Sex with the Enemy

September 1940: Flight Lieutenant Peter Yelland, a fighter pilot, was taking his first leave in  six months. The Battle of Britain was drawing to a close; he was exhausted; he had lost several close friends and he now needed peace and quiet in the country. That posed no difficulty; his cousin Colin was a farmer in East Anglia. In the past, during school holidays before the war, Peter had often helped with the harvest and with minor jobs round the farm; as a boy he had once toyed with the idea of becoming a farmer himself. Passing his leave on the farm would be therapeutic. 

Colin met Peter at the station with a horse-drawn trap; petrol shortages and rationing meant that the horse had come into its own again. Colin thought, but did not say, that Peter still looked incredibly boyish for a man who was now the battle-hardened equivalent of a Captain in the Army, and a holder of the Distinguished Flying Cross. He was fair-complexioned and had clear blue eyes; eyes which had seen a lot of danger. He was still only twenty-one. Thank heaven he had not sprouted a silly 'whizz-bang' moustache, nor did he bang on  about the war. He genuinely seemed to want to forget about it, which is just as well, Colin thought.

Peter gazed appreciatively at the countryside as they rattled along. Suffolk was looking its best, with golden corn waiting to be harvested in some fields and and stubble punctuated by stacks of sheaves in others. Pheasants and partridges were gleaning spilled grain. The sky was still the intense, metallic blue of high summer. Trees stood dark and immobile in coppices, hedgerows and gardens. Even in September there were some swallows and house martins about; they were in no hurry to leave.  

“Just one thing,” remarked Colin, “we've got a German POW working for us, called Helmuth.”  

Peter nodded and expressed interest. Colin continued:

“He's a nice enough lad, not a Nazi, but he doesn't take kindly to anti-German jokes. So be tactful. He doesn't talk much but he works hard and is very honest. He's terrifically strong; he spends his spare time weight-lifting and keeping himself fit. I want to keep him for as long as I can; Germans are good workers. Over at Highfield they've got two Italians who are nothing but trouble and they're saucy with the girls. One of them is currently sporting two black eyes given by a fiance who caught him canoodling with his girl when he came home unexpectedly. There'll be more violence there if it turns out that the girl is pregnant! Helmuth doesn't cause that kind of trouble.”

“So Helmuth's super-strong, is he?” asked Peter, changing the subject.  

“He is! Do you remember Gadsby's Hill on the way to Gadsby's Drove End?”

“Yes! It's supposed to be man-made, a prehistoric monument; about the only hill worthy of  the name round here.”

“That's the one! Well, he runs up and down it a few times a week, with a big wooden railway sleeper across his shoulders! He's more or less naked when he does that; just a pair of shorts, socks and boots. At the end he's pouring with sweat. He's fixed up a gym in one of the barns. He's made a set of barbells; the weights are drums full of concrete at either end of metal bars. He's also got a pile of rocks that he's collected and he lifts those; even throws them around. I asked him if he was training for the next Olympics!”  

“Wherever and whenever they happen, if they happen!” said Peter gloomily.

Peter's train had been delayed; meanwhile Colin's wife, Chloe, had started serving supper at the usual time. The meal was in full swing when they entered. The long oilcloth-covered kitchen table was crowded with family and farm workers, all talking. The wireless was quacking away disregarded in the background. Helmuth stood out among them all by his size: six-feet-six, muscular and very blond. As they came in, he was saying in heavily accented English:

“Hitler isn't a proper German; he's Austrian; they say he's a corporal from Bohemia, where they're all very strange. I don't like him either, nor do I understand him. Don't blame me for what he does!”    

Helmuth then proceeded to address himself to his food and hardly said anything more, although he raised his glass like the others, smiled politely and said “Prosit!” when Colin called for silence and briefly welcomed Peter back from the war. Soon after that James caught Helmut studying him over the rim of his beer glass. When Helmut got up at the end of the meal, he said thanks to Chloe and glanced at Peter once more. Then he went out. 

“Going to his quarters, I expect.” said Colin. “We've given him what used to be the stable lads' room above the stables. He doesn't go down the pub. When he's not working or training, he sits and reads. The vicar lends him German books. You know that he studied at Heidelberg a long time ago?”  

Peter had not known. So Helmuth was a serious soul. Peter resolved to try out his schoolboy German on Helmuth. He would call on him and, with Colin's permission, invite him to come fishing. There was a stream on the farm that had been dammed to make a small lake. In addition to the usual roach and perch, rainbow trout had been placed there before the war; perhaps some were still there. There was one way to find out!  

Later, Peter clattered up the stairs to the stable lads' rooms and knocked on the door. 'Komm!' said a deep German voice and he entered. Helmuth was stretched on his bed, which was just-about big enough to contain him, reading. The book was an expensively bound copy of Schiller's Works, presumably the vicar's. A tortoiseshell butterfly flew around, looking for the way out. Because the weather was hot, Helmuth was now naked apart from a towel draped around his middle. He stood up to open a window for the butterfly and the towel fell off. As he bent over to pick it up, he revealed a beautiful, muscular ass. Like the rest of him, it was tanned, apart from two thin lines of paler skin stretching round his sides, which joined at his ass-crack. Laughing and cursing under his breath, Helmuth hastily retrieved the towel, wound it round himself once more and stretched out again on his bed.  

Peter spoke his carefully composed little speech in German, which seemed to amuse Helmut. He replied in English:

“So, you do not mind associating with me?”

“I don't, and nor do my cousins. Anyway I gather that you're not a supporter of Herr Hitler?”

Helmut said something terse under his breath in German and added “Certainly not. Can we talk about something else?”

“Yes; I came to invite you to go fishing with me tomorrow. Colin will give you the day off. I can lend you rods and tackle; we might even catch some trout!”

Helmuth smiled; he was an enormous man, like a friendly blond bear. His bulk was all muscle. His head-hair was short, pale blond, almost silver, with a quiff at the front. The hair on his arms and legs was fine and golden. That on his chest was also golden, thick and curly, as was his glittering crotch-hair, which Peter had fleetingly glimpsed above his heavy sex. His pink nipples showed through the golden fuzz that sprouted around them. them. He was very tanned. Peter, whose acquaintance with Germans was limited to one school visit before the war and a few prisoners of war, thought that German soldiers were usually better physical specimens than their British equivalents. They were fitter, healthier, bigger and tanned. That seemed to follow, if they were all as keen on exercise as Helmut seemed to be. Or was it due to heredity? Whatever the reason, it no doubt explained the Germans' notorious lack of shyness about exposing their bodies.  

“Trout eh?” said Helmut. “Thank you. I'd like that; I'd like that very much!” He grinned at Peter.  He had good, white teeth. “Would you like a drink?”

Helmut had some beer stored in his room. It was wrapped in damp towels, which kept it cool. He now rose and opened two bottles. He indicated that Peter should take the only chair in the room. Helmut subsided onto his bed and arranged himself comfortably.  

They drank the beer from the bottle. “Hah! that is good,” sighed Helmut and smacked his lips as he drained the last drops. “I think that I shall like you very much,” he added matter-of-factly and grinned at Peter.    

'I hope so,” said Peter, meaning it. He looked around.

Helmuth had not made much effort to decorate his room. There was an old framed engraving which Peter remembered in the farmhouse, but which Colin had disliked and banished: 'The First Quarrel'. It showed a young couple in the dress of Jane Austen's time in a pretty garden. He was seated sulking on a garden bench, while she, her back to him, was pretending to pick flowers.

There was also a photo of three young German men, taken at the seaside before the war.  They were all super-fit and had stripped to bathe, two of them wearing very brief trunks. They were standing, arms around each other's shoulders, with a backdrop of sand-dunes and murram-grass. Helmuth was in the middle; slightly younger, his body shaved – possibly for a recent physique competition – and quite naked apart from a g-string. This consisted of a narrow triangle that covered a small area of his anatomy from about an inch below his navel to his genitals. Thin bands disappeared round his sides to join a further, invisible band that passed tightly between his buttocks and secured the tiny garment in place. Hence the tan-line. It was hard to tell from a black-and-white photo, but Peter guessed that the g-string was red. It clung damply to Helmuth's body; he had been circumcised.  It was the most provocative bathing suit that Peter had ever seen; even more erotic than unabashed nakedness.

“Another beer?” asked Helmuth, still smiling. Peter was jerked out of his contemplation of the photo.

       The following day dawned. They rose and breakfasted early in the kitchen with the rest of the workforce, but then walked down to the pool where rainbow trout might be lurking. Chloe had provided them with a sandwich lunch and tea in a thermos flask. Peter wore an old blue RAF shirt and khaki shorts; Helmuth still wore his German army shirt with a POW's uniform of black short jacket and trousers with a large coloured patch sewn onto one knee. He remarked en passant that he detested that outfit, but he had to wear it.  

Fish were visible, from minnows in the clear shallows to larger ones in the centre, including roach, perch and one or two trout. They drifted about, rising to the fly from time to time. However they seemed disinclined to take the bait that Peter and Helmuth offered them. The early morning had been cool and dewy but after nine o'clock the day became slowly and steadily hotter. Dragonflies darted about. Peter propped his rod against a forked hazel stick, took off his shirt, pulled his hat over his face and started to drowse. Even asleep, he would still sense any movement of the rod. Towards midday he began to think about lunch.  He stood up and looked around for Helmuth.  

He was nearby, propped against a tree which leant over the pool. His arms were draped along the sides of the trunk; one leg was bent and the foot planted on the trunk. His fair hair shone with reflected light, but his face was in shade; he was looking downward, possibly because the sun was so bright. He looked like a textbook illustration of male human anatomy. The lines of his defined physique converged naturally on his crotch, where the cock and balls were confined by a coloured g-string like the one in the photo. Peter felt a sphincter-and-balls tightening tension in his ass and crotch; this feeling was usually stimulated by the sight of handsome men, especially if they were naked, in brief sports kit or wearing tight riding-breeches that showed off their muscular legs. It was like a mild, pleasurable electric shock and was normally followed by a hard erection, which had to be defused somehow...  

Helmuth raised his head, opened his eyes and flexed his arms. He saw Peter looking at him. He smiled broadly as Peter moved uncertainly towards him. 

“It's a beautiful day! Just now I wished you were a woman!” murmured Helmut. 

“What?”  

“But I'm glad you aren't. I like you the way you are... Du bist schon!”, continued Helmut, and he smiled again.  

Peter realised that he was being paid a compliment. He was not an innocent. At school he had had romances with other boys, which occasionally took physical form, until the day when a prefect had caught him and his friend Clive at a tryst in a deer park near the school. Luckily for them, the prefect was Peter's elder brother, Stephen (now an Army Major, last heard of in Alexandria). Stephen had explained to him quite kindly that if that sort of thing were ever found out, it could lead to expulsion and career ruin before Peter's career had even begun: 

“If you're still thinking about a commission in the Armed Forces, you'd better  forget all about that!”  

Peter had in fact been thinking of a career in the Royal Air Force, so he took the message to heart. He had lived virtuously, kept his nose clean, passed from his school to the RAF College at Cranwell and was duly commissioned as a Pilot Officer in 1939, just in time for the war.  

His brother's advice had ceased to apply during the Battle of France, and was even less relevant   during the Battle of Britain.  Since no-one knew whether they would be alive by that time tomorrow, self-restraint was abandoned; anything went and the authorities turned a blind eye; Carpe diem. Peter was attractive; he was fair, fine-drawn, lithe and had the long-limbed body of a man built to sprint and swim. He was charming and he laughed a lot, in those early days. He had enjoyed passionate flings with one or two other young airmen before they were obliterated in flame or plummeted into the North Sea.

Back in the present, while what Helmuth had said sounded rather like a proposition, perhaps he had only been joking; Peter recalled from his one pre-war visit to Germany that German men, most of whom must have been straight, went in for very brief swimming costumes. He had seen, and been stimulated by, similar g-strings at the bathing place where he and his host-family had swum near Munich. Now caution seemed advisable. As a result, nothing happened that first day.  

The following week they went fishing again. This time Peter was watching Helmuth more carefully; Helmuth seemed more cheerful and relaxed than ever. Again Peter drowsed by the pool while Helmuth wandered off exploring. Towards noon Peter looked up. Helmuth was again leaning against the tree. This time he was fully naked. Their eyes met. There was no real need to speak. Helmuth simply beckoned to Peter. Slowly he walked though the long grass towards the golden man. By the time he reached him, he was grinning nervously. Helmuth reached out, grabbed a handful of Peter's Wedgwood-blue shirt, pulled Peter towards him and kissed him roughly. A moment later they were in a rib crushing embrace. Helmuth's fingers were deftly unbuttoning Peter's shirt buttons; then unbuckling his trousers; opening his flies and reaching inside. Finally Peter was as naked as Helmuth and they were rolling in the grass.

“You need to have some love; I mean, fuck, I think!” said Helmuth.

“Both!” mumbled Peter indistinctly; Helmuth's tongue was inside his mouth.  

Peter was by inclination a top, but not for much longer. Helmuth transferred his attention from Peter's mouth to his ass, which he rimmed expertly. Finally, with a yell, Peter lost his ass cherry as Helmuth took him, using no more lubrication than his own saliva. Lying on their sides, Helmuth's arms and legs wound round Peter, Helmuth thrust deep into Peter's guts, while Peter jacked himself off. Finally, exhausted, they lay side by side, staring at one another. Nothing was said; then they went for a swim. But late that night Peter slipped out of the house, joined Helmuth in the stable lads' room and stayed until just before dawn.  Helmuth woke to see him standing, still naked and not wanting to dress yet, by the window, watching the sunrise.

“More fuck?” grunted Helmuth.

Peter grinned. “Yeah!”