One day, new information interrupted the boring routine.
“Germany has capitulated! The war is over!” the guards announced when Johann returned in the afternoon from his work detail.
They must have received the news hours ago, because the Russians, and most of the Romanians, were smashed. The smell of alcohol wafted across the camp and the guards could barely keep their rifles straight.
For a moment Johann thought about escape, but he understood the futility of such an attempt. Even if he managed to wrest away the rifle of one of the guards, the vast Russian grasslands were unforgiving. A man on foot would never make it past the thirty-five-mile cordon around the camp. Then he’d be picked up by soldiers and beaten to a pulp before he was brought back to die as a forbidding example for hi
