"John Ringo - The Legacy of the Aldenata 7 - Watch On The Rhine" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ringo John)

head, and walked bravely to where his one-armed fatherтАФmore
importantly, the father's beltтАФawaited him. He knew he could not cry out,
could not show fear; else the beating would be worse, much worse.

Afterwards, when the long beating was over, the boy, Hans, walked dry-
eyed past his mother, his walk stiff from the bruises, the welts, and the
cuts.

The woman reached out to her son, seeking desperately to comfort him in
his pain. All she felt was his shudder as her hands stroked his bruises
and wounds. "Why, Hansi? What did you do wrong?"

The boy, he was tall for ten but not so tall as his mother, hung his head,
buried his face in a maternal bosom and whispered, "I do not know, Mutti.
He didn't say. He never says."

"He was never like this before the Great War, Hansi, before he lost the
arm."

The boy could not cry, that had long since been beaten out of him. He
shrugged. The mother could cry . . . and did.

***

Later, in a Mercedes, one of the pair said, "I must say, you are a cool one,
Herr Brasche."

"I am old. I have seen much. I have never seen where being afraid, or
showing I was if I was, ever did me or anyone else any good. Would it
now?"

The other, the driver, answered, "In this case you have no cause to fear,
Herr Brasche. We are here to do you a favor."

Hans shrugged. "I have been done favors before. Little good I had of

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them."

***

The times had changed. Plenty and hope had replaced hunger and
despair. From the windows, from the street lamps, on the arms of men and
women all over Germany fluttered a new symbol. On the radios crackled
the harsh, gas-damaged voice of a new hero.

Hans felt his thirteen-year-old heart leap at the sound of his F├╝hrer's voice