by Gary Haynes
He craved sleep. His body ached in every joint. He let himself relax, his head bowing. His eyelids fluttered. He tried his best to stop them from closing, but it was a futile exertion.
Pavel’s eyelids flicked open, startled by sudden movement, something he’d thought had sounded like the scrambling of heavy-duty boots over shale. Intuitively, he swivelled around. He saw a grey shape running towards him. The right arm was pulled back. He knew that meant a stick grenade. In the confined space of the bunker’s entrance and stairwell, the consequences would be devastating. Briefly, he pictured the blood and flesh of his comrades, his charges, splattered up the bare walls. Something he’d avoid at any cost.
Still squatting, he let off a burst from his Shpagin. He held the drum magazine with his left hand, as he pushed it up in an arc. The muzzle smoke spread out and the brass casings somersaulted vertically before clattering onto the concrete about him. The discordant music of war. Of death. The rounds hit the shape in a crescent from waist to shoulder. It was flung back onto the rim of a bomb crater, filled with rancid water. It didn’t move again. Pavel knew he must have looked like an easy target.
The grenade, with its long wooden handle, exploded with nothing more than what he regarded as an exaggerated phut, something he put down to his familiarity with the near deafening discharge of close by artillery and tank fire. But it threw up chunks of aggregate in a white-grey smokeball, the shockwave making the body lift off the ground. It blew off what looked like an arm, or a thigh.
Hearing his men running up the steps behind him, he said, ‘Get back. I’m alright.’
He took out his binoculars. He saw the tattered field grey uniform. The dead German girl was about fifteen years old, her lower thigh looking as if it had been gorged upon by one of the packs of now wild dogs that roamed about the city. But he remained unmoved. Besides, he thought she might be better off dead.
The Red Army liked to rape at night, after they got drunk on pilfered schnapps, or antifreeze from jeeps when alcohol wasn’t on hand. Girls as young as eight. Stooped crones. It didn’t seem to matter. The hopeful took to smearing soot onto their faces and teeth and cutting their hair or tying grimy rags into it. The hopeless jumped off buildings or into swirling rivers. They took their young with them too, wrapped like bundles of bread against their empty breasts. It sickened him. But he guessed all wars sent people spiralling into madness.
Deciding the street wasn’t a good place to be for either side, he took point after re-joining his men. He told himself it was only right he took his turn, although he hated point duty as much as they did. He knew he shouldn’t. It was perilous, and they deserved a sound leader, but he did it anyway.
The passageway took a sharp left at the foot of the concrete steps. It proceeded in the form of a long corridor, which he reckoned passed under the street and on towards the half demolished civic office building. All but a very few lights, affixed to the walls in wire cradles, were broken. The way ahead appeared narrow and ominous. The floor was cracked, damp and slippery. Water leaked from exposed overhead pipes and spilled patches of oil were prevalent.
He knew explosions had happened further on. The air stank of stale smoke and acrid sulphur. He told his men to be careful, to watch out for the sand buckets, fallen plaster and wooden benches. There were scattered documents too. He stooped and picked one up and held it a few inches from his squinting eyes. He risked igniting a match against the wall. He just about made out the outline of the same unknown design on the paper as had been on those few pieces he’d seen in the street. These looked as if they’d been dropped in a chaotic retreat. He blew out the match.
With almost no visibility, it was impossible to tell how far the corridor receded. And there were other corridors now, branching off the main one. It appeared to be a complex underground facility. But he decided not to allow his men to use their torches. Not until he was sure they were alone.
Turning to them, he said, ‘We’ll make sure it’s clear. Share what food we have and what we can find. Then rest for the night.’
A few nodded. The rest just looked bleak.
If it’s clear, we’ll get up at dawn, he thought. Make our way back to company HQ. Get fresh orders.
He got about thirty feet before seeing a steel door, a couple of yards away. Black liquid that looked like stale blood or oil had oozed out from underneath it. He halted his men with a raised arm. He pointed to the Kid, circled his hand over his head and thrust it down: To me. The Kid came forward, his sunken face full of belief. The Kid nodded to him.
Squatting to one side of the door, Pavel pulled down on the metal handle, checking to see if it was locked. He couldn’t risk lobbing in a grenade. The bunker’s damaged ceilings appeared too fragile. The door was unfettered. He kicked it open, rushed in, followed by the Kid.
Inside, he grimaced, moved his Shpagin around in a semicircle, although the dark was almost impenetrable. The stench was even more revolting than in the street. Rank and overwhelming. He held his throat, choking on it. The Kid almost vomited too. There were bundles on the floor, but he couldn’t make them out, and there was something smouldering at the room’s centre.
‘It’s clear,’ Pavel said. He coughed, spat.
He watched the others shuffle into the large, square room, which was devoid of furniture, of any means of artificial light. They covered their noses and mouths with the sleeves of their jackets or blouses, before hastily replacing them with dirty handkerchiefs and strips of bandages snatched out from their pockets.
‘It stinks like a fucking slaughterhouse,’ the Muscovite said.
It does, Pavel thought. But what the hell’s been slaughtered?
3
‘Turn your torches on,’ Pavel said.
He was still unsure whether all the bunker had been abandoned, but he felt he had a duty to investigate what was in the room. Besides, his curiosity was getting the better of him.
The three that had them, did so. The others lit matches or flicked open cartridge-shaped storm lighters, taken from captured German soldiers. The Heer were flagrant looters, irrespective of their rank. They stole everything, even those items they had no use for. Pavel and his men hadn’t redressed the balance, but they still took what they could use. He’d leave the real work to the Soviet trophy brigades.
The torch beams played over the floor and Pavel saw that naked corpses lay face up there. They were positioned in organized lines, like cadavers in a mortuary. They’d been tortured. At least three had had the tops of their skulls hacked off. The craniums had been cleaned and were dotted about the room, used as bowls to hold small piles of smooth stones. A pile of bloodied Red Army uniforms was in one corner.
Pavel grimaced, shaking his head. All their noses and ears had been severed, the legs and arms and hands and feet. But most of the removed body parts looked as if they had been put back in place against the heads and torsos, such that from a distance they could be taken for whole. Pavel wondered why they’d been put back together, like sickening jigsaw puzzles.
He smelled incense. The scent of it clawed at his nostrils, even above the sweet and suffocating stench of decomposing human flesh. He walked towards the source. There, in the centre of the room, was a huge, rusted iron vat, like a witch’s cauldron. Beneath the orange embers was a foot or more of ashes.
It was an irreconcilable sight in a German bunker, and it made his head ache simply to consider what its presence might mean. It was something truly out of the ordinary in a world where violent death had become as ordinary as day passing into night.
Pavel walked back to the dead bodies and crouched down. ‘Over here,’ he said, pointing to the head closest to him.
Illuminated and upon closer examination, it was evident that the man had been shot in the back of his neck. Pavel motioned with his hand and the torch beams highlighted each head and body in turn. He duckwalked down the line, seeing that all were the same, the backs of their necks smeared with sticky brown, coagulated blood, the torsos tie
d with woven rope. He just hoped they’d been executed before the butchery, but something told him that hadn’t been the way it had panned out. He stood up. Spat on the floor.
‘Highlight all of their faces,’ he said.
The beams scanned across all twelve. He recognized them as Soviets. Uzbeks or Kazakhs, he guessed, even given the sliced human tissue. Mongolian volunteers or northern Asians from Siberia, perhaps. He didn’t know for sure. Not one looked older than his mid-twenties. He knew the Germans murdered Red Army prisoners at will, but this was something different. Something unholy, whatever that means now, he thought.
The Kid lit a cigarette. Pavel noticed that the boy couldn’t stop his hand from shaking.
There was the sound of erratic footsteps and a heavy fall. They all turned, ready to kill, even the injured farmer. A slim man was sprawled on his back in the doorway. He was bareheaded, but still retained his round, steel-rimmed glasses. His field grey service uniform was all but covered in plaster dust.
After a pause, one of the beams picked up the three pips on his left collar, the hated insignia on the right. A Waffen-SS Hauptsturmführer, a captain, Pavel knew. It was obvious the German was close to unconsciousness. His face was ashen, his brown hair matted with sweat. A small line of dark-red blood popped in and out of his cracked mouth in unison with his laboured breath. His eyes were the colour of aubergines.
Looking at the Kid, Pavel said, ‘Check him out.’ Although the German was in a bad way, he knew he could be hiding a pistol or grenade.
The Kid walked over to him, tossed away his cigarette, and slung his Shpagin over his shoulder. Kneeling, he pushed the captain onto his side. Patted him down. Nothing dangerous had been concealed. With one knee on the German’s chest, he rifled through his pockets. He took out a packet of cigarettes, a half-eaten chocolate bar and a tanned-leather wallet. The officer mumbled, his head rolling from side to side.
Standing over him, the Kid raised his Shpagin, about to use the stamped-steel muzzle to cave-in the German’s face, which was turning sallow. The others flicked open their lighters and lit matches again to further brighten the room.
‘Wait,’ Pavel said. He nodded to Doc, knowing he could speak almost fluent German.
Doc handed his carbine to a comrade. He moved over to the badly injured officer, waving the Kid out of the way. Reluctantly, the Kid shuffled a few steps to his left.
The Muscovite positioned himself at the doorway. Squatting, he kept watch on the corridor. ‘I want his boots,’ he said.
Crouching by the officer’s side, Doc cradled his head. He tipped water into his parched mouth from a battered water bottle. The officer coughed and spluttered, dislodging much of the liquid. To Pavel, he looked beyond saving.
‘Ask him if there are more SS here?’ Pavel said.
Doc spoke to him in German. But the officer just moaned before emitting a guttural snarl like a nervous dog.
‘Ask him if he wants to die here?’ Pavel said.
Doc translated, and the German raised his right hand about six inches above the polluted floor. He tried to spread his fingers.
‘Five,’ Pavel said in German.
The officer blinked.
‘Ask him why these men died here. Like this,’ Pavel said to Doc.
He heard the officer strain to get a few words out. ‘What did he say?’
‘Not me,’ Doc said.
‘They always say that,’ the Muscovite said. ‘They think it’ll save them, the stupid bastards.’
‘Ask him again,’ Pavel said.
Doc did, and the officer struggled to raise his head and breathed a few rasping breaths like an asthmatic. Doc leaned forward, and held him up at the neck, enabling his enemy to speak into his dirt-stained ear. He whispered two words. A split second later, Doc stood up. He’d let the officer’s upper body fall to the concrete, as if the German had told him he was contaminated by some contagious disease. One with no cure.
‘Tell me?’ Pavel said.
Doc didn’t respond for a few seconds. Then he said, ‘Doctor Doll.’
Pavel shook his head. ‘He’s delirious.’
The Muscovite, still squatting by the entrance to the room, sniggered. ‘Just kill him.’
Pavel thought he was a stupid ape. He’d never liked him. He knew he would have displayed extreme brutality if he hadn’t kept him in check. But part of him knew the Muscovite was right. He had no means, let alone the inclination, to deal with a dying SS officer. Besides, the man was all but dead as it was. But he wasn’t a murderer, even after all that had happened. Why start now?
But in his mind, he watched the Kid hit the officer in the head with the sturdy muzzle of his Shpagin. Short powerful strikes, creating deep gashes in the yellowing skin. The sound, he knew, would be like splintering wood. Retribution for what had happened here, if only of an imaginary nature.
The officer made one brief, ragged gasp and died, as if Pavel had willed it.
Nodding, the Kid lit another cigarette. But after his second inhalation, his hand stopped midway between his hip and mouth. His emerald-blue eyes seemed to glaze over.
‘I want to go home now, sergeant.’
It’ll end soon, Pavel thought.
‘I know,’ he said. ‘Just be patient. It’ll be over soon.’
He knew too that he would have to remain vigilant. His ultimate responsibility was the protection of his squad, every one of them. Even more so in what he knew to be the last days. The war was an infernal vortex that had sucked life from the world. He swore that his men would not be the ones to finally leave it sated.
Deciding the bunker was either too bizarre a place to spend the night, or too unpredictable, he took a firm grip on his Shpagin. ‘We’re leaving.’
Half a dozen explosions erupted from beyond the room. White light steaked through the corridor like flash lightning bolts. The ground vibrated, as if a platoon of Tiger tanks was rumbling by. The shockwaves travelled down the walls and the Muscovite was thrown back against the doorframe. It erupted into flying splinters, as lethal as blow darts. For the first time since he’d met him, the Muscovite looked serene.
Pavel knew the blast had killed him.
Some of his men had sunk or been propelled to their knees. Others stared wide-eyed and trembling. Plaster and brick dust fell from the ceiling. There was a deafening, creaking sound: the hull of a ship hitting an iceberg.
They all rushed for the door, just as an iron girder swung down from out of the dimness, like a huge and lethal pendulum.
4
At night, before Pavel fell asleep, he always prayed to a God he no longer believed in. He didn’t know why, except that he didn’t know what else to do. He prayed that his Russian village hadn’t been burned to the ground. So many had been, both during the initial advance of the fascist beasts, and in retreat, as reprisals. On his way to the defence of Stalingrad after the German offensive against southern Russia, Operation Braunschweig, he’d heard that millions had been forced into a murderous slavery, and millions more Europeans had already died. He hadn’t been able to conceive of such things and hadn’t believed them at first, even though he’d been fighting since 1941 without rest.
But he’d seen all a man had to see to continue to risk his life willingly as he’d gotten closer to the city. Children had hung from trees in deserted and wrecked parks, like mahogany marionettes. Old men had had their eyes burned out. Women’s bodies had lain in the frosted earth, with babies still in their arms. The German invasion had caused famine and disease too, the air for miles about replete with the smell of the dead and the carcasses of donkeys and horses. Barns had been burned to the ground, the smouldering ruins unable to hide the charred bones, so many had there been. Asphyxiated corpses had been recovered from shallow graves without a mark on them.
But Stalingrad hadn’t fallen, even though the Soviets had suffered over one million casualties. He’d survived the hellish battle. He knew now he could survive this.
‘Stalingrad,’
he said, creating an impression of it in his mind.
It had been the flagship of the Soviet Union. Before the war, he’d once walked between its towering, blond-stone blocks of flats, and had marvelled at its modern factories and ornamental gardens. It had stood elegantly for twenty miles on the banks of the Volga River. But after seven months of ruthless fighting, he’d seen the city ravaged and reduced to a flaming skeleton.
He’d fought the German Sixth Army. There were other armies there. Other Axis nationalities. His enemies had come from Hungary, Croatia, Italy and Romania. Many had died from the cold or typhus, it had to be said. But the Sixth Army had included 30,000 Russians, a fact that had been kept secret from the ordinary Soviet people. Pavel and his men had called them Hilfswillige, volunteer helpers. Some had been the remnants of the pro-Tsarist White Army, old men in Pavel’s eyes, that had seen a chance to exact what had been a festering revenge against the Bolsheviks. Some had seen it as a way of escaping the horrendous conditions of captivity. Others, however, had simply been traitors. They were all dead now, he guessed, their last moments spent tied blindfolded to a wooden stake, their shattered and bloody bodies the result of unimaginable torture by SMERSH, the main directorate of military counter-intelligence. He saw them often in his imagination.
But Pavel hadn’t speculated about the fate of his wife and two children, because he knew his mind wouldn’t be able to cope with it. He just told himself that they were alive. Safe. Even though he’d heard no word from them.
Now, close to unconsciousness, he knew that the previous explosions that had taken place in the bunker had weakened the ceiling even beyond what he’d thought before, and the explosions that had just occurred had caused it to all but cave in. Bulky debris covered some of his men and the mutilated corpses. Concrete slabs. Strips of metal. Mounds of plaster and powdery dust. Legs had been crushed by iron girders. One comrade puked a foul-smelling mixture of blood and a bile-like fluid, his life force draining away, Pavel knew.