Broken Blades

by Aleksandr Voinov

  His office door was open, a guard holding the receiver beside his desk.

  “Here he is,” he said into the phone, and then held it out to Armin.

  Armin paused for a couple of breaths. “Jawohl?”

  “Colonel Truchsess von Kardenberg, this is Major General Pfaff. Gather what provisions you can, and evacuate your men and your prisoners.”

  Armin’s heart stopped. “Evacuate …” This was a superior officer, someone with access to information well above Armin’s pay grade. He was in no position to question him. “Evacuate to where?”

  The guard’s eyes widened.

  On the phone, the officer said, “North. Move north. See if Stalag Neustadt has space for you.”

  Armin schooled his expression for the benefit of the guard and Schäfer. “How much time?”

  “Go now, Colonel.”

  “I have in excess of two hundred men here, Herr Generalmajor. How much time?”

  The man huffed sharply. “Days. Perhaps less. Move now.”

  Click. And the line was silent.

  Armin exhaled slowly through his nose. He lowered the receiver, feeling around blindly until he found the cradle.

  “We’re evacuating, Colonel?” Schäfer prodded him.

  Armin didn’t answer immediately. He let the orders sink in, let the reality take hold. Then, he nodded. “Yes. Gather what supplies can be carried.”

  “We’ll need cars, trucks,” the guard offered softly.

  “Yes. Take … take what you can to the village. Offer a trade. Whatever you can get.”

  The guard gave him a sharp salute, and Armin wanted to lash out at him for wasting precious time with absurd formalities, but that itself would take even more time. So he simply returned the salute, and the guard left.

  Schäfer touched Armin’s shoulder. “Are you all right, Colonel?”

  Armin closed his eyes and nodded. “Bring Chandler and Millington-Smythe immediately. Don’t let word spread yet.”

  “At once.” Schäfer left, and Armin envied him that energetic stride. Schäfer still had a purpose, still the energy to uphold one. These days, Armin chalked it up as a victory when he managed to leave his bed in the morning. Like some prisoners who suddenly turned morose and couldn’t be roused, some not even for Appell.

  After so many years in the military, Armin had mastered the art of simply doing things because they were routine. This, however, was anything but.

  Evacuate? North? Hearsay had it that Stalag Neustadt was a lice-infested, dirty, starving hell of a camp, hardly adequate to house officers and closer to a concentration camp in all but name. He’d have disregarded the hearsay, if it hadn’t come from a Red Cross inspector who found Ahlenstieg “mostly adequate, certainly one of the best camps we’ve inspected.” So much for lapses in military bearing.

  The door opened again and a disgruntled Chandler and a cautious-looking Millington-Smythe entered.

  “Please sit.” Armin waited for their usual show of reluctance, then sat down when they’d settled. “I’m afraid I have bad news. We will have to evacuate the camp.”

  “Hardly bad news,” Chandler huffed.

  “It will be for the wounded and cripples. We’ve been ordered to move north and we don’t have a great deal of transportation.”

  “Enough for the wounded?”

  “We’re doing what we can.” Armin drew up his shoulders.

  “Colonel, if I may.” Millington-Smythe leaned forward. “The front is only days away. You could let yourself be overrun. Spare the men and your soldiers a trek on foot in the teeth of winter.”

  Armin nearly burst out laughing. “A German winter is nothing compared to a Russian one.”

  “Still. You know the war is almost over. The Allies are close. If you give yourself up, you save yourself a battle and dead men. You might save lives if you yield, Kommandant.” Millington-Smythe sounded genuine, earnest. He’d have made a decent diplomat, or a father talking sense into a rebellious son. For years, that was exactly what he had done at Ahlenstieg.

  Chandler, who’d appeared confused at the unexpected turn in the conversation, looked at each of them in turn. “And even if we do evacuate, what happens if we run out of ‘north?’ Where’s the destination? We can’t just set off into nothing.”

  “There’s Neustadt a few days’ march away.”

  “Won’t they be evacuating, too?”

  Armin shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “You’ll just toss us out into the winter and have no provisions, no transportation, and you’re putting the men’s lives at risk—for what? For your stubbornness?” Chandler seemed to have warmed up to the new thrust of the discussion.

  Armin straightened. “I have orders.”

  “Kommandant.” The British SBO again. “If you stay here, there’s food and shelter. The front will overrun us, and you can capitulate with honor and dignity. Chandler and I will do what we can to protect you and the rest of the garrison.”

  It was tempting. He knew Millington-Smythe had been taken without a fight, and he assumed many others in the camp too. Except for one small detail.

  “I truly appreciate your concern, Lieutenant Colonel. It’s a sensible idea.” The two men already perked up, but then Armin shook his head. “The problem I see is this: We don’t know whether it’s the British or the Americans or the Russians. And after what I’ve seen in Russia, I will never let any German be taken alive by the Ivan. I know for a fact they will not take me alive, and I’m still responsible for all the men under my command.”

  Chandler bristled, shifting in his chair, and his features tightened, reminding Armin only briefly of Holzknecht’s ever-present expression.

  Millington-Smythe spoke first, though. “Someone has to know who’s closing in. Surely you can get that information.” His eyes darted toward the phone. Then Chandler’s did. Then Armin’s.

  Armin drummed his fingers. The lines were likely clogged with officers frantically ordering camps and units out of harm’s way. Any call he made that went through would likely be met with an angry demand to know why he was questioning those above him and wasting valuable time.

  He looked across the desk. “I will find out what I can. But for now, we must assume that evacuation is imminent. Have your men pack what they can carry, and report back to Hauptmann Schäfer or myself with the requirements to move the wounded.”

  Both men started to speak, but Armin put up his hand. “Dismissed. I will advise you if anything should change.”

  The two prisoners glanced at each other, a mixture of irritation and worry on both of their faces, but they didn’t protest. They rose and left Armin’s office without stopping for any formalities.

  Alone again. Armin tapped his fingers beside the phone. Millington-Smythe and Chandler were right. Assuming the front that was closing in was not made up of Russians, staying here would be the safest option. But the alternative—

  “Colonel.” Schäfer appeared in the doorway. “You’re needed in the courtyard.”

  Armin rose. “For what? Don’t tell me the enemy is here already.”

  “No,” Schäfer said as they started down the corridor. “Worse.”

  “Worse?”

  “Indeed. It’s Holzknecht.”

  “Isn’t this just a day of delights,” Armin muttered darkly.

  Stepping outside, he saw Holzknecht, along with a handful of men, and a truck. Some of Armin’s guards stood uneasily around, and just then, thunder rolled across the sky in the distance. Across a blue sky. The skin on Armin’s neck tightened. The enemy was that close, and the other enemy even closer. A number of POWs had lazily rolled a football around in the corner of the yard, but one of them picked it up and held it under his arm.

  Armin stepped up to Holzknecht. They exchanged that infernal Heil Hitler greeting and before Holzknecht could say anything, Armin noted, “One truck is hardly enough to evacuate Ahlenstieg.”

  “It’s not for the evacuation. It’s for a transfer.” Hol
zknecht nodded at the man next to him, who handed Armin papers.

  Armin leafed through the orders. Then looked back at Holzknecht. “So tell me what you’re planning to do with the twenty highest-ranking POWs.”

  “Not your concern.” Holzknecht pointed at the orders. “Those are official.”

  They were. Signed and sealed. But if most of the men were to “walk north,” and some of them vanished into the SS’s pockets—to reappear as pawns or disappear forever, that was his concern.

  “Schäfer, please round up the top twenty highest-ranking officer-prisoners.”

  Schäfer saluted and turned, rapidly motioning for some of the guards to follow him. The football players in the corner had vanished without a trace, like ghosts. POWs mastered that skill over the years.

  Armin rolled back onto the balls of his feet. “Doesn’t it strike you as odd to collect the most valuable hostages in this way?”

  “They have intelligence we need.”

  “These men have been locked away and isolated for months, if not years. They know nothing of value.”

  “That’s not for you to decide.”

  Armin pursed his lips, then looked around and up. Hundreds of eyes were on them. The castle had fallen oddly silent, too. In the distance, guns snarled at each other. War was no place for flesh. It was steel against steel, and flesh could be easily mangled and was difficult to repair. It really had no place in war anymore.

  “I protest sharply!” Chandler snapped when two guards pushed him out of the door. For a moment, he seemed about to punch somebody, but slipped on the steps and barely caught himself. The guard didn’t make a move to catch him had he fallen.

  Millington-Smythe went more quietly, but his eyes were burning holes in Armin’s. An intensity, half vengeful and half pleading that wouldn’t have been out of place in The Count of Monte Cristo.

  Armin turned back to Holzknecht. “What you’re planning to do is against the Geneva Conventions.”

  “Humanitarian hogwash.” Holzknecht sneered. “The Master Race does not give quarter.”

  Armin swallowed. Propaganda had turned toward imploring everybody to be hard and merciless, but all that meant giving up what little humanity they still possessed.

  “Shackle them,” Holzknecht called over his shoulder. “Shoot them if they resist.”

  Keeping men in shackles was another violation. Shooting them outright—even worse.

  “Obersturmbannführer, the Geneva Conventions will be the only thing that stand between German prisoners and the Allies, too.”

  Holzknecht reached for his pistol. “That’s defeatist talk.”

  “No. I’m not saying we’ll lose this war. I am saying that the Allies have German prisoners. The Geneva Conventions are mutually binding. That’s why the Eastern Front is worse than the Western Front. Stalin never signed it.”

  “So?” Holzknecht’s lips pulled into a small smile. “What’s your point?”

  “I can’t allow you to take those prisoners.”

  The Obersturmbannführer’s eyebrows climbed his forehead. “Allow? Colonel, you are out of—”

  “You are in my camp.” Armin’s stomach twisted. The semi-frozen ground beneath his boots was beginning to feel like thin, splintering ice. “And you’re not taking my prisoners in violation of—”

  “These orders are from SS Obergruppenführer Meier himself, Colonel!” Holzknecht snatched them from Armin and waved them in his face. “You will stand down and let—”

  “I will do no such thing.” Armin stepped closer, narrowing his eyes. “These men are my responsibility, and—”

  “And what will your responsibility be when the Americans close in?” Holzknecht snarled. “To give them back and surrender yourself like a coward?”

  Armin glanced past him, at the horizon, as if the blue sky might suddenly confirm what the man had let slip. No Russians, then. The ice beneath his feet was getting thinner by the second, but the same could not be said for his backbone. He glared at Holzknecht. “No one is leaving my camp.”

  “No …” Holzknecht stared at him, sputtering. “This is treason.” He went for his pistol, but Armin was faster.

  Everyone in the camp froze. No one breathed. Even the gunfire in the distance seemed to quiet, and all the world stared at the pistol aimed squarely at Holzknecht’s forehead.

  “No one,” Armin growled, “is leaving my camp.”

  Fear and fury vied for dominance in Holzknecht’s expression. When his eyes flicked toward Armin, his skin became so taut it was nearly translucent. When they flicked toward the Luger’s muzzle aimed steadily at his face, creases formed between his eyebrows, and the corners of his mouth twitched.

  “You will be executed for this, you know.” His voice trembled just slightly. “Unless you plan to shoot every one of my men too.”

  “So be it. At least I won’t die with twenty more men’s lives on my conscience.”

  “You’re a traitor, von Kardenberg.” His eyes slid toward his men. “Round up the prisoners. Shoot any man who—”

  Armin squeezed the trigger.

  Holzknecht dropped.

  Immediately, every one of Armin’s guards raised his weapon, aiming at the men who’d accompanied Holzknecht. Nobody moved. Nobody made a sound. The distant gunfire seemed to have stopped now, but Armin’s ears rang too much to be sure.

  Moving slowly, he lowered the pistol and turned to Holzknecht’s escorts.

  They stared back at him, eyes wide, hands hovering near rifle butts and holstered pistols. One gulped. Another glanced at the guards with weapons trained on them. His eyes darted toward Holzknecht’s corpse. Then, slowly, he raised his hands and placed them behind his head. Beside him, another did the same.

  Armin glanced at his own men. When he looked back at the group of SS soldiers, his stomach knotted tighter. Despite their uniforms, the distinctive insignia of the Führer’s most fanatical believers, they had become boys. Young. Shaken. Knees trembling and eyes round.

  Armin holstered his pistol. Then he gestured at his men. “Lower your weapons.”

  They hesitated.

  “But, Colonel …” Schäfer eyed him. “They—”

  “They’ve surrendered.” He scanned the prisoners who’d watched this whole exchange. To Schäfer, he said, “Disarm them. Take them to the hole and keep them all separated, but make sure they have rations just like any other prisoner.”

  Schäfer blinked. “But …”

  “Was I unclear, Hauptmann?”

  “No. No, Colonel.” Schäfer cleared his throat, saluted Armin, and ordered the small contingent of guards to carry out Armin’s command. As the men were marched—hands still behind their heads—out of the yard and down to the hole, Armin gestured sharply to Millington-Smythe and Chandler.

  They exchanged uncertain looks, and then jogged across the yard.

  “The evacuation is cancelled,” he said. “I will do my best to get the message of surrender to the Americans before there is any risk of Ahlenstieg taking fire, but I can’t guarantee anything. Advise your men to stay within the walls, away from windows. Keep provisions nearby and distribute first aid supplies just in case.”

  Chandler swallowed. “You’re … you’re surrendering, then.”

  Armin glanced at Holzknecht, then at Chandler. “I don’t suppose I have a choice now, do I?”

  The American held his gaze, and for the first time, genuinely smiled at Armin. “This won’t be forgotten.”

  Armin nodded. Then he gestured toward the gathered men. “Go. There may not be much time.”

  As if to underscore how little time there was, a mortar boomed in the distance, vibrating the ground beneath their boots.

  “Go,” Armin repeated.

  Chandler turned on his heel and hurried toward the others.

  “Thank you, Colonel,” Millington-Smythe said. “If I had to be a prisoner in this war, thank God it was in a camp under your command.”

  He didn’t wait for a response, and jogg
ed after Chandler. The two commanding officers barked orders at their men, and immediately, the prisoners started dispersing and hurrying back into the castle.

  One paused, and through the crowd, met Armin’s eyes.

  Mark’s expression was unreadable. Fear, relief, confusion—probably a little of each. A faint smile formed, though, and Armin returned it.

  And then Mark hurried after the others.

  Alone in the courtyard, Armin pushed out a breath, forming a thin cloud above Holzknecht’s motionless form. Both sides could hang him now. Or worse.

  But soon, the prisoners would be back among their own, en route to their homelands and their lives away from this place. None would be marching as human shields and bargaining chips for Holzknecht, or trudging through the bitter cold to almost certain death.

  Perhaps none of that would be enough to save Armin’s life, but it was enough to give him peace.

  And after all the things this war had done and all that it had taken, peace was enough.

  Chapter 28

  Mark helped the other men organize provisions, distributing anything they could find to the various rooms deemed safe enough to wait out the next few days or hours. All the while, Mark couldn’t get the image out of his mind. Armin facing off with Holzknecht. Pulling the gun. Killing Holzknecht without flinching.

  The gunfire in the distance was intermittent now, but whenever it started up again, it was closer than before. Mark was surprised he couldn’t hear truck or even tank engines yet, but he had a feeling that wasn’t far off. Rumor had it, there were American troops on their way in. Allied, anyway. Not Russian, not German—that was all that was important.

  And when they got here, then what?

  Worry nauseated Mark. Regardless of everything Armin had done to save some or all of them from the “evacuation,” he was Kommandant of this camp, and therefore anything that had happened here was on his shoulders.

  If the men rolling in were shell-shocked and combat weary, if they’d recently witnessed their friends mowed down by German fire, few would blame them if they took it out on Armin. Hang him. Shoot him.