by Leo Kessler
For a while as the plane droned on, von Dodenburg let his mind wander. He wondered how the new recruits, the youngsters who had joined his First Company to replace the losses of the Balkan campaign, would fare in combat. He considered how his veterans would take to the strict water rationing they would have to impose in the desert; how they'd fare against the British without armour or heavy weapons. Slowly his eyes started to close once more as he was lulled into the doze occasioned by the steady boring progress of the old three-engined transport eastwards. To his right, Sergeant Schulze began to snore once more. Not for long.
Suddenly, startlingly, there was the abrupt clatter of machine-gun fire. Von Dodenburg woke from his new doze with a start. He was just in time to catch a glimpse of a single-engined fighter flashing back the port, trailing white smoke behind it, as the fuselage flooded with the acrid stink of burnt cordite and cold air. On the floor a young reinforcement writhed in his death throes, choking on his own bright red blood, his plea "Mama... Mama," barely audible as he died in front of them.
In an instant all was confusion as the young Luftwaffe pilot broke formation, Next moment he was diving to the bright blue sea below, as yet another fighter came bursting through the Junkers' formation, machine guns spitting angry blue fire at the cumbersome transports. But they, too, were reacting, scattering crazily, their gunners answering the enemy fire the best they could. For they knew they were hopelessly out-gunned by their attackers, and at least a couple of hundred kilometres per hour slower.
At the controls of von Dodenburg's Junkers, the pilot fought desperately to shake off his attacker and at the same time bring the three-engined plane out of her dive before she smacked straight into the sea, which was looming larger and larger by the instant.
On his seat, holding on to a spar for all he was worth, von Dodenburg willed him to succeed as the pilot heaved and heaved at the joystick, almost standing up in his seat, his shoulder muscles threatening to burst through the thin material of his coverall at any moment.
Again there was the clatter of machine-gun fire, and slugs ripped the length of the Junkers' fuselage. Abruptly, ragged silver holes appeared as if by magic and men fell writhing to the deck, as their attacker zoomed away in a tight turn, perhaps believing he had finished the Junkers off for good. But he hadn't.
Slowly, awesomely slowly, the plane began to come out of that dive of death. Its every rivet and panel howled in protest at the tremendous strain. White-faced with fear, eyes bulging out of their heads like men demented, the troopers clung to their seats, some howling without restraint, a few even praying.
Suddenly the pilot slumped into his seat. For a moment von Dodenburg thought it was just with relief at the fact he had pulled the plane out of that fatal dive. Then he saw he was wrong. There was deep-red blood pumping from the Luftwaffe man's right shoulder. He had been hit – badly. "Scheisse," he cursed. None of them could fly a plane. If the pilot went now, their goose would be cooked. "Lieutenant Singh," he called urgently, as the British fighter came in yet again, determined to knock the German plane out of the sky. "Attend to the pilot."
"Sir!" Singh didn't hesitate. He sprang from his seat and rushed to aid the wounded man.
Von Dodenburg craned his neck and cursed as the enemy fighter opened up yet again, angry purple flame rippling the length of its wings, as its eight Browning machine guns burst into frenetic life.
Tracer slammed into the port wing. The engine spluttered. For a moment von Dodenburg's heart stopped. Then the damaged engine came to life once more, but now he could see the black smoke pouring from it in thick clouds. He knew it wouldn't last much longer. Von Dodenburg said a quick prayer that the wounded pilot, with Singh's aid, could keep the crippled Junkers in the air till they were over land. He'd feel safer if the pilot could ditch the plane on terra firma. But that wasn't to be.
Suddenly the port engine cut out for good. For one long, frightening moment, as the plane lurched sharply to starboard, von Dodenburg thought the wounded pilot wouldn't be able to hold the Junkers. But with Singh's help he did. Now, with black smoke trailing behind her, the Junkers headed for the land. Still the British fighter plane didn't let up. Jockeying for position, it clung to the dying plane's tail, trying to get in that killing burst that would tear the Junkers out of the sky.
Somehow or other the pilot managed to toss the plane from side to side every time the fighter was about to fire that final murderous volley. How the pilot did it, dying as he was at the controls, von Dodenburg never found out. Besides, he had no time to consider the matter now. Shouting above the whine of the dying plane and the chatter of the fighter's eight machine guns, he ordered, "Prepare to ditch... For God's sake, prepare to ditch!"
The survivors of the First Company needed no urging. The ground was racing up to meet them at a frightening rate now. They raised their feet and buried their faces in their clasped arms, tensed for the inevitable impact. Von Dodenburg made one last check, as behind them the British fighter plane gave up and broke to the right, its pilot obviously satisfied that the Junkers and everyone on board her was doomed. Then he too took up the ditching position, his heart pounding in the knowledge that the next few minutes decided whether he would live or die. Now he had lost all control over his young life. He was at the mercy of fate. He could only crouch tensed here and wait for the inevitable to happen. He gave a hollow laugh. What was it they always proclaimed in SS Assault Battalion – march or croak? Now he was no longer able to decide which to do.
The roar of the surviving two motors ceased abruptly. It was replaced by the eerie sound of wind whistling through the bullet holes in the Junkers' fabric.
With that air, von Dodenburg, head bent into his arms, could smell the scent of the land, the mixture of herbs and exotic plants. For a moment the imagined scene took his mind off what was to come. Abruptly Singh's cry alerted him. He tensed, as Singh repeated in a fragile broken voice, "This is it. We – " The rest of his words were cut off by a tremendous bang as the Junkers hit the earth. Its undercarriage took the impact and the three-engined plane bounced upwards once more like an express lift. A moment later it hit the ground once more. This time the undercarriage snapped and collapsed immediately. The fuselage slammed to the ground and then they were racing forward at a hundred kilometres an hour, as the dying pilot tried frantically to keep control of the plane. To no avail. It slithered and shimmied forward, the rocks and the rough terrain tearing the guts out of it.
Men screamed. Others were thrown out of their seats and slammed against the walls, to lie there in grotesque positions like broken dolls. Desperately, von Dodenburg hung on. To his front, Schulze roared, "Fuck this for a game o' soldiers... I'm getting off." He wasn't. Next moment he slammed his shaven head against the shattered fuselage and went out like a light.
Then it happened. The Junkers hit the side of a rock wall. Its crazy progress across that wild barren landscape, trailing bits and pieces of severed metal behind it, ended. With a great lurch and rending of torn metal, the rump rose high into the air. Something struck von Dodenburg hard across the face. He yelled with acute pain. Next moment everything went black.
CHAPTER 9
Groggily, von Dodenburg pulled his way out of the smoking wreckage of the fuselage. There were dead and dying men everywhere, sprawled out in the wrecked plane, some of their faces bloody unrecognisable masks.
For a few moments, von Dodenburg wanted to do nothing but get out and breathe in the clear air to escape the cloying petrol fumes of that place of death. His mind wouldn't function any further than that. A big hand like a small steam shovel grabbed his and led him out, as if he were a very old and feeble person. Under other circumstances, he would have shaken it off angrily. Not now. He felt the need for any support that could be given to him. Gratefully he let himself be led to a stunted olive tree where his benefactor – it was Schulze, his broad face a mess of blood – stood him against it and ordered, "Breathe in nice and slow, sir. It'll do yer good. Though a good stiff
shot of Westphalian Korn'd be better for yer." Schulze gave a great sigh, like a man sorely tried by the injustices of this world.
"Thank you, Schulze," von Dodenburg heard himself say, as if from a long way off. "Look after the men..." His words dribbled away. Schulze had already gone back to the wreckage and was pulling a heavy panel of metal from a man trapped beneath it.
Von Dodenburg sucked in the clear air gratefully. The black mist which had threatened to overcome him was beginning to dissipate at last, and he knew it was time that he took charge. He had to make some sort of order from this confused mess before any further trouble made its appearance, and he was sure, for what reason he couldn't fathom at that moment, that it would.
About an hour later, von Dodenburg knew the worst. He had lost ten men, with a further five pretty badly hurt – sufficiently so that they couldn't march. The thought of what he would have to do to those poor devils filled him with dread. But for the time being he concentrated on burying the dead, patching up the lightly wounded, and sorting out whatever supplies they might be able to take with them, though what their objective might be, von Dodenburg hadn't the faintest idea. For the moment it seemed to him that they were in the middle of nowhere with sand and scrub stretching as far as the eye could see, without a dwelling of any kind in sight. In the end, he had given Singh, who had recovered from the ordeal of the crash as quickly as the Wotan old hares, the task of trying to establish their position.
Meanwhile, Schulze and Matz were trawling through the wreckage, in theory looking for anything that might be of use for the march. In fact, however, the two old hares were searching for something stronger than the water they had just drained from a shattered radiator and that taken from the water bottles of the troopers killed in the crash. It had been carefully tested before being distributed among the survivors, but so far the two veterans had found only one flask filled with cold tea instead of stale drinking water. As Schulze commented, wiping the beads of sweat from his forehead, "There ain't no justice for us common-or-garden stubble-hoppers, Matzi. Cold Tommy piss – " he meant tea – "what good's that to hairy-chested soldiers, I ask yer, comrade?"
Matz shrugged, as if the question was too overwhelming for him to comprehend. Instead he broke into the tuneless monotony of the old ditty, which recounted the tale of the unfortunate young lady called Starkie, "Who had an affair with a darkie. The result of her sins... was an eightsome of twins. Two black and two white and four khaki."
Sitting under the shade of the wrecked starboard wing, Lieutenant Singh looked up from the charred bit of map he had found in the dead pilot's cockpit. At that moment, von Dodenburg happened to glance in that direction. For a few moments he wondered what was going through the Indian's mind after hearing that little ditty, full of racial prejudice. For Singh's face revealed nothing, neither resentment nor hate. But then, von Dodenburg told himself, in the few days since he had first met the Indian lieutenant, Singh had shown nothing of his inner feelings. Admittedly he smiled a lot, as if he might be nervous, though at the same time he took himself and the cause of Free India very seriously. So what did go on in Singh's mind?
Five minutes later Singh called over and told von Dodenburg that he calculated they were somewhere on the border between Syria, Palestine and Iraq. "From what I have heard from our own people," he lectured an attentive von Dodenburg, "it is not the friendliest of places."
"What do you mean, Lieutenant?" von Dodenburg queried, his mind really concentrating on the awful thing he would have to do soon.
"Like most border people, those pay little loyalty to their official masters. They play off Arabs, Jews, Iraqis – " he shrugged – "you name it, against one another. Religion means little to them, too. But this does." He made the continental gesture of counting money with his thumb and forefinger. "Money, especially gold and silver coins, with which they adorn their womenfolk, that's the religion of those border people, so I have been told."
Von Dodenburg nodded his understanding. "Well, work out the route of march for us, Lieutenant. The heat of the day's over. We'd better get moving."
He didn't wait to see Singh's reaction. Indeed, he had already forgotten what he had just said to the Indian. Now his mind was racing electrically, full of what he had to do next before they left the wreck.
Slowly, his handsome face set and intent, he walked over to where the men who were dying were being sheltered under some stunted olive and camel scrub, cloths over their faces, soaked in precious water, to keep the flies and heat off. One or two of them were still moaning. Fortunately, however, they were unconscious, something for which von Dodenburg was grateful. Slowly the young officer loosened the catch of his pistol holster. Watching him, Schulze, his search for firewater abandoned, felt for his company commander. Twice he had seen officers carry out this horrible task in the campaign through the Balkans, where it had been feared they would have to abandon Wotan's wounded to the Serbs who kept cutting them off in the mountains during the attack on Belgrade. For Wotan, just like the rest of the feared elite SS formations, never left its wounded behind. If they couldn't take the wounded with them, then there was only one other alternative.
Now, von Dodenburg was having to face up to that terrible other alternative. Schulze wished he could have done the job for his admired company commander, but he knew that wasn't possible. It was a grim task, to be carried out by an officer only. For a few moments, an officer would play the role of God: decide between life and death for a fellow human being. It was something that the military establishment of the Waffen SS had decreed could only be left to a gentleman and a commissioned officer.
Slowly the young CO approached the first of the dying men, silent beneath the bloodstained tarpaulin which covered him. Gently von Dodenburg bent and removed the covering from his face. The boy, for he was one of the teenage reinforcements, didn't move. Fortunately he was too far gone. It was something for which von Dodenburg was profoundly grateful. He looked down for a moment at the boy he was now going to kill, and then he clicked off his safety. It seemed to make a hell of a row. Still the boy didn't stir. Carefully von Dodenburg bent and placed the muzzle of his pistol at the base of the dying kid's skull. He hesitated only a single moment. His jaw tightened. Next instant he jerked back the trigger of his pistol. The dying man started up as the bullet struck the back of his head. For an instant. He yelled. Not for long. Suddenly, the back of his head disappeared in a welter of dark red blood, through which the shattered bone gleamed like polished ivory.
Von Dodenburg swallowed hard. He felt himself beginning to tremble. The pistol wavered in his blood-splattered hand. Hot green bile welled up in his throat. He told himself he was about to be sick. With an effort of sheer will power, he repressed the feeling.
He killed the next man, trying to make the killing worthy but unable to do so, just wanting to get what amounted to cold-blooded murder over and done with as soon as possible. For in a moment he knew that he'd break under the strain of killing his own soldiers and be unable to carry on.
But the horror had just started. Just as he was about to pull the blanket from number three, the dying man did so himself and he saw that well-known face. It was that of Lance Corporal Heinz, an old hare who had been serving with the Battalion since before the war when von Dodenburg had joined as a callow young second lieutenant straight from the Cadet Academy at Bad Toelz
Heinz blinked weakly and looked up at von Dodenburg's strained face, seeing the smoking pistol in his right hand. "Got to be done, sir," he breathed, the end of his nose a sickly white, a sure indication that he was close to death. "I don't want to be left to no heathens." He gasped for breath and closed his eyes for a moment.
Von Dodenburg swallowed hard. The permanent lance corporal – for that was what Heinz had been, always willing to obey orders and move out when the shit was flying in Poland, France, the Balkans and Greece – deserved a better fate than this: to be shot in cold blood by one of his own officers, out in this barren wilderness the very
name of which they didn't know. God, it was damned awful.
Heinz's eyes blinked open again. "Better get on with it, sir," he said. "You and the lads'll want to be off before it gets proper dark."
Von Dodenburg seemed unable to move. At that moment, if he had been able to, he would have dropped the pistol and fled. He hadn't the strength any more to put this old soldier, who had served his battalion so loyally all these years without reward, out of his misery. But Heinz made it easy for him.
"I'll turn, sir," he breathed, and with a grunt of pain, he turned his dying body so that he lay face downwards, the back of his skull exposed for von Dodenburg to fire that coup de grace.
As if watching someone else going through these last terrible motions, von Dodenburg saw the hand grasping the pistol move towards the vital spot just below the left ear. He watched as the trigger finger turned white as the first pressure was applied to the trigger of the pistol; the slightest hesitancy and then the finger pulling back the trigger the whole way. A thunderous crash, or so it seemed. The back of Heinz's skull bulged. Next moment it exploded in the ruddy welter of blood and gore. Heinz gave a strange sad little sigh and then he was dead.
Five minutes later the survivors, strung out in single file, were on their way into the unknown, led by Lieutenant Singh with his fragment of map: puny little creature set against the infinity of that featureless desert. No one looked back.
BOOK 3 – The Defence
CHAPTER 10
The Habbaniyah RAF Base had been under siege for over four days now. The Iraqis had advanced down the main road from the capital as far as the heights to the east of the base, where they had dug their artillery in. But instead of the expected infantry attack, which the RAF staff knew would probably overrun Habbaniyah, because the base simply had not enough infantry or local levies to defend itself against such an assault, all that the Iraqis had done was to pound the RAF positions at regular intervals. It seemed they were working to some timetable – the kind the older RAF men remembered from the Great War, when such artillery shoots had been followed by an infantry attack. That attack had, however, not come.
