by Eric Meyer
“Understood. Let’s hurry this up and get moving.”
Fifteen minutes later we were ready to go. We’d brought the truck out to the rear entrance and positioned it to point towards the road that went south, towards the NKVD. The factory was wired with as much explosive as we could find, cobbled together from grenades that we’d taken apart and mixed with fuel from the truck, only leaving enough in the tank for our purposes. The Russian driver had his hands tied in position to the steering wheel, his feet were fastened well away from the pedals. I looked around, it was time. Blomberg set fire to a bundle of wood and rags on the back of the truck, I locked the accelerator pedal in place, pressed in the clutch, put the truck in third gear and let out the clutch. As the truck roared away I jumped off. The Russian’s instructions were to keep the truck heading south until he was out of our machine gun range, the fire in the back was to draw attention to the moving truck.
“Let’s go,” I said to von Raasch, “We need to move fast and stay out of sight.”
I led them in a long line away from the factory. Goethe brought up the rear, as we left he set the timer on the charges. We hurried along a dark track, it was slightly sunken and I was confident we were as safe from detection as possible. Already I could hear the sound of shouts from the Russian positions, several rifles started to fire at the truck. Then the factory exploded and the sky lit up with flames, my plan was simple, darkness followed by flames, explosions and chaos. We’d slip past them while their attention was elsewhere.
We hurried away, at one time we had to duck into an empty house when we heard Russians moving towards us, but their attention was on the flaming building. They went past us and we came back out and went on. We almost made it. A sentry was hiding behind a tree at the side of the road. He may have been one of the blocking troops, the criminals and scum they invariably employed to augment the NKVD in their task of preventing their own troops from deserting or making unauthorized retreats.
“Stoi! Kto idet!”
It meant stop, who goes there, we’d all heard it before. He stepped out with a PPSh sub machine gun cocked and pointed at us. His eyes widened as he realized we weren’t deserters, we were no easy target for him. We were the SS.
“Fascisti! Stoi!”
Blomberg was beside me with his own PPSh ready to fire, he triggered a short burst that threw the Russian to the ground, but it was more than enough to give us away. The Red Army troopers were less than a hundred meters away from us and they heard the shots, someone shouted and there was the sound of many boots as men rushed towards us. We only had one option left.
“Run!”
We hurtled along the muddy track, putting as much distance between us and the Russians as we could.
“This is not good, Roth” von Raasch said, running alongside me. “It’s a long way to Leningrad and we’ve got half the Red Army chasing us.”
“We have a half-track hidden in Ushaki, it’s less than ten kilometers from here. If we can stay ahead of them we should be ok.”
I heard him grunt, “And if we can’t stay ahead of them?”
We heard the sound of an engine starting and a vehicle started to draw nearer.
“We’ll need to stop them, whatever that is it’ll be on us soon. I’ll tell the men to set up the MG34s,” Raasch said.
I nodded. “There’s a ruined building up ahead, it’ll give us some cover.”
“Hadn’t you better push on with Heydrich?”
“I told you, Sir, either we all get out or none of us. I don’t care who it is back there, it could be Heinrich Himmler for all I care.”
In fact if it had been Himmler I think I would have left him trussed ready for the Russians. We reached the wrecked house, little more than a pile of bricks overgrown with grass and bushes. Four of von Raasch’s troopers flung themselves down and prepared the two MG34s. Goethe came panting up, with the last of the men.
“Keep going, Goethe,” I shouted at him. “Another fifty meters and then get down on the ground. When you see that vehicle, start shooting, it’ll draw them on and give these machine gunners a chance to hit them hard from close-up.”
I heard him grumbling and moaning as usual, but he ordered the two troopers he was with to carry on, they ran up the track and disappeared out of sight. We waited.
The Russian vehicle finally appeared, an incredible sight. It was a half-track, slightly similar to our own Hanomag 251 half-track, but this contraption seemed to have been assembled from parts in a junk yard.
“What the hell is that?” I asked von Raasch.
“I’ve only ever seen a couple of them before. It’s called a BA-30, it’s a Soviet armored half-track they developed in 1937. They don’t look much, but even so they’re armed with a heavy machine gun, so I’d keep your head down.”
Goethe had seen the Soviet vehicle approaching, he and his two troopers opened fire at long range with their MP38s, they hit the thin armor of the half-track and we heard the bullets ‘ping’ off the armor plating. We waited as it bore down on us, but in the darkness the crew hadn’t seen us, distracted as they were by Goethe’s gunfire.
“For God’s sake, fire, they’re nearly on us,” a voice shouted from somewhere near. Panic stricken, Heydrich seized an MP38 from a trooper and stood up to empty the magazine at the oncoming vehicle. We looked at him in disgust, another few seconds and we would have had the Russian under the barrels of the MG34s.
“Damn the man, we’ll have to hope it’s near enough,” Raasch said bitterly. “Machine gunners open fire! We need to knock out that vehicle before it gets any nearer.”
The roar of the MG34s was deafening as they opened up, sending twin scythes of bullets towards the Russian. At first these too ricocheted off the armor, but as the vehicle got nearer, they started to penetrate the metal hull. But the Russian kept firing too and suddenly Heydrich cried out and jerked to one side, then fell, hit by a burst that had almost cut him in half.
“Medics, see if you can save him,” Raasch shouted. “The rest of you, finish that damned Russian.”
At last it was inside their effective range. A row of bullet holes appeared at the side of the driver’s compartment and the vehicle lurched to one side, hit a mound of earth and tipped over. Two of the men ran across and poured machine-pistol fire into the cabin to finish off the crew. I looked down at the medic working frantically on Heydrich.
“Any luck, can you save him?”
The man shook his head. “No chance, Sir. There are massive internal wounds, he’s only got minutes to live at most.”
I could feel all of their eyes watching me. Although Raasch was senior in rank to me, I was in command of the rescue mission, this disaster was mine. I looked up quickly as someone shouted.
“Sir, the Russians are advancing on foot, a hundred of them at least.”
“How far away?”
“Half a kilometer at most.”
We were out of time, I had to make fast decisions or we were all lost. I drew out my pistol, a Walther P38. “Are you absolutely sure he is beyond help?”
The medic nodded, “Yes, he’s almost gone.” Then he caught sight of the pistol and paled. “Sir, I don’t think you should do that.”
I ignored him, put the barrel to Heydrich’s head and pulled the trigger. The sound of my pistol shot was unnaturally loud in the night.
“Blomberg, go through his pockets, make sure he has no identification. Brenner, pick up his pack. Let’s get moving before those Soviets get here.”
They stripped Heydrich of his personal effects and backpack, then pushed his body into a ditch at the side of the road. I thought it a suitable resting place for him, it reflected his true worth. The Russians were coming on fast, they were nearly on us. We took to our heels and fled through the darkness along the narrow, muddy track. It took us an hour to reach Ushaki, thankfully the half-track was still hidden where we’d left it. We climbed in, we were massively overcrowded but no one objected. Wasser started the engine and pointed us in the
direction of Leningrad, we arrived back just after dawn without any further attacks from the Russians. As we drove through the gates into our temporary HQ the troops saw us returning and we were greeted with loud cheers. Wasser stopped and turned off the engine. We were close to where Kurz stood talking quietly with his second in command, Hauptsturmfuhrer Werth. I shook my head, the meaning was unmistakable and the cheering died away. He didn’t say a word at first, just looked over the ranks of tired, dusty troops climbing down from the half-track until it stood empty.
“I take it that Standartenfuhrer Heydrich is not with you, Roth?”
“No, Sir. He was killed during the escape from Ryabovo.”
“How did he die?”
“I shot him, Sir.”
“I see. And the Robe?”
I shook my head.
Chapter Three
The cell in Gestapo headquarters at Number eight, Prinz Albrechtstrasse, Berlin was cold, dark, damp and very cramped. It was designed to intimidate, not to make a prisoner comfortable. It succeeded admirably, I’d never felt so pain-wracked and uncomfortable in my whole life. The beating I’d been given by Himmler’s Gestapo bullyboys on the return journey from Leningrad had been bad enough, they’d sent four particularly brutal, sadistic bastards who’d treated me like their personal football from the first moment I’d been handed over to them. Kurz had been sympathetic, “I realize that you made the correct decisions under the circumstances, Roth, but still, he was Heydrich’s cousin! My God, that’s like royalty in the Third Reich, you can’t just go around shooting people like that. I’ll put in a good word for you, Himmler has asked me personally for a full report. But I doubt it’ll do any good. Maybe you’ll just get a stretch in a concentration camp, some of them aren’t too bad.”
The cell door abruptly slammed open and two uniformed guards stood there, gazing at me dispassionately. I assumed I was in for another beating, but I was wrong.
“You are to come with us,” one of them said in a menacing tone.
“Is this it, am I to be executed?”
I tried to keep my voice level, but probably I failed. The guard sneered. “Not this time, scum! When it’s your turn we’ll prepare something really nasty.”
“At least I won’t die laughing.” It was the best I could think of at the time, I refused to let him intimidate me, but all I got for my pains was a hard blow in the kidneys with his club.
“Move, hurry up, they’re waiting for you.”
They shoved me along the dark, narrow passage, up several flights of stairs and through another corridor, this one was well lit and carpeted. An armed, steel-helmeted SS guard stood to attention outside an office door, one of the guards knocked and I heard a muffled voice from inside. They opened the door and pushed me forward. I nearly tripped, but when I looked up I was staring into the face of Reichsfuhrer-SS Heinrich Himmler. The Third Reich’s dark angel of death.
I scrambled to attention and managed a shaky salute. “Heil Hitler.”
He nodded unconcernedly from behind his carved wooden desk. “Obersturmfuhrer Roth, at last. It was unfortunate, that business with Heydrich’s wretched cousin. You should have done better you know, Heydrich was angry about it, very angry. He called for your execution. Naturally, I explained to him that all of my men deserve a fair hearing, I wouldn’t want my SS troopers to think of me as inhumane.”
“No, Sir, of course not.”
I thought I’d entered the realms of the completely insane. Himmler inhumane, a ridiculous idea.
“I’ve read the reports, it seems that Standartenfuhrer Heydrich acted unwisely. I have therefore decided to postpone your sentence, pending the outcome of your next mission.”
“Mission, Reichsfuhrer?”
He looked up at me, the light glinted on his rimless glasses. “I’ve got a job for you, Roth. Tell me, are you a religious man?”
I wasn’t sure what he wanted me to say, but decided to tell him the truth. “No, Sir.”
“I see. Do you recall that Heydrich was trying to recover the Robe of St John the Baptist before he fell so valiantly in battle?”
I thought he’d been trying to steal it from the Russians, not ‘retrieve’ it. Besides, he’d behaved like a coward and I’d shot him. But I just nodded. “I do, Sir.”
“Do you understand what that robe would mean to Christians, Roth. Believers across the whole of Europe, millions of Christians of all denominations?”
I was about to reply, but he went on. “The Fuhrer believes it would attract them like moths to the flame, we’d have instant legions of fanatical believers to fight for us. Men would flock to whoever had such a prize and follow the cause to hell and back. We need those kinds of men if we’re to secure the victories in Eastern Europe that will make that benighted place safe for the next thousand years. Men who will be prepared to die for their beliefs. The Robe of St John the Baptist will be their standard, the flag they will follow into battle, to fight for and conquer the alien, Russian wastelands. Our Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, has stated that the Robe is a treasure beyond price. That is why we need that Robe, Roth, and you will get it for your Fuhrer.”
“Do you know where the Russians have hidden it, Reichsfuhrer?”
“I do, yes.”
“Then I’ll do my best, Sir, I’ll give it everything I’ve got.”
His look was sharp and cruel. “Indeed you will, Obersturmfuhrer. Your life, that’s what you will give if you fail, that’s what’s at stake. Is that clear? I can hold Heydrich back only so far, but I will need results to convince him. Without results, well, he’ll want justice for his cousin. Is that clear?”
“Yes, Reichsfuhrer.”
“Good. You will see my adjutant, he has your orders ready for you. Good luck, Roth.”
“Yes, thank you, Sir.”
Himmler had just laid out my life for me, he’d made it crystal clear indeed. Retrieve the Robe and live, fail to retrieve it and Heydrich would have his revenge for his cousin. But as I left the office I was thinking of a third option, desertion. That was fraught with danger too, I doubted I would get away with it. A civilian in a double breasted suit was waiting for me, he looked tough and competent. No, he was no civilian, in this place the tough, military physique and plain clothes meant only one thing, Gestapo. He spoke coldly.
“Obersturmfuhrer Roth, you will come with me. I am Kriminalinspektor Johannes Hachmann, the Reichsfuhrer has ordered me to supervise the mission.”
He didn’t offer to shake hands and I followed him. We went next door to Himmler’s adjutant who had an order packet ready for me. I signed the receipt for the orders, knowing that they would likely prove to be my death warrant. Hachmann then handed me another document.
“What’s this?”
“A copy of your Schutzhaft, Roth. It’s just a formality, an arrest document that places you in protective custody. You are nominally a prisoner of the Gestapo until further notice.”
He managed a half smile, but there was no warmth there. “It’s just a technicality, so that you understand that you’re not free to go off anywhere, not until the Schutzhaft is rescinded, that will be after you complete your mission, naturally.”
“How will you know when it is completed?”
“I shall be coming with you. The Reichsfuhrer is anxious that there will be no further mistakes.”
We flew back to Leningrad in a Luftwaffe JU52, the ‘Auntie Ju’, the flying workhorse of the German military. I’d flown one previously, before I embarked on my fool’s errand to Spain, the International Brigade and then Franco’s dungeon. I remembered my briefing before I’d first flown it. The aircraft's unusual corrugated metal skin strengthened the whole structure, the corrugations were a design principle that dated back to the previous war. It made it an odd looking but robust aircraft. The Junkers 52 had a low cantilever wing and a huge inner flap section that lowered the stalling speed, the arrangement became known as the Doppelflugel, or ‘double wing’. She was an easy aircraft to fly, safe, stable and rel
iable. She was also slow and unarmed, a sitting target for any wandering Russian fighter. Hachmann saw me studying the sky out of the window and smiled coldly as if reading my mind. Perhaps he’d never been shot down, I had and it wasn’t an experience I cared to repeat. We landed at a temporary airfield near to Army Group North Headquarters at Gatchina, close to the Tsar's summer palace that was being used as our military HQ. Himmler’s office had warned them we were coming and a car was waiting for us. They took us out to Sonderbattalion Kurz and I re-acquainted myself with the CO, who was astonished to see me alive.
“Roth, I thought they were going to shoot you. You’re back on duty?”
“Not exactly, Sir.”
I introduced him to my companion. “This is Kriminalinspektor Johannes Hachmann of the Gestapo, he is on Reichsfuhrer Himmler’s personal staff. We have been ordered to undertake a top secret mission for the Reichsfuhrer, I’m afraid I’ll need to borrow some of the men.”
“A mission? It sounds interesting, are they still after that idiotic moth-eaten old robe, you know, the thing that lunatic Heydrich was after?”
I smiled inwardly, so much for top secret. But Kurz went on, oblivious to Hachmann’s cold frown. “Of course not, they wouldn’t be so stupid. It’s just as well it’s a load of superstitious nonsense, you know. I couldn’t spare any men, not for Himmler, not even for the Fuhrer, we’re too hard pressed here. Now, what’s this mission all about?”
Hachmann put a document on his desk, one I hadn’t seen before. “You’d better read that, Kurz.”
The CO reddened, technically he outranked Hachmann. But Himmler’s personal staff cared little for the military niceties.
“It is an order from the Reichsfuhrer. You will cooperate in any way I see fit. A failure or refusal will result in immediate arrest and summary execution, is that clear?”
Kurz’s face went from red to a ghostly white. Not the white of fear, but of anger, he was a brave man who did not want his battalion interfered with by outsiders. Except for Himmler, who couldn’t be refused.
