by Leo Kessler
Notes
1. Eight thousand metre climbs.
2. Führer Headquarters.
SEVEN
The next thirty-six hours flew by. There were a hundred and one minor and major problems for Colonel Stuermer to solve — from the ammunition he could expect each man to carry once they had commenced the ascent, to whether they should take salt tablets (against heat exhaustion) or not. For now the summer sun was there in full strength, and in the suddenly oven-hot air of the plain, from which there was no relief, the half-naked mountaineers sweated over their equipment, preparing to load it on the drooping, listless, brown mules.
Colonel Stuermer longed for the cool of the far mountain peaks. But, his lean face already brick-red from the sun, he forced himself out into the burning sunshine to inspect and check the mountaineers’ preparations. And from early morning to late evening, the sun continued to blaze down mercilessly, the beat waves trembling on the still air, the mountains in a stifling opaque haze.
It was not surprising that when Major Greul sneered at a sweat-drenched, exhausted Lieutenant Haas, who was acting as the Stormtroop’s supply officer, ‘My God, Haas pull yourself together in front of the men,’ Colonel Stuermer rounded on the surprised Major with, ‘Greul, can’t you ever remember you are a human being — and that human beings have weaknesses?’
‘Weaknesses, sir?’ Greul echoed, puzzled.
‘Yes, weaknesses. You and your cheap ideology! Do you think that is what war and the mountains are about? The creation of a new master race, who use the possibility of death as a kind of political and national aphrodisiac?’ With an angry gesture, Stuermer wiped the sweat from his burning face. ‘The mountains prove nothing — they are just there. Remember that!’ And with that, Colonel Stuermer strode away to inspect another group of mountaineers grouped around a reluctant mule, leaving Greul staring after him in open-mouthed bewilderment, while a grinning Haas went back to work with renewed energy, confident that his C.O. was the best in the whole of the Greater German Wehrmacht.
At the end of the second day of preparations, Colonel Stuermer called Stormtroop Edelweiss together and told the weary men that the preparations were finished. ‘You can take the next twenty-four hours off. We shall move out after dark, as soon as the curfew is enforced tomorrow evening. But one thing: remember the peasants in the village seem to be friendly — so far they have been very co-operative — yet we still can’t take any chances. For that reason — everybody is confined to camp for the next twenty-four hours. And I mean everybody! Good, dismiss!’
Most of the men were only too glad to lie down in the shade of their bunks, away from the blinding sun and the back breaking work of the last forty-eight hours. But not all. Sergeant-major Meier, for one, had other plans for that night. As he said to his running-mate Jap, who was stretched out completely naked on his blankets, exhausted, arm shielding his eyes from the last rays of the sinking sun which came in through the hole in the wall that served as the cottage’s window, ‘I mean, you lot of warm brothers don’t like women. I do. Besides it’ll be a long time till I get another bit of how’s yer father — and I think I love Roswitha,’ the big NCO added thoughtfully. ‘As soon as it’s dark I’m off under the wire.’
‘Love her?’ Jap said wearily. ‘You big currant-crapper, you’ve only known her a week!’
‘In wartime, love blossoms quick,’ Meier announced. ‘I read that in a book once.’
‘Books!’ Jap snorted. ‘It takes you all yer time to read the instructions on a packet of Parisians.’1
‘Well, by the look of that nasty little worm you’ve got drooping there, you’d never need a Parisian. They don’t make ’em for midgets.’ He rose from the bunk, and walked across to the tin basin of grey suddy water on the chair in the corner. ‘Better start making myself more beautiful for Roswitha. And remember to cover up for me when the orderly officer comes round — tell him I’m in the thunderbox or somewhere — or I’ll dock that worm of yours down to the size of a maggot!’
‘Hope she’s given you a nice juicy case of clap,’ replied Jap in his usual friendly manner, ‘that’ll certainly make love blossom even faster.’
Roswitha was waiting for him as usual when he slipped into her little blacked-out cottage, lying on the couch, naked save for a pair of black silken knickers, her ivory-white body glowing in the dusky red light given out by the solitary candle under its red glass shade.
‘Firewater?’ she enquired.
Meier took his greedy eyes off her beautiful naked body and looked for the usual bottle of vodka. It was standing on the top of the green-tiled oven. Grabbing it, he took a hefty slug straight from the bottle. ‘Grr!’ he breathed gratefully. ‘That was good. The dust was up to my tonsils.’
‘You have been working hard today, yes?’ she asked carefully, still not moving.
‘Yes.’ He grinned knowingly and advanced upon her, taking off his clothes as he did so. ‘But I know I’m going to work a lot harder for the next thirty minutes. Come here, my little Russian cheetah!’
Quivering with what the big NCO took for passion and desire, the Russian woman allowed him to fondle her breasts. She sighed with pleasure at his touch. His hairy paws grabbed for her black knickers and ripped them off in one swift greedy grab. ‘Nyet!’ she gasped.
‘Don’t be impatient — soon,’ he gasped, misunderstanding her protest, grappling with his boots as he forced her backwards.
‘Boshe moy — nyet!’ Her fervent protest ended in a hysterical, gurgling scream, deep down in her throat, as he thrust himself savagely between her wide-open legs.
It was nearly dawn now. Outside, the birds were beginning their first frantic chatter of welcome to the new light. Eyes half-closed, weary, and yawning constantly, as if he would never really wake up again, a tousle-haired Meier searched unwillingly for his clothes, while the Russian woman, lying naked on the rumpled sofa, watched him, half-amused, half-wary. ‘You have duty this morning?’ she asked as he pulled on his boots and began to thread the laces through the brass-rimmed holes.
‘No,’ he said thickly.
‘Why the hurry, then?’
‘We’re not allowed out of camp. I am here without permission. I must get back before everyone wakes up.’
She nodded her pretty blonde head. ‘Is there something happening there?’
Meier was too busy trying to tie his boots to notice the sudden gleam of interest in her eyes. ‘I think we’re leaving.’
‘For the mountains?’
He looked at her suddenly, aware of her persistence. ‘How do you know — the mountains?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know,’ she answered, shrugging easily. ‘Just your badge. The Edelweiss. Everyone knows that alpine flower is the badge of the German alpine troops. So, if you go anywhere — you go to the mountains. Yes or no?’
Meier ignored her question. ‘Don’t you worry your pretty Popov head about such things,’ he said. He clasped her to his uniformed chest. ‘Listen. I’ll come out with the driver to get bread from the bakehouse up the road for the soldiers at midday. It’ll take about half an hour to load up the loaves. Can I come by for a quickie?’
‘Quickie?’ she queried.
‘You know, Roswitha. Bang-bang, goodbye ma’am.’ The big Bavarian NCO made an explicit gesture with his thumb pressed between his two forefingers.
‘Oh yes, I see…. Yes. I will be here for you.’ She smiled, but there was no accompanying warmth in her bright blue eyes.
‘Fine.’ He planted a big, wet, noisy kiss on the side of her cheek. ‘Off I go to the big war. See you at midday, Roswitha.’
‘Dosvidanya, soldier,’ she sighed wearily and watched him go, never to return, as she had watched many of their proud field-grey backs depart in these last terrible twelve months. Then, snapping out of her momentary reverie, she started hastily to put on her clothes.
Punctually at twelve o’clock, a happy smiling Sergeant-major Meier clicked open the gate to her little cottage and knock
ed politely on the door. There was no answer. He knocked again and again. Still no answer. Puzzled, and not a little disappointed, for he knew at the back of his mind he would never see the handsome blonde Russian woman again after today, he opened the door and said, ‘Roswitha, it’s me — and I’m limping already.’
There was no answering call.
‘Perhaps she’s in the thunderbox,’ he said to himself, and opening the door of the kitchen he looked out at the little wooden lean-to with the crude heart carved in its door. It, too, was empty. The girl was nowhere to be found.
In his few bits of fractured Russian, with the aid of much arm-waving and exaggerated gestures, he tried the neighbours on both sides of the tumbledown cottage. They were obviously frightened, and there was nothing he could get out of them about Roswitha’s strange disappearance. Over and over again, they kept repeating the same word ‘schpion’, ‘schpion’, which meant nothing to him until, as he walked disconsolately back to the waiting truck, its meaning dawned upon him. ‘Schpion’ was the same as the German Spion.2
He paused in the middle of his stride, and staring blankly at the dirty white wall in front of him, he said to no-one in particular, ‘Roswitha is a spy!’ He bit his bottom lip in bewilderment. ‘But for whom — and what did she want to know?’
There was no answer forthcoming to those particular questions. Watching the German’s strange behaviour from the open door of his bakery, the sweating, flour-covered baker in his dirty undershirt tapped his temple and said to himself: ‘The Fritzes — they’re always either drunk or crazy — or a bit of both…’
Note
1. Slang for contraceptives.
2. German for ‘spy’.
EIGHT
‘All right, you bunch of wet-tails,’ Meier called, ‘get those twinkle-toes of yours moving! Make dust!’
Colonel Stuermer sighed. ‘Meier, must you make so much noise? You’ll waken half of Southern Russia with that fog horn of yours!’
Meier peered at him through the gloom. ‘Sorry, sir. Just doing my duty as a conscientious NCO of the Greater German Army should.’
‘I shit upon you, Meier,’ Stuermer said, sensing rather than seeing the mocking look on the big Bavarian’s face. ‘From a great height!’
‘Thank you, sir. I appreciate your concern for my well-being.’
‘Get on with it, you rogue.’ Stuermer chuckled and turned to the elderly one-armed colonel in charge of the Kommandantura who stood next to him, framed in the yellow light streaming from the door of his quarters. Well, I suppose this is the parting of the ways, Colonel.’
‘Wish I were going with you, Stuermer. But with this one flipper of mine, I don’t suppose I’d be much use to you where you’re going.’
Stuermer knew the elderly Colonel was happy he was staying behind. He preferred his nightly bottle of vodka, his warm bed, and the even warmer young Russian girl who shared it with him. All the same, Stuermer said, ‘I wish you could come along with us too, Colonel. We can always use good men. But someone must keep things ticking over in the rear echelon, you know.’
‘Spect you’re right, Stuermer,’ the colonel said, his mind already occupied with the thought of Lydia’s naked body, waiting for him under the covers upstairs, once Stormtroop Edelweiss was gone.
Stuermer took one last look at his men lined up in a long column in the blacked-out gloom, with the mules at the rear under the command of Lieutenant Haas, their hooves and equipment wrapped in sacking so that they would make as little noise as possible as they passed through a sleeping Cherkassy. Then he turned back to the colonel. ‘Many thanks once again for everything you have done for us while we were here.’ He swung his opposite number a salute. ‘Till the next time, Colonel.’
‘Till the next time, Stuermer — and lots of luck.’
‘Thank you.’ Stuermer turned and strode away. He gave a soft command to Major Greul, who was in charge of the point.
‘Broken step!’ Greul ordered. ‘Advance!’
Shuffling through the ankle-deep dust, the men and mules started to advance. Like silent ghosts, they disappeared one by one into the darkness.
At the door to his quarters, the old one-armed colonel watched them for a few moments, his mind full of Lydia. Then he turned and closed the door behind him, licking his suddenly dry lips in anticipation. But Colonel August Adams was not fated to enjoy the ample charms of his eighteen year-old Lydia that night or any other night.
The blonde woman waited till the last plodding mule had shuffled past, its head bowed as if it bore not only its load but all the cares of the world, before she whispered, ‘Now!’
Dark clouds parted in the moon’s path for an instant, and she could see the men all around her, tensed over the knives and axes, as they started to creep towards the Kommandantura. Metre by metre they crawled towards the silent bunker which was the HQ’s sole defence. She clutched her own pistol more firmly in a hand that was beginning to sweat heavily with nervousness, and followed.
They were about fifty metres from the bunker now. There was no sound save the soft whisper of the wind in the tall oaks. Abruptly the blonde woman froze. Two dark shapes had detached themselves from the deep shadows cast by the oaks. Slowly they plodded towards the crouching men, in the slow, weary manner of soldiers everywhere who were carrying out a boring duty in the middle of the night. Carefully, very carefully, she cupped her hands around her mouth and whispered in the ear of the man nearest to her, ‘Fritzes, Sergei.’
‘I’ve seen them already,’ the boy whispered back. ‘Shall I take them out, Comrade Captain?’ His stainless steel teeth flashed in a grin.
‘Yes.’
Sergei needed no urging. He gripped his knife between his steel teeth and crawled forward, while she watched his progress tensely, knowing that they would have a real fight on their hands if the sentries managed to alert the bunker in time. But her fears were groundless.
Just as the first of the elderly sentries turned, probably alarmed by some slight noise Sergei made, the boy flung himself forward. His knife flashed. There was a stifled cry of pain. The first sentry sank to his knees, clutching his slit throat, trying to stem the sudden flaw of blood. Sergei sprang on the other one’s back, gripped the rear of his coal-scuttle helmet and tugged hard. It was an old partisan trick. The Fritz’s chin strap would dig into his neck and effectively cut off any shout of warning.
The woman waited no longer. ‘Forward comrades!’ she hissed, while Sergei wrestled the dying German to the ground.
The men swept forward like grey, hungry timber wolves emerging from some winter forest, greedy for prey to still their gnawing hunger. A partisan kicked the kneeling German in the face. He smashed against the nearest tree and was dead before he hit the ground. Behind the first partisan, another one sprang over the dead body and flung open the door to the bunker. A third knew exactly what he had to do. The captured grenade flew from his hand. In the same instant that it hurtled into the inside of the bunker, the man at the door slammed it closed again. There was a thick throaty crump from within.
‘Into the Kommandatura!’ the woman cried above the noise. They hurtled up the steps. A half-naked German came running towards them, trying to pull up his braces over his fat belly as he did so. Sergei’s knife flashed once more. He went down, his throat slashed open from jugular to the carotid, drowning in his own blood. Sergei gave the woman another of his gleaming steel smiles of triumph.
‘Up the stairs!’ she commanded.
Followed by half a dozen of the partisans she clattered up the staircase. A German opened a door, pistol in hand. Before he could fire, a partisan tommy-gun chattered. He jack-knifed, stomach ripped open by the vicious burst, and flopped over the landing rail.
‘This way,’ the woman gasped. She knew the way to the one-armed Fritz colonel’s room exactly. With the heel of his boot, Sergei smashed in the door.
The one-armed Colonel was completely naked, standing next to the rumpled bed in which cowered a pretty bab
y-faced girl, who couldn’t have been a day older than eighteen.
The woman was suddenly seized by an all-consuming rage. It was pretty obvious what the one-armed Fritz had been about to do when they had burst in, and it was clear, too, that the girl had been a willing party to his disgusting form of fornication. ‘Pigs — vile pigs!’ she hissed through clenched teeth and pressed the trigger of her pistol.
The bullet struck the Colonel in the stomach. He smashed back against the wall, eyes wide and staring, pink foam suddenly on his lips, a gaping hole vivid red against the pale white of his stomach. She fired again. This time she did not miss her target.
The Colonel’s sexual organs shattered in a red flurry of flesh and blood. He screamed once like a pig being castrated and slammed to the floor.
‘Boshe moy!’ Sergei said in awe, as he stared at the hole in the base of the Colonel’s stomach.
The woman turned her burning eyes on the girl cowering in the bed, the felt quilt drawn up in front of her, as if that fragile thing might protect her from what must come.
‘Let me have her first, Comrade Captain,’ Sergei pleaded. ‘I’ll give her one good meal of real Russian meat after all that Fritz carrion.’
The woman ignored his plea. She raised her still-smoking pistol. The girl backed against the headrest, as if she might be able to press herself through it and escape. ‘Comrade…Comrade…please Ros—’
Her frantic request for mercy was cut short by the sharp crack of the pistol. She screamed as the slug shattered her pretty white face like the shell of a soft-boiled egg being struck by a too heavy spoon. Her lifeless body slumped on the quilt.
The woman savoured this moment. It seemed to her at that instant that her action had purified her beautiful body of all the dirt it had accumulated in these last terrible months when she had been no different from the girl she had just murdered. She had killed herself! Then she snapped out of her reverie. ‘Collect all their weapons and distribute them to the peasants!’ she cried. ‘Come on — hurry it up there. There is a lot to be done yet…’
