Supply Chain by Peter Lingard, an ice-cold Schnapps,

It was my first day in a new job. Management had chosen me, so I was confident in being the right man. My eyes swept the room and I saw nervousness in the eyes of some as I strode to my office in the corner. Not a windowed corner, but still a corner. I wasn’t here to grow the company directly, just manage the office. I couldn’t care less about what the company’s product was, only that the office ran smoothly and efficiently. My last job had been despatching trucks around the city and state. If you can handle truck drivers, you can handle anyone. This gig should be a trip.

              I stopped at my office door and turned to face everyone. I asked them to interrupt whatever they were doing and pay attention. ‘I’m Dave Cratchit, the new office manager. I’m not concerned with the plastic ducks this company manufactures but with the running of this office. I’ve been advised that one problem is the constant disappearance of office supplies. This will stop. Anyone found stealing will be fired on the spot. I’ll be looking at who signed for said supplies, that is, who lost (I raised my hands and wiggled my first two fingers on each one) a lot. If you find you have superfluous staplers, et al, return them to my office by nine tomorrow and we’ll start out with clean sheets.’

‘Signed?’ a woman said. ‘We don’t sign for stuff.’

‘Well, you do now. Just return all your excesses by nine and we’ll be right.’

‘Really?’

‘Really.’

             When I got to my office the next morning, it was as if a tsunami of office supplies had surged in. My seat was covered in memory sticks, paperclips, staples and a letter opener that someone probably hoped I’d sit on. My desk was awash with computer mice, mousepads, cables, chargers, Stickum pads and a keyboard with a dab of red nail polish on the letters f,u (two dabs), c,k,y and o.

Someone had made a notice board in the shape of a triangle with requests for new computers, service and parts. The most urgent at the apex.

When I turned to look at the office, I found everyone silently staring at me.

We had sent messages to each other and now we all knew where we stood.

 

About the author  

 

Peter Lingard, born a Brit, served in the Royal Marines, was an accountant, a barman and a farm worker. He once lived in the US where he owned a freight forwarding business. An Aussie now because the sun frequently shines and the natives communicate in English. 

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The Mole

 

by Angeline Schellenberg

German Schnapps

 

Alice has gotten used to the mole behind the sofa by now.

 

Her cat is too arthritic to be much help chasing it away. When the mole ran in from the garage as Alice was carrying in the groceries, she’d nearly tripped, her throat making that eerrup noise as she caught her breath. At least it wasn’t a snake.

One could get used to almost anything, she’d learned. The streak of pencil lead in her palm since the day her Kindergarten teacher startled her. The kink in her neck since college. The pink wall in the closet that she always intended to repaint. The cat’s diarrhea. The bust of Friedrich Schiller that has started talking to her.

 

She doesn’t mind, really. She’s even beefed up on her German. Alice gets down on her belly to peer into the darkness under the sofa. If only the old poet were as good at listening.

 

About the author

Angeline Schellenberg is the author of the Manitoba Book Award-winning series of linked poems about autism Tell Them It Was Mozart (Brick Books, 2016) and the elegy collection Fields of Light and Stone (University of Alberta Press, 2020). Angeline hosts the Speaking Crow reading series in Winnipeg, Canada. angelineschellenberg.wordpress.com 

 

The Lone Bomber

by Henry Lewi

Schnapps

The American built B17 Flying Fortress was alone in the dark sky above France as it flew in a south western direction, Strasbourg was now far behind them, they’d dropped their payload a couple of hours earlier. 

  The four engined plane had been fully rebuilt after a crash landing some months earlier, following an Allied bombing raid on Hanover. Now fully operational and crewed by its full complement of  10 men, it steadily flew on;  the US built Pratt and Whitney engines working harmoniously.  For the 10-man crew it had been a long, long, war and by late summer 1944 they were exhausted;  they’d flown numerous missions into and out of Germany and France, and somehow, they’d all survived.

Below them were the flashes of artillery fire as the Allies tried to advance across Northern France but the Lone Bomber continued in its south westerly route, hoping to avoid any anti-aircraft fire. Unexpectedly, below and ahead of them they saw a formation of American B17s obviously heading home and their plane joined the rear of the flight,  giving their call-sign of the 392^nd Bomber Group.  Switching radio frequency, the wireless operator, a farmer’s son from North Dakota, confirmed that they’d been separated from their group somewhere over Stuttgart. The flight they joined acknowledged their presence and the Flight Commander in his Bostonian accent welcomed them to temporary membership of the 41^st Bomber Group ‘Party’,  and happy to provide them with company and an escort home. 

  Over Clermont-Ferrand they ran into unexpected heavy anti-aircraft fire and were pounced on by a pack of German Fighters. The flight of B17s broke up, and to escape the ground fire and fighters the bomber turned due South and was soon was over Toulouse.

   The Lone Bomber continued in its southerly route, crossing the Pyrenees into Neutral Spain. It  had clearly taken a hit as one of the engines now failed, but with three engines running and adequate fuel, the navigator calculated they could reach Valencia on the Mediterranean coast of Spain.

 As the B17 rolled to a stop in the early dawn on the runway at Manises Airport just to the west of the city of Valencia, its Luftwaffe markings could be clearly seen, with the Hakenkreuz or swastika emblazoned on its tailfin. The 10-man crew climbed down from the aircraft and drank in the fresh morning air of Spain.

  The German Luftwaffe Special Forces men of Kampfgeschwader 200 had finally left the war far, far behind, and the four agents they had dropped over Northern France would have to fend for themselves.  The war was lost anyway, so why worry?

It Cannot be Possible

Sandy Wilson

Drink: Schnapps 

by Sandy Wilson

Schnapps

The package fell to the floor with an ominous thud. Miriam walked into the hall wrapping her dressing gown close against the cold. She turned the thermostat dial until she heard a click, picked up the package and walked through to the kitchen.

 

Miriam poured a mug of coffee, sat down at the kitchen table and turned the parcel in her hands examining the label. Untying the hemp string she folded back the brown paper to reveal a cigar box. Opening the lid she spread the contents on the table top: a letter, some old brittle documents; one looked like a birth certificate, and a faded photograph. There was a masculine aroma of tobacco. Apart from the letter, handwritten in English, everything appeared to be in German. 

My dear Miriam

You were far too young to remember me. I have enclosed a photograph of your father. He looks  quite glamorous in his uniform, do you not think? The birth certificate is yours. Of course, you had a different name then. 

 

I will contact you by telephone. We must talk.

Kindest regards

Esther

Laying the letter on the table  Miriam smoothed the paper with her cold finger tips, as if by doing so some deeper meaning could be deciphered. Outside a neighbour was cutting his lawn. On the wall next to her a radiator ticked, hot water coursing through the pipes, but Miriam felt chilled. She reached out and picked up the photograph. A handsome man smiled at her from some distant time. His peak hat, worn at a jaunty angle, was decorated with the insignia of the Waffen SS. Underneath the stylised eagle, claws gripping a swastika she could make out a skull and crossbones bright on the dark hatband. She turned the photograph over and stared at words written in faint pencil: Rudolph Höss, Commandant of Auschwitz, 8 May 1944 – 18 January 1945.

 

She thought of the numbers tattooed on the papery skin of her grandfather’s left arm, remembered her grandson’s Bar Mitzvah the previous month. This is not possible. Could not be possible.

The buzz of her neighbour’s lawn mower stopped. In the silence the telephone in the hall began to ring.

About the author

Sandy writes fiction, memoirs and sometimes poetry. His work has been published in the anthologies ‘The Pulse of Everything’ and ‘The Darkening Season’ and  the international poetry anthology ‘Indra’s Net’. He is a member of Otley Writers and blogs as www.sandyscribbler.com