Meine Ehre heißt Treue!

My father was crazy. He had to be. What other reason could there be for forbidding me to join a group that required members to stay clean of tobacco, drugs, and alcohol like the Viking Youth?

He was the living embodiment of everything that was wrong with this country. He kept praising the problem: sexual degenerates, the "Dreamers" and the other illegal aliens and all the ISIS terrorists pretending to be refugees. I was trying to be part of the solution.

I had to listen to all his communist stupidity, or he would take the keys to my car away. Even worse, I had to listen to all the perverted Freuds my mother took me to. But they promised this one would be interesting. He was a gun collector, and several of the guns would be of particular interest.

His name was Fred Weber, and he lived on a large farm WAY out in the boonies. He was a client of my father's law firm. He was middle-aged with wire-rimmed glasses, a bald head and bulging muscles  "Come in," he said. "Your Dad says you have an interest in Third Reich firearms."

My eyes widened, and I smiled. "You bet!"

I had never seen so many guns in one place in my life. Some I recognized like AK's, Mausers and G3's. On one wall hung two dozen examples of one type of pistol. They were all Pistole 640(b), also known as the Browning Hi Power. I felt like the wall was calling me to it.

"Only one is a Nazi pistol," he calmly said. "Which one is it?"

One particularly caught my attention. Much of the bluing was etched off and the grips were dark and dinged. There was no German Army Weapons Agency code on it, but there was on the pristine-looking one below it. I touched the pretty one and the others around it. They all felt cold and dead. But the old one was alive and warm. "I am yours," it called to me. "Bring me back to life. Let me serve the Reich." That surprised me, but I said "This one."

"That is correct. It was a pre-war Latvian contract pistol captured by the Soviets.  Then it was captured by the Waffen SS."

My imagination unfurled a little waking dream. I was standing in front of a platoon of Russian prisoners. We had stripped them of their weapons and equipment and tossed them in a big heap. My job was to learn what their orders were.

I told my translator to say "Would you like to live?"

The Untermensch snarled in his gutter language, and the translator said: "I serve the Soviet people and the working class."

"I guess not," I said and shot him with a little WW I French officer's pistol. It made a disappointingly small pop. The Ivan coughed and sputtered with blood coming from his chest and his mouth, but he remained standing and began to sing that Red Army song.

That was too much. I tossed the French tickler in the heap and searched for something more suitable. Then we met. She was beautiful, with lustrous honey blonde grips and rich bluing. I had fallen in love. Together we shut up the warbling Red. "Would anyone here like to live?"

I was back in the room. "May I hold it?"

Fred cleared the gun and handed it to me. I read the engraving on the backstrap. “Meine Ehre heißt Treue!” My honor is loyalty – the motto of the SS. I pointed it at a safe spot on the wall, aiming it at the corner. It fit me perfectly as if it were a part of me.

It was a beautiful fall day. My squad was operating out of the Zhytomyr General District. We were in the square of some armpit ass town. I couldn't remember the name, and I couldn't care. All I knew was that the Reichsführer-SS had ordered this region cleaned. It was a messy and exhausting job. We had Jews digging trenches while the Poles and the Ukrainians watched eagerly.

The bright spot was that the secretaries and clerical girls from SS Headquarters brought bread, cheese, and bottles of beer. They arranged the banquet at a table. One sat eating blueberries, eying me. What a face, what curves. I smiled back, walked over and took a beer. Today would be wonderful. My score was 487. I would make my 500th today.

Eventually, the trenches were deep enough. The Jews were ordered to strip and climb in the pits. "Come and get them," I called to the townsfolk. They fought over the clothes while the MP40s and the Mausers barked. I looked into the pit and was horrified. Half the Jews inside were squirming or groaning. "That is terrible," I shouted at my squad. "You should be ashamed of yourselves. Were you trying to miss?"

I pulled out my pistol, aimed and punctured the head of a young Jewess with nice tits. I fired again and again and again. Old men, children, I shot them all. I made my 500. It was even better than sex. I changed magazines and went to the table for another beer. "We're out," the beauty with the blueberries said. "Just Polish vodka left."

I took a large swallow. My mouth was on fire, and my face and head burst out in sweat. Somehow it was stronger than I thought it would be.

I took the bottle and went back to the pit. Somehow there were two of everyone now. I closed one eye. I hit a couple, but most I didn't.

She came on over and took the pistol from my hands. "How dare you waste the Reich's ammunition?" With that, she opened fire, hitting every one of her targets in the head or the heart.

She wasn't just beautiful. She was a wolf, and I was in love. I looked at her. "I don't know your name, but will you marry me?"

I was back in the room again. I was sure that no more than a few seconds had passed. Even though I hadn't had a drop, I felt as giddy and drunk as if I had a six pack of Coors. I didn't want to give up that gun up, but I handed it to him. "Do you think maybe I could shoot it some time."

He handed me two sets of eye and hearing protection and took a box of ammunition out of a drawer. "How about right now?"

We walked through his fields to a hill with a wide variety of steel targets. Some were of animals. Some were circles. Some looked like people. "Do you know how to load it," he asked.

I did indeed, carefully putting each of the rounds in the magazine. I racked the slide and rang a line of man-sized steel silhouette targets that were about 25 yards away, sweeping back and forth without missing once. I reloaded. Three steel gongs were at 50 yards and another silhouette at 100 yards. I rang them all without missing. I didn't think I had ever been so happy in my life.

I was in Poland. It was the beginning of Spring, but there was still a chill in the air. We had told all the Jewish men in the village that we wanted them to beat the ground to flush out the game. We said we wanted to hunt rabbits. They made a long line and flushed the rabbits and the birds, but we held our fire. At about 100 meters away I drew my pistol and opened up on the beaters. I made my 1000th that day. My beautiful Hilde bagged three Jews with her shotgun. "Could I fire another magazine," I asked Fred eagerly. "This will be the last one," he said. "Be careful. That is the most precious gun in my collection."

"I understand," I said. "Priceless."

I knocked down the poppers, spun the spinners, and even rang the little chicken gongs. When had finished the magazine, I was in a house. The sound of artillery fire rumbled in the distance. The carefree girl with the blueberries was there, but she looked ten years older. She was holding a crying baby. "You could run and take Heinrich," I said. "Pretend you're just another refugee. You could make it to the West."

"Couldn't you run too?"

"No. Someone will catch me.  Either our side will shoot me as a deserter or worse some Russian will recognize me.  It is time to pay the bill."

She thought. "There is no leaving. You know what Reds do to women. I will not suffer gang rape by Mongols."

"And Hermann?"

She put the baby on the sofa, picked my pistol off the desk and exploded his head. "The Reich is gone. All the best are dead. I will not leave my baby to grow up among rubble and cowards." Then she shot herself.

There was nothing left for me to do. I picked the gun up, put it to my head and squeezed the trigger.

I was back among the targets. I carefully put the gun down on the ground and threw up, uncontrollably and painfully. Then I began to sob.

I was too shook to drive home. My parents came for me. My mother took my car. I rode with my Dad. I silently nursed a Dr. Pepper as I seriously wondered if I were a reincarnated Nazi killer. What should I do? Embrace my destiny? Lead the new Reich? I shook my head. The thought of reincarnating as a toad wasn’t appealing. Convert to being Jewish? Become a Rabbi? There was some appeal to that idea, but it wouldn’t begin to undo the wrong of killing over a thousand people. As we drove towards home, I wondered what could.