‘There’s somewhere for me to sleep?’ Messner was eyeing the car. The back seat, he thought. With maybe a blanket or two.
‘We can do better than that, Herr Oberst. Come…’
They got back in the car. On the western edge of the town was a low timber building with a sagging roof and a line of bullet holes beside one window. The front door was missing and two horses were grazing on a patch of nearby pasture. Beside the fence was a child’s swing, the wooden seat hanging on a single length of rope.
‘This was the school, Herr Oberst, until four days ago.’
‘So where are they now? The kids?’
‘At home? In hiding? Gone? Dead?’ Klaus shrugged. ‘No one knows.’
‘And I’m to sleep here?’
‘No. You sleep next door.’
Next door was another building, smaller, neater, in a much better state of repair. This, the orderly explained, had been the schoolmaster’s house.
‘He still lives there?’
‘No. We commandeered the property as soon as we arrived. There’s space inside for eight officers. If you’re lucky, they might give you one of the armchairs. If you’re luckier still, they may spare you a little vodka. Either way, Herr Oberst, you’ll be in good company. I’ll pick you up tomorrow morning as soon as your aircraft is ready. Gute Zeit, ja?’
Have a good time, eh? Messner watched the car bumping away, then turned back towards the house. Like the school, it was single-storey but a recent coat of fresh paint on the door and the window frames gave it a pertness that lifted Messner’s spirits. Kalach was a world away from the Wannsee but there was something about the house that reminded him of the lakeside property he’d shared with Beata and little Lottie after their marriage. Someone had loved this place, he thought.
The front door was unlocked. He stepped inside, aware at once of the earthy scents of men living together at close quarters. A modest sitting area had room for two armchairs, a folding table and a home-made banquette that ran the length of one wall. Logs were piled in a fireplace. Beneath the single window was an upended wooden box full of books and, when Messner explored further, he found more books tidied neatly in the corner of one of the two bedrooms. There was room here for at least four men, more if you were happy to sleep on the bare wooden floor, and he was about to return to the living room when his gaze was drawn to a line of photographs on the windowsill.
There were four in all, one very faded, the other three more recent. The latter were family shots, one of them taken beside the swing he’d just seen. The swing appeared to be working. A little girl sat on the wooden seat, her legs out straight, her tiny hands gripping the ropes. She wore a twist of ribbon in her hair and she had a big grin for the camera. Behind her stood a tallish figure in a rumpled jacket and dark trousers, and there were other children playing in the background.
Messner picked up the photo and stared at the two faces. Father and daughter, he thought, caught at a moment of brilliant sunshine before the clouds gathered and countless German armies had fallen on the Motherland. Another photo featured the same little girl. This time, she was sitting on what Messner assumed was her mother’s lap. Half close his eyes, and Messner fancied he could see a family resemblance in the upward tilt of the two faces. The little girl had a napkin tucked beneath her chin and her mother was offering a spoonful of what looked like soup. The same wide-eyed innocence. The same dimpled smile. The photo had been taken next door: Messner recognised the logs in the fireplace, and he stared at the image for a long moment, trying to imagine what might have happened to these people.
He’d noticed a radio in the living room. Even here, adrift in the ocean that was the steppe, word would have come of what awaited communities such as these. The rumble of heavy artillery in the west. Strange foreign shapes in the sky overhead. Then uniformed figures trudging east as the first ragged formations of Soviet troops fell back before the German onslaught. But what then? Where would a family like this go? Would they take their chances with the retreating Russians? Frightened young men who at least spoke the same language? Or would they stand fast, determined to somehow protect their little flock of pupils?
Hours later, mid-evening, he wanted to put these questions to the first of the property’s temporary tenants to return. His face and his name were already familiar from the last of the day’s meetings. Renke. A man, thank God, with the manners and the intelligence to conduct a half-decent conversation. At that afternoon’s conference he’d won over more impatient colleagues with a quiet recitation of the facts. Like Klaus, he had the advantage of age on his side.
Messner refused the offer of a glass of vodka. Even with a fresh weld on the Storch’s undercarriage, he said he needed his wits about him for tomorrow’s flight. Renke shot him a look, then shrugged and settled in one of the two armchairs. As the senior supply officer, he’d spent the last two months feeding Sixth Army’s insatiable appetite. They’d naturally foraged for local food wherever they could, but the Soviets had become expert at what he drily called ‘sustenance denial’. Field after field of crops had been burned to the ground. Wells had been poisoned, livestock slaughtered, butchered and hauled east. In all too many respects, he said, this war was two thousand years old: primitive, vicious, implacable, no quarter offered or taken. The victories in the west had been easy. This campaign, after a promising start, was anything but.
‘The Ivans have two cards to play,’ he said. ‘One is geography. There’s too much of this bloody country. It just goes on and on. It never stops. You set another trap, and then another, and you pat yourself on the back but after you’ve counted the first forty thousand prisoners you give up because there’s just too many of them. Yet the next day, waiting over the horizon, there are more, and more, and more, and you realise you haven’t even made a start. These people breed like rabbits. No wonder they call it Mother Russia.’
‘Some of us think Paulus could move a little faster,’ Messner said stiffly.
‘Paulus is unusual. I admit it.’
‘In what respect?’
‘He cares about his men. He hates to waste them.’
Messner was tempted to argue, to somehow pretend that Richthofen was in the room with them, mercilessly applying the lash. Movement is the essence of conquest. Strike hard and strike often. But there was something in Renke’s face, a weary acceptance that he probably faced an eternity of days like these, trying to marry an ever-diminishing trickle of supplies to the demands of tens of thousands of hungry men.
Back home the public’s image of the Wehrmacht was shaped by photos and newsreel footage from the front line: the murderous shriek of a diving Stuka, Panzer tanks pushing aside curtains of enemy fire, endless lines of enemy prisoners stumbling into captivity. But how many people ever thought – even for a moment – about the unsung heroes in the rear? Officers like Renke who somehow managed to keep the wheels of the killing machine grinding?
Messner wondered about putting some of these thoughts into words but decided that he had nothing to add. Renke lived in the world of figures. He spoke the cold language of supply and demand. All too literally, he measured the success of his personal war in kilos and litres. Was there glory in any of this? Would the Führer strike a medal for the Heroes of Resupply? Probably not.
‘So how long have you been living here?’ Messner gestured round.
‘Two days. This is the third. Compared to previous billets this is luxurious, believe me.’
‘And the occupants? You met them?’
‘No. They’d gone by the time we were cleared to move in.’
‘You think they fled? Went east?’
Renke didn’t answer. Instead he swirled the last of the vodka in his glass and then swallowed it in a single gulp. The bottle was nearby. He uncapped it slowly and then glanced at Messner.
‘You’re sure?’
‘Yes. I don’t drink much any more. It doesn’t do anything for me.’
‘Did it ever?’
‘Yes. Once.’
Renke nodded, expecting an explanation that never came. The two men sat in silence for a while, listening to a growl of thunder in the west. Then Renke recharged his own glass and drew Messner’s attention to the sideboard that dominated the room.
‘Top drawer,’ he murmured. ‘You might take a look.’
Messner got to his feet. The wood of the drawer seemed to have swollen and it took him a moment or two to wrestle it open.
‘These were here already?’ He was looking at a collection of child’s toys.
‘No. We found them in the daughter’s bedroom. They were everywhere, all over the floor, on the bed. You’re married, Messner? You have children of your own?’
‘One. A daughter. Lottie.’
‘Then you’ll know that children and tidiness don’t go together, which is exactly the way it should be. When we first walked into that bedroom it was like the family were still there.’
‘Maybe they had to get out in a hurry,’ Messner suggested.
‘Maybe they did but I doubt it. What three-year-old leaves her dollies behind?’
Messner took a closer look at the contents of the drawer. Renke was right. Three dolls, one missing an arm, one with a new skirt. These could belong to Lottie, Messner thought.
‘Now try the next drawer down.’ Renke gestured with his glass.
Messner did his bidding. This time he was looking at a nest of birds, each one hand carved. He lifted out the biggest and ran his finger down the length of its body. A light coat of varnish had given a dull gleam to the spread of its wings and, when he looked closely, he could see the tiny marks that had transformed the bare wood into feathers. A goose of some kind, he thought. Or perhaps a swan.
‘Beautiful,’ he said. ‘Exquisite.’
‘How much work, do you think? For each bird?’
‘Weeks, months, I’ve no idea.’ Messner looked up. ‘These were in the child’s bedroom as well?’
‘No. Some of them were next door, in the bigger bedroom, and the rest were in here. We put them away in case they got damaged. War can be unforgiving. Don’t you find that?’
Messner’s gaze returned to the bird. He picked up another, smaller this time, weighing it in his hand, half expecting it to react, to move under his touch, to squawk in alarm and fly away. Renke was right. No matter how urgent the need to leave, you’d take masterpieces like these with you.
‘So what happened?’
Renke swallowed another mouthful of vodka. In the last of the evening sun through the nearby window, his eyes were beginning to swim.
‘You know about our SS friends in the Einsatzgruppen?’
‘A little. Perhaps enough. We spend most of our lives in the air, thank God.’
‘That makes you lucky. They follow us everywhere. Somebody once told me they’re there to keep us honest but that’s Scheisse. They’re vermin. They’re worse than vermin. Fighting the enemy is one thing. Battle is never pretty. You spill a lot of blood, often your own, but after a fashion there are rules, things you do do, things you don’t. The Einsatzgruppen have no time for rules. Rules are for Untermenschen. These SS people are fanatics. They want to wipe Poland clean of Jews. Ukraine, too. And now Russia. See them in action and you might wonder what really drives this war of ours. They want to engineer a new world, regardless of the cost.’
‘You’re telling me they were here? In this house?’
‘Almost certainly, yes. As I say, they follow us everywhere. They have their own transport, their own priorities. They move in behind us and do what has to be done. They call it tidying up.’
‘This man was a Jew?’ Messner was looking at the little bird in the palm of his hand.
‘I doubt it. Two other cardinal sins, Messner. Number one, it doesn’t pay to be Russian. Number two, this house obviously belongs to an educated man. On both counts that could be a death sentence.’
‘And his wife? His child?’
‘Them, too. In SS eyes, they’re tainted. Vernichtung, Messner. Not a pretty word.’
Vernichtung. Extermination. Not just Jews but anyone with a brain and a schoolful of children to educate and the patience to fashion a living thing from a block of wood.
Messner was trying to visualise the scene in this little house once Sixth Army had swept through. The smoke of battle beginning to clear. Tank after tank grinding eastwards. The family emerging from wherever they’d managed to hide, only to find a different set of uniforms at the door.
‘So, what would have happened to them?’
‘They’re taken away.’
‘And?’
‘Nobody knows. Last year they killed tens of thousands of Jews in Kyiv. A ravine called Babi Yar. Shot in cold blood. We’d gone by then, thank God.’
‘They?’
‘The Einsatzgruppen. With the help of the Ukrainians.’
Messner nodded. A bullet through the back of the head, he thought. And then the long topple onto the mass of bodies below. Rumours from Kyiv had reached FK VIII headquarters on occasions over the last ten months, but no one ever seemed to have either the time or inclination to enquire further. Here was different. He was still holding the little bird.
‘There was an SS officer at the first of the meetings this morning,’ he said. ‘Was he part of the Einsatzgruppen?’
‘Yes.’
‘I didn’t catch his name.’
‘Standartenführer Kalb.’
‘And he’s been with you a while?’
‘Behind us, yes. Oil and water, Messner. We don’t mix.’
‘Socially?’
‘In any way.’
‘But he came to that meeting.’
‘He invited himself.’
‘Why? Why was he asking about our plans for Stalingrad? Why the bid for an aircraft?’
‘I have no idea. These people are a law unto themselves. You will notice that he left that meeting early, when it suited him. That’s the only clue you’ll ever need. These people have powerful allies in Berlin. They also appear to have the ear of the Führer. God knows why but that appears to be the case.’ He paused, then reached for the bottle again. ‘I’d like to propose a toast, Messner. It’s a small thing to ask.’
Messner held his gaze, then nodded. Another glass appeared. Renke filled it and passed it across.
‘To our schoolmaster,’ he said.
*
Messner slept badly that night. One by one, the other occupants of the house arrived. Klaus stepped in from the darkness around eleven in the evening with a welcome cauldron of stew that might have been horse.
By now, much against his better judgement, Messner had swallowed two more glasses of vodka and done his best to hold his own against one accusation after another that the Luftwaffe were becoming notable for their absence as Sixth Army prepared to push even further east. The Stukas had been more than welcome over the last couple of days, but substantial doubts remained about resupply. Was it really feasible to keep an entire army on the move without proper roads or a decent railway? Messner, who shared these doubts, did his best to defend the honour of Fliegerkorps VIII but by midnight his eyes were beginning to close.
Both bedrooms were occupied. Three men shared the living room. Renke offered to vacate his armchair for a berth on the floor but Messner wouldn’t hear of it. Klaus had left him a greatcoat and a couple of blankets. Messner spread the blankets on the floor and pulled the greatcoat to his chin. The rough serge smelled of tobacco and engine oil but within seconds he was asleep.
He awoke a couple of hours later, pitch-black. Somewhere outside a dog was barking. Closer, from one of the bedrooms, he could hear two men snoring. Messner stirred. His head was bursting, and he could still taste the rawness of the uncooked paprika in the stew. He struggled to his feet and fumbled his way to the tiny kitchen where he palmed water from the dripping tap into his mouth. Feeling a little better, he knew there was no point trying to sleep again. Better to get some air in his lungs.
Outside, huddled in the greatc
oat, he settled himself against a corner of the house, his head tipped up. The sky was ablaze with stars, not a wisp of cloud, and a sliver of moon was already sinking in the west. He sat motionless for minutes on end, trying to rid himself of the images that had haunted the briefness of his sleep. Beata, his wife. Lottie, his daughter. And the little lakeside house that had been full of sunshine and laughter until the madness had overcome him and everything had turned to dust.
Her name had been Olga Helm. She was a movie star, nearly famous, and from time to time she’d appeared with Goebbels on one of the Führer Squadron flights. Messner had never seen a film of hers but when a fellow pilot rhapsodised about her Slav good looks he knew exactly what he meant. The wide curve of her mouth. The goddess cheekbones. The way her smile could transform any conversation. When travelling, she always favoured loose-fitting dresses, hints of a seemliness that Messner found mysteriously alluring. What was she like under those folds of cotton? What might a man expect at rather closer quarters?
To his great surprise, Messner found out. She had a stylish apartment off the Wilhelmstrasse and one night she invited him in after he’d given her a lift back to the city centre from Tempelhof. Anticipating a brief cup of coffee, she’d led him straight to bed. She’d flown with him three times. She loved his sternness, his air of command, and for a woman who was terrified of flying she’d never felt anything but safe. Now she wanted to find out whether he could work that same magic in bed.
The magic worked. When opportunities presented themselves, they continued to meet, sometimes in Berlin, sometimes elsewhere in the Reich. Messner, who’d always suspected that she was one of Goebbels’ mistresses, discovered that this was far from true. The Minister of Propaganda still enjoyed a pretty woman on his arm but a previous affair – once again with a foreign-born actress – had clipped his wings and so Messner found himself sucked into a relationship that turned his world upside down.
Last Flight to Stalingrad Page 9