Peninsula's Erwin Klem: The German who painted bad pictures

It would be easy to forget ever having known the carefree moments of rural plentitude: his father’s farm but a half day’s carriage ride from Munich — goats, a sturdy barn, making cheese under the periwinkle-blue skies of October. Harvest. Oktoberfest. He could so easily imagine the rich head of tan foam floating on a pint of brown beer in the village tavern, tender ham hocks simmering in stock for half a day, or the slow smoked and cured meats. And cabbage, always cabbage. Literally, a prisoner of war, he dreamed of eating and socializing with friends in that same pub, one of several that punctuated the cobblestone streets of the small rural village like so many others, alight with tile roofs and stone walls, and smoke peeling into the still autumn air. A place he called home. Klem could palpate the pall of blue smoke, wraithlike inside the pub. The rising cacophony of conversation as the liquor distorted their voices and thoughts. Many of those friends were dead now. Still, Erwin could taste the rich thick beer, and dream of an armistice.

Chained to a gun

Mired in a rectangular hole with a cover of oak planks and dirt, he stretched out his legs. A clanking metal sound followed his movements, as loyal as a betrothed lover. His world was a dark shadow now, and the restrictions on his body were the result of a long chain that pinioned him to the concrete wall and a Maschinengewehr 08 machine gun. The world was at war. Klem was a private with one assignment: he was to gun down Allied soldiers until there were none left or he died trying. Without the chain, he might have deserted the infantry long before now.

The hour was late. The clatter of canon fire and carbine rifles riddled the late afternoon air. Minutes later, streamers ricocheted like firebrands. There was movement in the broken trees a mile or so down-valley, and the bark of gun fire and tracers now lit the sky. Klem felt the jump of acid in his empty stomach. Felt it ignite like a nefarious deja-vu. In flashes of gunfire, his filthy face and hands turned from ghostly white to gray and back again. The artillery was intense. His hands were huge, as were his arms and neck. His face was broad and square, with small eyes set deeply in dark sockets. As flares ignited against the black-noir darkness, the sky suddenly gleamed like fool’s gold. A steady pulse of fear rippled through the small bunker, a kind of bat cave. Had he the ability to stand up straight in the condensed space, the German would have reached six and a half feet tall.

The gun was loaded with a belt of machine gun shells. Erwin sighted methodically down the thick hot barrel. Tangled through the woods on his left and right were other bunkers, although a number had fallen silent in the latter days of the British and American offensive. There was stifled talk of an Allied break through. One could easily imagine the next stop: Berlin. The Homeland. His homeland. None of this was supposed to be. The promise of victory lay scattered across the killing fields like so many of the sheared grasses and broken limbs. And the bodies of the dead.

Even under the cloak of darkness, the terrain appeared riddled with shell cavities that reminded the young soldier of pock marks on his adolescent face. Hadn’t he been a kid just a short time ago? Good Christ, he thought, how fear and constant bombardment had changed him. Had he grown wiser? No! Like a hunted animal he had been forced to survive. He had simply honed his instincts. He was a beast.

He thought of them, the young girls with ed faces. Plenty of time for that. Plenty of time to let his imagination wander.

Lost in a barrage

But now, the barrage moved closer, preceded by prolonged shelling, explosions that might shred a body into undefinable body parts, or leave a soldier alive but grossly disfigured. That same pernicious movement was staggering up-valley, foot by foot. The big man steadied himself. The fog was ghostly. A baby moon appeared and disappeared like a wrath backlit by thin lantern light. He could see movement, soldiers with dough boy helmets racing from behind the burnt dead stumps and shredded shrubs — any cover — or what little remained of the bramble after intense shelling, after the fires of war. Eerie strands of barbed wire seemed to tie together the broken and disfigured earth like a chain gang of assassins. The Germans were the bad boys. The Johnny-come-lately Americans were all cowboys with white hats. He thought he hated them. Certainly there was fear. Fear everywhere, day and night.

Anchored to the wall, Klem felt the deadening jolt of the machine gun as he pulled steadily on the dull trigger, tarnished from overuse, transformed from bright gunmetal blue to the palest of pewter hues. The fading color mirrored his emotions. Before him the field turned suddenly white from an Allied flare, and he manhandled the gun as burst after burst of bullets leaped across the killing field. Suddenly, the enemy raced forward. Klem could clearly see the sheen of steel from their rifle barrels; make out the sharp silhouettes of honed bayonets. Empty casing and the acrid smell of gunpowder blew past his face and glazed red eyes. He felt nothing but a loathsome and insidious fear for the enemy. Enemy — young boys like himself. Christians with white skin. Klem was a Lutheran. His short thin hair was filthy and unkempt, but image was of no imaginable consequence to the machine gunner. The rules were simple enough: kill or be killed. Without thinking, he jammed another string of shells into the gun and continued firing. The movement was automatic. And then — shockingly, inexplicably — white light filled the chamber. A mighty pile of dirt, shattered boards and concrete crowned him, a prince without a dowery. Consciousness fled like a frightened deer racing for shelter before a rage of fire and rain and death.

A survivor

1962. Erwin Klem was in his late 50s when I met him. I was only 12 or 13. My father was the country doctor and Klem his patient. The German spoke broken English with a stutter. If he remained a mountain of a man, he appeared as gentle as a shepherd. Almost timid.

That summer he constructed a rock wall for my parents. With a sledge hammer and a chisel, he broke and shaped the stone, then stacked them together with a small amount of mortar into a wall that rose higher and higher each day. The man was not unpleasant, but to a young boy, he was hard to approach or understand. His body was bent slightly as if the burden of lifting stone had reshaped his straight back and broad shoulders. As I mentioned, his German accent was accompanied by the stutter that translated with difficulty to a boy both hard of hearing and reticent around adults. And the big German’s gestures were animated and intimidating. Those large arms seemed to swing demonstratively through the Pacific air like a baseball bat.

My father told me the story how Klem had been buried for days under an avalanche of debris in a shattered bunker in France. Call that a prison cell, father said, anger etching his handsome Irish face. Father was a veteran of the Second World War, and although he housed a particular animosity toward the Germans and Japanese, none of that held true for Erwin Klem. Indeed, father constantly found work for the gentle giant. Klem’s wife was a lovely, dignified woman with pretty eyes and a solid waist. She had been Klem’s nurse during his long recovery. Her blue eyes sparkled vivaciously as she arranged the flowers from her garden in the sink of their immaculate cottage.

She sent her husband to work with bouquets of dahlias or pastries to be shared with kind neighbors. With his large, gnarled hands, Klem attended the couple’s flower garden with a dexterity that certainly would have surprised most observers. The couple sustained an abundant vegetable garden and stayed mostly to themselves.

No master of bricks

That next summer father began construction on a new medical clinic. A handsome brick wall was to enhance the reception room and Klem was hired for the project. Klem may have been a master of the rock wall, but the brick counterpart rose in an awkward unbalanced stack of brick on brick, each one at odds with the other. Klem couldn’t run a straight line to save his life.

I remember clearly that my grandfather had come west for a brief visit. Grandfather never extended his stay. He was a careful man with impeccable southern manners and iron in his voice. He believed in decorum. He fired Klem early one morning, sparing my father the indignity. A man who never minced words, he dispatched the German in much the same manner that a hunter draws a bead on a game animal and then brings it quickly to its knees.

Dad was unusually quiet that evening. Klem had cried at his dismissal, but found a new creative outlet.

The days of summer were upon us, and I saw little of the German that season. In the fall father came home with a Klem painting finished in autumn oranges and yellows that awkwardly outlined a forest landscape with bright summer light and green grasses laid down with stiff horizontal brush strokes. Father had paid Klem for the painting and for a few weeks it hung at the top of the stairs that led to the second story of our tall sea house. Mother moved the painting, once, twice and finally it remained hidden until years later after my parent’s death when I found it sulking in a closet.

The quality hadn’t changed, but my feeling for Erwin certainly had.