by Roy Jacobsen
Ten minutes later he dropped his cigarette in his coffee cup, got to his feet and walked the 500 metres through the snow-covered village to the house concerned, where his men had apprehended and handcuffed four men. In the sitting room, apart from the prisoners, the Truppenführer and two guards, was the ruddy-faced Elsen, clearly dejected, as well as an elderly, wizened and self-effacing woman and a blind man with dark glasses who was talking to one of the prisoners.
Blaskowitz stamped his foot and asked for silence, received a whispered briefing from the Truppenführer and mustered the civvies-clad captives, four young men of not even twenty who were making ungainly attempts to stand to attention.
“Deserters!?”
“Luxembourgers!’ they answered in unison.
“But well brought up?” he said scornfully with regard to their postures, and told the Truppenführer to remove the chains linking their handcuffs. “And you were taught that by the Wehrmacht. Name, rank and unit! You first!”
“I’m a civilian, Herr Kommandant. Léon V….”
“You’re wounded.”
“Yes, Herr Kommandant. A bullet wound in the knee. I got it during the evacuation of Hosingen…”
“When?”
“The sixteenth, Herr Kommandant. I’m from Dorscheid, but was doing farm work in Hosingen…”
Blaskowitz shook his head dismissively.
“Farm work in December?”
“Slaughtering animals, Herr Kommandant.”
“But you haven’t got any papers?”
“No, Herr Kommandant, my mother has them. She was evacuated to—”
“Find out about him,” he said to the Truppenführer. “He’s too afraid or too stupid to give his real name – and you?”
At this point the Truppenführer broke in and handed him a revolver he had found on the prisoner next to Léon.
“Look at this, an 0.8, and of course you found this in the woods?”
“Yes, Herr Kommandant. I walked all the way here from Stolzembourg, where I was working in a smithy. I’m looking for my family, who have been evacuated from Stolzembourg. I found the gun south of Fennberg and brought it with me in case—”
“How long have they been here?” Blaskowitz asked the host. Elsen hesitated and mumbled:
“Varies. Some five days, one two days…”
“Why are they in the cellar?”
“The house is full, Herr Kommandant.”
“Indeed. We received reports from one of the girls here that these Schweine are deserters.”
“I don’t know anything about that, Herr Kommandant. They’re wearing civilian clothes and they are Luxembourgers.”
“Is that so? Well, I have no intention of dirtying my hands. I assume the Sicherheitsdienst will get the truth out of them. Take them to Clervaux on the next available lorry. And clean up this rathole.”
He turned and walked towards the door but was stopped by a loud voice.
“Dirtying your hands is just what you’re doing, Herr Oberst.”
He stared in disbelief at the assembly, went over to the sofa and looked down at the blind man.
“Is that so?” he drawled. “So I’m dirtying my hands, am I?”
“Yes, Herr Oberst. The S.D. know only one truth.”
“How do you know?”
“I was in Manstein’s general staff before I lost my sight. I know the S.S., the S.D. and the Wehrmacht, and I know they’re not the same. I think you know, too, Herr Oberst.”
The Kommandant stood rocking to and fro on the balls of his feet, sceptical about this appeal as well.
“Since you’re so well informed,” he said contemptuously, “you can maybe tell a Wehrmacht officer what he ought to do when he finds a deserter?”
“They’re not deserters, Herr Oberst.”
“Stop that Oberst nonsense, I’m a Leutnant. And I asked you a question!’
“They’re all Luxembourgers, Herr Leutnant. They can’t be deserters. Unless you force them to be.”
Blaskowitz seemed to be struck by a moment of doubt. He put on a disbelieving smile, looked from the bowed heads of the prisoners to Elsen and the old woman’s evasive gaze, to the expressionless face of the Truppenführer, who didn’t appear to be particularly impressed by the performance, either. The situation irritated Blaskowitz beyond measure. His contempt for Hitler and his stupid war was genuine enough, but so was his fury at this intellectual hairsplitting.
“This war is obnoxious,” he said in a quivering voice. “But that doesn’t mean that those who have been involved should be able turn their backs on it, wherever they come from. Take them to Clervaux! And clean this place up.”
Léon and his fellow prisoners were loaded onto the back of an open lorry and transported the six kilometres to Clervaux, where they were locked in the cellar of the Koener Hotel and had to lie in a heap on the floor, chained to each other, leaving only when summoned for torture or interrogation or to peel potatoes. The one who suffered most was the oldest of them, who refused to say a word, not even his name, and Léon, who had two teeth knocked out and his already damaged knee totally smashed because he insisted that he had not deserted but was just an ordinary German soldier who had lost contact with his unit. A Gestapo officer threatened in his presence that he would soon settle the Schweinehund’s hash, but the Major who was in command at the hotel made it clear that this was a Wehrmacht matter and the prisoners would be put before a war tribunal, as was right and proper.
A week later they were transferred to Germany via Enscherange. There they were loaded onto a bus full of American P.O.W.s, and through a fugged-up window Léon glimpsed a group of civilians slogging through snowdrifts at the side of the road and recognised the blind man from the Elsens’ house, saw him stop and stare vacantly at the bus, saw him raise a hand and wave, a black angel in the snow, before the bus went on, down the Our Valley and through the border town of Gemünd, to Eisensmitt in the Rhineland, where Léon’s knee injury was given some makeshift treatment before all the prisoners were brought before a war tribunal in a disused spinning mill.
The tribunal consisted of twelve officers of different ranks. The prosecution demanded the death sentence. But the defence counsel, the court-appointed young Leutnant with a legal background, pointed out that not one of the four had reached the age of majority, that their actions were manifestations of youthful foolhardiness and asked the court to take into consideration that they could be presumed not to have understood the binding nature of the oath of allegiance, after all they were Luxembourgers.
The accused were led out into the hall and had to wait, Léon sitting on a chair because of his injured knee while the others stood, and none of them said anything because a word can always be taken amiss, and nowhere more so than here, and they could see from each other’s faces that they were slowly ageing, that the years were marking them, like surgery, until they became bent and sunken, weary of life, shaking and incontinent, this was the initial stage, but they weren’t old, they were eighteen and nineteen, and one of them had to be carried in while Léon, to everyone’s surprise, insisted on hobbling in unassisted and also standing up on his one good leg while the verdict was pronounced, there was an angelic expression on his face, as though he glimpsed not a faint ray of hope but rather everlasting redemption in the court’s sombre expressions, and maybe that was what they did receive because it turned out that the court had found for the defence, not for the argument concerning their Luxembourg origins however, this went the other way, there was no such thing as a Luxembourger, they were sentenced to fifteen years’ imprisonment.
Léon had not been anticipating an earthly reprieve but a chance to be relieved of the unbearable pain, so now his right leg gave way, they had to carry him out, and they were surprised to see that he was still wearing his angelic smile when he awoke, for they didn’t know that from henceforth he was a resurrected soul, or an angel, black or white, in ash-grey shrouds with a rook’s jagged wings, that kind of thing only appeared in the rea
lm of superstition, and this, by God, is reality.
6
Well, so far this story has been true, so from now on it will have to be considered as pure fiction if it is not to compromise the veracity of the first part, you have to choose, it is either/or as to whether this is a realistic narrative you are contending with or not. Léon the Angel and his three friends were now transported by military escort to a prison in Wittlich and from there to Rheinbach at the end of February. But the Reich was on the retreat, so only a week later they were forced to shovel sand into sacks on the eastern bank of the Rhine, night and day, whether their legs were up to it or not, they had to build defences and run supplies, and all that was left of Léon was his seraphic smile and the hard-earned sympathy of his comrades, they gave him some of their rations, an extra blanket, and developed a system of signals to wake him up and get him on his feet whenever the guards approached.
But then everything went into freefall anyway, and in the chaos surrounding the Allied crossing at Remhagen, the guards were suddenly nowhere to be seen, the prisoners found themselves in empty space, they could escape unhindered, on foot, even Léon, there was no need to make a run for it, only a laborious climb up the beautiful vineyards south of Erpel. He hobbled along with the aid of two crutches which his comrades had made for him, and up in Orsberg they found shelter in a small copse and gazed across the mighty Rhine, lying there stripped of all its bridges from Bonn in the north to Andernach in the south, except for the one at Remhagen which was being defended with titanic energy by the twentieth-century’s full range of technological wonders. A historic pandemonium was approaching from all quarters, an unending quak- ing of the earth and heavens, so what now? – for they needed both food and protection, and the four witnesses of this scene were still Luxembourgers, weren’t they, at least it was a long time since they had worn a German uniform, but now they were in prison garb and couldn’t agree on whether to wait in the forest, go back down to the Rhine towards the advancing Allied forces, move north, south or maybe into the sorry remains of the Reich, because there had to be some possibilities there too – for what? Not even that was an obvious question, and Léon was especially ill-equipped to provide any answers, it was all too similar to the very wrong answer he came up with when he was alone at home in Dorscheid or on the hill above Enscherange and thought he saw the light; but it ended with them parting company: Léon and Benjamin – the blond fringe who had his bed on the shelf above him at the Elsens’ house – they went north along the Rhine, on the basis of little more than a gut feeling and the hieroglyphics they saw in the sky, that was the map they had, they walked under cover of night, stole food from farms, slept during the day in haylofts or under the open sky in the forest as Europe’s heart thumped and pounded, and Léon thanked God for God knows what, and Benjamin talked about food and described all the details of his childhood home in Ösel, from cupboard linings to horsehair and his left-handed sister and the nightingale that in springtime babbled in his ears, and in Léon’s too, like the clearest brook, all the things they would never see again but took with them into the darkness.
One morning they woke up to find themselves surrounded by German tanks, scruffy, exhausted soldiers sitting on their vehicles and smoking and paying no attention to the motley collection of civilian and prison clothes that got up from the dewy grass, open-mouthed and wide-eyed like terrified children. But Léon the Angel had nothing to fear, he was as dead as a dodo, so he approached them undaunted, started up a conversation with an officer who, with complete indifference, told him they were part of Feldmarschall Model’s doomed Army Group, in all 325,000 Wehrmacht soldiers who have been surrounded by the Allies and have probably surrendered, who knows, no-one tells us …They were given some food, but the victors moved in that same day, and the two friends had to cling to each other to be allocated to the same P.O.W. camp in Sinzig-Käfig, or the Sinzig Cage, as the Americans called this massive internment centre several square kilometres in size, which had been hastily set up on the outskirts of the village of Kripp, leaving lethargy to descend on the Rhineland.
And also Léon’s heart.
But what now? In the camp, conditions were more lamentable than anywhere else he had been: there was a shortage of food and clothing and fuel, provisions and tents and equipment and medicine; they had to sleep for weeks out in the open, and after only a few days Léon saw through a heavenly veil that people were beginning to die around him, it was raining, they were drowning in the mud as they slept, there were epidemics and there was a growing barbarism among the prisoners who killed each other over trifles, over nothing. But Benjamin had met a group of veterans from the Eastern Front under the leadership of a young S.S. officer: with unflagging energy, they were busily digging a shelter which was then protected by barbed wire and guarded like a military barracks; Léon was laid on a wooden board under a ragged blanket at the very back, like a religious relic, while the most exhausted prisoners guarded the entrance, and the S.S. officer and a select few went on raids to plunder fellow P.O.W.s and take part in the battle for the supplies the civilian population had smuggled into the camp.
Lying on the board, Léon gathered strength for his meeting with God, but God was great, He sent no relief now either, only more heart-rending longing for home, the Ardennes, with its smells and forests, and Agnes, an even whiter sculpture than ever before, strange words went through Léon’s mind, conversations he had with his father about a gold coin he must have stolen and he thought had a face value of thirty-nine francs, which of course was not a unit of currency but a mystery, so he couldn’t understand why his father wanted to punish him, I am innocent, Léon said and had to laugh at his own voice, at the hollowness of it; he could mimic his sisters’ quarrelling at the dinner table and could be the arbiter because of the age difference, with Leni getting the better deal, and he was appalled to the point of fury that his fellow P.O.W.s kept him alive when he was fated to die – they give me food and blankets, Agnes, which they need themselves, there is no justice in this, how precious I am, Agnes, you are the only person I cannot mediate between, ha ha …for there is only one of you, one single person!
7
After four weeks of uncertainty in the badger’s den Léon is taken out into the sunshine and laid on a stretcher, he feels himself being showered with hot water, being disinfected, shaved, his whole body, and dressed in new clothes, and is given liquid food and a bed which he never wants to leave, they have to drag him out – well, that won’t be much of a problem, he thinks with a smile – and send him by ambulance to an Allied P.O.W. camp in Bavaria, but Benjamin is with me. “You’ve saved my life,” Benjamin says. “How come?” I ask. “They didn’t have the heart to kill you,” he says, “and I am your friend.”
“Yes,” Léon says absent-mindedly. “We’re friends.”
And now there is enough food, it has also become warmer, and Léon can go for short walks in the early-summer sun and appears before a new war tribunal, an Allied one, and they accuse him of taking part, during the Ardennes Offensive, in the attack on the village of Munshausen in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, where the Americans suffered considerable losses and where, moreover, summary executions were carried out, which have been documented in two reliable witness statements.
Léon rises to his feet in the provisional courtroom and starts to tell his story, but it won’t stand up, it is too implausible, so instead he declares that he can’t remember much, a contention he sticks to, even though the prosecutor points out that this will not advance his case, if he has one at all, there are no extenuating circumstances for being a sheep in a wolf’s clothing, everyone has to be responsible for their actions, both conscripts and volunteers, could he not have decamped when he was in Schnee-Eifel waiting for Alert Level 1 in December, for we have our own small choices to make within the weightier ones that history makes for us, we all have, G.I.s and generals, that is the wisdom the Americans are there to ordain, Europe is soon to find out, mass movements are dead an
d the final triumph of individuality will be enshrined in treaties and protocols.
Léon didn’t understand much of all this, it confused and irritated him, like a plague of lice, and then his thoughts turned to something else – where was Benjamin? The Americans could provide no answer, they didn’t know of any Benjamin, but they sentenced Léon to four years’ imprisonment for crimes against his mother country. Together with five other soldiers from the 2nd Panzers (two Luxembourgers and four Belgians in all) and, after a month’s futile searching for his only friend, he was transported to Dover, England, whence he was conveyed on a rickety train to a camp outside Edinburgh, where the rain ensured that the seasons merged into one another and time stood still.
But even up there in the north Léon considered that he was making some important discoveries. He began talking to his father again, with a vengeance, both day and night, especially about the missing gold coin with the impossible face value of thirty-nine francs, he maintained in his defence that when a choice had to be made between family and nation then of course you chose the family, the seeds of loyalty germinated in the family earth, nation came second, this insight was what his father expected of him, no, it was not what his father expected of him, neither his father nor anyone else, and Léon was puzzled, didn’t he know his own father – that was what the conversation about the gold coin was about, and the sun and moon rose above the horizon and united in a black cloud.
Then a fellow P.O.W. told him that the young S.S. officer who had held a protective wing over him in Sinzig had been sentenced to death for the murder of eighty-four Russian prisoners, one of the final Nazi convulsions of the war, and Léon realised he would have to unburden himself, so he went to see the duty officer and demanded to be allowed to testify on the S.S. officer’s behalf, he was a good person. But no one knew the case, they dismissed him with a shake of the head and English curses and abuse, and subjected him to various psychological tests, which he couldn’t see any point in, Léon was a borderline case, in all of the term’s cryptic senses. But here in this field hospital – which they called a sanatorium – he met Leutnant Blaskowitz, who was serving a sentence of fifteen years for the maltreatment of civilians in the Ardennes, he had been unfairly sentenced, too, it transpired, but he confided to Léon that this was a dangerous path they had chosen to tread.