Shell

Part 6: Return. Colmar (Alcase-Lorraine), Germany. September 19, 1915

Colmar (Alcase-Lorraine), Germany. September 19, 1915

"Folgen Sie der Rue De Berlin und biegen Sie links in die Rue de Vienne ein..."

It had taken the woman a long time to answer Hugo. He had stopped her in the street and asked her for directions, and after a moment of looking him over she just stared.

Since the injury, it always took a new acquaintance a minute to adjust to his appearance. Some couldn't stop looking at his deformed face. Some couldn't look at him at all. She was of the former group. She was frantic in the chaos of the evacuation, just as everyone in the city was. The French had made progress in the battle at La Linge, just kilometers away on the plains of Alcase-Loraine, and citizens in Colmar were being evacuated to Strassburg.

Hugo had seen the fighting in La Linge first hand and could testify that it was some of the most bitter warfare he had witnessed in the last year.

And he had witnessed a lot.

His journey all the way from up North in Ypres, where Gerhard died, down South to Colmar had taken months. It consisted of hitching rides on random convoys in exchange for volunteering in the medical tents, or trench fortifications. One Lieutenant briefly had him re-enlisted to fight at Festubert after the British launched a massive offensive. He was dismissed when he recounted for an Opst by the name of Bergen the battles he had survived at Champagne and Ypres. He told them about that night at Ypres, when he lost Gerhard, dragging him for several hours amidst the gas. How he stopped and knelt over Gerhard's body under the flares after he noticed that Gerhard wasn't responding. How he was lifeless. And how he had to abandon Gerhard amidst a French counter-attack later that night, traversing the craters back to the German lines in pitch black because German high command ordered the illumination flares to cease lest they aid their enemy's counter attack.

He didn't tell Opst Bergen that upon his return to the German lines he was overtaken with such a fit of uncontrollable anger, fighting any man within ten feet of him, German or Frenchman, for several hours. When the sun came up Hugo found himself arrested, shackled to a fence. Only after a random Gefreiter intervened to testify that he had witnessed Hugo pull Hauptmann Meyer from a crater on the battlefield did they let him go.

After recounting this journey to Opst Bergen, and not recounting his brief arrest, he presented Lieutenant Gerhard Meyer's identification tags to him. Bergen volunteered to send for documentation and information regarding Hugo's life via the Kriegsakademie to help him, but Hugo didn't want to wait. He convinced him to instead stamp transport papers for him all the way south to Colmar. He could only get him to La Linge, where he had to aid in mining operations in the mountains of Alsace-Lorraine in preparation for the battles there.

It was two months of mining before Hugo was able to leave.

After the French pushed past their mines, rendering their work useless, he left, honorably, to Colmar and found the city under complete evacuation.

Colmar.

The midday sun gave the gray stone streets a golden hue as the diesel truck pulled into town. He thought as soon as he set foot in town his memories would return.

But they didn't.

He didn't remember the winding brick and stone streets, or the beautiful canals that ran through the city. It scared him that nothing was coming back. The last physician he had spoken to said that only time would tell if his memory would return.