bettina beehive 4

The skies are all ablaze with red thunder, smoke and hailing metal rain down upon the wretched Earth.   There is no escape to go forward and there is no escape to return.  
I am seventeen.
..in the middle of Hell,  didn't knock on it's door and ask to play.  But it's here and wanting my blood.  what would you do..to stay alive..what  ?
  I was  big for my age, we lived on a farm in Northern Germany. The harvests were good   Which is why when they came to enroll troops, I was prominent by my stance.
  It was not my choice, I was the eldest lad on the farm, and I had to go, and leave my younger sister and brother.  Both me and my father had to go and join the army, there was no choice..My mother didn't cry, she was strong and a good mother, she came to Germany from Poland just before the 1st World War, and settled with my father, who was a well appointed crop and beast farmer.  Whole hams hung in our house, and salamis made by my mother were in the loft. She baked fresh bread every morning, and made potato salad warm with cucumber and tomatoes..which we ate with rye bread and sometimes pickled herring, on the bread. 
My mother also worked in the local school, one day she saw me crying outside the headmasters window, and she asked me why I was crying.
" he said i had to find something in the garden for him to
to beat me with " I said between splutters,
my mother disapeared into the undergrowth and came back with a bullrush, a tall thin plant that grows near water
" give him that" she said,  which I did. and the anger was diffused.
 Where is my bullrush now ? my red card..my Get Out Of Jail Free....I'm dying Mutti...I'm dying