Playing With Matches
Page 17
The soberness of their assignment felt so incongruent with the day which was full of sunshine and blue skies. Birds could be heard chirping in the nearby forests. Emil tilted his face toward the sun allowing himself to forget where he was for just a moment.
A fellow soldier spotted his slight smile.
“Don’t be fooled by the beauty of the day,” he said. “The blue skies belong to the Russians.”
Emil shot a look of questioning.
The soldier looked to be in his late twenties, with a sharp penetrating gaze. The frown lines on his face were deeply etched. “The Luftwaffe is nearly crippled,” he continued. “If you hear aircraft engines, take cover.”
Emil nodded. It sounded like good advice.
“I’m Philip, by the way,” the soldier said. “I’ve been with this company for three years. I’m sorry to see you here and so young.”
He said this with a deepening frown, and Emil figured Philip didn’t expect him to survive his first battle.
If they ever got to it. The front was like a mirage in the desert; the more you walked toward it the farther it seemed to be. Emil’s calves ached with all the walking and the strap of the Mauser rifle dug into his shoulder. He shifted over, closer to his neck for relief, but the weight of the weapon pulled it back into the raw groove.
To top it off, his boots bit into his ankles with every step, thumb sized blisters burst and burning with the sweat that dampened his socks. Emil was miserable with itchy sweat in the summer heat. All of the men were. Sweat dripped between his shoulder blades under his tunic and in the crevices of his underarms, under his chin and along the rim of his cap. He longed to gulp the remainder of the water in his canteen, but it was precariously empty and he had to preserve what he had until the next stop.
Emil scoured the faces looking for Johann. It was easy to get separated and Emil felt nervous when he lost sight of his only real friend. Then he spotted him marching beside Friedrich who was head and shoulders taller than most of the men and hard to miss.
They set up camp in another deserted town. Emil wondered where all the people had gone, but didn’t blame them for wanting to get out of the way, especially when the town was crouched close to where the front line battle was brewing.
Emil noticed the banter decreased as each day progressed. Fatigue and nagging fear wore on a man’s spirit along with his physical body. Johann hadn’t spoken a word in days and though Emil tried to marked it up as normal under the circumstances, he worried about him.
The camp cook worked a miracle with few supplies, and Emil devoured the cup of stew and two hard buns provided to each man in minutes. He wasn’t alone. The space around him filled with the sounds of metal spoon scraping every last drop of gravy from the tin cups.
The weather had cooled a little and he reclined on his pack in the grass allowing himself to feel a small measure of contentedness. Johann did the same.
“I can’t stop thinking of home,” he said.
“Me neither,” Emil admitted, silently adding “or Katharina.”
“I still can’t believe we’re in the middle of this nightmare,” Johann continued, his voice catching. Emil hoped he wasn’t about to cry.
“It will be over soon,” Emil said. “Just take it a day at a time. Eventually it will end.”
Then Emil heard a sound that made his blood curdle. The hum of an Aircraft engine. He remembered what Philip had told him.
“Quick, Johann!” he said, crouching, preparing to take flight. But where to? Not to one of the vehicles. A strike to one of them would blow them up, too.
Everyone heard the engines now, and mayhem erupted as men grabbed their weapons, many running for cover in the church. Emil sprinted for the nearest cottage and kicked at the wooden door with his foot. Visions of Helmut and Karl lying in the field after their strafing attack shot flashed through Emil’s mind. They had to get out of sight. Pure panic squeezed his chest tight.
“Help,” he shouted to Johann. But they were too late. A single plane flew overhead. It was one of theirs, a straggler.
Emil fell to the ground in a heap, near to tears with relief.
Pure exhaustion brought on a dreamless sleep that night despite the heat and mosquitoes, but Emil awoke to the sounds of men scratching and cursing.
The next day produced more marching in the heat. Emil was assigned to guard duty for the morning near the front of the troop. The road beneath them was uneven dark dry soil riddled with rocks. Each step produced a cloud of dust and more than one man stumbled when their toes inadvertently hit a stone.
Though alert to his situation and the fellow soldiers with rifles ready around him, Emil found distraction from the tediousness and raw ache of marching by letting his mind wander to kinder times. Images of his mother and father, fatter and happy, Helmut playing in a carefree world of make-believe. He pushed back memories that included his bad behavior toward them.
Or of the food his mother used to prepare, like roast ham and dumplings. Chocolate torte.
Emil’s stomach growled in response. He took a sip of water and mentally reprimanded himself for the self-torture.
Instead he let his mind drift to Katharina and their kiss good-bye. Her blue eyes desperate for him to stay, the tight clasp of her hand in his.
The blue string. A promise that she would be there when he returned.
The reason why he must return.
They marched along the dry road that narrowed to almost a goat path. The vehicles lurched along single file, along the twists and turns, all of the soldiers on guard as if something was bound to dart out of the trees.
Then something did. Dark and low to the ground, it raced across the path in the distance. The commanding officer ordered the convoy to halt. The soldier beside Emil shot at the moving target, but missed.
Before Emil’s mind could registered that the black spot moved too quickly for a partisan, it burst out of the trees onto the road. Emil shot involuntarily, joining the cacophony of rifle fire around him.
The spot dropped to the ground. The officer waved to one of the soldiers to investigate. Half way to the corpse, our soldier started hooting with something close to laughter.
“A wild boar!” he shouted.
A wild boar! News of the kill flew among the ranks, and a cheer rose to heaven. Emil wasn’t alone in dreaming about the roast dinner to come.
Before too long, the animal was tied by the ankles and strapped to the back of one of the trucks. The mood of the men cheered considerably.
Their guard down as they entered the vacant village around the bend.
Shots rang out again and several men collapsed to the dirt near Emil, including the soldier that had just minutes before rejoiced with the announcement of the boar. A chorus of “Ambush!” filled the air, as the men took cover behind the vehicles, in the ditches and behind brush.
Emil fell to the earth with only dead bodies as his cover. His heart beat madly against his ribs. He shot randomly over the nearest corpse.
The Spandau machine guns were engaged. Grenades thrown and shot into the village huts. Huts burst into flames, and partisans ran to the woods.
Their lieutenant shouted for them to pursue. Emil scrambled to his feet and ran. He felt exposed, like he was chasing shadows.
Ahead of him a partisan jumped from the tall grass and sprinted like a wild animal. Emil aimed, but hesitated. He could kill a fleeing target.
But this one was different. This one was a woman.
A woman partisan? Had the war come to this?
Emil lowered his rifle but heard a shot resound anyway. The woman screamed, falling. Another comrade had no such qualms about killing her.
The partisans weren’t unskilled in guerilla warfare. They’d hidden bombs in the ground. The soldier running ahead of Emil tripped a wire. The blast of the bomb shook the earth as the man’s body was shredded and fell to the ground. Pieces of his flesh splattered on Emil’s arms and he thrust it about like his jacket was on fire.
He waited until he heard the familiar sound of the lieutenant’s whistle. The battle had ended.
Though they had killed most of the partisans who had attacked them, they lost seventy men and two supply trucks doing it. The partisans were devoted to stopping the convoy of supplies from reaching the Germans on the front and the boar had been a ploy of distraction.
The beast was roasted up as planned, but there was no accompanying happy celebration.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
THREE DAYS after the partisan attack they finally arrived to the front. It was a place called Ternopil, a muddy barren wasteland. A summer storm pelted rain on Emil’s face like sharp grains of sand, the wind whipping through his uniform. He spit black dirt moving it out with his tongue. Emil couldn’t fathom why they were fighting over this desolate piece of landscape.
He didn’t have time to think about that now. They’d barely arrived before being thrown into the fray like mice dumped into a pit of snakes.
Ahead were three rows of hills behind which hid an incredible number of Soviets. Soviets who were not untrained with subpar ammunition like the partisans, but who had machine guns, tanks, and trucks mounted with rocket launchers. Emil’s unit had those things too, but not in the same numbers. And worst of all, the Soviets had airplanes. The Luftwaffe, Emil’s beloved Luftwaffe, had been all but destroyed.
Deafening, head throbbing explosions went off to Emil’s left. Then right. Now straight ahead. He ducked and dodged, shooting off his newly issued machine gun, rat-a-tat-tat, through the haze, praying that he didn’t hit one of his own.
Johann, Friedrich and Georg, who had also managed to survive the partisan attack, were doing the same. At times they ducked behind tankers, and other times fell flat on the ground. Their faces were twisted in shock, flushed red with panic. Emil’s body felt like it moved outside the will of his own mind. With an animal-like instinct, he scampered and crawled, his eyes watering and filling with dust, caking like mud.
Their squadron crawled forward bravely, bit by bit, shooting rockets from their tanks. Though they were powerful and intimidating, kicking up dust that blind Emil while shattering his eardrums, they were yet noticeably inferior to the Reds.
A Russian rocket exploded to Emil’s left, knocking him to the ground. He grabbed at his ear, which rang painfully.
“Get up!” Johann grabbed him by the arm and they moved on, stepping over bodies, German and Russian, as they went.
They continued forward when everything in their hearts, minds and bodies demanded they turn and run the other way. But, if they did that, they’d be dead for sure, shot by their own men.
The barrenness of the land left them exposed, vulnerable, easy targets for the Reds. They covered themselves by sticking close to the tanks, hiding behind the odd tree or worse, a dead body.
Emil’s heart raced like a scared rodent’s, his lungs gasping air in short puffs. His stomach churned, turning his bowels to liquid. He couldn’t imagine surviving this endless, hellish day. But he had to. If he died, it would crush his mother and break Katharina’s heart.
Up ahead, Emil spotted a scarce bush. He and Johann collapsed behind it, exhausted.
Emil pulled out his shovel and started digging a foxhole. Johann joined him, digging to save their lives.
“I don’t even want to fight this stupid war!” Johann said with bitterness.
“Shut, up!” Emil snapped. His nerves were shot, and his patience along with it. Maybe Johann didn’t care if he were shot down by one of their own commanders for treason. Emil wanted to live.
“Stop whining like a baby.” Georg had come from nowhere, out of the shadows. Emil was afraid he might turn his gun on Johann. Instead he started digging.
“We have to kill these imbeciles. Don’t you know what they do to their POWs?”
Johann ran his sleeve under his nose. “They can’t do much to me if I’m dead.”
“You are such an infant, Johann,” George said loudly. “So, you’re dead. But what about your family. You got a mother? A sister?”
Johann shrugged. Emil didn’t like where this was going. A bomb dropped, they all flinched.
“You know what they do to German women and girls?” Georg shouted above the noise. “They rip their clothes off and rape them. Take turns. While their men are holding the lanterns so they can see and hear everything. Then the Reds shoot them. The women first, then the men.”
It was no secret the Reds hated them. Really, really hated them. Emil believed him.
“Johann,” Emil said. “We have to fight. For our mothers. For Katharina.”
Johann slumped to the bottom of their fox hole and covered his face with his hands. Emil was afraid Johann was about to start bawling, proving Georg right in his accusations. But he didn’t. He took a deep breath and said, “I’m fighting already, aren’t I?”
Each day when darkness began to fall, Emil was filled with wonder that they were still alive to live another day.
But before they could collapse into their hard, dirty beds and wish for sleep void of nightmares they still had to load up the dead. The injured were transported to the mobile hospitals several kilometers away from the front.
There was no getting used to it. Emil grabbed the arms of one corpse as Johann took the legs, both of them trying to ignore the ripped flesh, crushed limbs and stinking wounds.
One dead body after another.
The next morning, a low fog sifted through the camp. Emil could barely see his hand in front of his face.
“We’re retreating,” Georg said when he joined them. The normal cockiness of his tone, gone. He’d shrunk into a sliver of a man, seemingly overnight. He was just a boy.
They all looked like that, Emil thought. Stick men. Sick, stupid stick men.
The squadron packed up the barracks, and walked west to the next village. Emil struggled with the weight of his kit, fearful about how frail he had gotten. Each step was a monumental effort. Though several hundred men remained, the trip was quiet. No unnecessary talking was permitted or desired.
They finally settled on the least deplorable looking abandoned building and set up shop. Emil and Friedrich scoured the village for anything wooden, anything that could be broken up and burned.
“Why don’t you like me, Emil?”
Emil looked at Friedrich sharply, not certain where that had come from. He had heard that crisis situations had a way of making people closer, and to his surprise Emil felt a certain fondness for Friedrich now.
“What do you mean, Friedrich?”
Friedrich’s head was down, his eyes scouring the earth and avoiding Emil’s gaze. “I know we haven’t always, you know, been the best of friends.”
Was he trying to apologize?
“I like you,” Emil said. He did a little bit, now, so it wasn’t a complete untruth.
Friedrich paused. Emil could see his large Adam's apple go up and down, struggling to swallow. His voice cracked. “If I don’t make it, you’ll tell my mother, you know, I’m sorry.”
Run and duck, run and duck. Explosions on all sides and from the air. Heart beating, quicker, faster. Sweat dripping from his brow into his eyes. This wasn’t a dream. This was real. In his constant state of fear and fatigue, Emil couldn’t tell the difference anymore. When did he wake and how did he get here? Every moment was a blur.
With his peripheral, Emil saw Johann, his face stiff, eyebrows arched in panic, dread. Another fierce explosion and they dropped to the ground. Emil braced his machine gun against his shoulder and pulled the trigger. He didn’t even open his eyes.
A panzer rolled by, and Emil and Johann jumped up to run alongside it, hoping it would provide some cover, some protection from the ferocious attack of the Red Army, stronger now than
any other day.
Emil heard a man scream. The noise around him was overwhelming, all-consuming, but he heard it. He turned and saw Johann on the ground, writhing. Writhing and screaming. His leg was gone.
“Johann!” Emil ran to him, pulled off his belt and strapped it around Johann’s stump, pulling it tight. He couldn’t help it, he turned away and vomited.
Sucking in his sour breath, he grabbed Johann under his arms and dragged his wailing friend back, away from the enemy line.
Bombs dropped from over head, bullets whizzing. Emil kept dragging Johann, back-step, slide. His screams became moans. Almost there. Medical truck in sight.
Burning heat in his right leg. Emil gasped, dropping Johann’s heavy body. He was hit. A bullet. Emil fell with a thud, Johann falling against him. Friedrich caught up to them from behind, pausing briefly to register—two soldiers down.
“Those dirty dogs!” Friedrich’s face contorted, devil-like. His long legs sprinted towards the front; he hollered a deep belly yell, For the Fatherland! shooting his machine gun with wild madness.
The shots were returned. Friedrich’s body shuddered as it was riddled with bullets. He slumped to the ground in a pool of blood.
Emil jerked himself backwards, one painful pull at a time, trying to hang on to Johann as he went. More pain. Vicious, searing, tearing pain. Another hit—his shoulder this time, blood spurting.
Then blackness.
CHAPTER FORTY
HIS EYELIDS felt like lead blankets. His lips like frayed ropes. A moan escaped through them when he shifted his weight—pain burst through his entire right side.
Where was he?
He worked his eyelids open a crack, then closed them quickly. Bright light, blinding, singed his eyes.