by David Fraser
‘They could still be our friends. But now they never will be. Now there is the sort of hatred I’ve described, the sort of cruelty, savagery, barbarity.
‘Do you know what is going on behind our front, Father? No, you cannot. And I will tell you. Or I will tell you a few things. A few little examples.
‘A friend of mine was slightly wounded at Kiev – von Hamelstein, the one in our division, I’ve spoken of him, you know his uncle. He rejoined us after only three weeks. Hamelstein travelled up to us by road most of the way, as it happened, and he went through a number of places the division had passed during the advance. He talked to a lot of officers on the way forward. He told me, privately, what he had discovered.
‘There are special units established for security in the rear areas. Enormous numbers of Russians have been murdered – quite simply, murdered. By our own people. In one village all members of the Communist Party – about fifty – had been herded into a barn and shot.
‘In another place – a town – Hamelstein learned about the Jews. The Jews, of course, live – or lived – mostly in the towns. In this place there were over two thousand. They’d all been rounded up – men, women and children – and taken to a field outside the town. Then, covered by machine guns, they’d been made to dig a long ditch – about two hundred metres long. When it was done – and it seems they did it, perfectly docile, largely scrabbling earth out with their hands – then they were shot, the lot. And the Einsatzgruppen – that’s the special security units, so called, the units who do this job – organized some tractors, from the local collective farm to push the bodies into the ditch and cover them. The tractors were driven by Russians, and as the final act they were shot as well and toppled into the ditch. Then the tractors were collected by other Russians. We’re meant to be stimulating local agriculture, you see, it’s going to help feed the Wehrmacht.
‘Hamelstein was told about all this by an SD – Sicherheit dienst – officer who was drunk. And that was only one story.’
Kaspar von Arzfeld listened, his eyes never leaving his son’s face, following that face, that figure as it swung on the crutch up and down, up and down. Kaspar sat as if turned to stone. Frido’s voice remained expressionless.
‘That is why, Father, I speak of the hatred which this campaign is generating. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not suggesting the Soviet Government or high command care a damn about their population, their civilians. In fact, there have even been incidents of civilians being herded forward in front of their attacks. Human shields. In an atmosphere so poisoned on both sides by cruelty and evil is it any wonder that men become beasts, and that mercy and decency die?’
Frido stood still for a little. Then he continued. He recalled for his father a phase during the winter fighting, on the Don front. He described how an experienced Feldwebel reported one evening. The front was static.
‘We should send out a patrol again this evening, Herr Leutnant.’
‘It’s not necessary. We’ve had no orders to do so, we know all we can about the Russians, and it’s twenty degrees below freezing.’
‘It’s not that, Herr Leutnant. There are three wounded men out there. And if we don’t reach them the Russians will tomorrow. When we withdraw. We can’t leave them alive to the Russians, Herr Leutnant. They were good soldiers. We must finish them off.’
It was often done. A patrol was risked on an errand of mercy, to make sure that wounded men did not fall alive into the Russian hands to meet a slow, horrible death as was only too likely.
‘Let us sit for a little in the garden,’ said Kaspar, who had heard all in a terrible silence. ‘It is a fine evening,’ he said mechanically. He heard himself saying –
‘In spite of all you have told me, I hope the enemy’s wounded are decently cared for by our own people.’
Frido considered, ‘In the front line, certainly, by which I mean that our field hospitals, as far as I’ve seen them, do a wonderful job and according to the traditions of the service. They’ve saved many Russian lives. When I was operated on, for the second time – as you know, gangrene had set in, they were concerned – at that time there were Russian soldiers lying on either side of me. They were both charming boys, too, suffering badly and bravely. We were doing everything for them.’
‘In spite of all,’ said his father, ‘I am greatly relieved to hear you say so.’
‘On the other hand I’ve heard very bad things about prisoner of war camps, or some of them. I spoke to a Gefreiter who was operated on at the same time as me and recovering with me. He’d seen a lot of Soviet prisoners. He told me a favourite trick in one camp – where many of them were sick and half-starved anyway – was to make them draw lots, every fifth wretch was hauled out and made to stand against a wall with his hands tied above his head. Then a grenade with the pin drawn out would be put in each of his trouser pockets. Our people thought it was amusing. The Gefreiter who told me – of course his tongue was loose, he was in a state of post-operative shock, I suppose – said,
‘“You see, Herr Leutnant, our men knew that that was nothing compared to what the Ivans did to our prisoners,” which I expect is true.’
‘I cannot believe it!’ said Kaspar, finding his voice, ‘I cannot believe it! You have not seen such things yourself!’
Frido looked at his father with sadness.
‘No, Father,’ he said, ‘I’ve not seen that myself. But, unfortunately, I can believe it. You see, it’s that sort of war. Not the sort you fought twenty-five years ago. Not the sort we fought in France. It’s a different sort of war. The sort I’ve been describing.’
Kaspar made a gesture of demurral –
‘Surely –’
He looked at his son’s expression and held his tongue.
It was indeed a fine evening. Kaspar rose from the wooden bench on which both had been sitting and took his son’s arm. Supported by father and crutch Frido swung the full length of the house in silence. There was in the air an exquisite smell of spring.
‘It’s that sort of war,’ said Frido, almost inaudibly. He added, in a near whisper, ‘and that sort of Germany.’
Kaspar could find nothing to say. The sort of sententiousness which, surely, was the appropriate response from a father immersed in a tradition of duty to a doubting son seemed wholly out of place. With a sense of charade he heard himself sigh and utter –
‘Well, like many of our family you have drawn the sword for the Fatherland –’
‘Yes,’ said Frido tonelessly. ‘Yes, Father. But doesn’t it have to be a double-edged sword – with a back-stroke that can cut some standing behind one, some –’
This had gone far enough.
Girls’ chatter and laughter sounded from round the corner of the old house. Frido’s heart, as it always did and always would, lifted at the sound of Marcia’s voice. He raised his hand in stiff salutation as Lise and Marcia walked towards them across the grass.
‘Excellent news, Frido,’ Lise called. ‘Anna Langenbach is coming to stay for a few days. She’s not been here for ages. She wants to see you very much. I’ve just had a letter.’
Anna had paid, with Franzi, one long visit to Arzfeld in the autumn of 1941. She had told a troubled Lise of how disagreeable the local Kreisleiter now was to her.
‘He hates me, of course. I had to make clear I didn’t want his attentions. It happened here, at Arzfeld.’ Lise was concerned.
‘Anna, you must be careful! You must be a little tactful, even if the man is horrible. There can be so much trouble made for you.’
‘It’s too late to think of that. I spoke as I had to, from the heart.’
Lise could imagine. Now, however, Anna wrote better news.
‘You remember I spoke of a certain person here – he’s departed! He’s been enrolled to do “special work” for the Government-General in Poland. I’m sure it’s very important.’
Nothing more. This must be a profound relief to Anna, thought Lise. The man might always return, and would
periodically visit his home on leave, presumably; but the pressure of Schwede’s mingled desire and hatred in the same small place had been removed and Anna must be feeling liberation. She could probably manage to avoid him if he only returned for short visits. Anna would be less anxious, more her previous, radiant self.
‘She’s coming on Tuesday!’ Anna had also written –
‘The more I think of Frido the more I long to see him and talk to him. He is so steadfast, his instincts are so good. I would trust him with my soul.’
Kaspar still held Frido’s arm firmly. He spoke low. None but Frido could hear.
‘Frido, my son, it is best, whatever you may think or feel, to say nothing of these things. These are difficult times. They are not – safe times. It is necessary to be very, very prudent.’ His voice was unsteady and only just audible. His son looked at him with love and, for the first time in his life, with compassion. Then Kaspar released his grip on Frido’s arm and spoke to the girls with his usual agreeable courtesy.
‘Excellent news, indeed, little Lise! Anna loves the summer here. I have told her that she should always plan to bring her little son to Arzfeld for every July. But it is good that she should come, too, in the spring. We cannot have her here too often.’
Chapter 14
It was December, 1942, and their fourth day on the hill. B Company had arrived in darkness, astonished and relieved to be told they had reached what they had understood was going to be a strongly defended objective – reached it without difficulty. Some shells had fallen among the rear companies as the battalion moved forward silently through the night, but these had, by good luck, done no harm. In front there had been nothing – no enemy machine gun fire, no mines, no reaction: nothing. The word had been muttered, ‘Dig in,’ and on stony and inhospitable ground they had done their best, scratching holes, enlarging them. Fear of the enemy’s fire, so uncannily silent, struggled against exhaustion. ‘Dig in.’ In some places solid rock ordained that the erection of stone-piled breastworks had to replace the excavation of trenches.
‘They look like grouse butts,’ Anthony thought, as dawn began to reveal the battalion to itself.
Dawn did not come as a friend. Anthony was now a Captain, second-in-command of B Company. He and his brother officers, the day before their attack, had had the opportunity to look at the landscape from a neighbouring hill, to study the objective. They had seen, as if looking at a stage from far back in the dress circle of a theatre, the large, bare hill they were to assault that night. The hills of Tunisia were dark in colour. From a distance they looked grey and forbidding, with the rough, ridged texture of an elephant’s hide. The lower ground was brown, with much scrub. Here and there were fields – patches of earth where there appeared to have been attempts at cultivation, to European eyes haphazard and unsystematic. Yet Arabs tilled this ground, and presumably owned it. As Anthony looked through his binoculars at the objective B Company was to attack in a few hours’ time, two Arabs rode out on donkeys into the low, intervening plain: they dismounted and began to work, scratching the resistant surface of the ground, pausing often in their labours, desultory, seemingly undeterred by the occasional sights and sounds of battle. Guns sounded in the distance. There was a sort of absurdity in the scene. Yet, for a little, these Arabs engaged in their primitive agriculture seemed more real in their struggle for survival than did the contenders for that dark, silent hill where a battalion of strongly entrenched German troops would try to kill the attacking British as they climbed up and along the elephant’s hide, and must, therefore, themselves be efficiently killed. It was not the Arabs’ quarrel.
And then, in darkness, there had been silence, anti-climax. No opposition. Arrival, by every calculation, at the correct point, unopposed. An hour later dawn had come, and as the early morning mist cleared every man could see that the crest they had reached was a false one. Ahead, and overlooking them, was a further crest. It was significantly higher. It had been invisible from their original observation point. And there was soon no doubt, no doubt whatsoever, that it was held by the Germans. Shells began to fall. Almost as bad was the fact that their supply route, the way they had taken forward, was, like most of their own positions, also overlooked by the enemy on the next crest.
It was the battalion’s first battle. A few, like Anthony, had joined from another battalion after experience of that other battle, in France. To most men, of whatever rank, it was their baptism of fire. The first lessons learned were not new, but they were viciously taught. Anthony looked at the dark, menacing ridge in front of them, topped by black rain clouds, as dawn gave way to morning and shelling intensified.
‘If I ever have anything to do with it, which is unlikely,’ he thought, ‘I’ll never, never again sit down in front of an enemy who’s occupying higher ground than me!’
The ridge beyond them was, in truth, only a little higher, but to the men of B Company it felt as if the Germans could peer into every British slit trench, could engage in observed target practice at their leisure. They felt naked and impotent.
Their spirits, nevertheless, were extraordinarily high. Every small fold in the ground was used to produce some sort of cover. Men worked with frantic energy to improve trenches, to find ground where digging was possible, to construct the bleak, sodden habitations of the battlefield and to carve some kind of protected way between them. In these circumstances the journey to or from a particular platoon’s position was an adventure, the laughter and companionship found there something different from other laughter, other companionship. It had an edge to it, a nervous zest, profoundly experienced.
‘I’m frightened most of the time,’ said Anthony to himself. ‘I’m soaking wet, I’m hellish uncomfortable, and I’m not even convinced that we’re winning this little bit of the war. But there’s nowhere – absolutely nowhere – that I want to be except here.’
On their second day he had to go back to attend for orders at Battalion Headquarters. When he returned to the scratches in the rock – half dug-out, half-cave fortified by piled earth and heaped stones – which constituted Company Headquarters, Anthony found an extraordinary sense of homecoming. Away from the little world of B Company he had felt a stranger. The Company Sergeant-Major, Phillips, held out a mug of tea to him when he returned.
‘Tea, sir?’
Anthony looked at him and thought he had never known friendship until that hour.
It was hard to decide whether wind or rain was worse, although often, of course, they came together. The rain filled such trenches as could be dug. The wind struck with an icy, penetrative power which none of them had experienced before. German shelling was alarming but sporadic, rather than insistent: until the fourth day there had only been six casualties from shelling in B Company. Men were encouraged to leave the trenches and stretch their limbs, to show by this small act of defiance that their spirits were unaffected by the enemy’s guns, to warm themselves in the occasional sun. Some might then be too slow or too unlucky to take cover again before a German salvo arrived: but it had not happened yet and the hazard, Anthony reckoned, was well worth it.
The worse aspect of their life was the sense that they could do nothing to hit back. They heard with enthusiasm the sound of British artillery, pounding positions the far side of that menacing crest line above and beyond them, answering the German guns which harried themselves. But although it was at first hourly and then daily expected, there was no German attack. The men of B Company had no chance to use their own weapons. Their fate had been to advance in darkness, to halt, to dig, to find themselves overlooked, cut off, vulnerable: and then, simply, to endure. There was, they supposed, no thought of withdrawing them. It did not seem that the high command contemplated, just yet, a further attack. And the Germans appeared content to wait, to drop shells among B Company with intermittent ferocity, and to bide their time.
Supply had to be entirely by night. By day, German binoculars could focus on every route that led to them, from any direction. Their sup
ply vehicles were well to the rear, in some woods near the foot of the hill. Movement of any kind was laborious. Getting wounded men back off the hill had been particularly hard, and in this, as in most things, Sergeant-Major Phillips had played an heroic part. An abrupt, high-principled Tynesider, with a rough tongue, he had shown himself careless of personal safety and tireless where the life or health of a single man in his Company might be at risk. By now every man in B Company, from the best to the worst, would have lain down with an appropriate oath and gladly have suffered Phillips to walk over him had the Sergeant-Major, improbably, so desired.
Now it was mid-morning on the fourth day. Anthony’s Commander, Major Richard Wright, was at a conference at Battalion Headquarters, near the base of the hill, close to the track which wound through woods in the valley behind them, connected to something like the outside world. It was generally expected that he would return with news, plans, orders. Perhaps they would be relieved. The day had started well. Supplies had come forward in the hours of darkness. Anthony had been at Company Headquarters.
‘Mail, Captain Marvell, sir.’
Everybody devoured letters, letters able to transport them in imagination to another, safer, drier world, a world filled with regular sleep, predictable activity, a world sweetened by the bodies of women, the gentle, the soft, the personal. Sometimes there was no time to read a letter: it had to be stuffed into a pocket, eagerly anticipated, treasured. But whatever the pressure, a man would instantly and hungrily tear open a letter if he possibly could. Men shielded the precious paper from the rain with the improvised cover afforded by their groundsheets, buried their faces in their letters, eyes moving up and down the lines, lips moving.
For Anthony it was a good moment for the arrival of letters. Things seemed extraordinarily quiet. A mug of tea and some tinned sausage and beans had made a delicious breakfast. He settled into a corner of B Company’s headquarter cave. The letter was from his mother. Hilda was an excellent correspondent. She gave enough – but not too much – detail of their quiet doings at Bargate, enough to bring its gentle peace instantly before Anthony’s eyes. Hilda knew how to do this without the appearance of design. She knew how casual reference to some paintwork in dilapidation, to some village eccentricity, would evoke home vividly, catch at Anthony’s heart. She never overdid it. Then she wrote of serious things, of books, of thoughts. Whenever possible, she sent books to her son, and he delighted in writing to her his views on them, responding, arguing. Their minds were not unlike. They had always been able to talk to each other. As he read her letter Anthony could smell smoke from the fire in the inner hall of Bargate, hear birds outside the windows, see a print hanging slightly askew against the dark panelling.
