by Nick Cook
“. . . then Germany will be great again.” My bloody arse, it will.
The officer watched through half-closed eyes as Dietz slipped his rifle strap over his shoulder, leant forward and prodded him.
The officer’s eyes flicked wide open, but he wasn’t startled. He knew they thought he was too cool by half. Whereas the rest of them stank and were covered in dirt, the officer always managed to look clean and shaven every morning, wherever he happened to be. His face had become gaunt in recent weeks though, the skin was stretched tight over his hooked nose and his cheeks were grey from the bout of dysentery that had gone round the platoon after their withdrawal from Boskovice.
The officer stared back at Dietz for several seconds. Sergeant Dietz served as a terrible reminder of the horror of the battle for that provincial town. The retreat from Boskovice had been a nightmare. The seven survivors of the once proud platoon of 22 had withdrawn across country by night, taken to these foothills and had remained here for two days without seeing any enemy activity.
Parts of Czechoslovakia were like that. The isolated valley in which they had taken refuge was off the main Soviet armoured convoy routes and they hadn’t seen a soul. Except Dietz, of course. He’d been surprised by some old peasant when he went down to that hamlet near Tryskov on a clandestine forage for food the previous night. The old man had spotted him coming out of a barn with two dead chickens under each arm and had rushed up to welcome his Russian liberator. Even though Dietz was wearing full forage gear - the camouflaged smock and over-trousers that they all used, with no insignia of any kind - the Slav couldn’t help but notice the shape of his helmet even in the half-light of dusk. The old man’s cry of alarm died in his throat the moment Dietz’s combat knife hit him full in the chest.
When Dietz told the story later he had bragged that the man had died before the chickens had even hit the ground. Everyone had laughed, but he was still damned good with that knife. It had got them out of a few tight spots before.
The officer realized that his sergeant was standing there waiting for orders. He snapped out of his reverie.
“What is it?” He stared up at the broad unshaven face and was about to speak again, when he heard the faint sound in the far distance and knew that it was beginning all over again.
“One jeep and an armoured personnel carrier, sir. They’re heading this way, but haven’t yet come out of the trees. I saw them enter the other side of the wood two minutes ago.”
The officer rolled onto his front and parted the grass so that he could get an unrestricted view of the flat expanse of land and the line of trees beyond. Dietz lay down beside him and studied the face once more, this time waiting for orders.
The officer had chosen his ground well. You could get a clear view of the plain that stretched away from in front of their hillock as far as the pine forest in the middle distance. From where Dietz had been sitting on look-out you could even see the road that led into the far side of the wood. It was on this patch of the track that the sergeant had first spotted the vehicles.
It would only be a matter of seconds now before the small convoy would be in sight again. Thank God we’re well hidden, the officer thought. At least Ivan won’t have a clue we’re here.
He turned to Dietz.
“As I said, sir. Two vehicles. One of them an APC. One of ours. Thought we must still have some armour left in this area, until I saw the red star on the side. It’s a Hanomag, sir, and it must have had more than a full complement of men on board, because I saw two Ivans sitting on the front. The rear compartment must be full, sir.”
The officer waved a hand impatiently.
“I’ll make the damned judgements around here, Dietz. What about the other vehicle?’
The sound of engines was quite discernible now and growing louder.
“It was a jeep, sir. Two men in the back, plus driver.”
The officer thought fast. The jeep, that was no problem, except for its speed of course. The Hanomag, though, that was different. They were big brutes with drive wheels at the front and tank tracks on the rear six bogeys. There could be ten fully armed troops in the back, if Dietz’s guess as to why the soldiers were sitting on the front proved to be correct. So that means there could be at least sixteen Ivans and only seven of them. Good odds. Christ, it was better than Boskovice. There must have been thousands of them there.
“Get back up to your position and take out the driver of the jeep with the sniping rifle. Wait until he gets to the bend in the track and you can see the Order of Lenin swinging on his bloody tunic and then let him have it. Body shot. With any luck, he’ll roll the car and that’ll take care of the two men in the back.”
The officer got to his feet and picked up his MP40 machine pistol which had been propped against a nearby tree. He turned back to Dietz, who had already concealed himself behind an old tree trunk on the brow of the hill. He had unslung the Mauser and was drawing a bead on the point where the sandy track led out of the forest.
“I’ll take the rest of the men and the panzerfaust and deal with the Hanomag. We’ll hold our fire until you shoot the driver.” Dietz gave the thumbs up signal without looking at the officer. He may be a complete swine, the officer thought, but he was a damn good soldier and was the best shot in the Das Reich Division. For that matter his remaining six men were the best soldiers in the Waffen-SS. They didn’t like him much and Dietz hated him, he knew that, but they had all survived and that bonded them together.
The officer moved fast down the slope towards the boulders that would shield him and his men from the road. As long as the Soviets didn’t leave the track, they’d get a clear shot at the Hanomag as it reached the slight bend fifty metres away from their position. Just don’t get any big ideas about the roads being mined, Ivan.
As he approached the rocks the other five were already there with the panzerfaust. It was just as well they had trained for this over the last two days.
He hit the ground in the middle of the group as the Hanomag came into view. Two seconds later, the jeep followed it out of the wood. The officer watched with satisfaction as the two vehicles continued along the track. Just to his right he heard a faint click as the panzerfaust was armed and out of the corner of his eye he could see the soldier raise the device to his shoulder. The bend in the road was right at the extreme of the rocket launcher’s range, but there was nothing else for it. They would have been spotted a mile off if they left the cover of the rocks and got any closer. Let’s just hope that hothead Dietz doesn’t get an itchy trigger finger.
It was then that the Hanomag stopped.
“Scheisse.” The word was hissed under his breath. He didn’t dare use the powerful Zeiss binoculars for fear the bright March sun might reflect off the lenses and alert the Russians. He squinted into the distance and could see an Ivan standing up in the rear of the Hanomag, flagging down the jeep. The man jumped over the side of the personnel carrier and wandered over to the smaller vehicle. Thirty seconds later he was back at the Hanomag, walked ten metres past it and dropped to his knees.
He’s looking for mines. For God’s sake don’t leave the track. The officer held his breath and felt his stomach knot and twist, until the pain was agony. Nerves and dysentery could incapacitate a man. Then the Russian stood up and beckoned the Hanomag on. He walked, scanning the ground, while the Hanomag inched along the track several metres behind him. Christ, if he carries on at this rate, the bloody war will be over. Worse than the tearing pain in the officer’s stomach was the awful realization that the Russian scout might be able to see Dietz, or even the whole group as he got to the bend in the road. Then it would be all over. The Hanomag’s heavy calibre machine-gun would pin them down amongst the boulders and they would fire back until their ammunition ran out. Without surprise on their side they would never be able to get a clear shot with the panzerfaust. One thing was for sure, he wouldn’t be taken alive by those savages.
The officer’s anxiety faded when he saw the scout jump
back in the Hanomag and then both personnel carrier and jeep proceeded swiftly along the track towards them. The scout must have satisfied himself that the patch was free of mines. They reached the bend. The panzerfaust wobbled briefly in the hand of the man on his right. Steady, steady. Come on Dietz. Nothing. Come on, you Bavarian oaf.
Ten metres away, Dietz shifted the centre of the cross on his telescopic sights from the driver’s head to his left shoulder. He was briefly fascinated by the animated discussion which the two officers in the back seemed to be having. Then he fired.
The wheels on the jeep locked hard round to the right and the vehicle slewed over onto the side, catapulting one of the passengers onto the ground ten metres away from the edge of the road. The officer saw one of the Russians on the front of the Hanomag crane his neck round to where the jeep had been behind them. His eyes were wide with terror.
There was a flash and a deafening crack to his right. The rocket shell left the panzerfaust and hit the Hanomag just behind the driver’s cabin. It was no coincidence that it had found the thinnest point of the vehicle’s armour. Anyone who had travelled in the German personnel carrier never sat just behind the driver’s seat. You could use the metal there as cigarette paper it was so thin, had been the old Wehrmacht joke when the Hanomag made its first appearance during the Blitzkrieg in Europe. The corporal with the panzerfaust knew exactly where to aim.
The Hanomag evaporated. Ivan never learnt. Those stupid potato-heads must have stored some ammo in the back of the vehicle.
Now they’d have to move fast before every Russian in Central Czechoslovakia came down on them like a ton of bricks.
When the dust settled seconds later, there was no sign of movement around either the jeep, or what was left of the Hanomag. The SS officer cocked his machine-pistol and walked down the hill to the nearer of the two vehicles. His feet slipped once on the rough scree slope, but he kept his balance by grasping a clump of grass that was growing up through the rocks.
The rear wheels of the upturned jeep were still spinning furiously. The officer looked at the two bodies lying spread-eagled on the ground beside it and then beckoned to the rest of his men who had remained by the boulders. He put a boot under the belly of the driver and rolled him over onto his back. Dietz had done a good job. The old rogue must have used a dum-dum, because the bullet had blown off most of the Russian’s left shoulder. There was no sign of his arm. The officer who had been behind him was also quite dead.
There was not so much as a forage cap to be found beside the burning chassis of the Hanomag as the officer and his men patrolled around it looking for signs of life.
Dietz had wandered down to the jeep and wasted no time in pulling off the Russian officer’s watch. He then disappeared behind the vehicle and started rifling through the pockets of the inside of the vehicle’s door. He emerged thirty seconds later with a khaki coloured canvas dispatch case tucked under his arm.
The officer walked over to Dietz who was admiring his handiwork with the Mauser.
“A good shot, sir?” Dietz looked up and was grinning from ear to ear, exposing an uneven row of brown teeth. “I keep a few of these beauties for special occasions.” He was holding one of his specially doctored bullets between thumb and forefinger.
Then the officer noticed the dispatch case under his sergeant’s arm.
“It was in the jeep, sir. In a compartment on the inside of the door. It’s sealed.”
“Give it to me.” Dietz hesitated before handing the case to his superior officer. Several other camouflage-clad figures drew round the officer and Dietz, sensing a showdown between the two of them in the air. If they disliked the officer, they absolutely detested Dietz. He was not only their sergeant and superior, but an outsider. Some even thought that he was a Nazi party minder who’d been assigned to their platoon to spy on them.
If the officer’s men had been less intent on the confrontation, they might have noticed a slight movement in the tall grass ten paces away from the jeep. As it was, the twitching arm of the second Russian officer who had been thrown furthest from the vehicle went completely unnoticed.
Major Yuri Paliev had been brought round by the sound of voices nearby. His ribcage felt as if a tank had driven across it and he could taste blood in his mouth. He knew he was dying. Waves of pain were washing over him, but he was fighting them, motionless, except for the twitching movement in his arm, over which he had no control. What bothered Paliev was that his mind was quite lucid, at least he thought it was, yet these men who seemed to be arguing a little way over to his left were not German. At first he thought that they had been ambushed by Slav partisans, who were not uncommon in that part of Czechoslovakia, but he knew some Slavic and he knew some German, and these men were neither.
He couldn’t raise his head, but through the tall grass he could see a group of men. They were soldiers, all right, but whose, it was hard to tell as they wore camouflaged battle gear and even their helmets were covered in grass, twigs and leaves. He couldn’t get a look at the two men who seemed to be arguing, but one of them must be an officer, he thought, from the way he was barking out orders. With all his remaining strength, Paliev craned his neck for a better look. At the precise moment he spotted the peaked cap of the Waffen-SS officer, one of his smashed ribs dug into his diaphragm and he screamed.
Seven heads spun round in the direction of the cry and three machine-pistol bolts clicked in metallic unison as the guns were cocked.
One of the men ran over to the dying Russian and peered at his face. Blood was trickling from Paliev’s mouth, but the soldier hardly noticed it. He was captivated by the quizzical expression, which furrowed the Russian’s brow. It was as if the Ivan wanted to ask him something.
“Over here, sir! One of them’s still alive!”
But it wasn’t the officer who rushed over to the Russian’s side first, it was Dietz.
“Who are you?” Paliev choked out in German. Dietz drew the bolt of his sniper’s rifle back and slipped in a bullet. He cocked it and pointed the gun nonchalantly at the Russian’s head.
“We’re just about all that’s left of the Second SS Panzergrenadier Regiment, Das Reich Division, Ivan, which is too bad for you.” Dietz’s finger tightened on the trigger.
The Russian’s eyes looked imploringly at Dietz.
“What’s bothering you Ivan? Is it the others?” He laughed. “I am German. But these reprobates I’ve mothered for the last fifteen hundred kilometres, they’re not. I’ll show you.”
Paliev could hardly understand a word the Bavarian was saying. He saw Dietz grab the soldier next to him and rip open his camouflaged jacket. The grey uniform underneath was the same as a thousand other SS uniforms he’d seen on dead Germans along the front. The young soldier did not resist as Dietz took off his battle smock. The others had all crowded round and some were laughing. It was as if they were playing a game which had been rehearsed many times before. Dietz grabbed the young soldier’s arm and pointed to a little badge just below the elbow on the field-grey uniform.
“See Ivan? It’s red, white and blue.” Dietz was revelling in the Russian’s confusion. He could not have sounded more mocking. “We’re a Freikorps unit. Very rare they are too. You’re a lucky boy.” He laughed loudly again before reverting to the language which was the native tongue of his officer and those five other young idiots.
“Yes, we’re a British Free Corps unit in the SS,” he said slowly, mocking the aristocratic English accent of the superior officer.
He levelled his rifle once more at the Russian’s forehead.
Paliev closed his eyes before Dietz’s second dum-dum bullet entered his cranium. He died without having a clue what the German had said.
CHAPTER THREE
Although it was raining lightly, Kruze chose to walk from Waterloo Station to the Air Ministry. The journey from Farnborough to the London terminus had taken well over an hour because of an unscheduled stop in a tunnel near Addlestone. Air raid, someone had said, a
nd Kruze had not moved to disagree, even though he knew it was just another false alarm.
The rain fell more heavily as he walked down the Strand. He contemplated calling a cab as he dodged the pedestrians who weaved down the street of theatres and music halls, but dismissed the idea as the familiar sight of Nelson’s column came into view. From Trafalgar Square the Ministry was only a few minutes’ walk.
Londoners seemed to have forgotten the war. The last German air raid on the capital was a distant memory. Although the buzz-bomb threat had been serious enough for the government to consider an evacuation of the city, everyone always referred to it as if it was nothing more than a mild nuisance. In the four years that he had lived among the English he still had not quite got used to their vagaries.
Kruze paused by a crowd that had gathered outside the Rialto Cinema. The proprietor was shouting excitedly at a policeman and pointing at two lower ranking soldiers, who joked and winked at the girls in the crowd when the policeman’s back was turned.
“But I saw them do it!” The proprietor looked ridiculous in bow tie and ill-fitting impresario’s jacket. There was loud laughter as one of the soldiers turned drunkenly and shrugged at his growing audience.