Minutes earlier, he and his
beloved father had run from the back door as the soldiers burst through the
front of their home. Two shots rang out, one hitting his father and the other
striking Jerry in the shoulder. His father dropped to his knees and with an
impassioned cry, yelled,
"Run Jerry, run!"
As he rounded the corner,
he remembered that the bakery had a narrow alley between it and a shoe store.
At the end of the alley stood about two dozen old wooden boxes piled against a
six‑foot fence. To one side of the boxes there was a 14‑inch gap into which he
often crawled. That led under the floor of the bakery, an ideal place to smoke
cigarettes with another teenage friend, something his father would have frowned
upon . . . if he knew.
His eyes were wild with
terror, not only because he had been shot and was being chased by Nazis, but
for fear of what had just happened to his father. As he crawled under the
bakery floor he heard another two shots ring out. He stopped moving and
whispered,
"Dear God . . . what is happening?"
The ground was damp and cold and there was hardly room for him
to lift his head. He looked down at his bleeding shoulder. It was just a flesh
wound but it scared him. The bullet had entered at the back of his left
shoulder, missed the bone and passed through the other side, tearing the flesh
as it went. It was burning as though it had been clamped in a red‑hot steel
vise, causing uncontrollable groans to come from his mouth. His breathing was
deep and fast and his chest heaved and burned as freezing air was drawn into
his lungs. He gritted his teeth and shut his eyes to try and stop himself from
crying, both from the pain of his shoulder and the dread that gripped his
heart. Even with his right hand held tightly over his wounds, the sleeve of his
shirt was crimson with blood right down to his wrist.
His eyes widened in fear,
at the thought that entered his mind. What if his wound had left a trail of
blood? Suddenly he heard footsteps! It
was the unmistakable sound of soldier's leather‑soled boots crunching the
stones on the ground in the alley. Jerry held his blood-drenched hand over his
mouth to stop his loud breathing. He could hear voices, and through the cracks
of the wooden foundation he could see the legs of the three soldiers that had
so terrorized his family. His mother and sister! What would happen to
his mother and his sister back at the house? He prayed that the soldiers would
leave them alone. As far as he knew, it was only the men that were being rounded
up and shot.
From the German dialect he
had learned, he heard one of the soldiers say,
"He's just a
boy!" Then he said something Jerry couldn't understand. After that there
was silence, then footsteps heading off into the distance. He slowly took his
hand from his mouth, took a deep blood‑tasting breath, and gave a guarded sigh
of relief. It would be ten long hours before he dared to move, and in the dark
of the night make his way back to his home.
To be continued.
