by Jana Petken
Max nodded, getting a good look at the middle-aged Frenchman for the first time.
“Oui, Marcel is right,” the doctor said, injecting Max in the thigh. “Besides, there’s nothing more I can do for you, except to prescribe bedrest, which I am now doing. Don’t try to run before you can walk. You’ll only delay your recovery.” Again, the doctor mumbled, “I know what you youngsters are like.”
Max, who had not objected when the needle penetrated his thigh, was already feeling lightheaded. The pain seemed to miraculously slip away, and the doctor now had two faces instead of one, and both were swimming in and out of focus.
“London knows the situation and they’re sending a replacement. You’ll be back in England before you know it,” Pasqual said.
Max tried to keep his eyes open but failed miserably, “No … no,” he slurred. “I’m not going back … must get to Klara. Take me to Paris … Pasqual, Paris.” Then his eyes closed to oblivion.
******
During the next six days, Max worked from his bed, setting up a chain of command and training programme for the Frenchmen who were still unfamiliar with the use of weapons and explosives. Men as young as sixteen and as old as sixty were willing to fight the Germans in Saint Quentin, but most had never been involved in an armed struggle before. Max had also asked Pasqual to go with Marcel to a remote location with the radio, to contact the SOE in London. Max’s message insisted that a replacement agent wasn’t necessary. The operation had not been hindered by his injury as the mission had always been to leave Pasqual in charge while he, Max, went to Paris to discover what had happened to Klara and Romek’s group. And that was what he planned to do in four days’ time, come hell or high water.
Max had not thought about Klara, or about much of anything in the last few days, but his mind was clearer, the morphine having been purged from his system through drinking copious glasses of water, and wine. He was now anxious and impatient to get to Paris to extricate the woman he loved.
He raised his legs off the mattress, grimacing as the pain shot into his lower back and backside. He cursed, but surged ahead, rolling his whole body over the side of the bed as he’d been instructed, getting his feet onto the floor then take a few shuffling steps towards the window.
Marcel knocked on the bedroom door, entered without waiting for an invitation, and almost knocked Max off his feet. “Damn it, man, could you not have waited a minute longer before barging in?” Max snapped as Marcel caught him just before he toppled over.
“You would have landed on your black and blue derriere had I not held you upright, Englishman,” Marcel retorted.
“Hang on, I’m not a bloody racehorse,” Max chuckled, then groaned with pain as Marcel pulled him towards the bed at a faster pace than he was used to.
“I have news of the Resistance group you asked about. I have an associate working at the train station in Fresnes, Val-de-Marne,” said Marcel when Max was propped up in bed again.
“Near the prison?” asked Max.
“Yes. My man saw thirty-five prisoners being put on a train, including three women. They were wearing Fresnes prison uniforms, and some of them were talking in Polish. After the train left the station, he managed to speak to one of the civilian prison guards and found out that the prisoners were being transported to Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany.”
Max’s heart sunk at the knowledge that some of the prisoners were Polish, for as far as he knew, Romek had cornered that market in Paris. “I don’t suppose he heard any names being mentioned?”
“If he did, he didn’t say.” Marcel turned away.
Max gripped Marcel’s arm. “What are not telling me?”
“I can’t confirm…”
“Tell me.”
“All right. The guard also mentioned that most of the prisoners being transported had been captured from a single group and that the Germans were delighted with themselves for having caught them – it has to be the Polish-French Resistance run by your man, Romek.”
Max squeezed his eyes shut, a mixture of anger and sorrow making his stomach churn. He had arrived in France too late, too bloody late to help the group because of a stupid accident which had left him lying in a bed with a sore arse.
After Marcel left the room, Max wondered again if Klara had been one of the women prisoners getting on the train? Was it possible that Romek had cracked under torture and given her cover away. In four days he would find out. To hell with the pain. He needed to get moving and drag his bruised backside to Paris.
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Wilmot Vogel
Russia, September 1941
From his muddy ditch, Wilmot watched as thousands of captured Soviet troops trudged westwards to a concentration camp under the watchful eyes of the SS guards. He lifted his can of beans in the air as the columns went past his hole and shouted, “Do you want some beans, ya’ load of Commie bastards?” Who’d have thought he’d be jealous of prisoners? He had food and they had gaunt, emaciated bodies, but they were leaving this Godforsaken country when he wasn’t; lucky swine.
A truck hooted its horn and flashed past the ditch, splattering mud into Wilmot’s face and eyes. “What’s your hurry? Are we not wet enough?” Wilmot yelled and then kicked the soldier lying beside him. “I wish I was going in the other direction with those SS guards. I can feel snow in the air already, and it isn’t even October yet. I’m freezing, aren’t you, Claus?”
“Shut up, Vogel. You talk too much. I’m trying to get some sleep here.”
Wilmot sighed, finished his beans and then rattled his knife against the insides of the can just to annoy Claus. They were on Leningrad’s doorstep and had already pounded the city with shells and cut off the remaining railway connection. Wilmot could smell victory in the air, see the tops of buildings. They were so very close, yet his unit hadn’t moved forward for two days. He didn’t understand the madness in their methods at times. He just hoped those in charge did.
Wilmot heard his name being called. He sat up, peered over the lip of the ditch and heard it again, “Vogel! Schütze Wilmot Vogel!”
After climbing out of the hole, he looked around him. Overwhelmed by the sea of men, tanks, military vehicles, and horses, he couldn’t spot the source of the voice until the Gestapo officer on horseback was almost upon him. “Vogel!” the officer shouted again and this time he got a reply.
“I’m Schütze Vogel,” Wilmot said standing to attention and wondering what stupid rule he’d broken this time. “What can I do for the Gestapo, sir?”
The officer handed Wilmot an envelope. “This has come from Gestapo headquarters in Berlin. Someone important has gone to great lengths to get a letter to you,” he said, turning his horse’s head and riding away without another word.
Wilmot got back into his ditch. It was uncomfortable, but its back wall kept the wind from scouring his face. He stared at the envelope, afraid to rip it open to see the letter inside, perhaps telling him he was to go back to Dachau because his release had been a mistake, or that he’d been reinstated in the SS, which he didn’t want either – the bloody animals shooting civilians every five minutes were creepy buggers – he was glad to be out of all that nonsense.
“Who’s managed to get a letter through to you here, and why are you important enough for an officer to deliver it?” Claus was wide awake now. “Are you going to open it or gawk at it all day?”
“Go back to sleep. It’s none of your business.” Wilmot lifted the one-page letter out of the envelope and began to read it.
My name is Kriminaldirektor Fredrich Biermann of the Gestapo. At the request of your dear mother, Laura, I must inform you of your father’s death. He was killed by an explosion in his factory during a British air raid on Berlin.
As your papa’s good friend, I must also tell you that your mother has legally emigrated to England. Whether she has arrived safely or not, I cannot say yet, but I believe she will not return to Germany for the foreseeable future.
You a
nd I have met on numerous occasions, Wilmot. I attended your baptism, and birthday parties when you were growing up. Please know that I am also grieving for Dieter. Your father was like a brother to me, and only one day before his death, he became my daughter’s father-in-law, after we celebrated the wedding between my Valentina, and your brother, Paul. We are now part of the same extended family, Wilmot, and I shall endeavour to keep tabs on you, as your father would wish me to do. When you return to Berlin, look me up.
Please accept the Biermann family’s sincere condolences.
Kriminaldirektor Fredrich Biermann
“Well, what does it say, Willie?” Claus asked again. “Vogel, who’s it from?”
Wilmot stood on shaky legs, climbed out of the hole and ran. Blinded by tears, he bumped into men and horses, but kept going through the vast German lines. Consumed with grief, he fled from the news, from this hell, from himself, running faster and faster, knocking into more and more people as his rage grew. Who was he to go home to if he ever got back to Berlin? Who cared about him, stuck out on a limb away from the rest of his family in a country that smelt of burnt vegetables and animal carcases?
When he finally stopped running, he found himself between two tank columns. He’d run about five-hundred metres, and the German battle group still stretched before him all the way to the horizon. He bent double, trying to catch his breath, head hanging down to his knees, his hands gripping his side where he’d suffered broken ribs on the day he’d been injured at the Russian defensive line.
Men were arguing on the other side of the tank nearest him. He couldn’t see their faces or ranks, for the tank stood as a barrier, but by the discussion they were having he deduced that the voices belonged to high-ranking officers on the general’s staff. He should leave, he thought, but he was too sore and breathless, and the officers might see him and think he was listening in to a conversation he shouldn’t know about. Anyway, he didn’t want to leave, they were talking about Leningrad, and he wanted to hear what was being said.
“… are you questioning the Führer’s wisdom?” an angry voice asked.
“In this instance, yes, I am. We’ll weaken the entire Army Group North if it stays out in the open during winter,” another voice answered.
“It won’t take that long to starve the Russians in Leningrad. The blockade will stop supplies getting in and people getting out, including their army. It could work,” a third voice said.
“He should be telling the Army to take Moscow.”
“Moscow will come after Lenningrad…”
The discussion continued, but the voices faded. Wilmot peeked around the back of the tank. The officers, including the North Battle Group Commander, General Reinhart, walked to a command trench and disappeared into it.
Wilmot took stock of his new surroundings; he was still far from his unit and the ditches they lived in, and the ground here was blanketed by tanks rather than men and heavy weaponry. He looked to his left, to the edge of the woods where a large crowd of civilians and soldiers were gathered. He crossed the field to get a closer look and found a unit of Wehrmacht infantrymen aiming their rifles at a group of Russian civilians huddling on the lip of a long trench. Behind the soldiers, SS Stormtroopers sat on the grass eating from cans of something or other as he had done earlier.
He observed the prisoners, mostly Jews and a few Russian soldiers in uniform. Men and boys laboured in the waist-high trench, digging it deep. The adults used spades, but the boys were burrowing into the ground using their bare hands. Women and children congregated at the side of the hole, crying, half-naked and in some cases devoid of clothing altogether.
Wilmot wondered what was going through the prisoners’ minds. Did the men and boys know they were digging their own graves? They probably did, yet they were working hard, sweating with exertion, appearing desperate to finish their task, perhaps to please the soldiers in a last-ditch attempt to be spared a bullet. Were he a Jew with a spade in his hand, he’d throw it at the guards and tell them to dig the hole themselves. He’d die just the same, but with his dignity intact, not as a lamb going to the slaughter while smiling like a half-wit trying to get his captors to like him. Not wanting to watch what was to happen after the hole was long enough and deep enough, he turned to walk away.
“Schütze, come back here!”
Wilmot halted, turned around and approached the SS-Untersturmführer, who was gesturing to him with his hand.
“What are you doing here?”
“I was going for a walk, sir,” Wilmot said.
The Untersturmführer peered at Wilmot’s face, his eyes red raw from crying and his mud-caked cheeks streaked with tears. “Going for a stroll, eh?” The Untersturmführer and the SS soldiers laughed. “Where’s your rifle?”
“I don’t have it with me,” Wilmot said.
The officer laughed for a second time and his men joined in. “Listen to this, boys. He’s a rifleman, and his only job is to walk beside the tanks and carry a bloody rifle; instead, he’s wandering about the place like a lost tourist,” he sniggered. “You’re obviously a clever lad. Your father must be very proud of you, Schütze.”
Wilmot clenched his fists, allowing the laughter and insults to wash over him without retaliating. In his mind, he saw Franz, the man he’d shot in Poland, the guards in Dachau, and the civilians who’d killed the Jews in the last Baltic town before entering Russia. He pictured his father’s body, blown up by the British, and his brothers’ voices telling him he was an idiot, but they loved him all the same. And finally, he saw naked children howling with terror, but he held his anger in check, lest he join them in the hole.
“What’s your name?” the Officer asked.
“Schütze Wilmot Vogel, Untersturmführer,” Wilmot answered, his head high.
“Well, Vogel. You might as well make yourself useful. Borrow a rifle from one of my men – you do know how to shoot, don’t you?” he laughed and then continued, “Follow my Oberschütze’s orders. This will teach you to be nosey.”
When he was handed the rifle, Wilmot realised that the SS guards had no intention of killing the Jews themselves. The loathsome task was being left to low-ranking cannon fodder like himself. The SS men had laughed at him for leaving his rifle behind, yet they were bucking their responsibilities by passing them on to others.
The slaughter began half an hour later. On the SS-Oberschütze orders the soldiers fired first at the Jewish men who had dug the grave and were still in it. Wilmot, who’d pretended to pull the trigger, watched as women and babies, young boys and old men lined up on the lip of the hole to be shot.
When the rapid gunfire began, most of the prisoners tumbled into the hole, dead by the time they hit the bodies beneath them. But after each round, the soldiers jumped into the hole firing at heads with pistols to make sure none of the victims had survived.
When it was over, Wilmot found a spot to empty the cartridges from the Mauser’s chamber and then went to the SS-Oberschütze. He set the rifle on the ground and said, “If I don’t get back to my unit I’ll be on a charge. Can I go?” The man would eventually realise that the rifle had not been used, Wilmot thought, but he hadn’t been the only one not to fire his weapon. He’d seen at least two others who had not squeezed the trigger once.
“Cover the bodies,” the SS-Oberschütze ordered the infantrymen, and then to Wilmot, “Get out of here.”
Wilmot’s knees wobbled as he tottered back to his line. Dizziness made his head swim and he vomited his beans to a chorus of jeers from some nearby soldiers. He walked on, trying to grieve for his father, which was why he’d left his post in the first place, but instead, he wondered what his father would say about this earth-bound hell in Russia? What could anyone say, now or in the future? Who would be able to plumb the depths of these Eastern lands where raging hatreds, appalling indignities, terror and the wholesale slaughter of human beings was witnessed and ordained by a flick of a pen every single day.
This, he thought, was a war witho
ut compassion or honour, a titanic struggle in the murky atmosphere of kerosene and cordite, in choking heat and in what soon would be, the flesh-scarifying cold of winter. This war had just begun, yet he predicted that Russian soil would be soaked in the blood of millions before the insanity ended, and would warp and twist the souls of those who survived.
Wilmot reached his ditch and found Claus sitting in the same spot as he’d left him. It had started to rain, and he pulled his coat over his head. “Where have you been, Willie? Are you going to tell me what was in the letter or not?” Clause asked again.
“Shut up, will you?” Wilmot reread the letter, and once finished he sobbed like a baby under Claus’ concerned gaze. Embarrassed, Wilmot turned to face the ditch’s wall. He hadn’t thanked his father for getting him out of Dachau; on the contrary, he’d complained that his release had been far too long in coming, and then he’d thrown a tantrum because of his posting to the Eastern Front.
He recalled the last conversation he’d had with his papa. They had gone for a beer together and had sat in the corner of a bar that neither had been to before. His father, as always, had reminded him of his duty to the Fatherland while refusing to listen to Wilmot’s reason for shooting Franz in Poland.
“The reason doesn’t matter, Willie, it’s in the past,” his father had pointed out. “What matters now is that you never disobey another order or get into a fight with your fellow soldiers. They’re the ones who might save your life one day.”
Dieter had then become unusually melancholic. “Son, I want to see all my children around my dinner table when this war is over, and yes, even Frank. But I worry about your temper. You’re not like your brothers or sister, you have this passion inside you and I don’t think you know what to do with it yet. But always remember, regimes and dictators ebb and flow, they have their moment in the sun and then burn into the pages of history. But family, Willie, is forever and must always come before politics – always, without exception.”