At the end of the war, fleeing the advancing Americans during the Battle of the Bulge, a band of German soldiers found themselves in a remote valley of the Upper Rhine.
The band had long forgotten what it meant to be soldiers in the Third Reich. If they owed allegiance to anything, it was the notion embodied in their stern Captain of survival. But now in the valley that seemed to them more like a haven, untouched by war, their discipline began to crack.
One of the men whose name was Gruber was idling in the arms of a young peasant girl when the Captain passed him in the street.
“Where is your jacket, Gruber?”
“I gave it to the village idiot,” he said, “in exchange for some butter and eggs.”
Removing the pistol from his holster, the Captain ordered his men to arrest Gruber.
They refused.
The Captain was disarmed and stripped of his uniform. Two days later, he was found wandering, delirious, in the forest by his opposite number.
When the American Captain entered the village in his jeep, he took off his helmet and scratched his head. Before him was a scene of rural charm, of peasant girls with milk churns and peasant boys chopping wood. What had happened to the war?
When the village idiot rolled up in Gruber’s jacket, everyone laughed.
“Est hast butterr und eggs.”
The American Captain shook his head.
“Hell,” he said. “You wouldn’t bet on a place like this.”
A young peasant girl squeezed Gruber’s hand behind her back.
Thus, love conquered war in the last valley.