by Jana Petken
While handcuffs were being secured on Romek’s wrists, the Gestapo officer lit a cigarette, and nonchalantly leant against the wall nearest Romek. Romek flicked his eyes around the room as far as his line of sight would allow and thanked God that his Resistance fighters had got out. When he’d left with Oscar at dawn that morning, he had ordered Sabine to uncover the entrance to the tunnel. Hidden inside it were sticks of dynamite and rifles that Romek had collected from dead German soldiers who’d been killed on hijacking missions. His men were to take the weapons and explosives to a derelict house inside the woods. It had a crawl space under the floorboards, and he’d already hidden a box of grenades, half a dozen rifles, and ten pistols there.
He had also instructed Sabine to leave dynamite in the factory for him to blow up the building upon his return from the city. “Why do you want to do that?” she’d asked. He hadn’t answered, for his reason had sounded petty even to his ears. The Germans might find the factory useful one day, and he’d wanted to demolish the place leaving only piles of rubble. If he couldn’t have the factory, neither could the Boche. He gave an arrogant toss of his head. He’d pre-empted the Nazi scum, got his people out, and had a healthy weapons’ cache for his people to use, regardless of what was going to happen to him.
Stubbing the cigarette butt with his heel, the Gestapo officer ditched his relaxed expression and replaced it with one of impatience. “Right, down to business. We know who you are, Romek Gabula or Louis Leroy, as you like to call yourself on forged documents. I’ve been watching you for a while.”
Romek blinked.
“Ah, you’re wondering why I didn’t arrest you and your … your band of criminals before now … you are, aren’t you?”
“I’m afraid you and the Hauptsturmführer have the wrong man. I’ve done nothing wrong,” Romek replied with a steady gaze.
The Hauptsturmführer nodded to the soldiers standing slightly behind him and they left the room.
Romek rocked from left to right on his sore knees. His head was throbbing, his vision blurry from the strike to his head. First, he heard mumbling voices and then watched in horror as Sabine appeared, her blouse torn, her face red from weeping, her top lip cut, and her hands tied behind her back. Next came Edzio, looking even more terrified than Sabine. He stared at Romek in disgust. Afterwards, nine more Resistance fighters were led out and pushed to their knees in a line facing their injured leader.
The Hauptsturmführer sneered as he waved his hand along the line of prisoners. “You see, Romek, these people claim to know you. Every one of them has been trying for hours to save their miserable skins by giving you up. They must be a disappointment to you. It took us all of five minutes to find out that you were going to return here to blow the place up. Do you deny knowing them? Are they all liars? Shall I shoot them?”
“I have done nothing wrong. You have the wrong man,” Romek repeated.
“You’ll get us all killed, you fool!” Edzio shouted, his eyes wide. “Hauptsturmführer, he’s our leader. I swear to you on my mother’s grave, he is. He knows everything that goes on here … me, I’m just a man trying to survive. I don’t care who I fight for … I’ll fight for you if you want me to.”
The Hauptsturmführer smiled, cupped Edzio’s chin and tilted his head back. “You’re a pathetic coward. You’re useless to me.” He paused, sweeping his eyes along the line of prisoners, then issued an order to one of his soldiers, “Shoot this spineless Pole in the back of the head, then take the prisoners outside.”
Edzio crawled on his knees to the Hauptsturmführer, wrapping his arms around the officer’s legs. “No! Not me please, I’ll do anything … I’m begging you … I have information about a lot of things...”
When the bullet struck Edzio’s skull his whole body toppled forwards until he lay face down in his own blood.
Romek tried to get to his feet. “Don’t kill them. I am their leader, just like Edzio said. It’s me you want. My name is Romek Gabula. I’m the man who gives the orders.”
The Gestapo officer clapped his hands. “Good. Good, Romek, now we’re making progress. My name is Gert Dreschner, and you will be seeing a lot of me in the next few days.” The German smirked. “We’re going to get to know each other very well.”
A soldier appeared at the bottom of the stairs and gave the Nazi salute. “The trucks are here, Mein Hauptsturmführer.”
Romek glanced at Sabine. Edzio’s splattered blood and brains had sprayed her face and hair, but she seemed unaware of the dismal sight she presented, instead she was mesmerised by the puddle of blood surrounding the dead man’s head. He longed to take her in his arms but was determined not to give the impression that she was special to him, lest the Germans used her against him.
Sabine stared at him as she was led away. Romek switched his gaze from her to concentrate on the Gestapo and SS officers who were whispering in one corner of the room. Klara shot into his mind and his heart thumped. Only Darek and he knew where she was and who she was. She should be safe unless Darek was also a traitor? He hadn’t turned up that day in the café, so, where was he?
As his people were taken outside, other questions regarding Klara tumbled into Romek’s mind: had Darek delivered the radio to her at the shop? Had the Gestapo or SS followed him to Chirac’s? Had the radio been found? Was Darek already in prison, spilling his guts? Jesus Christ, he couldn’t think anymore. He was going to be shot in a day or two, a week at most, and then he’d never think or wonder about anything again.
Chapter Fifty-Five
Wilmot Vogel
Russia, August 1941
It was several weeks into the never-ending route march across Russia, and Wilmot felt as though every orifice in his body, including his backside, was clogged with dust, smoke and dirt. Yet even under the brutal sun’s rays in the dirty environment and terrain where asphalt didn’t exist, he and his division had managed to march almost fifty kilometres every day.
He slogged along behind a tank, absently taking in the arid, burnt-out wasteland, but without his previous enthusiasm for war. He was lost, directionless and wondering why he hadn’t told his parents the truth about his experience in Poland; the tantrum which had led to his incarceration at Dachau.
The more he tried to bury his rebellious thoughts, the more they crowded his already overtaxed mind. That he was a lowly Schütze who would probably walk all the way to wherever the hell they were going while other higher-ranking soldiers rode horses or sat in vehicles, didn’t bother him in the slightest. That he was going to spend months, or even years, eating field rations and shitting behind bushes with icicles hanging from his arsehole didn’t faze him either, for he was young and fit and could handle the elements, whatever they were. No, what bothered him about the army wasn’t the discomfort, it was its incomprehensible wickedness; immorality that was totally unrelated to war.
Wilmot always began his daily musings with the Jewish question; was he a Jew lover? The answer still came back, no. Like many Germans, he resented the Kikes, and he agreed with Goebbels’ analysis that they had, for years, moved into countries throughout Europe in a bid to change them to their liking from the inside. He’d always despised their organised communities in Berlin that lobbied for self-serving political and social reforms. They had never been satisfied; always wanting the best jobs, acquiring the biggest businesses and the fanciest places of worship. Yet, for all their annoying idiosyncrasies and shortcomings, he’d come to realise that he didn’t hate the Jewish race. That was the crux of the matter, his dilemma in a nutshell.
When the army had surged into the Northern Baltic States some weeks earlier, Wilmot had been taken aback by the population’s reaction to them. Battles had taken place, aeroplanes had dogged them from the air, but after the Russian retreat, the German forces had been met with cheers and flowers and had been hailed as liberators by many of the local people. Stalin’s reign of terror, and the ruthless actions of the NKVD – the Soviet Secret Police who tortured and killed Communist disse
nters – had caused such intense suffering that the people now seemed delighted to see the new occupiers.
In the last town before the Russian border, Wilmot had marched through the streets singing songs of victory with his Schütze comrades, planning his strategy to win the Iron Cross, just as his father and Hitler and had done during the First World War. Only one act of bravery would be needed to get that medal pinned on his chest, and at the time, that hadn’t seemed out of reach.
Prisoners, killed by retreating Russians for being anti-communist dissidents, had been laid out in rows in front of the town’s prison. That sight had not turned Wilmot’s stomach, for he’d seen plenty of dead bodies. No, it hadn’t been those lifeless bloodied creatures who’d dampened his spirits, it had been something much more chilling.
During his first day in that town, the name of which he could no longer remember, he had witnessed Jews being rounded up by local anti-Semites. Accused of colluding with the Communists, the Jews had been ordered to cart the dissidents’ bodies off the streets. The local population then organised a pogrom, an organised massacre of the Jewish citizens. And Wilmot had watched it all with a mixture of astonishment and dismay.
“Do what you want with the Jews.” The German officer had been encouraging the townspeople. “But make sure you don’t leave a trace of them behind.” Claus, a soldier the same age as Wilmot, had dragged an old Jew by his long white beard, and pulled him along a line of German soldiers, as though the ancient little man were a dog. “What have you stolen today, Old Father?” Claus had asked the man in an exaggerated kindly voice. “Eh, who have you stolen from this time?” he added with a swipe to the man’s black-hatted head.
When the local mob began pushing and pulling Jews into the street, Wilmot had retreated. He’d stood at the top of the Town Hall steps, watching the hatred haemorrhaging from the anti-Semites in the crowd. Jews being kicked was nothing new, but watching men and women bludgeon, shoot and stab unarmed Kikes, regardless of gender or age, had disgusted him. He didn’t know how many had died in that town, but ever since, flashes of body after body being thrown onto a pyre in the street and torched like wood on a bonfire, had fomented his growing desire to call it a day and go home.
He groaned at the ravaged and ruined fields, razed of produce by Russian peasants before the invading army had had the chance to eat or store any food. The Russian civilian population gave true meaning to the saying, cut off your nose to spite your face, for thinking that they wouldn’t be returning to their homes, they had destroyed everything in their wake.
It had all seemed very easy at the beginning of the march into Russia, Wilmot thought, as he passed yet another burnt-out farm. The invasion force had consisted of one hundred and fifty-three divisions, all German, Finnish, Slovakian, Hungarian, and Spanish fascist troops. Three million men along with six hundred thousand trucks, three thousand tanks and three thousand aeroplanes had surged confidently, and without restraint, into the vast hostile Russian territory, expecting to conquer Moscow, Leningrad, Stalingrad and the rich oilfields of the Caucasus within three months. Now, Wilmot was convinced that the time frame for victory concocted by the 4th Panzer Division’s Commander, General Reinhardt, was a load of hogwash.
Reinhardt and his batallions had spearheaded the advance for Army Group North in the opening phase of Operation Barbarossa, crossing the Neman River in good time until they were counter-attacked by 300 Soviet tanks near Raseiniai. It had taken a gruelling four-day battle to encircle and destroy the Soviet arms before they were able to seize the Daugava bridges and begin their advance towards Leningrad. How long would it take to defeat that city when Russian leaders seemed willing to sacrifice their soldiers en masse, and have the capacity to send just as many men into the fray the next day, and the next, ad infinitum. How many bloody Soviet troops were there in Russia? He tripped over another boulder. “For God’s sake, pay attention, Willie,” he mumbled.
Wilmot also liked to remind himself that he was lucky to be alive after a battle against a massive Russian defence line some days earlier.
It had begun on a hot, sunny day with clear blue skies and a perfect line of sight for over a kilometre. After the German cannons had weakened the Russian trenches, Wilmot and his fellow riflemen were ordered to assault the remaining active dugouts. His heart had thumped in his ears, his insides vibrating when the big guns let loose their loads, and he and his comrades hollered an adrenalin-filled “Arrrrgh!” as they surged across the rough terrain into fountains of dirt and dust.
Men to Wilmot’s left and right had fallen to machine-gun fire coming from the trench directly in front of his unit. He’d fired his rifle indiscriminately at the glinting tips of Russian helmets; actions driven by fear and the hope that he’d get them before they got him.
He’d been struck by a sudden searing pain in his chest – which he now knew had been caused by a stitch and not a bullet as he’d thought at the time. His throat had constricted making it difficult to swallow, and dirt and dust had clogged the back of his mouth and blurred his vision as clouds of the stuff continued to shoot into the air.
He’d glimpsed a Russian soldier coming over the parapet with a sabre waving in both hands. The man had been like a wild beast, growling and howling in Russian at the top of his lungs. Wilmot, struck utterly breathless, had become dizzy, and had stumbled into a shallow pothole – or had it been quite deep? As he’d lain winded by his fall with his foot wedged in the hole, he’d tried desperately to roll onto his other side where his pistol was holstered – somewhere during his fall he’d lost his grip on his rifle.
Paralysed by fear and a cold, sharp pain in his side as well as his foot, he’d gawped in horror at the chaos around him. Gunfire snapped in the air, but most of the noise in his immediate vicinity had been that of soldiers screaming for their mothers, desperate to live, to kill, to survive another day. Bodies were entangled in an orgy of hand to hand combat, and for a few seconds Wilmot was a spectator, forgotten, or so it had seemed.
Minutes later, when his body finally managed to react, he’d rolled over and grasped his pistol in both hands. Out of the corner of his eye, he had seen the giant Russian slashing at German soldiers with his sabre until no one stood between them.
Wilmot’s pistol had been waving in his hands but by the time he’d pulled the trigger the tip of the Russian’s bayonet had nicked the mud-hardened material of his uniform field jacket and he’d passed out.
When his senses had returned, and he’d opened his eyes, the sabre’s tip was lying flat, pointing towards his neck and sandwiched between his body and that of the dead Russian. He’d fought for breath under the Russian’s weight. The man’s blood had gushed from the gaping hole in his cheek and coated Wilmot’s half-parted lips. It had grown dark, not like a sunset, but instantly, as though night had descended like a stage curtain, and once again he’d felt himself falling, falling, falling into oblivion.
Later, someone had pulled him from under the Russian, bandaged him up and then sent him back to the German lines to march on as if nothing had happened.
He often recalled his frantic efforts to defend himself on that day, the pain and terror of impending death, his mistakes, his hesitations. Even as a child, he’d perfected a soldier’s swagger and a chilling tone of voice that he’d used to scare his playmates. The tough Vogel kid, the teachers at school had often called him, the boy who would either end up a general or spend his life in prison, for he seemed to lack restraint. In every daydream he’d ever had as a teenager he’d come out of an imaginary fight victorious; standing over his dead enemy, slicing a throat, shooting a gun, breaking a neck, pummelling his enemy to death, but not once had he envisaged himself curled up on the ground, unable to catch a decent breath. He pressed his hand against his ribs, now tightly strapped with layers of bandages. He was lucky to be alive.
“Halt!” someone shouted, bringing Wilmot back to the present. Thank God, they were taking a rest, he thought. It was still painful to walk, to laugh, to
breathe at times, but he’d been more fortunate than the scores of Germans who had died or suffered terrible wounds at that German trench. All he’d got were a couple of cracked ribs from the tumble, a sprained ankle and a graze on his chest from the Russian’s sabre. He chuckled to himself – he’d been given a sign – he wasn’t destined to die in Russia.
Chapter Fifty-Six
The Vogels
Berlin, September 1941
Paul took Valentina with him to his parents’ house for the last family dinner before leaving Germany. It was the second anniversary of the Polish invasion; the reason for the war against Britain and France.
Laura had decided to make the evening a special occasion by inviting Valentina’s parents for a dinner that was to be held in the rarely-used formal dining room. That morning, Dieter had asked her why she thought it was necessary for Freddie and Olga to be present at what would be the Vogels last evening together and Laura had replied, “You’ll find out why soon enough, darling.”
At the lavish dining table, Paul listened to Valentina talking to her parents about her promotion at the Neue Reichskanzlei on Hermann-Göring-Straße and the corner of Voßstraße. Her animated face, flushed with her first glass of wine and no small measure of excitement, was the vision he’d take with him when he left Germany – love was a divine gift.
“Every girl I know wants a job at the New Reich Chancellery, even though the only work available is in the typing pool. It’s hard, no one says thank you when one’s table is piled high with completed documents, and the noise of typewriter keys being hammered all day, every day, is irritating to say the least.” Valentina was laughing as she spoke and her parents and the Vogels were enchanted. “I’ve been especially lucky. I truly believe that.”
