Deaths on the Nile

by Scott Palter

  Now he was being gifted with two more Jewish companies, plus Peiper’s light armored contingent. He was the lead element in the order of march, whatever that meant. His battalion was to advance directly behind the Libyan division. He was to ‘coordinate’ with them on this. He would then entrench at the to-be-built new German base camp, wherever that was.

  He had four manuals. He and Greta were puzzling them out. They covered some things. They presumed prior knowledge on a million other things. What he needed was a ‘battalion command for morons’ manual, but such a title wasn’t on the list. He’d asked for ten official tomes, based on Isaak’s advice. He’d gotten four. What he was missing was a few pages of basics. Hopefully Uncle Isaak could write one up.

  Then two thoughts occurred to him. Peter, now Hauptmann Peter, had run work gangs for his father. That was sort of command experience. Plus Naiomi had had some sort of officer training in Betar. Between the two as tutors, perhaps he could fake commanding a battalion in battle. He couldn’t allow himself to fail. Greta was his princess and needed his protection. All he could do, was his best. So he just trusted to hope and his Reichsdeutsche bloodlines. German Aryans were all supposed to be natural warriors under National Socialism. Part of him was aware of just how silly this line of thought was, but it beat crying and gibbering like a circus monkey.

  1200 hours CET

  6 September 1940

  Conference Room, Reichschancellery, Berlin

  The meeting was officially that of the four who governed. As usual, the Führer and Chancellor sent a secretary to represent him. Following the norms, that secretary had no instructions from his boss concerning anything on the agenda. Such was how an emerging superpower ran its war.

  Most of the list of action items was approved somewhat pro forma. Each ruler had staff to predigest most potential choices, and often to work out bargains where possible. No one except Heydrich trusted his minions enough to allow them the power to make binding decisions. That left the two difficult discussions.

  The first was an evolving and escalating Gestapo investigation of misappropriation of supplies, black marketeering, and general financial malfeasance in the officer corps. The investigation had started with OKW, been extended to the occupation commands in the West, and was now beginning to tap at the doors of the War Ministry. Generaloberst and War Minister Beck wanted this stopped now. “Heydrich, don’t recite legalities at me. You only follow those that suit you, anyway. You are doing this to undermine us. I want it stopped.”

  Heydrich was his normal sardonic self. “I want to avoid another November of 1918. The corruptions of your class brought down the Reich. I won’t permit you to do so again. But I have a proposal for you. Have the Chain Dogs take over the investigation. You can handle the mess with quiet transfers, if you will publicly disgrace a few cases for propaganda.”

  Generaloberst Halder, head of the Army General Staff and thus of OKH, saw a possible bargain here. “How many sacrificial goats?”

  “How corrupt will you allow the headquarters class to be? The fewer obvious cases of misbehavior, the fewer examples that need to be made. Every NCO and officer who abuses access to luxury goods like coffee and gasoline, who is clearly living beyond his salary, has neighbors. Friends. In-laws. Servants. People see, they feel aggrieved, they gossip. Our regime doesn’t need this. So I can live with ... say, one a quarter thrown to the wolves, and none of those unfortunates being from the military aristocracy, if it is a joint Gestapo and Chain Dog investigation.”

  Beck wanted to laugh in the Nazi swine’s face. “That way you have full files to use against everyone, as and when you wish.”

  “Of course. So discipline your class. Keep the sins minor, less even than venal. Small things don’t get noticed outside your social circles. They can be written off as class privilege, as a reward to a warrior caste. I’m purging the upper echelons of the Party and the civilian bureaucracies with a harder hand. The public sees and approves. Why do you think each Gauleiter’s hanging is a public event?”

  Halder had thought Heydrich did it because he was a bloodthirsty barbarian. He would deal with Beck’s ire later. “Approved. Now: what is this about army units?”

  “I asked for a particular mountain division, so I could get its commander. I still want General Dietl. However, I don’t need mountain troops per se. According to your staff Obersts, mountain units are specialist experts. I don’t need the expertise. I’ll give it back for your 22nd Airborne Division, whose specialty I will need. I’m also asking you to form a new division. Why is that a problem?”

  Beck accepted the trade. It actually made sense. This cashiered naval Leutnant never ceased surprising him. He had promised Dietl, but never intended to honor it. He enjoyed putting Heydrich in his place. Let him have to beg Göring. “What’s this about a new division?”

  “It is General Jodl’s concept. We wanted the mountain division for its light, air-transportable equipment. Jodl sensibly pointed out that one could generate the equipment set without the specialist manpower, and create an air landing division. Now I could do this from the Waffen SS, from the NL, even from the SA. If I needed first rate manpower, I could ask Führer Göring to make one from the Luftwaffe. I’m trying to honor the concept of our bargain that the bulk of the ground forces remain Army. My minions don’t understand why your staffs were so difficult about this. We are talking second line manpower. Older reservists or Volksdeutsche or Balts. I’ll even take Czechs. It’s the equipment set. They fly to an airfield the paratroops or glider forces take, entrench, and then hold till the mechanized forces arrive.”

  Beck wanted to argue. He would detest free money if it came from Heydrich. Halder wanted to get back to his office, and voted with Heydrich to approve the formation of the 91st Airlanding Division, which was to be ready for deployment in the south by March 1st of next year.

  1300 hours CET

  6 September 1940

  Stendal, Germany, Garrison of 7th Flieger-Division

  Recently promoted Sous-Lieutenant Marcel Bigeard was glad to be out of captivity. He had volunteered for this new parachute service to accomplish that feat. He could see where his service in the Corps Franc had fitted him for these new forces. He welcomed the physical challenge of parachute training.

  His problem was getting such training from the hated Boche. He was born on the borders of the old Kaiserreich in Lorraine. These Germans were to him the perpetual foe. His recruiting officer did not disagree. He merely offered logic, Cartesian as well as patriotic. The Nazis held Paris. France was helpless to fight the Germans at the moment. All such a further war would accomplish, was the occupation of the Unoccupied Zone and the extinction of the French Republic. National suicide was hardly a wise course.

  In the meantime, the enemy was Britain. It was the British who had pushed poor France into this war. Then when serious fighting began, the British ran away to their island, leaving the French army behind to die. When France had been forced to an armistice, the British had treacherously attacked the French fleet at anchor. Now they were stealing France’s Empire in Africa, using this General de Gaulle as a cat’s-paw.

  Bigeard’s training contingent would form the 6th Colonial Parachute Battalion. All in all, the French were forming eighteen such battalions for African service. First France would fight the British. Then they would extract themselves from Germany’s death grip. Germany had managed this from Napoleon’s grasp. Nothing lasts forever. Bigeard didn’t like the chain of reasoning, but he accepted it. He had faith in Marshal Petain and General Weygand. These men were patriots, not tricksy political scum like Laval. If they could do these things with honor, Bigeard could do the same.

  1800 hours local; 1700 hours CET

  6 September 1940

  Camp Gorlov, Italian Colony of Libya

  Joey Bats had never been shy around women. He’d always hung with older guys because of his mechanical abilities. So when his balls dropped at twelve, he went out on Saturday nights with guys in their
late teens and twenties he worked with, not the local kid pack. He’d taken his share of serious teasing in the beginning for his youth and short stature (he’d never been tall, and his growth spurt had been late). He’d dealt with it. He did a man’s work and earned a man’s pay. He could hold a drink, and when necessary take a punch. The good-time girls they would buy drinks for, dance with and try to get in the pants of, were looking for a guy who could dress sharp and pay to take them someplace nice. These were Depression years. He was an earner and a lot of guys weren’t. His mates could drop the right names to get into the best clubs, to get into the hottest scenes. Being connected meant you had such entrée.

  Now he was sitting at the office table with a jug of wine and a pot of coffee. Across from him was this Clara Fischer. She didn’t look half bad (or as old as he had feared). However, she was not shooting come-hither looks. It was more like the wary glances a passerby gives a vicious guard dog. What the fuck?

  Clara was looking Joey over. She didn’t mind the ground-in dirt and grease on his hands. She was working class, and such decoration was normal in guys who worked with machines. He was a little short, but he had a pleasant face. The problem was, she’d never been a whore and wasn’t really sure she wanted to start now. “Talk to me in German. I need to see how well you can speak, to design a lesson plan.”

  Joey went near bug-eyed. “Huh?”

  “You seem as unsure about the mistress part as I am, so let’s focus on teacher. Berlin wants your German improved. Do you plan on telling the Reichsführer SS that you refuse?” She gave a mordant laugh, thinking of what would follow telling the top thug no.

  This was not a boy/girl script Joey knew. “Look, I didn’t say no. But this is kind of sudden. Gunter tells me I’m acquiring a wife, a live-in lady. My old man had been on my ass about marrying, but I sort of expected I would get to choose … ”

  “And your choice didn’t include a German Communist cleaning lady with thirteen kids and a very damaged brother. You Americans! You think everything is a Hollywood movie. The Gestapo shipped me to you because our mutual friend Wanda the bootlegger thought it made sense. On one level it does. On a Hauptmann’s pay I could better bring up my kids … ”

  Joey was now in shock. Thirteen kids! How old was this bimbo? “Pardon me, but thirteen? How young did you start?”

  Clara showed her weariness. “Foster kids. Their parents would vanish. Dead, in jail, gone underground, fled to Moscow. One never knew, and one didn’t ask. We surviving neighborhood activists would make sure they all had homes, had meals. The Party was a family. We take care of our own.”

  “Party? Reds I knew were Puritan weirdos.”

  Clara finally found humor in the absurdity of this all. Besides, his German wasn’t any worse than the kids of Polish miners. Ruhr was full of them, and she’d been trained to handle bad grammar and strange pronunciations. She stopped Joey and ran him back through how to correctly say she was a Puritanical political killjoy, as opposed to a member of a vanished English religion sect. He had a poor tongue but a good ear. More tools she could use on the lessons. She mentally nodded to herself. She’d made her decision. If she changed her mind, Gunter could get her out of this later. He could break this man in two without using more than one of his well-muscled arms.

  Clara stood up. She knew how to strike a pose to sexually display herself. Never having been a street girl was different than not knowing the sidewalk dance. She enjoyed watching the reaction she was getting. The young man flushed, his breath subtly quickened, and a bulge started in the right place. OK. The equipment worked.

  “I can satisfy a man. None of my past lovers complained about the physical side. It is healthy exercise, and we Germans pride ourselves on physical fitness.” She walked over, a street corner strut, and caressed his face. “Can you satisfy a woman? Really pleasure, not just service her like a bull does a cow?”

  Joey was trying to bluster, and lacked the German for it. Switched into a mix of Italian and English, none of which Clara knew a word of. “Don’t worry lover, I’ll teach you those words too, not just how to give a technical report.” By now her hands had found his belt buckle, were helping him out of his pants and underwear. She got her hands on his engorged phallus, stroked twice and then gave a savage twist. Joey yelped in frustration and pain. “But let’s get a few things clear. You beat me and I’ll have Gunter knock your teeth out. I’ll be faithful to you. You’re a man, which means left to yourself you’d fuck a dog or a melon after a few drinks. Now you will exercise some judgment. Bring home diseases or lice, I’ll take you in my mouth and gnaw off your favorite parts. So use care or use condoms. You have bastards and I’ll raise them, but I get a say if we take the bitch into our household.” She had gone back to caressing. Joey was slowly losing his ability to formulate words. She knew that male state. “Nod yes and we’ll work out the details in the morning.” Joey was nodding like a child being told there would be a meal all of sugar desserts. Clara pushed him back in the chair, mounted him and set out to show German racial superiority in this Olympic event.

  2300 hours CET

  6 September 1940

  An aristocratic general’s mansion, Charlottenburg, Berlin, Capital of the Reich

  The bid had been set at 6 diamonds, doubled and vulnerable. Colonel Kevin Duffy was dummy and thus free to stand and move about. By house rules, that meant he saw to beverages. The servants were mostly all in the bomb shelter out back. The RAF ‘visit’ to Berlin was in its second hour. There were never many planes, and they never seemed to hit anything of note. As the Luftwaffe general he partnered with at tennis assured him, he and the household he was guesting at were in more danger from fragments of flak shells than from British bombs. The Nazi Party insisted all those guns be fired so that the morale of Berlin’s people would be kept up. The general thought it was both idiotic, and typical of the new Gauleiter. The man should give more time to making beds squeak with his receptionist, and cease pretending he was competent to do anything more. Just tell the public the truth about what damaged what, and like good German subordinates they would accept and obey. Duffy kept to himself the retort that if Berliners had been so good at obeying what their betters decreed, why had there been so many Communists, Socialists, and Nazis there?

  Duffy found this all a most strange sort of captivity. Clothes had been borrowed for him from serving officers of roughly his size and build. He now had tennis whites, golf outfits; he could dress for dinner or to attend opera. His days were given to gentleman’s sports – golf, riding, tennis, swimming, boating, shooting. Here he was a prisoner in the Reich doing competitive shooting. Even that was less bizarre than a morning ride where his party had come upon a party centered on the head of the Abwehr, Admiral Canaris, and the head of the SS, Reichsführer Heydrich. He had been formally introduced to both. Cards had been exchanged, and the Admiral had invited him to a dinner he was giving in a few weeks. The Brigadier’s social contacts seemed bottomless. He and the Admiral had mutual friends. Had broken bread in Sicily back before this war.

  Kevin’s German was still marginal, but improving day by day. He could now bid bridge hands and take drink orders in a social setting. He had learned how to clearly say ‘I have little German. Please speak slowly and use small words’, with what many Berliners told him was a rustic East Prussian accent. The mansion’s owner was Count and General. His extended family was from that province. He was on active service, as were two sons. A third son had been crippled in a training accident and was on a ministry staff in Brussels. The count’s granduncle, the retired general, was not recalled to active duty, and thus presided over the mansion and a floating population of relatives, servants, and hangers on. Which now included the Brigadier’s party of four.

  The Brigadier’s two servants had objected to using the air raid shelter. They felt as retired military they had as much right to show courage as the older men, who refused to let these silly British pinprick raids interrupt their evening socializing. The prob
lem was that all the male servants were also retired military who had followed their local nobleman into the army and back out the other side. The younger ones were all on active service, so that most of these men were well past retirement age. They would joke they had been called back to the count’s colors for duration.

  The wives, widows, and spinsters were also of either of the military aristocracy or their hereditary retainers. They too felt they had the courage of their class. A compromise was reached. To get the children into the shelter, all the women and servants went as well. Duffy laughed to himself. All turned out to be many. The teens were all HJ or BDM, and refused. They and a few of the adults colonized the air raid precaution service in this precinct, and served as unofficial helpers on two ack-ack guns. Twelve-year-old girls helping to load a gun whose fire director was an eighty-year-old retired artillery sergeant, was not what the RAF lads up there in the clouds thought they were fighting. Modern war was strange that way.

  Still stranger were the interrogations. Duffy expected to be confronted on knowledge he had of supreme command in London. He was months out of date, but it still might be of value. No one cared about that. He’d been quizzed incessantly about his Great War service. When he’d asked why, the answer was that this was important socially. One couldn’t bring him to party X where Widow Y was, if he had served in a particular corps for Third Ypres as she had lost her husband and two sons there. That was a memory she didn’t wish to revisit. However, Widow Z’s husband never came back from Fourth Ypres. Missing presumed dead. She found reminisces of anyone on either side of those days, a way to anchor her memories of him. Indeed, one of his bridge partners – a one-armed, one-legged retired major – had sought him out as his CV spread around. Turned out they had fought at quite close quarters during the Cambrai Campaign. That was where the then-Hauptmann had lost the leg below the knee. Those six days of nonstop combat were the high point of his life. He couldn’t find a German of his class he hadn’t bored to death with his war stories. Now Duffy could hear them all and tell his own.