Last Flight to Stalingrad

by Graham Hurley

  He began to saw at the schnitzel, but Schultz wouldn’t let him off the hook.

  ‘And the Russians? Do they get a say in any of this?’

  ‘Of course, they do. You were here last year. You’ve just told me how hard they can make life. It’s gone midnight, Willi. A truce, ja? Time for just a mouthful or two?’

  Schultz was staring at him, and for the first time Nehmann realised that these reservations of his were genuine. He had first-hand experience of what the Russians could do, of how tough they were and how resourceful. Sheer numbers, he seemed to be saying, may in the end count more than propaganda.

  Schultz peered down at his own plate for a moment or two, then looked up.

  ‘You’re flying to Tatsinskaya tomorrow morning. Am I right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And then you’re attached to Fliegerkorps VIII? Richthofen’s mob?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That may not be enough.’

  ‘Enough for what?’

  Schultz shook his head. He wouldn’t answer the question. Then he glanced round the near-empty restaurant before returning to Nehmann.

  ‘I can get to the front line any time I want,’ he said softly. ‘Make contact when you need me.’

  17

  TATSINSKAYA, RUSSIA, 24 AUGUST 1942

  Exhausted, hungover, but otherwise undamaged, Werner Nehmann was at Kyiv airfield by six in the morning. Schultz hadn’t accompanied him out of the city but had been on hand at Nehmann’s quarters before dawn to shake him briefly by the hand and say goodbye. Nehmann wanted to enquire further about what he might expect over the days to come but Schultz wasn’t in the mood for conversation.

  ‘You know how to get me,’ he said. ‘Ring if you have to.’

  Have to?

  Nehmann was sitting at the back of the big Ju-52 transport. Every seat on the aircraft was occupied, mainly Wehrmacht officers with a couple of younger men in Luftwaffe uniform. The narrow cabin was airless and seemed shrouded in gloom. Conversation, at this time in the morning, was subdued. Beside the window, Nehmann had the sun on his face and as the lattice of Ukrainian fields below grew smaller with altitude, he fought the urge to doze. Whether he liked it or not, the regime had gathered him up and was shipping him east.

  Have to?

  Schultz, he knew, had contacts at every level of the Nazi machine. As an Alter Kämpfer, one of the old brawlers who’d brought mayhem to the streets of Munich when power was still a gleam in Hitler’s eye, he had the ear of countless Party members who’d done well out of the regime. They trusted Schultz. For better or for worse, they believed he represented something the Party would be poorer for losing. Whether Schultz still carried the authentic whiff of revolution wasn’t for Nehmann to judge but what was incontestable were the talents of the man himself. Like Nehmann, he had an acute awareness of when things might get out of hand. And, like Nehmann, he was a survivor.

  The flight was much longer than Nehmann had anticipated, the living proof that Schultz might have a point about the sheer size of the challenge that Hitler had set himself. Halfway through the journey, in the middle of nowhere, they landed to refuel. Nehmann, along with most of the other passengers, clambered down the metal ladder to stretch his legs. In every direction he could see nothing but the yawning folds of the steppe. Apart from a cluster of huts and two refuelling bowsers, there was nothing, just a faint sweetness on the wind and the bored near-adolescent on duty advising one of the passengers not to get too close to the refuelling hose with his cigarette. As a metaphor, thought Nehmann, this scene is telling. We’re nomads in this wilderness. Our tenure here is strictly provisional. A blink of the eye, a turn of the page, and we’ll be gone.

  They filed back onto the aircraft. Nehmann felt better now, ready for a proper sleep. He counted his fellow passengers. There were sixteen. The pilot fired up the three engines, pointed the aircraft at the wind, and took off.

  Two and a half hours later, a series of bumps awoke Nehmann. They were descending through a layer of thin cloud. From the window, as the cloud parted, he saw another airfield, away to the right, very different from the last. There were aircraft parked everywhere in clusters of four and five. Midget-sized vehicles busied between them, trailing wispy clouds of dust, while a series of small brown dots marked the edges of the airfield. The dots were everywhere. They looked like insect larvae and it was a full minute before they were low enough for Nehmann to recognise them as tents. This is where I sleep, he thought. This is where I must hatch my best ideas.

  Messner was waiting at the low wooden structure that appeared to serve as a terminal. He offered a stiff salute and then nodded at Nehmann’s bag. It was red, soft leather with a yellow flower pattern around the handles. It belonged to Maria and it was all he’d been able to find in the scramble to leave Guram’s apartment.

  ‘That’s all you’ve got?’

  ‘It is. I’m not staying long.’

  ‘You’re sure about that?’

  Nehmann didn’t answer. He followed Messner to a waiting Jeep. Evidently it was American, a gift to the Russians and now part of the spoils of war. Nehmann couldn’t see anything like it elsewhere on the airfield.

  ‘It’s for our use only.’ Messner told him to get in.

  ‘Our use?’

  ‘Myself and the Generaloberst.’

  Mention of Richthofen prompted a question from Nehmann. He was here to watch Fliegerkorps’ chief in action. It was Goebbels’ wish that the nation gain some understanding of what it takes to smash the Russians.

  ‘Is that your phrase?’ Messner enquired.

  ‘Goebbels’. Normally he’s much more subtle but I think the Eastern Front brings out the worst in him.’

  ‘And you’re here to correct that?’

  ‘I’m here to watch.’

  They were crossing the airfield at high speed, the Jeep shuddering from rut to rut. Nehmann clung to the hand-grab beside him, watching a big Heinkel wallowing in beneath the grey duvet of cloud. Messner drove like a maniac. No wonder his face was such a mess.

  Finally, they lurched to a halt beside a tent. Messner unfolded his long frame and got out.

  ‘Pretend it’s a hotel room.’ He led the way into the tent. ‘Use that imagination of yours.’

  Inside the tent there was space for three camp beds, each with a neatly folded blanket. Messner drew Nehmann’s attention to an oil lamp, the glass sooty, the wick blackened. It stood on a chair beside one of the beds.

  ‘Only use it when you absolutely have to,’ he said. ‘Fuel out here is precious. There’s a bigger tent I’ll show you that serves food three times a day. The food’s shit but the water is safe to drink as long as you remember the tablets.’

  ‘Tablets?’

  ‘In the bag there, beside the lamp.’

  Nehmann nodded. ‘I’m alone here?’

  ‘For the time being, yes.’

  ‘And your Generaloberst? When will I get to see him?’

  Messner frowned. This was the coldest of welcomes but after their first meeting Nehmann had expected little else. Every army he’d ever known had a suspicion of outsiders.

  ‘The Generaloberst may have time for you this evening,’ Messner said. ‘It depends on events. Meanwhile, he’d like you to take a look at his work.’ He nodded at the bag. ‘You have something warm in there?’

  Nehmann found a heavy sweater he’d packed in case it got cold at night. Messner had left the tent. When he returned, he handed Nehmann a camera.

  ‘Have you ever used one of these? It’s a Leica III.’

  Nehmann took the camera. It was small, neat, but surprisingly heavy. His fingers found the knob that advanced the film, the ISO adjustment, the focus ring on the lens.

  ‘I used one of these in France,’ he said. ‘Is it yours?’

  ‘It belongs to the Generaloberst. He asks that you take the greatest care of it. It’s fully loaded, thirty-six exposures. He told me he’s pre-set the film speed. You’ll need this, too.’


  He gave Nehmann a light meter. Nehmann checked the film speed on the camera: 200.

  ‘So, what am I supposed to do with it?’

  ‘We have a little expedition in mind.’ Messner’s face rearranged itself into what Nehmann guessed might be a smile. ‘Yesterday we took care of Stalingrad. There are more raids in progress but yesterday was the big one. We’ve assigned you to a Heinkel. There are no spare seats so you’ll be flying as the ventral gunner. The pilot’s name is Rubell. The plane’s fully operational so you’ll get a taste of the real thing.’

  ‘We’re dropping bombs?’

  ‘Of course.’ He nodded at the camera. ‘The Generaloberst would appreciate some shots of Stalingrad. Might we assume you’ll oblige?’

  *

  The aircraft assigned to carry Nehmann into battle was part of a much bigger force of bombers. Some of them were already on the move on the bareness of the airfield, taxiing slowly towards the end of the grass runway. Messner pulled the Jeep to a halt beside a lone Heinkel and led Nehmann to the foot of a metal ladder. The pilot was waiting with a spare parachute. The rest of the crew had already embarked and Nehmann was wondering whether his presence was altogether welcome. He’d never fired a machine gun in his life and knew that the training took weeks to complete.

  ‘The name’s Rubell.’ The pilot extended a meaty hand. ‘You’re the one who organised that photo, ja?’

  ‘What photo?’

  ‘Mount Elbrus. The guys with the battle flag. We all got copies yesterday.’ He nodded at Nehmann’s borrowed camera. ‘You’re very welcome, Kamerad.’

  Nehmann nodded, shrugged, and then milked the applause. In truth he’d forgotten about the showy conquest of Elbrus, but he was very happy to share the glory. If a photo could take him to Stalingrad and back, so be it.

  ‘You were on the raid yesterday?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course. Two sorties. By nightfall, between us all, we’d dropped a thousand tons of bombs.’

  ‘Any opposition?’

  ‘Nothing to speak of. We lost three planes.’ He patted Nehmann on the shoulder. ‘Don’t worry, Kamerad. Forget about the Ivans. We’ll give you a little tour once while we do the business. I’ll talk you through it on the headphones.’ A squeeze of the shoulder this time. ‘Just take the shots, ja?’

  He helped Nehmann into the parachute harness and watched him tighten the straps.

  ‘Not too big for you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’ve done this before?’

  ‘Ja.’

  ‘You know how many seconds to count? When to pull?’ He grinned. ‘What to pull?’

  Nehmann’s hand tracked to the canvas stitching of the handle that released the chute. Rubell, impressed, gave his arm a final pat.

  ‘Wir gehen, ja?’

  Nehmann followed him into the belly of the plane. He’d been in a Heinkel before and he knew how claustrophobic this space could be. The ventral gunner’s position lay beside the open door and he flattened himself against the skin of the fuselage as Rubell squeezed past before pausing to make him comfortable in the gunner’s seat. The gun itself, to Nehmann’s relief, had been removed.

  ‘You’re seeing out OK? Good view?’

  Nehmann nodded. He felt like a tourist. Rubell made sure Nehmann’s headset was working and went forward to the cockpit. The aircraft began to shiver as he fired up the first of the two engines. Then came another cough, the second engine, and the whole plane shuddered as it began to inch forward.

  ‘You’re hearing me, Kamerad?’

  Nehmann grunted a yes.

  ‘Gut. If it gets too noisy, tell me to shout.’

  Nehmann smiled. This was like the movies, he decided. The view through the air gunner’s blister was perfect, the greys and greens of the runway beginning to blur as they picked up speed. Behind, and to the right, another Heinkel was keeping station, half airborne between bounces, readying for the moment of take-off. Nehmann had already taken a reading on the light meter and he raised his camera, adjusting the focus, filling the frame with the aircraft as the pilot hauled back on the control column and the wheels left the runway for good. Not bad, thought Nehmann, winding the film on.

  The flight east took just over an hour. Barely minutes from take-off, still climbing, Nehmann caught an expletive in his headset which he assumed came from Rubell. He was celebrating the view from the cockpit. Nehmann leaned forward, his nose against the cold Perspex. With his neck at the oddest angle, he could just glimpse towering columns of smoke on the distant horizon. Stalingrad, he thought. Still burning.

  He was right. As they approached the suburbs of the city, Nehmann began to recognise the heavy footsteps of Fliegerkorps VIII: whole areas cratered by bomb blast, street after street of houses reduced to ashes. The ruins were still smouldering, smudges of light grey smoke curling away on the wind, and it took a minute of two for Nehmann to realise that the curious ochre stripes on each plot of land were brick chimneys, the sole evidence that people had once lived here.

  ‘Incendiary bombs by the thousand.’ Rubell’s voice again. ‘No need to blast anything apart down there. Just set the place alight.’

  Nehmann could see the river now, the broadness of the Volga dividing the city in two. On the western bank, the tall white apartment blocks threw long shadows and appeared to be intact. Wrong. Rubell’s voice again in his headphones.

  ‘We hit them time and time again. If you looked hard enough you could see concrete dust billowing out of the windows. At ground level there was even more of the stuff. My best guess is that the floors inside collapsed.’

  ‘The people got out?’

  ‘Not many of them. Not that we could see.’

  ‘They have air-raid shelters? Like at home?’

  ‘It seems not.’

  Nehmann nodded, raised the camera, took more shots, fidgeting with the focus, hunting for the kind of trophy images that might please the author of this wrecked city: huge petroleum tanks on the riverbank, still aflame, their metal carcasses torn apart; a lake of blazing oil drifting slowly down the river, dragging thick coils of smoke that circled slowly upwards in the updraught from the water; a nearby building on the western shore that must have been a hospital, eviscerated by high explosive, dozens of beds plainly visible inside.

  Rubell dropped a wing and then steadied the aircraft for the bombing run. They were running parallel to the river now, no trace of anti-aircraft fire or enemy fighters, the entire city at their mercy, a party box of targets that no bomber pilot could resist. The city centre, according to Rubell, was dominated by a huge Tatar burial mound, Mamaev Kurgan.

  ‘This is our second helping, Nehmann.’ He laughed. ‘When we arrived on Sunday the Russians were out in force, having their picnics. You never saw people move so fast in your life. Now they know better. Which in some respects is a shame.’

  Nehmann felt a blast of cold air as the bomb bay doors opened. He sat back from the Perspex, the camera readied, adjusting the exposure for the gloom of the aircraft’s interior. The bombs nestled in front of him, eggs crudely sculpted in dull metal, tail fins welded at one end. Someone had chalked a message on one of the cylinders. Nehmann was still familiar with Russian from his early days in Georgia and he brought the Cyrillic characters into focus in the viewfinder. With love from Berlin, went the message. Expect more where this came from.

  Nehmann squeezed the shutter button, then readied the camera for another shot. At the moment of release the aircraft lurched upwards, suddenly lighter, and then he glimpsed the stick of bombs falling earthwards with a tiny wobble that had an almost dance-like grace. He returned to the gunner’s blister, peering down through the Perspex, hoping to capture the line of explosions as yet more bombs stitched their way across the ruined landscape, but the aircraft had moved on and all he could see was smoke.

  18

  TATSINSKAYA AIRFIELD, 24 AUGUST 1942

  They were back at Tatsinskaya in time for Nehmann to join the queue for goulash and cabba
ge in the tent that served as a mess. Of Messner there was no sign but Nehmann recognised one of the cameramen from the Propaganda Company he’d briefly got to know in France. His name was Helmut and he was now attached to Sixth Army for the final push to Stalingrad. Helmut had set up a darkroom at Tatsinskaya, strictly to develop stills rather than movie footage. When Nehmann mentioned the photos he’d just taken from the Heinkel, Helmut said he was welcome to help himself.

  ‘You know how to develop stills?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then I’ll come, too.’

  They walked the five hundred metres to the dank space behind a maintenance facility that Helmut had converted into a darkroom. He locked the door, checked the blackout on the single window, then warmed the inky darkness with the glow of a red lamp. While Nehmann extracted the exposed film from the Leica, Helmut prepared the developing fluids. Within half an hour, they were both bent over the bath of fixer, waiting for the first of the images to swim up through the soup of chemicals.

  Nehmann had been witness to this process on a number of occasions and it always fascinated him. The first glimpse of what he’d captured through the camera, its sheer ghostliness, that fog of greys that slowly resolved itself into shapes he recognised, the remains of a city that only a couple of days ago had been intact. This, in Nehmann’s view, was a kind of magic.

  One by one, he identified the shots he wanted Helmut to print for Richthofen.

  ‘You’re seeing him? You’ve got an audience with the great man?’

  ‘Tonight, as far as I know.’

  ‘And that’s why you’re here?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘One favour? Do you mind?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘Ask him what the SS were doing here yesterday with a truckload of bodies.’

  *

  The Generaloberst was quartered, at his own insistence, in a smallish tent adjacent to the two-storey wooden structure on the edge of the airfield that served as a control tower. Beside the tent Richthofen had parked the little Fieseler Storch that took him to every corner of 4th Air Fleet’s enormous area of operations.