and gloss over the victors barbaric acts. Like the horrors visited upon German civilians by British bomber command's incendiary bombing tactics, Napalm used on Japanese wooden cities and Russian solders being encouraged to rape and pillage everything they came across on their drive westward to Berlin. Not that the Germans or Japanese were any better in their atrocities, they just weren't the only ones acting like savages. I wrote a story called "The London Blitz 12/29/1940" about the worst raid London ever endured. I was going to write one on the bombing of Dresden as well and still might one of these days. Anyway, great poem as always sir.

[Marie]

I reached a point in this where I was actually afraid to read on. I wanted this couple to find happiness, but I suspected the story would end in tragedy. THough I didn't expect the ending you gave it. Double tragedy.

[Kristallo]

This is heart wrenching. I love the style in which you've fashioned this beautifully tragic tale. It would seem that true love doesn't always conquer all, especially in the bitter times of war.

"I know i'll love you forever, though the heavens destroy our race." Epic quote, David. This scene was so alive in my mind as I read through, which is the real gauge of good writing in my opinion. You are a skillful and imaginative man, always in awe of your craft.... exceptional write, my friend. :)