Copyright 2006 by Carl Mason with Ed Collins
All rights reserved. Other than downloading one copy for strictly personal enjoyment, no part of this story may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, except for reviews, without the written permission of the authors. However based on real events and places, "Josef's Forge" is strictly fictional. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. As in real life, however, the sexual themes unfold gradually.
If you would like to read other Mason-Collins stories, please turn to the listing at the end of this chapter. Comments on all stories are appreciated and may be addressed to the authors at carl_mason@comcast.net.
This story contains descriptions of sexual contact between males, both adults and teenagers. As such, it is homoerotic fiction designed for the personal enjoyment of legal, hopefully mature, adults. If you are not of legal age to read such material, if those in power and/or those whom you trust treat it as illegal, or if it would create unresolvable moral dilemmas in your life, please leave. Finally, remember that maturity generally demands that anything other than safe sex is sheer insanity!
CHAPTER 2
(Revisiting Chapter 1)
On a sunny day that Heinz (their resident expert on such matters) swore was in early April, the boys sat around after their exercise session, swatting at the mosquitoes that were just beginning to be noticeable. God, they were big enough to pick up a Volkswagen...maybe even the Field Marshall's Mercedes...and fly off with it and could they ever bite! Loudspeakers suddenly blared, announcing that in 15 minutes they would leave for their permanent camp. As they stood in lines before the camp gate - probably an hour later - Josef noticed that barely 2000 of the 5000 men who had marched into the camp in early February were departing. He shook his head in sorrow. Several hours later, their ranks swollen by another column, they again stood in line at a temporary dock on the Volga. It appeared that they would board several barges pushed by a heavy tug that were similar to those Josef had seen carrying grain on the Spree River in Berlin. Suddenly, he felt an arm around his shoulders. A low voice growled in his ear, "You did it, boss. You did it! We're all alive! Every man in the squad owes you his life." It was the great homophobe, Thomas.
(Continuing Our Story - Upriver )
The barge trip up the Volga - and its great tributary, the Kama, that drained much of the western Urals region - provided some relief from the absolute horrors of preceding months. Needless to say, it was in no way a vacation river cruise, but at least SOME Soviet planning had taken place. For instance, food - however inadequate - was available. Further, the young Red Army guards were a welcome relief after the brutal NKVD guards at the holding camp. The boys could even leave the hold occasionally, go up on deck, and enjoy the spring air and the scenery. As the terror receded, albeit temporarily, their strict focus on survival softened.
Josef's men - other than Thomas who, in all fairness, continued to mellow - began to show rough, teenaged male affection for the youngster who had brought them through the proverbial Valley of the Shadow of Death. There was even a bit more. One night, for instance, well after they had bedded down on the steel floor of the hold, Heinz turned over to face Josef who had been tossing and turning next to him. Slowly, very tentatively, the young lad rubbed his roughly shaven head over his hero's chest. Josef could see the red hairs in the faint light of a bulb at the far end of the hold. Josef brought his hand up and softly rubbed the boy's cropped skull. When Heinz gave a little moan of pleasure, he allowed himself to run his hand over the youth's thin body...his shoulders, his back, and what little was left of his rump. Heinz's body quivered as he thrust twice into Josef's thigh and, with a quiet grunt, came. Josef kissed him softly on the side of his forehead and hugged him affectionately. Indeed, he might have gone a bit further had it not been for Gerd's coughing and turning over in his sleep to face them. For all of that, Josef was conscious of the fact that his emotions were beginning to unfreeze. Excitement mingled with fear.
It was only when Josef lay back that he realized that he had also cum. So they would follow him to Hell and back, would they? God, he loved these guys...every one. He'd not let them be destroyed by this horror. HE WOULD NOT! GOD BEING HIS WITNESS, HE WOULD NOT!
Late in the afternoon of another of many days, the convoy tied up for the night in a cove that lay just off the main channel. The tugboat captain wanted to enter the Kama in full daylight, for it could be tricky given the number of barges he was pushing upstream against a heavy current. In fractured Russian, Josef asked whether they might bathe. The chief guard wasn't too enthused by the idea, but the barge captain didn't see what the problem was as long as the groups were small and they were guarded. (As on any vessel in the world - unless a secret police officer was on board - the Captain's word was pretty much law.)
In the late afternoon sun, about two dozen boys and men frolicked in the cold water at one time. When it came their turn, Josef shouted from the water - again, in his "best" Russian - that the off-duty Red Army guards should come in. Somewhat to his surprise, the chief guard shrugged his shoulders and waved them towards the water. Josef felt a stirring that he hadn't felt for months as he watched the cute young Russian boys strip and dive in. "God, they're so beautiful!" he thought. "They don't even look as if they've been in battle yet." Not long before they would have been called out to give other POWs a chance, one of the guards got a cramp and, with a loud cry, went under. Thomas, who came from a coastal town up near the Danish border and had evidently swum competitively in the Hitler Youth, was able to get him over to the side of the barge where his buddies managed to lift him aboard. Nothing much was said at the time, but the young guard came up to Thomas later on, thanked him, and asked if he and his friends would like some help with their Russian. As he was the first to admit, he and his buddies weren't teachers, but they would be happy to help as best they could. The offer was gratefully accepted. Not surprisingly, the boys enjoyed sharing a couple of bottles of beer even more than the Russian instruction! When their chief plunked a piece of chocolate down on the table at which they were sitting, the day was complete - even though the few nibbles each received raised hell with their insides!
On the way out of the room, one of the guards and Josef made eye contact. It's amazing how many hidden nooks and crannies there are on any boat! They finally found an empty storage locker. The kid - very young and as nervous as a cat - tried his damndest to remain the perfect picture of "The Soviet Warrior." Imperiously, he ordered Josef to kneel before him and open his trousers. Josef wasn't complaining! The large handful he extracted was enticing enough under any circumstances! The boy's dark red glans was already swollen and dripping precum. A touch of the tongue here...a little swirl there...a few taps on the frenulum... WOW! He exploded like one of those damned Soviet Katushka rockets - maybe a whole BATTERY of them! Josef expected to be returned immediately to the hold...but no. The boy knelt down in front of him and looked deeply into his eyes. "Droog [friend]?" he murmured. "Da [yes]," Josef answered breathlessly. The young German didn't last a second longer than had the young Russian!
When Josef returned to a darkened hold, Thomas silently moved over to give him room to burrow down onto the crowded steel deck. When he had situated himself, Thomas raised up, slugged him on the upper arm, snorted, turned over, and went to sleep! Snickering and quietly giggling for a good half hour as he tried his best to get comfortable and relax, Josef's eyes didn't really close until a new day was dawning.
(Siberska Street)
The trip up the wide Kama was a delight. ("Oh, for a different time and situation!" the boys thought.) Russia's fourth longest river, it drains a wide area of the western side of Urals before flowing into the Volga south of the city of Kazan'. Founded in 1723 by Peter the Great, Perm', their destination, was an important river city surrounded by beautiful pine forests. It was also a major industrial city - the foremost center of Soviet artillery production, though it also produced aircraft engines and a host of other products for the "Great Patriotic War" (as World War II was known in the Soviet Empire). Finally, it was also one of the Soviet Union's vital centers of research and development. As their barges passed the factory district, the German lads could see that the whole area was a beehive of activity. Indeed, the immense factories - manned by women and children in the main - were active 24 hours a day during those times.
The port area seemed crowded with boats and ships of every description. One of the guards told Josef that children from Leningrad had been evacuated here before the city had been completely blockaded. At the docks, the barges' human cargo was unloaded and control turned over to NKVD (Interior Ministry) guards. There was little doubt that they were of a different ilk than the young Army troops who had accompanied them upriver. Quickly establishing ironhanded control, they formed them into long columns and marched the more than 4500 POWs on a broad avenue through the city. Josef was able to decipher the occasional street sign that, in Cyrillic letters, read "Siberska" [Siberian] Street." Despite himself, he shivered.
Suffering in the moist warmth to which they were unaccustomed after being on the river for days, they trudged along towards the traditional eastern entrance to the city, "The Siberian Gate," as it had been known for centuries. Occasionally, an old woman...sometimes a young child...would come out from the lines of spectators and offer them water - though they were generally shooed away by the guards. Yes, there was a derisive shout here and there, but, by and large, the people of Perm' seemed to look upon them with...what was it...pity? Did they know something about where they were going?
That night they were camped in a damp, open field well outside town that was surrounded by rather scraggly pines. Their thin soup and small pieces of khleb [the dark, moist bread mentioned in Chapter 1] were made available, and small fires allowed. They could not, however, move around beyond their immediate areas. Four POWs were shot "trying to escape."
(Crossing into Asia)
The low line of dark hills rose immediately before them, blocking their path. The guards kept them moving, but neither the grade nor the pace was at all impossible. Slowly, they found themselves climbing through valleys that were heavily forested - conifers in the main, though there was also birch, popular, aspen, and willow. In the lower elevations, the soil looked deep and rich with countless streams and lakes. Small villages that appeared to be reasonably well off dotted the Urals' western slopes. Josef noticed that not a man between 17 and 60 was to be seen.
At a lunch breather - a bit of bread and fresh water - one of the older prisoners told them that the Urals were a true mountain range only at the northern and southern ends. Caused eons ago by a continent consisting chiefly of Siberia crashing into a supercontinent that contained most of the rest of the Earth's landmass, most of the range had eroded into little more than zones of rocky plateaus - the "Stone Wall," as the Russians called it - between Europe and Asia. This relatively low, "middle" section had long been Russia's highway to the East.
Traversing the something less than 200 miles between Perm' and Sverdlovsk would take nearly seven days on foot rather than a long day by rail - but the rail line was so crowded with troops and war materiel that it simply wasn't available. When they stopped for the first night, Josef noticed that the guards were drinking heavily and warned the boys to lie low. Just as well... A pretty village girl almost got Thomas killed! Having followed the column from her village, she managed to approach the encampment through the woods and catch Thomas's eye as they sat around after supper. He willingly followed her around back of a granite outcropping at the edge of the forest. When a guard came around for an unannounced count, he noticed that Thomas was absent. Josef called out loudly that the lad had diarrhea and couldn't make it to the shit pit. Hence, he had headed in back of the nearby ledge. As the guard moved quickly in that direction, automatic rifle at ready, Thomas appeared, hurriedly buttoning up his pants. The guard smashed him with the butt of his rifle and ordered him back to the others.
Thomas was the recipient of more attention from his comrades that evening than he probably wanted. It got so that he jumped whenever one of them approached, for it meant a heavy blow to the upper arm, a smirk, and a lewd comment...or two. Even Josef joined in, receiving a scowl...and, then, a wide grin...for his troubles!
The girl did tell Thomas that it was almost time for ticks to appear in the forest, insects whose bites could be serious. From then on, the boys checked their skin frequently - though the problem did not become widespread until they reached their final destination deep in the taiga.
"Taiga" is the Russian word for forest and is the largest life zone in the world, stretching over Eurasia and North America. The taiga is located near the top of the world, just below the tundra life zone. The taiga doesn't have as many plant and animal species as the tropical or the deciduous forest zones to the south, but it does have billions of insects in the summertime. Birds migrate there every year to nest and feed. The average temperature is below freezing for six months out of the year. The winter temperature range is -54 to -1 degrees C (-65 to 30 deg. F). The temperature in the summer gets as low as -7 deg. C (20 deg. F). The high in summer can be 21 deg. C (70 deg. F). The summers are mostly warm, rainy and humid. They are also very short with about 50 to 100 frost-free days. The total precipitation in a year is 30-85 cm (12-33 in) . The forms the precipitation comes in are rain, snow and dew. Most of the precipitation in the taiga falls as rain in the summer. The main seasons in the taiga are winter and summer. The spring and autumn are so short, you hardly know they exist. It is either hot and humid or very cold in the taiga.
The heavy drinking continued, and the brutality of the guards increased. On another night, for instance, one of the guards told a story in fractured German about survivors from an earlier age - akin to our "Abominable Snowmen" - that lurked in these forests. Hearing screams during the night, they awakened to find a horribly mangled prisoner lying not far from the shit pit. His body looked as if it had been ripped apart by great claws; his head and genitals were missing. "Could the story be true?" several of the boys asked, their faces pale, their teeth chattering. "Oh," replied Josef, "I guess it could, but my money would be on a different kind of monster that we've seen around." He laid down the law: Everyone did his business before bedding down for the night. In an absolute emergency, you woke up a buddy who accompanied you. You took care of it - quickly and quietly - in the immediate area. "Just cover it up with a little dirt," he advised.
As was the case with most Germans, the boys had a deep and abiding love for nature. Had the circumstances been different, they would have thoroughly enjoyed their mountain adventure. For instance, the area was teeming with wildlife. During the first three days, for instance, they saw elk, deer, and a variety of forest birds, including an enormous owl. Heinz swore that he had spotted a boar and wolves. At one point, the long column ground to a halt as guards began screaming that they had just seen "Tri Medvedya!" [three bears]. (Josef smirked to himself.) They wanted to take off immediately and bag them - but the head guard quickly quashed that idea!
Reaching the low summit, they immediately began the much steeper descent. The guards were in an increasingly foul mood, pushing the men along, shooting several POWs who were falling behind. Further, it was suddenly colder as they passed into Siberia where winds off water had much less effect on the climate than in Europe. (The Arctic oceans weren't of much help; the Pacific was simply too far away.) Ahead of them stretched the great West Siberian plain, one of the largest areas of flat land in the world, an area containing vast reserves of softwood timber and minerals, an area whose flat, poorly drained lowlands were dotted with marshes, swamps, and peat bogs.
The weather was as foul as the guards' tempers. Cold rain poured down endlessly. It was as if they had reentered earliest spring. There were even snow showers, and they shivered as they hadn't since March in the holding camp. Needless to say, they were relieved as they came off the lower reaches of the Urals and immediately approached a great industrial city. Its furnaces belching endless clouds of pollutants into the air, Sverdlovsk [today known as Ekaterinburg, its pre-Bolshevik name] was a major stop on the Trans-Siberian Railroad that spanned over 5700 miles (and 8 time zones) from Moscow to Vladivostok on the Pacific Coast. It was here that prison cars would take them deeper into the Siberian wilderness.
(To Be Continued)
DATES OF LAST POSTING IN NIFTY
Archived in Gay/Historical Unless Otherwise Noted
OUT OF THE RUBBLE (32 Chapters): 10-22-04. CASTLE MARGARETHEN (9 Cs): 12-24-04. THE PRIEST & THE PAUPER (12 Cs): 3-10-05. HIGH PLAINS DOCTOR (12 Cs): 4-25-05. FOR GOD AND COUNTRY (9 Cs): 6-13-05. HOBO TEEN (12 Cs): 8-23-06. YOUNG JEREMY TAYLOR (9 Cs): 9-25-06 (posted in Sci-Fi/Fantasy). STREETS OF NEW YORK (10 Cs): 12-06-06. JOSEF'S FORGE (10 Cs): Posting.