The whore parade

From Baumholder, 1961 in draft:

The arrival of the first train changed everything. Bass did not have to watch the parade of girls long to realize this was no snipe hunt, here was an event even more surreal and dreamlike than the descriptions of his colleagues suggested. Several hundred girls spilled off the first train, marching in disorder into the train station, women varying in age from teens to forties, women of all size and description, fat and skinny and in between, pretty and plain, hardened and innocent-looking. What struck Bass first was that so many of them were younger than he was.

“They look so young,” he said to Sullivan at the table beside him.

“The youngest are escapees from East Germany,” Sullivan explained. “They think they’re taking a job as a server in a gasthaus or a waitress in a restaurant, but it’s the syndicate bringing them into their fold. Once they’re captured, it’s hard to get away. They arrive broke, often without family or friends. They risk everything for freedom and end up here. It’s a tragedy really.”

Only Sullivan’s tone didn’t suggest tragedy. His voice had the hardened neutrality of a doctor working the midnight shift in an emergency room, who has seen every bodily disaster many times over. Neutrality, lack of concern, was the best defense mechanism.

“Jesus, they’re young,” Bass said again. “The one in the bluejeans can’t be over fourteen or fifteen.”

“I think there’s a law they have to be sixteen,” said Sullivan.

“Young enough.”

Some of the girls flirted as they passed but most looked tired and travel-weary. How far had they traveled to get to Baumholder just ahead of the Animals’ weekend pass? Some from as far away as Berlin, the Netherlands, even London, according to Sullivan.

No sooner had the several hundred women passed through the station than the train pulled away to make room for another behind it, and the parade of prostitutes began all over again. As the second group marched through the station, Bass heard someone shouting and turned to find a small group of young German men holding up placards in protest, though he didn’t know enough German to read them. But their manner was clear: their shouts at the women clearly meant disapproval.
Sullivan leaned close to Bass.

“See the guy waving his sign? That’s Karl, son of the proprietor of the gasthaus at the bottom of the hill.”

“Are they a religious group or what?”

“Nazis.”

“What?”

Bass stared at Sullivan in disbelief.

“Well, it’s illegal, so they have to be underground and pretend they’re something else. That D.P. on their caps stands for Patriots of the Homeland. Something like that. I forget the German exactly. Buddy would know. The thing is, this is so hypocritical because Konrad has a stake in the Family Club, yet his son is one of them. The Germans bitch about American immorality and then turn around and put the women in their clubs at starvation wages, which means they’re forced to put out on the side just to survive.”

“This is hard to handle,” said Bass. He stood up.

“Where you going?”

“To the can.”

In the men’s room he splashed cold water on his face. On the counter was a stack of neatly folded cloth hand towels, and he took one to dry himself.

So this was the infamous whore parade he’d heard so much about. The descriptions of what awaited him were too extreme to be believed – and yet they fell short of capturing the grotesque unreality of what he had witnessed. Bass had expected to be titillated but instead had escaped to the men’s room feeling light-headed and almost sick in his stomach. It wasn’t that some of the women weren’t attractive, many were – but there were too many of them, too extreme and blatant a display of commercial sex parading in front of him, he felt overwhelmed from the sensual overload of it all. This was more like a scene from a Fellini movie than an afternoon in the once-lazy farm village of Baumholder.

When he left the men’s room, he found a young woman standing outside the adjacent ladies’ room. She was crying. Bass stopped, wanting to comfort her, at least to ask if he might help, but he knew almost no German.

All the same, he asked, “Are you all right?”

She looked up, and Bass saw she was one of the younger ones, sixteen he supposed, a pretty girl, despite the swollen red eyes and grimace through which she sputtered choking words he couldn’t understand. Then suddenly she was embracing him and weeping on his shoulder.

Bass stiffened in something close to terror. He could feel the soft sensual bulge of her breasts pushing against his chest. He could feel her warm breath on his neck. He was getting excited and hating himself for it.

“Marta! Here you are!”

The deep voice belonged to a German wearing a business suit. Hearing it, the girl tightened her grip on Bass, who now tried to slip away from her grip.

“I think she is homesick,” said the German. His English was almost without accent. “Marta, come on now.”

The German pried her grip free of Bass, who quickly stepped back.

“Is she going to be all right?” he asked.

The German smiled.

“Of course, of course.”

He had his arm around her and already was leading the girl away. He spoke to her in German now, which Bass could not understand.

When they were out of sight, Bass took a deep breath. He realized he was shaking. He didn’t return to the table to watch the rest of the parade. Bass walked through town and up the hill to the kaserne. By the time Sullivan and the others found him in the E. M. Club over an hour later, Bass was pretty wasted.