Field Grey

by Philip Kerr

  For several days we were marched east of Konigsberg, and as we walked we were robbed of wedding rings, wristwatches, even false teeth. Any man refusing to hand over an object of value in a Russian's eyes was shot. At the railway station we waited patiently in a field for transport to wherever we were going. There was no food and no water and all the time more and more German soldiers joined our host.

  Some of us boarded a train that took us to Brno in Czechoslovakia, where at last we were given some bread and water; and then we boarded another train, headed south-east. As the train left Brno we caught sight of the city's famous St Peter and Paul Cathedral, and for many men this was almost as good as seeing a priest. Even those who didn't believe took the opportunity to pray. The next time we stopped we got out of the cattle cars, and finally we were given some hot soup. It was the thirtieth of April 1945, twenty days after our surrender. I know this because the Russians made a point of telling us the news that Hitler was dead. I don't know who was more pleased to hear this, them or us. Some of us cheered. A few of us wept. It was the end of one Hell no doubt. But for Germany and us in particular, it was the beginning of another - Hell, as it really is, perhaps, being a timeless place of punishment and suffering and run by devils who enjoy inflicting cruelty. Certainly we were judged by the book that was open; that book was Mein Kampf, and for what was written in that book we were all going to suffer. Some more than others.

  From that transit camp in Romania - someone claimed it was a place called Secureni, from where Bessarabian Jews had been sent to Auschwitz - there was another train travelling north-east, right through the Ukraine, a country I had hoped never to see again, to a stop in the middle of nowhere where MVD guards drove us from the cattle cars with whips and curses. Standing there, faint from lack of food and water, blinking in the spring sunshine like unwanted dogs, we awaited our orders. Finally, after almost an hour, we were marched along a dirt road between two infinite horizons.

  'Bistra!' shouted the guards. 'Hurry up!'

  But to where? To what? Would any of us ever see home again? Out there, so far away from any sign of human habitation, it seemed unlikely; even more so when those who had only just survived the journey found they could walk no further and were shot where they fell at the side of the road by mounted MVD. Four or five men were shot in this way like horses that had outlived their usefulness. No man was allowed to carry another, and in this way only the strongest of us were permitted to survive, as if Prince Kropotkin had been in charge of our exhausted company.

  At last we arrived at the camp, which was a selection of dilapidated grey wooden buildings surrounded by two barbed- wire fences and remarkable only because next to the main gate was the surviving steeple of a non-existent church - one of those sharp, metallic-roofed Russian church edifices that looked like some old Junker's Pickelhaube helmet. There was nothing else for miles around - not even a few huts that might once have been served by the church to which the steeple had once belonged.

  We trooped through the gate under the silent, hollow eyes of several hundred men who were the remains of the Hungarian Third Army; these men were on the other side of a fence and it seemed we were to be kept separate from them, at least until we had been checked for parasites and diseases. Then we were fed, and having been pronounced fit for labour I was sent to the sawmill. I might have been an officer but no one was excused work, that is no one who wanted to eat, and for several weeks I spent every day loading and unloading wood. This seemed like a hard job until I spent a whole day shovelling lime. Returning next day to the sawmill, half-blinded by the stuff blowing in my face, and with blood streaming from my nose, I told myself I was lucky that a few splinters in my hands and a sore back were the worst I had to suffer. In the sawmill I befriended a young lieutenant called Metelmann. Really he was not much more than a boy, or so it seemed to me; physically he was strong enough but it was mental strength that was needed more, and Metelmann's morale was at a very low ebb. I'd seen his type in the trenches - the kind who awakes every morning expecting to be killed, when the only way of dealing with our predicament was to give the matter no thought at all, as if we were dead already. But since caring for another human being is often a very good means of ensuring one's own survival, I resolved to look after Metelmann as best I could.

  A month passed. And then another. Long months of work and food and sleep and no memories, for it was best not to think about the past, and of course the future was something that had no meaning in the camp. The present and the life of a voinapleni was all there was. And the life of the voinapleni was bistra and davai and nichevo; it was kasha and klopkis and the kate. Beyond the wire was the death zone and beyond that there was another wire, and beyond that just the steppe, and more of the steppe. No one thought of escape. There was nowhere to go, that was the real communist pravda of life in Voronezh. It was as if we were in limbo waiting to die so that we could be sent to Hell.

  But instead we - the German officers at Camp Eleven - were sent to another camp. No one knew why. No one gave us a reason. Reasons were for human beings. It happened without warning early one August evening, just as we finished work for the day. Instead of marching back to camp we found ourselves on the long march somewhere else. It was only after several hours on the road that we saw the train and we realised we were off on another journey and, very likely, we would never see Camp Eleven again. Since none of us had any belongings, this hardly seemed to matter.

  'Do you think we could be going home?' asked Metelmann as we boarded the train and then set off.

  I glanced at the setting sun. 'We're headed south-east,' I said, which was all the answer that was needed.

  'Christ,' he said. 'We're never going to find our way home.'

  He had an excellent point. Staring out of a gap in the planks on the side of our cattle truck at the endless Russian steppes, it was the sheer size of the country that defeated you. Sometimes it was so big and unchanging it seemed the train wasn't moving at all, and the only way to make sure that we weren't standing still was to watch the moving track through the hole in the floor that served as our latrine.

  'How did that bastard Hitler ever think we could conquer a country as big as this?' said someone. 'You might as well try to invade the ocean.'

  Once, in the distance, we saw another train travelling west in the opposite direction, and there was not one of who didn't wish we were on it. Anywhere west seemed better than anywhere east.

  Another man said: 'Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns, driven time and again off course, once he had plundered the sacred heights of Troy. Many cities of men he saw and learned their ways, many places he endured, heartsick on the open sea, struggling to save his life and bring his comrades home.'

  He paused for a moment and then, for the benefit of those who'd never done the classics, said, 'Homer's Odyssey.'

  To which someone else said, 'I only hope that Penelope is behaving herself.'

  The journey took two whole days and nights before, finally, we disembarked beside a wide, steel-grey river, at which point the classics scholar, whose name was Sajer, began to cross himself religiously.

  'What is it?' asked Metelmann. 'What's wrong?'

  'I recognise this place,' said Sajer. 'I remember thanking God I'd never see it again.'

  'God likes his little jokes,' I said.

  'So what is this place?' demanded Metelmann.

  'This is the Volga,' said Sajer. 'And if I'm right, we're not far south of Stalingrad.'

  'Stalingrad.' We all repeated the name with quiet horror.

  'I was one of the last to get out before the Sixth Army was encircled,' explained Sajer. 'And now I'm back. What a fucking nightmare.'

  From the train we marched to a larger camp that was mostly SS, although not all of them German: there were French, Belgian and Dutch SS. But the senior German officer was a Wehrmacht colonel named Mrugowski, who welcomed us to a barrack with proper bunk beds and real mattresses, and told us that we were in Krasno
-Armeesk, between Astrakhan and Stalingrad.

  'Where have you come from?' he asked.

  'A camp called Usman, near Voronezh,' I said.

  'Ah yes,' he said. 'The one with the church steeple.'

  I nodded.

  'This place is better,' he said. 'The work is hard but the Ivans are relatively fair. Relative to Usman, that is. Where were you captured?'

  We exchanged news and, like all the other Germans at KA, the colonel was anxious to hear something about his brother, who was a doctor with the Waffen SS, but no one could tell him anything.

  It was the height of the summer on the steppe and, with little or no shade, the work - excavating a canal between the Don and the Volga rivers - was hard and hot. But, for a while at least, my situation was almost tolerable. Here there were Russians working, too - saklutshonnis convicted of a political crime which, more often than not, was hardly a crime at all, or at least none that any German - not even the Gestapo - would have recognised. And from these prisoners I began to perfect my knowledge of the Russian language.

  The site itself was an enormous trench covered with duck- boards and walkways and rickety wooden bridges; and from dawn until dusk it was filled with hundreds of men wielding picks and shovels, or pushing crudely made wheelbarrows - a regular Potsdamer Platz of pleni traffic - and policed by stone- faced 'Blues', which was what we called the MVD guards with their gimnasterka tunics, portupeya belts, and blue shoulder- boards. The work was not without hazard. Now and then the sides of the canal would collapse in upon someone and we would all dig frantically to save his life. This happened almost every week and, to our surprise and shame - for these were not the inferior people that the Nazis had told us of - it was usually the Russian convicts who were quickest to help. One such man was Ivan Yefremovich Pospelov, who became the nearest thing I had to a friend at KA, and who thought he was well off, although his forehead, which was dented like a felt hat, told a different story from the one he told me:

  'What matters most, Herr Bernhard, is that we are alive, and in that we are indeed fortunate. For, right now, at this very moment, somewhere in Russia, someone is meeting his undeserved end at the hands of the MVD. Even as we speak a poor Russian is being led to the edge of a pit and thinking his last thoughts about home and family before the pistol fires and a bullet is the last thing to travel through his mind. So who cares if the work is hard and the food is poor? We have the sun and the air in our lungs and this moment of companionship that can't be taken away from us, my friend. And one day, when we're free again, think how much more it will mean to you and me just to be able to go and buy a newspaper and some cigarettes. And other men will envy us that we live with such fortitude in the face of what only appear to be the travails of life.

  'You know what makes me laugh most of all? To think that ever I complained in a restaurant. Can you imagine it? To send something back to a kitchen because it was not properly cooked. Or to reprimand a barman for serving warm beer. I tell you I'd be glad to have that warm beer now. That's happiness right there, in the acceptance of that warm beer and remembering how it's enough in life to have that and not the taste of brackish water on cracked lips. This is the meaning of life, my friend. To know when you are well off and to hate or envy no man.'

  But there was one man at KA who it was hard not to hate, or envy. Among the Blues were several political officers, politruks, who had the job of turning German fascists into good antifascists. From time to time these politruks would order us into the mess to hear a speech about Western imperialism, the evils of capitalism, and what a great job Comrade Stalin was doing to save the world from another war. Of course, the politruks didn't speak German and not all of us spoke Russian, and the translation was usually handled by the most unpopular German in the camp, Wolfgang Gebhardt.

  Gebhardt was one of two anti-fascist agents at KA He was a former SS corporal, from Paderborn, a professional footballer who once had played for SV 07 Neuhaus. After being captured at Stalingrad, in February 1943, Gebhardt claimed to have been converted to the cause of communism, and as a result he received special treatment: his own quarters, better clothing and footwear, better food, cigarettes and vodka. There was another anti-fa agent called Kittel, but Gebhardt was by far the more unpopular of the two, which probably explains why some time during the autumn of 1945, he was murdered. Early one morning he was found dead in his hut, stabbed to death. The Ivans were very exercised about it, as converts to Bolshevism were, despite the material benefits of becoming a Red, rather thin on the ground. An MVD major from the Stalingrad Oblast came down to KA to inspect the body, after which he met with the Senior German Officer and, by all accounts, a shouting match ensued. Following this I was surprised to find myself summoned to see Colonel Mrugowski. We sat on his bed behind a curtain that was one of the few small privileges allowed to him as SGO.

  'Thanks for coming, Gunther,' he said. 'You know about Gebhardt, I suppose.'

  'Yes. I heard the cathedral bells ringing.'

  'I'm afraid it's not the good news that everyone might imagine.'

  'He didn't leave any cigarettes?'

  'I've just had some MVD major in here shouting his head off. Making me into a snail about it.'

  'Show me a Blue who doesn't like to shout and I'll show you a pink unicorn.'

  'He wants me to do something about it. About Gebhardt, I mean.'

  'We could always bury him, I suppose.' I sighed. 'Look, sir, I think I ought to tell you. I didn't kill him. And I don't know who did. But they should give whoever did it the Iron Cross.'

  'Major Savostin sees things differently. He's given me seventy- two hours to produce the murderer, or twenty-five German soldiers will be selected at random to stand trial at an MVD court in Stalingrad.'

  'Where an acquittal seems unlikely.'

  'Exactly.'

  I shrugged. 'So, you appeal to the men and ask the guilty man to step up for it.'

  'And if that doesn't work?' He shook his head. 'Not all of the plenis here are German. Just the majority. And I did remind the major of this fact. However, he's of the opinion that a German had the best motive to kill Gebhardt.'

  'True.'

  'Major Savostin has a low opinion of German moral values but a high opinion of our capacity for reasoning and logic. Since a German had the best motive for the murder, then he thinks it seems reasonable that we should have the most to lose if the killer is not identified. Which he believes is now the best incentive for us to do his job for him.'

  'So what are you telling me, sir?'

  'Come on, Gunther. Everyone in Krasno-Armeesk knows you used to be a detective at Berlin's Alexanderplatz Praesidium. As the SGO, I'm asking you to take charge of a murder investigation.'

  'Is that what this is?'

  'Maybe none of this will be necessary. But you should at least take a look at the body while I parade the men and ask the guilty man to step forward.'

  I walked across the camp in the stiffening wind. Winter was coming. You could feel it in the air. You could hear it, too, as it rattled the windows of Gebhardt's private hut. A depressing sound it was, almost as loud as the noise of my own rumbling belly, and I was already reproaching myself for not exacting a price for my forensic services. A extra piece of chleb. A second bowl of kasha. No one at KA volunteered for anything unless there was something in it for him, and that something was nearly always food.

  A starshina, a Blue sergeant named Degermenkoy, standing in front of Gebhardt's hut, saw me and walked slowly in my direction.

  'Why aren't you at work?' he yelled and hit me hard across the shoulders with his walking stick.

  Between blows I explained my mission, and finally he stopped and let me get up off the ground.

  I thanked him and went into the little hut, closing the door behind me in case there was anything in there I could steal. The first thing I saw was a bar of soap and a piece of bread. Not the shorni that we plenis received but belii, the white bread, and before I even looked at Gebhardt's body
I stuffed my mouth full of what should have been his last meal. This would have been reward enough for the job I was doing, except that I saw some cigarettes and matches and as soon as I had swallowed the bread I lit one and smoked it in a state of near-ecstasy. I hadn't smoked a cigarette in six months. Still ignoring the body on the bed, I looked around the hut for something to drink. My eyes fell on a small bottle of vodka, and finally, smoking my cigarette and taking little bites off Gebhardt's bottle, I started to behave like a real detective.

  The hut was about ten feet square, with a small window that was covered with an iron grille meant to keep the occupant safe from the rest of us plenis. It hadn't worked. There was a lock on the wooden door but the key was nowhere to be seen. There was a table, a stove and a chair, and feeling a little faint - probably from the cigarette and the vodka - I sat down. On the wall were two propaganda portraits: cheap, frameless posters of Lenin and Stalin and, collecting some phlegm at the back of my throat, I let the great leader have it.

  Then I drew the chair up to the bed and took a closer look at the body That he was dead was obvious, since there were stab wounds all over his body, but mainly around the head, neck and chest. Less obvious was the choice of murder weapon - a piece of elk horn that was sticking out of the dead man's right eye socket. The ferocity of the attack was remarkable, as was the brutal instrumentality of the elkhorn. I'd seen violent crime scenes before in my time as a detective but rarely as frenzied as this. It gave me a new respect for elks. I counted sixteen separate stab wounds, including two or three protective wounds on the forearms, and from the blood spatter on the walls it seemed clear that Gebhardt had been murdered on the bed. I tried to raise one of the dead man's hands and discovered rigor was already well set in. The body was quite cold and I formed the conclusion that Gebhardt had met his well-deserved death between the hours of midnight and four o'clock in the morning. I also discovered some blood underneath his fingernails and I might even have taken a sample of this if I'd had an envelope to put it in, not to mention a laboratory with a microscope that might have analysed it.