by Leo Kessler
Christmas passed in an alcoholic haze. The Battalion was kept on alert status and only local leave was allowed. Schulze staggered off to his two whores, laden with bottles and half a side of beef he had managed to get out of the ‘kitchen bulls’, swearing that he wasn’t going to get out of bed for three days. But most of the Wotan men spent the free days in the local pubs, getting steadily and deliberately drunk, gorging themselves with the extra rations which the Führer granted the whole of the Wehrmacht and snoring on their beds thereafter.
The Führer’s traditional New Year speech was looked forward to with unusual expectancy; and many were expecting him to announce that the Army would have a real crack against the Tommies before the spring. Why else the intensive training with the amphibious tanks? And in the evening when the drunks had returned from the smoky local pubs the barrack rooms would be loud with the drunken bawling of that proud song Wir fahren gegen Engel-land:
“Our flag waves as we march along.
It is an emblem of the power of our Reich
And we can no longer endure
That the Englishman should laugh at it
So give me thy hand, thy fair white hand
Ere we sail away to conquer Eng-el-land!”
But when the Führer’s speech finally came it was strangely enigmatic. “It is the will of the democratic war makers and their Jewish capitalistic wire-pullers,” he roared at the crowd in the Berlin Sportpalast, “that the war must be continued. We are ready!” he bellowed.
The huge audience exploded into a frenzied Sieg Heil. The band of the Berlin Guard Battalion crashed into the Horst Wessel Lied, the anthem of the Movement. A thousand voices took it up.
Kuno von Dodenburg looked across the mess table at his companions. They too had been caught up in the excitement of it all.
Schwarz sprang to his feet, his face burning. He raised his glass of champagne to the third button of his tunic as military custom prescribed, elbow extended at a right angle to the glass. “Meine Herren,” he said exuberantly. “To the great German victory of the year to come!”
They flung back their chairs. Clicking their heels together excitedly they echoed his cry: “To the great German victory of the year to come!”
With a crash their champagne glasses shattered against the big marble fireplace.
Only the Vulture seemed not to share their enthusiasm. His eyes cynical and not a little contemptuous of such a display of emotion, he walked over and switched off the pear-shaped ‘People’s Receiver’.
“I’ve always thought that the Horst Wessel Lied was such a vulgar tune,” he said provocatively. “Deutsch land über alles was good enough for the regular Army.” He took his seat again. “Besides I’m told the chap was a pimp3, though,” he added, “they too have their uses, so I’m told.”
They glared at him in silence. As party members and former Hitler Youth leaders, they had been brought up to regard the Horst Wessel Lied as almost holy; yet they knew they would lose if they took up the Vulture’s challenge. Like his namesake he was a wily old bird, and few would dare, as he did, to call their divisional commander ‘that ex-sergeant who directs our destiny – thanks to the protection of the greatest captain of all times’ without running the risk of being dragged away by the Gestapo. Major Geier had powerful protectors in high places and both he and they knew it. So they held their peace. “What did you think of the Führer’s speech sir?” von Dodenburg asked, feeling that as senior officer he had to bridge the gap between his CO and the others. “Does it mean England in the spring – and victory?” The Vulture did not answer for a moment; finally he unscrewed his monocle and looked at them with mocking, cynical eyes. “One wonders,” he said, “if the Führer of the Greater German Empire in his infinite wisdom, will be satisfied with such a puny prize. Just little England and then the war fizzles out like that!” He snapped his fingers together. “Why, gentlemen, I’m not even a colonel yet. Could the Führer do that to me? Surely he has greater plans for us all!”
“What do you mean, sir?”
But before the Vulture could answer, the first drunken chorus of Stille Nacht came floating across the frozen courtyard outside. The Major pushed back his chair and they all rose. “Gentlemen,” he announced, “I think it is time to go and wish the men a Happy New Year.”
Dutifully they trooped out into the night. Von Dodenburg looked up at the black infinity of the sky and shivered slightly. Where would that sky see him on next New Year’s Eve? As they stamped across the frozen know towards the central dining hall, his face creased into a puzzled frown. What did the Vulture mean by ‘even greater plans’? Did he know something they didn’t? And if so, what? Suddenly he shivered again. But this time it wasn’t with the cold; it was with an uneasy feeling of apprehension.
“You buggers run after rumours like a randy fifteen year old after a bit of arse,” Metzger said thickly. “You want to live for the day. Besides the Army doesn’t pay the likes of you to think.”
“Well who does it pay to think then, Sergeant Metzger?” Schulze asked cheekily. “You?”
Metzger, his cheeks almost crimson with beer and Korn, did not notice the sarcasm; he never did. “Naturally. That’s why I’m this battalion’s senior NCO – you might even say the most senior NCO in the whole Bodyguard – and you lot are ordinary hairy-arsed stubble-hoppers.” He took another slug of Korn and followed it with a hearty drink of beer. “As far as you’re concerned, you’ll go where they send you and that’s that.”
“But we’re going to England, aren’t we?” someone asked.
“Yer,” a blond youth next to Schulze said. “I’ve planned to dip mine in some English duchess’ twat like you see in the pictures. Give her something to remember the SS by.”
“A nice dose of clap perhaps?” suggested Schulze. The Butcher looked at the blond youth contemptuously. “You and your Tommy Duchess!” He took a deep gulp of his beer and poked a finger at the youth. “What do you know, eh? What about the fur jackets they’ve been delivering to those thieving storeroom ‘clothing bulls’ all week, what about them?” He swayed drunkenly and would have fallen if Schulze hadn’t grabbed him.
“Metzger!”
He spun round. The Vulture looked at him menacingly. “Enough of that,” the CO snapped.
“Yessir,” the Butcher shouted and raised his glass. “Let’s have a toast for the CO lads. Ex!”4
“Ex!” they roared back.
Korn followed Korn. A heavy, grey mist descended before Kuno von Dodenburg’s eyes through which he could vaguely make out the sweating faces around him. As a result it seemed natural that he should follow Schulze into the night after the latter had suggested with drunken formality: “Would the Captain have the goodness to come with me in order to indulge in some pleasure?”
The fresh air did nothing to clear his head. The thick blue haze of the brothel didn’t help either; and later the events of that last night in the old year seemed to him in retrospect like the flickering vague pictures of an old newsreel; a huge old woman, who spoke neither German nor French, grabbing at his flies and in a frenzy of drunken passion flinging up her wide skirt to reveal the obscene folds of her belly and the shaven gash below; a younger woman in a soldier’s cap and jackboot but otherwise naked, trying to do something with a banana to a giggling, drunken blonde; a girl – perhaps sixteen at the most – climbing on a squeaky brass bed on her hands and knees and wiggling her buttocks at him as he tried to get out of his clothes; and finally the last night of the year slipping away from him in the arms of the young girl.
It was a cold, grey New Year’s morning and von Dodenburg, creeping out of the now silent brothel, felt dirty and unshaven. He took a deep breath and shivered. Then he set off briskly towards the barracks, his feet crunching over the frozen snow.
The little Flemish coastal town was still not awake and he wanted to get back to his quarters before anyone saw him. But he was not to do so. He had just turned into the Parklaan when he bumped into Simone as
she trudged wearily through the snow, pushing her pre-war bicycle.
“You,” he said stupidly.
“Kuno!”
“Happy New Year,” he said, noticing how thin and pale she had grown since he had last seen her.
“The same to you, Kuno.”
“You’re out early,” he remarked awkwardly, avoiding her eye.
“You too. I’m on early shift at the hospital.”
“I see.”
For a long moment they stood there in the snow, not knowing what to say to each other. Then she swung her leg over her saddle. “I must go,” she said.
“I’ll be late otherwise.”
“Of course. Goodbye, Simone.”
“Goodbye, Kuno.”
Her rusty chain squeaked in protest as she pedalled away, while he stared after her, feeling angry with him self for not having asked to see her again.
He had almost reached the barracks when he realized that hers was the only track on the surface of the fresh snow and that it ran out into the countryside beyond. He stopped and pushed back his cap in bewilderment. Simone had not come from her home – it was on the other side of the town. He stared at the lone track running through the snow and asked himself, not for the last time, where the hell she had come from.
Notes
1. Admiral Doenitz, head of the German U-boat service and last head of the German state after Hitler’s death.
2. German Counter-Intelligence.
3. Horst Wessel was a parson’s son who forsook his family to go and live with a prostitute in the Berlin slums. There he devoted his life to the National Socialist cause and was killed in 1930 by the Communists. He became the Party’s greatest martyr.
4. German Army toast meaning, roughly, “no heel taps”.
SIX
The first bullet whizzed through the window which splintered into a sudden spider’s web. In the corner of the compartment a newly joined cadet-officer, from the Bad Toelz training school, clutched his throat. Without a sound he fell on his face across the seat opposite – dead.
“There’s somebody out there shooting!” Schwartz shouted somewhat superfluously. Bullets were pattering against the side of the train, which was bringing them back from training on the Somme, like a heavy summer rain on a tin roof. Another sawed its way through and struck the nozzle of the fire extinguisher. As they struggled to draw their pistols, thick white foam spurted all over them. Frantically wiping the muck from his face, von Dodenburg let loose a burst from his machine pistol at the firs on the side of the incline up which the heavily laden troop train was climbing.
Ugly stabs of red answered him. He caught a glimpse of a hunched figure running awkwardly over the snow. He squeezed the trigger.
Suddenly there was a great heave. The wall of the compartment swung up in front of von Dodenburg and he was thrown off his feet into the confused mess of men and equipment on the foam-slippery floor, the fire extinguisher gurgling its last like a man with a throat wound.
“Get out – out everybody!” the Vulture ordered from the next compartment. “Take up defensive positions!”
They fought their way up the sloping, splintered floor of the wrecked train and dropped into the deep snow. Up ahead the locomotive reared up on its tender like a toy train derailed by some mischievous child, but the cries of pain from the shattered leading carriages were proof that this was no game.
A small round grenade came wobbling through the air. Von Dodenburg could see it quite clearly, black against the blue winter sky. He ducked and it exploded behind him with an ugly crump. Splinters hissed through the wrecked train and a man screamed in agony. He fired a wild burst into the trees and a civilian pitched forward out of a bush and lay still in the snow. Behind him a woman appeared and seemed about to run out to him but a pair of hands grabbed her and dragged her back. In that split second von Dodenburg recognised her face.
All spirit drained out of him, as if he had suddenly been kicked in the stomach and he let the Schmeisser drop. Behind him the Vulture yelled an order and nearly a hundred men opened fire as one. The volley struck the firs like a great wind. Twigs flew everywhere and suddenly the firs were flecked with white spots, where the bark had been chipped off, like the symptoms of some particularly unpleasant skin disease. A civilian staggered into the field, his hands held high in surrender. Schwarz ignored the gesture and let him have a burst. At once his face looked as if someone had thrown a handful of strawberry jam at it. He fell screaming.
Then the locomotive’s boiler exploded and the firing from the firs stopped. The civilians were making good their escape, dragging their wounded with them. “Stop firing,” the Vulture shouted, standing upright in spite of the fist-sized pieces of red-hot metal hissing through the air. He could have been on some peacetime firing range.
Now there was no sound save the groans of the wounded and the drip-drip of oil escaping from the carriages’ ruptured axles. The troopers got up, rubbing the snow off their knees, but von Dodenburg remained where he was staring stupidly at the shattered firs from which the ambush had come. There was no doubt in his mind that it was Simone he had seen.
“I’d like to thank you for the tip, Captain,” the fat Gestapo man said, without removing the cigar from his thick lips. “The woman had been in it from the start. The hospital was an ideal place for her. Fellows in hospital always talk to the nurses, don’t they?” He relit his cigar with elaborate ceremony. “I believe,” he said with the typical insinuation of cops the world over, “that you met her a couple of times?”
“Yes, she nursed me when I was wounded.”
“Did she try to pump you?”
“With England three hours away, everybody here knew what we had been up to,” von Dodenburg said curtly.
“I see.” The Commissar made a careful note in his little black notebook. “I see.” Then he clapped it to with an air of finality. “Well, that’s that, Captain von Dodenburg. And once again many thanks for your help. Now we’ve got the lot of them, you’ll have a bit of peace around here again while you train for – er – England.” He smiled suddenly, as if at a private joke.
“And the woman?” von Dodenburg asked, ignoring the smile.
“The woman?” The fat Gestapo man stopped at the door. “Your Death’s Head chaps are taking care of her for us.”
“What do you mean?”
“At Henri Chapelle near Liège. They’re going to shoot her on Thursday with the other two. Do you think I could get a rum grog at your mess? It’s cold enough outside freeze the eggs off you!”
An old woman, with a shawl over her head, was pouring a pail of slops into the open gutter. A man in wooden clogs was chopping wood in the garden next door. A couple of middle-aged workmen, cigarettes glued to their bottom lips, heads buried in the collars of their shabby coats, stamped by in the snow. But none of the civilians took any notice of the German officers in their black dress uniforms getting out of the official cars.
“We’re here for the spy thing,” one of them said to the corporal standing in the red-and-white sentry box, his feet protected against the freezing cold by great felt boots.
“Through the gate and over there in the quadrangle, sir. Executions begin today at ten.” He said the words as if he were announcing the next performance of the local cinema.
Silently they marched across the dirty square and on to a field. A fat captain in the Death’s Head was waiting for them there. He was quite young and the only decoration he wore was the War Service Cross, second class. As if this were a social occasion, he shook their hands formally, asking them if they had had a good trip.
“I suppose you understand about the censorship regulations, gentlemen?” he asked. “No letters home. No reference to the executions in writing in any form. We don’t want to make heroes of these people. Nor do we want to alarm our folk comrades1 back home in the Reich, do we?”
The officers from the Armed SS, picked from every battalion of the ‘Bodyguard’ to witness the executions, nod
ded and murmured their understanding.
“All right, shall we go?”
They walked to another field, rough and uneven with frozen footprints. Beyond the high barbed wire which bordered it, the ground dropped abruptly to a snow-filled valley. But their eyes were not on the valley; they were fixed on the three posts in the middle of the field and the black-uniformed squad of Death’s Head men smoking and chatting among themselves as if they were called on to carry out executions every day of their lives.
Von Dodenburg looked around, as if it were somehow important to imprint the place on his mind’s eye. It was a landscape meant to die in – the ground harsh and barren, the grass thin and grey, the sky a leaden white, heralding more snow to come.
There was the sound of boots crunching over the frozen ground. He turned. It was Simone, deathly pale and clad in a grey prison overall. On either side of her walked two homely-looking Flemish boys, their hands hanging below the sleeves of their shabby jackets. They looked pathetic and there was no dignity in the manner of their last walk. The Death’s Head Captain acknowledged the salutes of the guard as if they were on a parade ground, then directed that the prisoners should be tied to the posts. The guards moved quickly and efficiently – they had done this often enough before – while the three stared rigidly ahead like nineteenth century woodcuts of an execution.
An ancient Belgian padre in a rusty robe came out and mumbled a few words, a prayer book trembling in his skinny hands. “Hired killers,” a young officer at von Dodenburg’s side murmured, “why all the fuss? Should have shot them out of hand.”
Von Dodenburg stared at Simone and remembered the perspiration streaming down between her breasts and the ecstatic contortions of her body. She would never do that again; she would never do anything again.
“Hab acht!” the Death’s Head captain ordered.
