Chapter 32
OZZIE
In the three weeks Ozzie worked in Auerbach at Camp Casanova, he tried his best to be a solid leader to his men, but it had been hard to bolster morale when he himself felt demoralized.
He was no closer to landing a job in Intelligence than he had been on that hot day in May at his neighborhood block party in South Philly.
Ozzie had assumed that with the title of corporal would come a bump in status, but he found himself side by side with his men, working in the trenches.
Camp Casanova had been a prisoner-of-war camp, and their job was to pick the grounds and the adjacent two-story building clean.
The rumor was that they were preparing it to be a headquarters for the relatively new CIA.
Ozzie shoveled shit both human and God knew what else, cleared rubble, took waste to a nearby incinerator, and burned what they couldn’t repurpose.
They smoothed out ditches, repaired the roof, and painted the two-story building.
Every night Ozzie slept in a room that smelled like a bag of jockstraps, on a cot as flimsy as construction paper.
He had to hold his nose when he used the latrine, and the water in the communal showers dawdled out in dribbles.
And it was freezing. Mannheim had been cold, but Auerbach was downright arctic, and the lack of electricity only added insult to injury.
What had worried him most was that Ozzie had not received word from Jelka.
It was bad enough that he had left them behind without a word, but worse, he didn’t know Jelka’s physical address.
Ozzie had always been excellent with directions and had a photographic memory when it came to landmarks.
From the moment Jelka’s sister had led him to their home on the day Katja was born, he knew his way from the barracks.
But without her address, he couldn’t reach Jelka, and her family didn’t have a telephone.
Ozzie had sent two letters to Morgan, asking him to find Jelka.
He had even drawn a map from the barracks to her house, but he had not heard from Morgan either.
What he did hear playing like a record on repeat was With Gottfried returning, what kind of life do you think she will have here…
? He is a violent man. Not being there to protect his daughter unnerved Ozzie from his teeth to his toes.