by Iain Gale
‘Ah, Ringler. There you are. You did get the invitation?’
‘Invitation?’
‘To the colonel’s party. Well, it would seem you did not. My apologies, but well here you are anyway. How d’you like our new accommodation? It’s only temporary I’m afraid. A present from our friends the Italians. They seem to have brought everything with them but the kitchen sink. Even women they say. Though where they might be now the devil knows.’
‘Well, sir, they did have a colony here. They seem to own half the houses on the coast road.’
‘I know the problems we’ve had with their damn damage claims. They’re meant to be our allies.’
‘Kind of them to lend us the tent though, sir.’
‘Yes, damn kind. Isn’t it splendid? Good target for the RAF too. This party had better be over damn quick. But good to be a bit festive. Well, you know, we had to push the boat out for the colonel’s birthday. Come inside and see the old man. He’ll be delighted you’re here. Be careful though Ralf. His hearing’s shot to pieces. Both eardrums perforated. Happened at Alam Halfa. He set up his OP directly beside an 88 battery. You’d think he’d know better at his age. Didn’t you know? Best not to mention it. You know how he is, he gets frightfully upset if he suspects that people think he’s deaf. Loves music: Beethoven, Wagner that sort of thing. You should hear him sing.’
They entered the tent and Ringler removed his field cap and tried to make his uniform look a little more presentable, bleached as it was by the sun to a sandy tan colour. At twenty-two Ringler was almost the baby of the battalion, but even so he was still a seasoned veteran. He had been fighting out here for the last two years, and the desert was etched into his brain.
Werter continued: ‘Now. Help yourself to a drink, Ringler. Witman has brought us some whisky. Courtesy of the British of course, taken on the road from Benghazi. And there’s even a case of Münchner Löwenbräu from the Aussies in Tobruk. And the Italians have also given us some wine. Kind of them.’
Ringler nodded his head: ‘Thank you, Herr Major.’
The colonel stood with his back to them in the centre of the tent, laughing in the middle of a circle of his battalion officers all of whom, unlike their CO, still wearing his peaked officer’s hat, had removed their headgear. Colonel Karl Ens was a hard-bitten veteran whose dark, sun-tanned face was marked with lines that bore witness to both laughter and anxiety. Ringler walked up to the group and was greeted with polite nods of the head. The colonel turned and saw him and not for the first time Ringler noticed the Knight’s Cross that hung at his neck.
‘Ringler. Good to see you. How are the men of Number Ten company?’
‘Fine, sir. We’re guarding a lane through the minefield belt.’
‘Ah, our Devil’s Garden. Our field marshal has done us proud, don’t you think, Ringler? What could break through that? Only a fool would try. And look at this. Look what they’ve all done for me. True comrades, Ringler, eh?’
‘Yes, Herr Oberst. It’s wonderful.’
The colonel squinted and inclined his head: ‘What did you say? Colourful?’
‘Yes, sir. Very good.’
The colonel smiled and nodded. ‘Very colourful.’ He laughed and shook his head. ‘Have a drink, Ringler. Take a glass of schnapps with me?’
‘I don’t think so, sir. I don’t often drink schnapps.’
Again the colonel squinted but this time Ringler was not so sure whether it was his deafness or because he was displeased at his apparently discourteous reluctance to drink the schnapps.
‘Yes, sir. Of course I shall have a glass of schnapps with you. Happy birthday, Colonel.’
The colonel smiled and drank the glass down in one. Ringler followed suit and managed to stop himself from coughing as the fiery, colourless liquid burned its way down his throat. Now he remembered why he didn’t drink the stuff.
The colonel was beaming now. ‘Very colourful, Ringler.’ He clapped Ringler on the back and turned away laughing.
The adjutant came up: ‘Well done, Ralf. The colonel will have his little jokes. You don’t care much for schnapps I think?’
‘Not as a rule, sir, no.’
‘Here, have a glass of beer. It’s good stuff and liberated too.’
Ringler took a bottle of the warmish beer and drained it, quenching the burning in his throat.
In a corner of the huge tent, one of the enlisted men, Lance-Corporal Kaspar, a talented musician from Bohemia, began to play on his harmonica. Inevitably the tune was Lili Marlene. Nevertheless, however many times Ringler heard it it always brought a lump to his throat. The colonel, hearing the tune despite his deafness, smiled and raised his glass.
‘A toast, gentlemen. To the Deutsche Afrika Korps and its unstoppable victory in the desert. On to Cairo and Suez.’
As one the officers echoed the colonel’s words: ‘On to Cairo and Suez.’ They raised their own glasses and drained them before resuming drinking at a more steady pace.
Ringler was standing inside the tent by the entrance next to a fellow lieutenant, Werner Adler, from Number Eight company, a blond, tall Aryan from Potsdam who had been an enthusiastic member of the Hitler Youth before joining the army, leading his local NSDAP boys’ group.
Ringler took another swig of beer and turned to Adler: ‘D’you really think we’ll get there?’
‘Where?’
‘Cairo of course. D’you think it’s really possible?’
‘Don’t you? You heard Colonel Karl. We’ll get there.’
‘Werner, how long have you been out here?’
‘A year exactly.’
‘And what have you seen in that time?’
‘Victory in our grasp. We’ve almost beaten them. We took Tobruk didn’t we? Then Alam Halfa. Perhaps this time we’ll get them. We just sit here and wait for them to throw themselves at us and then when they’re spent we counter-attack with everything we’ve got.’
Ringler smiled: ‘But do you think they’ll be spent? And what do we really have?’
‘We still have the panzers. Two divisions of them and the Italians too. Some of them aren’t half bad. The paras…’
Ringler cut in: ‘How many tanks do you think we’ve actually got, Adler? Real tanks I mean, German tanks?’
‘I don’t know. Four hundred. Maybe more?’
Ringler laughed: ‘My dear Werner. I was talking to this boy from Panzerarmee HQ and he told me that the last intelligence was that we had no more than two hundred and forty serviceable panzers. And there’s worse. We’ve no fuel. Well, not enough for more than a few days. Certainly not enough to punch through the Brits and get to Cairo.’
Adler stared at the ground and shrugged his shoulders.
‘That’s just hearsay, Ringler. I believe we can do it. And you must too. As officers we have a duty to believe in our victory. We owe it to the men, and to ourselves. You know that’s defeatist talk. You should be careful what you say to people.’
Ringler walked outside for a moment. His head had suddenly begun to ache and he felt weary. The schnapps, he supposed. An eerie silence hung over the desert. It was a beautiful evening and extraordinarily peaceful. He took another sip of beer and re-entered the tent.
As he did so Monier, the battalion sergeant-major and also its finest singer, coughed to clear his throat and began to sing. It was a familiar folk song from the Rhine. Soon the battalion officers and their guests were in full voice.
The song finished but just as it did Adler stared at Ringler and smiled. Then he began to sing. A very different song this time and of a more recent vintage, but one with which they were all familiar.
Die Fahne hoch! Die Reihen fest geschlossen!
SA marschiert mit mutig-festem Schritt.
Kam’raden, die Rotfront und Reaktion erschossen,
Marschier’n im Geist in uns’ren Reihen mit.
Raise high the flag! Ranks close tight!
The stormtroopers march with bold, firm step.
Their comrades
shot by the Reds and Reactionaries,
They march in spirit within our ranks.
The Horst Wessel song, the marching song of the Nazi party. The song which had carried Hitler to power. In the off beats when in a band cymbals would have crashed out the officers stamped their feet as hard as they could. The colonel for all his deafness had the loudest voice and, thought Ringler, it really wasn’t bad. He had never much cared for that song, named after its composer, a Nazi party activist assassinated by a Communist in 1930 and used as an excuse for a massacre.
But he still joined in. It was a symbol of their unity, their determination, their victory. And what was more once you were singing it it did something to the soul. Lifted the spirits from the depths of despair to some higher plane where the Aryan race really was invincible:
Zum letzten Mal wird nun Appell geblasen!
Zum Kampfe steh’n wir alle schon bereit!
Bald flattern Hitlerfahnen über Barrikaden.
Die Knechtschaft dauert nur noch kurze Zeit!
For the last time now the call is sounded!
Already we stand all ready to fight!
Soon the Hitler banners will flutter over the barricades.
Our time in bondage won’t last much longer!
Ringler looked at Adler across the tent. He was smiling now. Full of pride and confident with the certainty imbued by the music. Ringler too felt the better for it. He left the tent and found himself in the company of Sergeant-Major Monier who had come out for a smoke. Ringler liked the man. He was honest and simple but utterly loyal. He came from farming stock in the Rhineland and had joined the Wehrmacht shortly after the annexation of the Sudetenland. He seemed older than his thirty years and acted as a sort of uncle to the younger men in the battalion. Somehow he had always seemed to be at Ringler’s side throughout the African campaign, since the early days of 1941. At Mersa, when they had pushed the Allies back for the first time. At Benghazi when they had left it again to be taken by the British. At Tobruk, when they had gone in through the warren of stinking caves that the Allies had held for so long, Monier had been at his side joking about the ‘desert rats’. At Alam Halfa when they had seemed almost at the gates of Alexandria. And now here, near the little village of Alamein where they had attacked and failed so recently. Monier had always been there, offering support and advice.
Yet for all his apparent confidence there had always been, it seemed to Ringler, a curious air of insecurity about the man and as they walked back to their trenches on this chilly night with its bright moon and eerie stillness, Monier spoke: ‘Cigarette, sir?’
As Ringler accepted and lit up Monier continued: ‘Did I ever tell you, sir, about my home in the Palatinate? You know that area, sir?’
Ringler, a northerner himself, from Dresden, remembered a family holiday to the lower Rhineland. ‘I have visited it once. A very long time ago. I seem to recall it being very pleasant.’
‘It’s the most beautiful place in the world, sir. If you don’t mind my saying so. God’s own country really. Have you ever been to Mainz or Koblenz, sir?’
‘No, Monier. I’m afraid not. I’ve never been to Mainz or Koblenz.’
‘Then you’ve missed a real treat, sir. Oh, they’re fine big cities, sir. All modern bustle and fuss. But with some fine old buildings too. You’d like them, sir. I can see you there, you’d be in your element. Of course we don’t live there. We have a little house outside in the country. Little farm really, sir, just a few cows and some land for crops. But it’s enough for us.’
He poked around in his pocket and took out his wallet. Then reaching inside he produced two dog-eared black and white photographs. ‘Here they are, sir. Last Christmas that was, on leave. That’s Monika there and that’s Heidi and the little one is Hans. If I could just see them once more at home, Lieutenant. Once more. That’s all I ask.’
‘Perhaps you will, later, Monier. After our victory I’m sure that you’ll see them and then we’ll have all this behind us, eh?’
Monier nodded and smiled: ‘Oh yes, sir. That would be a nice thought. And then, sir, if I’m not being too forward, perhaps you’d do us the honour of coming to visit us on our farm. We’d make you feel quite at home.’
Ringler smiled at him: ‘The honour would be all mine, Monier. That’s a firm date. I look forward to it.’
It had been, he knew, a futile reply and as he shook Monier’s hand to wish him a pleasant goodnight, he wondered whether he would ever walk through the doorway of the little farmhouse and meet Monier’s smiling children. In truth he did not really believe that any of them had much chance of getting out of this hellhole, let alone getting back to their loved ones. But he thought that at least perhaps with Monier he had behaved creditably. Like a proper officer, the sort of man he aspired to be.
Ringler dropped down into his foxhole and stretched out in its narrow space, placing his head on the bundle of blankets that he reserved for that purpose. The combination of schnapps, Italian wine and two bottles of the hijacked Löwenbräu had addled his mind and induced a welcome sleep. He pressed his head into the soft wool and began to drift off gently into the darkness.
Hardly, it seemed, had he closed his eyes however before his dreams of Germany were cut through with a violence that made him sit up, shaking. An explosion. A huge one and not, it seemed, too far away. Ringler sat, stunned on the floor of the trench. The bang was followed by another equally massive explosion and the world felt as if it was being blown to pieces around him. He looked directly upwards. Above his head and as far as he could see, the sky was lit by the most extraordinary glow. He peered cautiously out of the foxhole towards the Allied lines and saw a flickering line of light. The desert looked as if it was on fire, shuddering with flame along the length of its horizon. Each new explosion now seemed to course right through him.
His limbs began to tremble uncontrollably and then he noticed that the ground itself was shaking. Every bang smashed into his consciousness like a huge battering ram. Thudding, relentless, sudden, awful in its intensity. Looking up again he saw a single huge shell fly above his head, towards the rear of the German lines, whistling as it went, like some terrible iron firebrand. A shiver ran up his spine and it occurred to him that to manage this the British must have countless batteries up there on their position opposite the lines. Countless batteries with which to hurl destruction at him and his comrades.
Monier came hurrying over to him, breathless and pouring sweat. He was wearing his helmet and carrying a slung MP38 machine-pistol. He crouched down at the edge of the trench.
‘Lieutenant Ringler, sir. This must be it, don’t you think so? The big one. The one we’ve been waiting for. They’re going to attack.’
‘I don’t know, Monier. Let’s not jump to conclusions.’
Quickly, Ringler pulled himself out of the trench and stood up beside Monier.
‘But sir, look.’
He pointed and Ringler followed the line of his arm back towards the rear of the German lines. He could see nothing now but a sheet of flame punctuated by fresh explosions, every second it seemed. Sometimes two or three at the same moment.
‘Oh, Christ in heaven! Yes, perhaps you’re right. Maybe this is it.’
The two men stood transfixed by the sheer enormity of the cataclysmic destruction being wrought to their rear.
Monier spoke first: ‘Poor devils, whoever’s under that lot.’
‘Just thank God it’s not us Sar’nt-Major. Where’s the signals section?’
Monier pointed to the left: ‘Trench over there, sir. I’ve stood all the men to. As much of the battalion as I can find at least.’
‘Well see if you can raise headquarters on the field telephone. Get the colonel. The adjutant. Get anyone. Find out if they have any idea what’s going on. Then find the rest of the men. I’m going to find my company.’
Five hours later and with his head aching from the endless cacophony of exploding shells, Ringler looked out across the sand from the shelter
of a slit trench in the Number Ten company position and noticed that the first light of morning was finally creeping up. The sky hung heavy with thick deposits of sulphur and cordite which cast a nauseous yellow tinge in the air and seemed, he thought, almost tangible, somehow slimy. It was as if some malicious God had wiped an open sore over the beauty of the world. At last the shelling ceased, although in the distance a low rumble indicated that the fighting was continuing and as the day dawned quickly he saw the sky change colour again until it was filled with a black-brown smokescreen that hung at a uniform height across the vast expanse of what overnight had become the battlefield. The smell though remained as it had been before, the unmistakable, sweet and suffocating stench of gunpowder. Acrid and stifling, it penetrated every orifice, reaching into the lungs until you wanted to retch.
At last the sun rose, casting a more healthy light on the smoke-hung horizon. Black plumes curled up from the desert, in particular from the areas containing the Fifteenth and Twenty-First Panzer Divisions and from the heavy artillery batteries. Those he presumed had been the Allies’ major targets for their bombardment.
In his trench Ringler’s number two, a young second lieutenant named Weber, younger even than he, threw up. Ringler had a quiet word with the boy.
‘Hans, it may just be the fumes from the shelling. God knows I feel like puking myself, but we can’t be too careful. We don’t want more dysentery. Not after the last lot and certainly not at a time like this. Get it cleared up will you and then see if you can find the MO.’
He did not know where Doctor Müller was this morning. He had seen him in the night as he went from foxhole to foxhole, just making sure. It was just as well. Two of the men had become slightly delirious from the shellfire and were unable to move. It wasn’t uncommon and Ringler had never seen such a barrage as that they had experienced last night. Rumours had come in all night thick and fast.
He had finally made contact with Battalion HQ at about two in the morning. Word was that this was the big attack they had been expecting and that they should all dig in and prepare themselves for the worst. It seemed bizarre to him that they had so far managed to avoid engaging the enemy. Nor, apart from the two cases of shellshock had they suffered any actual casualties.
