Last Flight to Stalingrad

by Graham Hurley

  Nehmann was watching an elderly couple hugging the shadows at the edge of the piazza as they walked their dog. They were arm in arm, discreetly turning their backs as the little spaniel squatted on the warm marble.

  ‘Maybe he meant it,’ he said softly. ‘Maybe it was true.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘Maybe it’s still true.’

  ‘And is that why you’re here? An envoy from the dwarf?’

  This was uncomfortably close to the truth and Nehmann sensed she knew it. Had someone been sent earlier? Had Goebbels tried to contact Baarova in person? Was this mission his last throw of the ministerial dice?

  Hedvika wasn’t giving up. She wanted to know more.

  ‘You know this man well,’ she said. ‘At least that’s what you always told me. You think he’s lonely? Might that be a clue?’

  ‘Everyone’s lonely at his level. Goebbels, Ribbentrop, Himmler. The only one who copes is probably Goering and that’s because there’s so much of him.’

  ‘You mean he’s fat?’ She was laughing.

  ‘I mean he’s big. Big-hearted. Lots of soul. He’s been through one war and he’s helping to win the next. Hitler’s the same. It takes a lot to frighten men like that.’

  ‘And Goebbels?’

  ‘Goebbels is clever. In the company he keeps, that can be a handicap. He’s also insatiable, just like the rest of them. He wants more and more. Of everything. By and large that seems to work. He reads this war like no one else but the one thing he can never guarantee is a good night’s sleep.’

  ‘Maybe Lida gave him that.’

  ‘Maybe she did. If he could put her in a bottle, a spoonful a day after meals, I’m sure he would. In the meantime, she’s a couple of countries away and all he’s left with are his memories.’

  ‘Hence your phone call?’

  ‘Yes. He wants me to see her, track her down, meet her, talk to her.’

  ‘Get her back?’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘Then what?’

  Hedvika was waiting for an answer, tapping her perfect fingernails on the zinc-topped table. In these situations, as he remembered far too late, she could be remarkably shrewd. In bed, in the middle of a particularly vigorous session, she’d once told him she could read him like a book. You think you can hide from me, she’d said. Wrong.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I just need a conversation. An address? Maybe a phone number? That would be kind.’

  ‘And if she says no?’

  ‘She won’t.’

  ‘How can you be sure?’

  ‘She just won’t. When did I ever lie to you?’

  ‘All the time, but we both know that. Your little friend leaves nothing to chance. I’ve watched him, remember. I’ve been there. He was often on set in Berlin. He wanted to control every detail. The way you delivered a particular line? What the make-up people had done to your eyebrows? How he’d rescued the fourth version of a shit script and turned it into a proper movie? He’s like that bloody cat. He can’t help himself. He has to mark his territory. As poor Lida found out.’

  Nehmann resisted applauding. This was exactly the Goebbels he knew – thin-skinned, hopelessly ambitious, but a slave to his own neuroses.

  ‘He thinks no one likes him,’ Nehmann said. ‘He’s found success beyond his wildest dreams. He’s been clever with money. He owns far more houses than he needs. He drives the fastest cars. He’s got a couple of boats on the lake. Hitler loves his wife, adores his children. He can snap his fingers and get on a plane and thousands of people will be waiting in some hall in God knows which shitty little town to listen to his every word. But it’s still the same face in the mirror every morning. And he knows nothing will ever change that.’

  Hedvika reached for her glass. They were both drinking Campari and soda, an aperitif before the waiter appeared with their order.

  ‘He’ll have written her a letter.’ Hedvika was running her fingertip around the rim of the glass. ‘And the man probably trusts no one else in the world to deliver it.’ She looked up. ‘Don’t bother denying it. Just nod.’

  *

  They were back in the Alla Vite Dorata, back in bed. Hedvika was still straddling him, moving very slowly as he wilted inside her. Afternoon sunshine flooded in through the window and of the cat there was no sign. Heaven, Nehmann decided, tasted of osso buco, lightly flavoured with parsley and thin splinters of garlic.

  ‘I think I’m in love.’ He closed his eyes. ‘Did I mention that?’

  ‘Name?’

  ‘Maria.’

  ‘Italian?’

  ‘Austrian. She says.’

  ‘You don’t believe her?’

  ‘I don’t know. And that makes her even more promising. She plays the piano like an angel. You can’t fake that.’

  ‘And she’s good at this, too?’ Hedvika was smiling.

  ‘Very. You can’t fake that, either.’

  ‘Lucky you, then.’

  Nehmann nodded. Hedvika’s bluntness had limited appeal but at least she was honest.

  ‘It’s in my jacket.’ He nodded down at the pile of discarded clothing on the bare boards.

  ‘Goebbels’ little missive?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You agree we should open it?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘Another envelope for afterwards? White? Standard size? That shouldn’t be a problem.’

  ‘You’re right.’

  ‘So, what’s stopping you? We open the envelope. Then we read whatever’s inside.’

  ‘Exactly. And afterwards?’

  ‘And afterwards you get on the train and take it to Rome. That’s where you’ll find Baarova. She has an apartment near the Piazza Navona. She’s living alone. She’s had some movie offers from Italian studios. You apologise for the intrusion. You introduce yourself. You present the great man’s compliments. And then you give her the letter.’

  ‘And leave?’

  ‘Of course. Unless you can’t resist another Czech actress. She has the most wonderful mouth, incidentally. My guess is that Goebbels can’t leave that memory alone. Have you ever met Frau Goebbels? The sainted Magda?’

  ‘Many times.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Great presence.’

  ‘And her mouth?’

  ‘Stern. Pursed. The tightest lips.’

  ‘Exactly. Had she been born in Prague, maybe his marriage would have worked out, ja?’

  She slipped free and then leaned forward. Nehmann could smell the Valpolicella on her breath.

  ‘You want me to get the letter?’ She kissed him. ‘Or will you?’

  7

  MARIUPOL, UKRAINE, 9 AUGUST 1942

  News that Army Group ‘A’ had taken the oil wells at Maikop reached Wolfram von Richthofen’s headquarters the same day. When the Generaloberst called for maps, Messner obliged within minutes. Richthofen was on the phone to Jeschonnek, the Luftwaffe’s Chief of Staff. He was at the Führer headquarters at Vinnitsa with Goering and Hitler. When Hitler was especially pleased, he had a habit of performing a little impromptu jig. This afternoon, according to the Luftwaffe’s Chief of Staff, the jig was in danger of becoming a full-blown waltz.

  Only yesterday, General Paulus – still ambling far too slowly towards Stalingrad – had managed to encircle major Soviet formations at Kalach. Army Group ‘B’ had seized 50,000 prisoners and more than a thousand tanks, and Richthofen had only just returned in his tiny Storch. From two thousand metres, he said, he’d had a perfect view of Fliegerkorps VIII’s Stukas and other close-support aircraft cleaning out the pocket. This news, too, had made the Führer dance.

  Now, Messner had spread the campaign map on the big conference table that dominated Richthofen’s office. Maikop and the oil wells lay in the foothills of the northern Causcusus. The news from Army Group ‘A’, on the face of it, was very good indeed, but Richthofen counselled caution. His respect for the Soviets was growing by the day. Barely a week ago, Stalin had issued
an order – No. 227 according to German intelligence sources – that had chilled senior German staff officers on the southern front. The Vodzh, the great Leader, was still at his modest desk in Moscow. Ni shagu nazad!, he’d said. Not a step back!

  The warning to both sides in this cut-throat war couldn’t have been clearer. The notion of retreat no longer applied anywhere on the front line. Every square inch of territory still in Soviet hands was to be defended at all costs. Deserters would be shot on sight. Mother Russia, in short, would prevail.

  Messner left the campaign map with Richthofen and returned to his own office. In the early evening, he was summoned back. A long phone conversation with an officer on the spot at Maikop had confirmed Richthofen’s worst fears. Soviet troops had destroyed hundreds of wells, wrecked oil storage facilities and crippled the refineries around Maikop by removing key components. Most of the oil wells had been set ablaze and would burn for days. Concrete had been poured down other boreholes, setting solid within hours.

  ‘You want to know Goering’s solution?’ Richthofen glanced up. ‘He wants someone to come up with a gigantic corkscrew. What’s good for a bottle is good for an oil well. I’d love to say we’re working on it, but the engineers are in despair. Most of them want to lock Goering in that cellar of his. What the rest are saying is unprintable.’

  Richthofen waved Messner into the chair in front of his desk. He rarely smoked in his office, but tonight was clearly an exception.

  Messner enquired whether the Generaloberst wanted him to fly down to Maikop and file a report.

  ‘Not yet.’ Richthofen shook his head. ‘Maikop is a disaster but it might pay to look on the bright side. The Soviets down in the Caucasus are still falling back. In my judgement, whatever Stalin had to say, they’re finished. By the end of the month we could be on the Black Sea. The other oil wells are in Grozny, and the Ivans will wreck those, too, but if we ever get that far it’ll be time to stop. We’re at the end of the line here, as you know. Resupply is already a nightmare. In my view we only have one option, which might serve us very well. Tomorrow morning, I shall conference with Jeschonnek. The time has come to concentrate our forces, Messner, and I’m sure he’ll agree. That slowcoach Paulus has finally sprung a trap on the Ivans at Kalach. He should be over the Don and driving hard for Stalingrad within days. I want you to fly up there. By the time you arrive, God willing, we’ll have declared a new transport region. It will extend as far as Stalingrad and receive our full attention. The Ivans got a taste of the Schwerpunkt at Kalach. Stalingrad should be the real thing.’

  He waved his hand in the direction of the map on the table, an unvoiced gesture that spoke volumes about command decisions at the very top of the Reich. Hitler and Goering, he seemed to be saying, should get their heads out of their arses and understand the brutal mathematics of a supply chain that reached back thousands of kilometres. Infantry needed food in their bellies. Guns needed ammunition. Tanks needed fuel. And the big Ju-52s, most important of all, needed luck and good weather, as well as full tanks, to bridge the gap between the end of the single railway line and the slow advance of Paulus’s Sixth Army.

  ‘How many tons a day, Messner? Take a guess.’ Richthofen was looking at a series of pencilled calculations on his desk.

  Messner did a rapid calculation. Over a quarter of a million men. Hundreds of tanks. Thousands of guns.

  ‘Fifteen hundred tons,’ he said.

  ‘Double it.’

  ‘Three thousand?’ Messner shook his head. ‘Impossible.’

  Richthofen looked up, a thin smile on his face.

  ‘My thoughts entirely,’ he growled. ‘You take off at first light. One way or another, we have to make this happen.’

  *

  Messner retired early, telling his orderly to rouse him before dawn. He enjoyed a dreamless sleep and was up and shaving by the time the orderly appeared at his door. He’d organised transport out to the airfield where he found himself looking at a spare Fieseler Storch that Richthofen had acquired from Kyiv. Messner’s usual Me-110, it turned out, consumed far too much fuel. As a portent of things to come, thought Messner, the message couldn’t have been clearer.

  It was years since he’d last flown an aircraft this light and this responsive. He turned it into the wind and nursed it into the air after barely a hundred metres, glad to spare the fragile undercarriage any more punishment, and shaded his eyes against the orange spill of the rising sun as he climbed into a cloudless sky. To his right, the blueness of the Sea of Azov as it began to narrow. Beyond, the silver gleam of the River Don as it wound beyond Rostov towards Kalach.

  Half an hour’s flying time from the landing strip, he banked to the west and lost height, uncertain about the weight of enemy air activity. The Russians were flying Lend Lease aircraft now, English Hurricanes, American Tomahawks, and even their own fighters – mass-produced by the hundreds in factories beyond the Urals – would feast on a little insect like the Fieseler Storch. With Kalach at last in sight, he stole a look towards the east. Stalingrad lay less than a hundred kilometres away across the interminable flatness of the steppe. With Sixth Army at full throttle, thought Messner, and the whole of Richthofen’s 4th Air Fleet at Paulus’s disposal, the city should fall within weeks.

  He dropped a wing to find the airfield and, as he did so, a square packed with tiny black dots swam into sight. At first, he mistook them for livestock of some kind, then he realised he was looking at thousands of uniforms, dark brown, huddled together. Soviet prisoners, he thought. The fruits of Paulus’s labour, now disarmed and penned in behind strands of barbed wire to await the long march westwards. Beyond the caged prisoners lay the debris of the battlefield, dozens of burned-out tanks scattered at random like a child’s discarded toys. The bareness of the steppe was pocked by thousands of craters, each one with its signature ring of charred grass.

  Messner began to lose height. Kalach itself, like so many Ukrainian towns, was nothing to look at: a scattering of small workshops, rusting tractors, a railway station that seemed to be falling apart, and dozens of shacks, each with its scrap of tended garden. The airfield was rudimentary, a flattish space that seemed to double as a meadow for a handful of bony cattle. On landing, Messner did his best to avoid the deeper potholes, finally coming to rest beside a battered army command vehicle. The driver who helped him out of the Storch was to drive him to a command facility where a briefing had been hastily organised. The driver was an older man, a Rhinelander, companionable, friendly. Unlike most strangers, he paid no attention to the state of this newcomer’s face and when Messner asked him how he was coping with the campaign, he said his wife would never believe it.

  ‘Just over seventy kilograms.’ He patted the flatness of his stomach under the grey serge tunic. ‘She’ll think she’s married a stranger.’

  They drove through the town. Wherever he looked, Messner saw more debris, more abandoned tanks, more evidence of the recent battle. Half a dozen prisoners, stripped to the waist, were hauling heavy wooden boxes towards a line of waiting trucks. When Messner enquired about the supply situation, and evacuation flights for the wounded, the driver admitted it was tricky. Most of the army were regrouping for the final push across the Don. Closing the Kalach pocket hadn’t been easy. Whatever the odds, the Ivans fought like lions.

  ‘Our guys are tough, though,’ he added. ‘If you can get through last winter, you can get through anything. Stalingrad should give us everything we need. When it gets below minus thirty, it pays to be in a city.’

  Messner said he understood. Luftwaffe boys, he was the first to admit, had a sweet time of it. A proper bed for the night. Decent food. And the prospect of playing God from two thousand metres.

  ‘Sounds wonderful.’ The driver was smiling again. ‘Me? I like to keep my feet on the ground.’

  *

  They’d arrived at a sizeable tent, pitched beside the dirt road. This was where the briefing was to take place. Messner pushed aside the tent flap and stepped into th
e gloom. The air was thick with cigarette smoke, harsh, acrid, and the fuggy heat under the canvas was close to unbearable. Half a dozen faces looked up from a makeshift table. Messner, who could smell paraffin from the single lamp, didn’t recognise any of them. No one got up. Not a hint of a welcome.

  ‘And you are…?’

  ‘Oberstleutnant Messner. From 4th Air Fleet HQ. And you gentlemen?’

  No one said a word. At first Messner put this seeming truculence down to poor morale and worse leadership but then it occurred to him that these men were probably exhausted. Springing a trap that had netted tens of thousands of Soviet troops didn’t happen by accident and it was obvious that any euphoria that accompanied a victory such as this had quickly vanished. At ground level, the stone-hard steppe would be endless. Another day of bouncing into nowhere. Another week of heat and dust. Yet more Ivans offering themselves for slaughter.

  Messner tried to put some of this into words in a bid to break the ice but the Oberst in charge dismissed his clumsy sympathy with a wave of his hand.

  ‘Our boys love it round here.’ He stifled a yawn. ‘Some of them dream of coming back as farmers once the war is over. Can you believe that?’

  There was a ripple of laughter around the table. The Oberst wanted to know whether Sixth Army could rely on the Stukas again.

  ‘When? Exactly?’ Messner queried.

  ‘Next week. We’ll be crossing the Don and the Ivans will jump us the moment we move. The Katyushas are the worst and those T-34s deserve a bit of respect. Stukas, Herr Oberst. The Ivans hate them.’