Edelweiss

by Madge Swindells

  ‘Have you kept out of the sun? Yes, you look a little pale. And you’re thinner. Excellent!’

  ‘I’m a prisoner here. You have no right to do this.’ She turned on him with a flash of her old fire.

  ‘I’m saving your life.’

  She gulped and flushed. ‘What are you talking about, Hugo? I’m not in any danger.’

  He cocked one eyebrow. ‘Go if you like. You’d be dead before nightfall. People suspect that you informed on them. A great many have suffered and some have died.

  ‘Marietta has appeared in court, but her trial was postponed. She faces a charge of spying, and you set her up. Bill is about to be deported. Louis is in a punishment battalion. Many of the students have been sent to the camps for life. Did you think you could get away with what you’ve done? We had to arrest you to save your selfish little skin.’

  Ingrid was invaded by a physical self-loathing. It seemed to fill each part of her until she was shuddering with disgust, and sick with fear.

  ‘Perhaps you’re not aware of just how successful you have been,’ Hugo continued smoothly. ‘Single-handedly, you have revealed the identity of all the Edelweiss students. They are either dead or in camps. You’ve informed on several prominent anti-Nazi politicians. You’ve shown us which professors are against us. You’ve also helped us to set up Bill as an enemy agent. Congratulations, my dear. You’ve been invaluable.’

  Ingrid could not speak. Her mouth was opening and shutting, but no sound came. Her eyes began to burn.

  Eventually she managed to speak through frozen lips: ‘I only passed on information for your research.’

  ‘Research which was needed for their interrogations and some of them died under that interrogation, Ingrid.’

  ‘I am not a spy,’ she burst out. ‘I didn’t betray anyone. No one will think so. I want to go back.’

  ‘It’s not that easy. You were arrested while helping Jews to escape. Are you one of them or one of us? I can’t protect you if they think you are a traitor, which they will if you return.’

  How did I ever get into this trap, Ingrid thought. If this is what he’ll do to me when I’m on his side, just what will he do if I turn against him?

  ‘I’m turning you into a martyr,’ Hugo said patiently. ‘It’s the only solution. You’ll be officially deported. It’s the only way for you to be safe.’ He stared at her strangely and she shivered. ‘You do understand that you’re either with me or against me, don’t you? You can’t have it both ways. Some martyrs suffer and die horribly. Others become rich and powerful.’

  Ingrid covered her face with her hands. I want to stay alive and I want my family’s wealth returned to me. I have the right to what is mine. Her thoughts had become her mantra. She took a deep breath. ‘I’m a dedicated Nazi,’ she said firmly. ‘It’s just that I’m tired and no one tells me what is going on.’

  ‘The next month will not be easy for you, but it’s the only way,’ Hugo explained. ‘Make one mistake and you could be killed. It’s a risk we’ll have to take.’ He made it sound as if he were sharing the risk, she noticed. ‘This is what you must do.’

  She listened, her heart thumping, her palms sweating. ‘Swear that you’ll give me back my parents’ property. Swear it,’ she cried out, when Hugo had finished.

  ‘I swear it, to the nearest field or two.’ He turned away from her when he answered.

  *

  It was midnight. The Count was sitting in his office trying to concentrate on his work, but his fears for his family prevented him from thinking straight. It was four months since they had been arrested.

  The sudden, shrill ring of the telephone shocked him. What new horrors were to be heaped upon them all? He lifted the receiver reluctantly. ‘Yes?’ he whispered.

  ‘Father. Listen carefully.’ Hugo’s deep, resonant voice was throbbing with urgency. ‘I’ve found Ingrid at last. She’s been in Sachsenhausen, a concentration camp outside Berlin. I’ve not only found her, but I’ve managed to get permission to have her released, but only if she leaves Germany immediately. Can you get to Berlin by the day after tomorrow? I’ve had to pull strings. You must hurry.’

  The Count sat bolt upright. He hardly knew what to say. He’d given up all hope of Hugo’s intervention.

  ‘Is Ingrid well? Have they harmed her?’

  Hugo’s voice reassured him. ‘She seems thin, but healthy.’

  ‘And Louis? Have you any news of Louis?’

  ‘He’ll be transferred any day now. You’ll be able to see him briefly at the station.’

  ‘And Andrea?’

  ‘On her way to Prague.’

  ‘Hugo, I am deeply in your debt, you have proved to be a good son. But what about Marietta? Have you managed to see her . . . or help her?’

  ‘I can only advise you, Father. There’s very little hope for her, unless you join the Nazi Party. If you were to do that, and perhaps take on some task for the benefit of the New Order, they would probably commute her sentence from death to life imprisonment. But I cannot guarantee it.’

  ‘Then I have no choice, even if there is no guarantee that her life will be saved,’ the Count said brokenly. ‘Thank you, Hugo.’

  ‘They’re my family as well as yours. Now listen, you must bring some cash for Ingrid and some clothes, travelling things, bring a hat or a scarf . . . whatever you think she’ll need and put her on the train for Paris. From there she can make her own way.’

  *

  The count was waiting well before the appointed time. His housekeeper had packed most of Ingrid’s possessions. There were six suitcases in the boot of the car.

  At noon exactly, a small door within the gates of Sachsenhausen swung open and a thin, pale, figure stumbled through. She seemed to be bewildered, as if she did not know where to go. She took a few steps forward, looking dazed and suspicious.

  The Count stared in shock. He had been propelled back in time to the station in Vienna. There stood the hungry, shaven, wretched waif, except that this time she was taller and older.

  ‘Oh my God!’ he murmured as he rushed forward. ‘Ingrid . . . Dear little Ingrid . . . Thank God . . . Thank God . . .’ He noticed how Ingrid’s clothes were hanging on her, and he felt how thin she felt as he folded her in his arms. ‘You’re safe. My poor, poor little Ingrid.’

  ‘Hurry,’ his driver whispered nervously.

  ‘Here, put this coat on, darling,’ the Count said. He had brought his late wife’s best sable, which Ingrid had always coveted. But why was she so quiet? Was she ill?

  He wrapped the long sable coat around his niece, while she sat silent and hostile, gazing out of the window. Watching her, the Count felt quite inadequate, and he tried not to stare at the large tattooed number on her wrist.

  At the station, Count Frederick showed Ingrid the special locked compartment in her briefcase, where she would find all the private papers: a letter of credit to their bank in France where his lawyer had started an account for her with a large deposit, share certificates, all the dollar bills the Count had been able to get together at short notice, letters of introduction to influential friends, the address of their Swiss lawyer, where more funds could be obtained if necessary, plus her passport.

  When the train began to move, Ingrid stared sullenly at him. ‘Forget about me, uncle,’ she said. ‘Just forget I ever existed.’

  ‘No, never, darling. I never stopped searching for you, but it was Hugo who found you.’

  Ingrid’s expression confounded him, a veiled, hostile look which pierced his soul.

  ‘What is it? Tell me, tell me. What have I done wrong?’

  Ingrid turned away and climbed into the compartment, her head averted as the train began to move, but the Count stood on the platform long after it was out of sight, the tears streaming down his cheeks.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Louis was crouched on the ground in front of the tent he shared with four other footsloggers in the punishment battalion, hungrily spooning his soup out of a t
in. Two divisions were camped along the Polish border, waiting for orders and as far as the eye could see were rows of tents. Everyone knew they were going into Poland, but no one knew when.

  Very little of the former Louis was recognisable in this wiry, lean, tanned soldier in camouflage grey. In his three months of training in the notorious Brandenburg Battalion, BB 505, reserved for political undesirables and criminals, Louis no longer had any illusions as to the depths of degradation which the Nazi system had created for its opponents.

  He heard his name being called. It was Wegener, their lieutenant’s driver. Wegener was an old man by army standards, he was short and stocky with enormous breadth of shoulders. Six months ago, he’d been the owner of a garage and workshop, but he and his wife had sheltered a Jewish family in their loft and the neighbours had informed on them.

  ‘Captain Smiedt has arrived back from headquarters,’ he told Louis. ‘He wants to see you in fifteen minutes.’

  Now what? Louis thought. He stood up reluctantly. Louis and the Captain had been in the same class at the Vienna Military Academy. Although Louis had nearly always beaten him in theory and in practice, they’d been good friends. Smiedt had pursued the girls relentlessly and Louis had rescued him time and again from getting caught AWOL.

  ‘I’d smarten up, if I were you,’ Wegener warned him.

  Fourteen minutes later, Louis entered the staff office to find Smiedt standing in front of a blackboard. He had drawn a large wavy line over the left-hand side of the board. In the bottom right-hand corner was a square with Warsaw written inside it.

  He said: ‘Shut the door behind you, von Burgheim. At ease. There’s a meeting here in five minutes, but I want to talk you first . . . off the record.’ He frowned. ‘You saved my skin often enough, so I want to help you. I don’t know what the hell you did to find yourself footslogging in this division . . .’

  There was a pause and Louis felt obliged to explain: ‘I was a member of the Edelweiss student organisation at Munich University, a protest group. We brought out a newspaper listing irregularities in the Nazi hierarchy . . . helped refugees . . . that sort of thing. I was studying music . . .’ It was still too painful to talk about. He knew that Andrea was safe in Czechoslovakia, but Marietta was still in prison awaiting her trial and he was tormented by the fear that she would be executed.

  Smiedt made no acknowledgement of Louis’ terse explanation. ‘Do you know the purpose of this battalion?’

  ‘Who doesn’t? We provide blotting paper for bullets and mortars at the front line, thereby saving some of the Germany’s right-thinking Aryans.’

  ‘That’s it. And for my sins I’ve been put in charge of you.’

  Louis wondered what his sins were.

  ‘Well, Sergeant Major Schneider gave you top marks,’ Smiedt glanced into his file, ‘for resilience, for bravery, and for intelligence. It seems he wasn’t sure about obedience. There’s a question mark here. I reckoned that with your background you’d be pretty self-confident when it comes to dishing out orders, so I applied for your transfer to an officers’ training college. My application did the rounds and landed up on the desk of a certain von Hesse, SS. He turned you down and put this sticker on your file.’ Smiedt slid a sheet of paper across the desk and Louis saw the red star on the top.

  ‘You know what that star means?’

  Louis shook his head.

  ‘A Communist, someone who would be better off dead. It’s my duty to see you get killed. Understand? Schneider hasn’t seen this and we’ll make sure that he doesn’t.’ Smiedt took his cigarette lighter and held the sheet as it erupted in flames.

  ‘I decided that someone as rich and as highborn as you would be damn crazy to be a Communist. Besides I remembered what we used to talk about, and I started thinking . . . von Hesse was your stepbrother. Right?’

  Louis nodded, feeling too shocked to speak.

  ‘I guess it’s a family affair. I just thought you ought to know. Strange how money . . . your sort of money that is . . . brings out the worst side of people.

  ‘Anyway, I’m making you a corporal with immediate effect. I’m going to give you the opportunity to redeem yourself. I expect you know that if you earn the Iron Cross First Class, and have a good service report from your superior officer, you can be transferred to another battalion. Here’s your chance. You will choose a squad of twenty men and be prepared to undertake special missions. This will be dangerous, sometimes suicidal, but some people have a knack of surviving. Pick twenty men for your squad, men you can trust.’

  ‘For suicide missions?’ Louis lifted one eyebrow and stared hostilely at the Captain.

  ‘On these tasks you can use your brains and initiative to stay alive. In the front line it’s a matter of luck. Sometimes luck runs out. I reckon you stand a better chance this way.

  ‘I’m going to call in Schneider and my section heads now, so stand to attention. You will be here at this and future briefings because you will need to know why your missions are so vital.’ He grinned and clapped Louis on the back. ‘I don’t forget old times.’

  Schneider came in, followed by Doctor Johann de Horn, a man who shared Louis’ deep love of music. The remaining section heads followed.

  ‘All right, at ease, men. Let’s begin.’ Smiedt picked up the chalk. ‘At dawn our armies will attack from all along the Polish border.’ He pointed to the wavy line. ‘From the northern areas will come Army Group North, including the 3rd, 11th and 8th armies.’ He drew three chalk streaks from the German border across Poland to Warsaw.

  ‘Advancing from the north-west we’ll see the Fourth Army moving south-east towards Warsaw along the Vistula River.’ The chalk slashed down again. ‘From the west comes Army Group Centre, which includes the 8th, 4th and 10th armies. It also includes us and we’ll come this way.’ Another streak scored the board. ‘Mobile units will follow through the gaps the tanks have made. Our tanks outnumber the Polish by ten to one. Our Luftwaffe is five times larger than the Polish airforce and supremely trained. Our army of tanks and mobile units is unprecedented in the history of war for size, concentration, mobility and striking power. My friends, it will be an easy victory.’

  Smiedt took hold of the eraser and obliterated Warsaw. ‘As easy as that,’ he said. He wiped his hands on a piece of cloth.

  ‘There are a few pitfalls, but nothing we can’t handle.’ To Louis’ surprise, Smiedt produced a bottle of brandy from his desk drawer. Moments later they were celebrating their coming victory.

  *

  Twenty men! Whom should he pick? He began with his closest friend, Private Hans Konrad. They had gone through the gruelling punishment training together and given each other moral and physical support. Konrad had also fallen foul of the Nazis. Like Louis, he was highborn and was the closest to Hitler’s ideal of the Aryan man, with his magnificent six foot two physique, his ash blond hair, clear, pale blue eyes and noble features.

  Wegener was also a man he could trust. Then Josef Meyer, a tall, gangly youth of eighteen who had not long left school, but, despite his ungainly big feet, hands and ears and his clumsy appearance, he was a genius with mechanics, and a first class shot. Louis chose him, not because of his qualities, but because he had no family. Slowly he composed his list. Eventually he handed it to Smiedt.

  *

  At daybreak on September 1, German troops poured across the Polish border. By 8 a.m. Louis’s battalion had advanced five miles along the road to Posen. Louis was trembling with nerves, but his anger was stronger. He was part of a mighty carnivorous beast that was slowly, inexorably moving into foreign territory, killing everything in its path. For the first time Louis felt that he truly understood the beast that was the Nazis’ New Order.

  Behind him, a three-column-deep file stretched far back into Germany. Overhead, wave after wave of Stuka divebombers hurled themselves over the front line, softening up the Polish defensive positions. The beast moved forward, toppling trees that had stood for hundreds of years, flattening t
owns and villages, destroying crops and killing everything that moved. It was unearthly and terrible.

  As they passed the small villages and farms, Louis watched in despair. Blitzkrieg had created a terror which was destined to become the scourge of Europe. Polish soldiers and civilians were being killed on a scale never before experienced, as tanks and aircraft roared towards their targets, destroying troops, ammunition dumps, bridges, railways, cities, towns and villages. Within a few hours of the attack, not only was the enemy’s front line annihilated, but their back-up supplies were totally dislocated. Only then came the main advance of German troops.

  He saw frightened refugees scurrying away to safety, carcasses of dead animals, blitzed homes, burnt-out tanks, streams of hopeless, defeated Polish civilians and long columns of prisoners en route to labour camps in Germany. He cringed as he saw a peasant woman hurl herself into in a ditch with her four small children and try to cover them with her body as the tanks raked them with their guns. Long after they had passed, her cries echoed in his ears.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  It was dusk at the end of their first day inside Poland, a day which seemed to have lasted a century. They were marching along a peaceful country road that cut through forest glades and fields of sunflowers shining golden-red. As if from nowhere, the earth began exploding around them, followed by the deafening din of mortars and the chatter of machine-guns. There were shouts and shrieks as the men hurled themselves off the half-tracks and into the ditches beside the road.

  Suddenly the fields were full of Polish infantry. Unbelievably, they were singing. Wave after wave of troops burst out of the trees beyond the fields and raced through the stubble towards them. To Louis, it was macabre and unreal . . . the screams . . . the cries . . . the curses, the high-pitched hysterical rattle of the massed machine-guns and the deeper chatter of enemy automatic weapons and the sight of these men racing towards them, intent on killing.

  A split-second later, they were firing into the running men. Louis tried to snap out of the awed daze that had fallen on him at the sight of the appalling carnage of writhing, dying Poles everywhere. Louis clutched his sub-machine gun and tried to bring himself to pull the trigger.