One Day in Oradour

by Helen Watts

  ‘She wasn’t scared, Gustav,’ he said, as he looked down at his son sitting in a state of shock halfway up the stairs. ‘It was so quick. Like switching out a light really. They call it a haemorrhage. These things can just happen, without much warning.’

  Even when his own heart was breaking, Otto offered his son no embrace, no strong arm around the shoulders, no shared tears. Only an awkward hand placed stiffly on his knee, and a moment’s pause, before mumbling about needing to make the ‘necessary arrangements’.

  He felt sorry for the poor lad, but sentimentality had never suited him terribly well. Otto always kept his emotions under control, locked deep inside him, as if in a secret safe inside his heart, and it was to here that he now banished the strangling grief caused by the loss of his beloved Klara. He was terrified that if he dared open that safe door, even just a tiny crack, in order to let Gustav in, he would never regain control.

  In bed that night, Gustav sobbed into his pillow. His father had been so brave all day and he didn’t want to let him down by being a crybaby. But he couldn’t hold back the tears any longer. He felt so alone, so completely lost. He ached for his mother, her gentleness, her kindness and her soothing words. If she were here now, he thought, she would stroke his hair and tell him everything was going to be alright.

  Gustav knew that life would be very different from that point on, now it was just Father and him. His mother’s death had left such a huge void in their lives, and Gustav was certain that his mother would have wanted him to try and fill that void with love. But to get close to his father, Gustav believed he had to rid himself of all the weaknesses he knew Otto saw in him.

  If he was too emotional, too sensitive, he would become more of a man and join the football team, learn how to box or take up hunting. And if he was too slow at school, he would concentrate harder in class and spend longer on his homework.

  One way or another, he would make his father proud.

  By the time he reached his teenage years, Gustav had succeeded in burying the soft and gentle side of his character. Now long-limbed and athletic, he started to discover that he had a natural talent for most physical activities, and because he was good at the sports he played, he was more often than not chosen to lead the team. Having his talents acknowledged, and seeing his team-mates so willing to put their trust in him, was like a shot in the arm to Gustav and he quickly became addicted to this new sense of power and authority.

  Out of school, he joined a shooting club, and rapidly became his instructor’s favourite. He was quick to learn how to handle a gun and proved himself to have a sharp eye and a steady hand. To hone his new talent, Gustav saved up his pocket money and bought a second-hand air rifle and after that spent hours on his own in the woods near his home, shooting at rabbits, birds and squirrels. He never took any of his kills home, nor told anyone how many creatures he had hit, but he kept a secret tally in a little notebook in his jacket pocket, and each month set himself a new target to beat.

  But Gustav’s sporting successes seemed to count for little in his father’s eyes. What mattered most to Otto was education and academic achievement, and in that Gustav simply could not excel. No matter how much effort he put in, his school results were always disappointing, always lower than average.

  At first, his father blamed the teachers, and took it upon himself to give Gustav extra tuition. But as time went on and Gustav’s results fell further and further below average, Otto’s disappointment became tinged with embarrassment. That was when the snide remarks began, the little jokes and quips about Gustav’s lack of intelligence and prospects, which gradually gnawed away at his self-confidence.

  Matters came to a head when Gustav came home from secondary school one day to break the news to his father that his teachers wanted him to repeat his sixth year.

  Appalled, Otto struck out, using the one weapon that could cause Gustav greater pain than any fist, strap or belt. ‘You are pathetic,’ he said, sneering at his son across the dining table. ‘How can you be my offspring? I am headmaster of the top boys’ school in Freiburg and yet I have a son who has little more intelligence than a slug. It’s a good thing that your mother didn’t live to see this day. She would have been so ashamed.’

  After that, the distance between father and son grew day by day. Conversation was reduced to short, clipped exchanges over dinner, after which Otto would withdraw to his office to work, staying there until long after Gustav had gone to bed.

  In trying to shut out the pain of his wife’s death, Otto had locked away any tenderness he once had for his son, until he was unable to express anything but bitterness and resentment. It was if he saw Gustav as the cause of everything that had gone wrong in his life, all of which seemed beyond his control, and all his son could offer him in payment for that was disappointment and humiliation.

  Lonely, rejected and yet desperate to please, the tall, gangly, teenage Gustav was an eager recruit for the National Socialist German Workers Party. He had long admired its leader, Adolf Hitler, and was wooed by his promises to improve the German economy with things like tax cuts for farmers and protection of food prices. But more than anything, he wanted to belong to something, to feel accepted and to be among people who were like-minded. He felt sure that the Nazi party could offer him all those things – as well as an escape route from his stifling life in Freiburg.

  Gustav had no intention of jumping too soon. The Nazis were battling for power with the Communists. Their violent methods had lost them both popular support and votes, and Gustav didn’t want to ally himself with a losing side. But after the elections of November 1932, when the 43-year-old Hitler was made Germany’s new Chancellor, Gustav knew that the time was right. Finally he could see a way out, he could leave his traumatic school life behind him and head for a place where he would be needed and could have a chance to succeed.

  Now a tall, athletic, handsome and imposing figure, the 19-year-old Gustav immediately made a good impression. He was loyal and eager to please and was quick to volunteer for Work Service in Naumburg. While there he applied to join the Special Forces and by 1936 he had been called up to the SS Signals Battalion in Berlin.

  Gustav continued to impress his superiors, thriving within an atmosphere, so alien to him and yet so welcome, in which good effort and attitude was rewarded with praise and recognition.

  A year later, Gustav was sent to the SS Officers’ School in Bad Tölz where he became an SS Cadet Officer. It took him only four and a half months to complete a platoon leader’s course, and his hard work was repaid with a promotion to SS Upper Cadet Officer in the Germania Regiment.

  Another step up, to 2nd Lieutenant, followed later that year and, alongside his men, Gustav proudly marched into the Sudetenland, along the mountainous borders of Czechoslovakia, a strategically important area which had been signed over to Germany by Britain, Italy and France through the Munich Agreement.

  ‘My leadership skills have been well recognised,’ Gustav wrote in a letter to his father. ‘After leaving the Sudetenland I was instructed to lead a platoon to the Polish front. We had a successful campaign with minimal losses and Herr Hitler saw fit to award me the Iron Cross 2nd Class. Thanks to that I have now been appointed Adjutant of the 2nd Company of the SS Regiment “Germania” which I hope makes you proud.

  ‘I think of you often, Father, and it is my dearest wish that the news I send of my faithful service to our beloved Nazi Germany brings you some comfort and peace of mind.’

  Far from the battlefield, surrounded by books and papers in his study, Otto found it difficult to identify with the experiences his son described in his letters. The ranks, titles and awards he listed meant nothing to him and so his replies to Gustav were brief and to the point.

  In May 1940, Otto received another letter from Gustav, who he knew had been fighting in Northern France. This time, when he saw the Military Hospital letterhead, his heart stopped. His hand shook as he read, fearing the worst.

  ‘I am in bad shape, Fa
ther,’ Gustav wrote. ‘A serious gunshot wound to the lungs. The damned French nearly got me. The doctors tell me that it’s a miracle I survived. But here I still am. I am feeling pretty rough, though, and am finding being incapacitated extremely difficult. It looks as though I shall be convalescing here for a while yet, so if you should find the time to write to me, I would dearly like to hear about life in Freiburg. The house, you, it all seems so far away now. Do write to tell me how you are. Your ever loving son, Gustav.’

  Every night, as Gustav lay in his hospital bed, the same nightmare scene crept into his slumber. He saw himself running through the thick mud, shouting to his men to give him cover. Then came the dull thud. The searing pain in his chest… and then the sensation of the cold, oozing mud on his hands, mixing with his own blood as he lay there, struggling to breathe, on the battlefield. As his chest tightened to bursting point, he saw the same, familiar figure standing in the distance. A man, wearing civilian clothes, a grey woollen suit and tie, staring at him amid all the chaos of the fighting. Gustav stretched out his hand, but the figure always turned away, fading into the fog. Gustav was discharged from the Military Hospital three months later. During the long and tedious weeks he had spent there recovering, he had received his highest award for bravery, the Iron Cross 1st Class, and a promotion to Battalion Commander – but no letter from his father.

  7: The Briefing

  The drive from Limoges back to Saint Junien couldn’t pass by quickly enough for Gustav Dietrich. Before he had left Scholz’s offices he had asked the girl on reception to get the leader of 3rd Company on the telephone so he could assemble the key officers for a briefing. They were to meet at the Hotel de la Gare at eleven o’clock sharp.

  What a stupid girl that receptionist was! It was painful watching her fumbling away trying to dial the number, and when she started stammering into the phone Dietrich couldn’t bear it any longer. Glaring, he had snatched the handset from her and impatiently ushered her away.

  Besides, he needed to contact his French informants, too. It was essential that they were at the briefing to share the latest intelligence on Resistance activity and, hopefully, Klausner’s whereabouts.

  Calls made, Dietrich had marched out of the building and jumped back into his car, instructing Ragnar, his driver, to get him back to St Junien without delay.

  Ragnar was used to following Major Dietrich’s orders. He had been Dietrich’s personal assistant ever since he became Battalion Commander and he wasn’t going to put such a cushy job into jeopardy by seeming unhelpful or incompetent. Ragnar had worked hard to build a good working relationship with Dietrich, which wasn’t easy. The Major was a volatile, unpredictable man. You never knew what he would do next. Ragnar did not like him one jot, but he knew what happened to people who got on the wrong side of Major Gustav Dietrich so he was never going to let him know his true feelings towards him. No, he was too smart for that, and Dietrich trusted him.

  Ragnar could see that Dietrich’s meeting with Major General Scholz had gone well. Dietrich had a look of smug satisfaction on his face as he sat in the back seat of the car.

  ‘Everything all right, Major?’ he asked his boss as they sped along the main road out of Limoges.

  ‘If you call having to pick up the pieces of a shambles of a mission to find a top SS officer all right, then yes, I guess it is!’ remarked Dietrich sarcastically. He always felt he could let off steam with Ragnar. Whatever he said to him stayed with him. ‘You know, this hostage situation is a whole lot worse than I thought. They’ve taken Major Klausner, Thomas Klausner, and they intend to execute him – and that cretin of a Major General in there is bumbling about without a clue. It’s no surprise that the Resistance are running rings around us with snails like that in charge.’

  Meeting Dietrich’s steely gaze in his rear view mirror, Ragnar shook his head in sympathetic exasperation and frowned.

  Dietrich went on, ‘But I’m in charge now. I’m going to start shaking the beehive, starting with Oradour.’

  They arrived at the Hotel de la Gare just before eleven o’clock. Ragnar parked outside and waited in the car at the bottom of the hotel steps, rolling down his window to let in some air. The sun was now rising higher in the sky and it promised to be a very warm afternoon. He lit a cigarette and gazed up at the façade of the hotel. The pale blue painted shutters on the windows were all closed, and Ragnar tried to imagine what heated debate was going on inside the cool, dark rooms.

  Dietrich was meeting with the Captain of the 3rd Company, Heinrich Krüger, the Gestapo secret police, and some French informants. Ragnar wondered whether the informants had any news of Klausner and, more importantly, if the poor devil was still breathing. Dietrich had said that the Resistance intended to burn him alive, but Ragnar found that hard to believe. Surely they wouldn’t dare do something so horrific to a man like Klausner. They must know what kind of response they would get from the SS.

  Ragnar kept an eye on the station clock across the road. He smoked four cigarettes, allowing himself one every quarter of an hour, and was just deciding whether to have a fifth when the front door of the hotel opened. Dietrich and Krüger emerged, and from their body language Ragnar could see that an unfinished argument still raged between them. Dietrich seemed incensed about something, and his whole frame was taut. He took an urgent stride towards the top of the steps but Krüger shot out a hand and caught hold of his arm.

  Ragnar could just hear the note of desperation in his voice. ‘You can’t do this, Commander. It hasn’t been sanctioned. Don’t lead my men into this.’

  Spinning round on his heels, Dietrich looked down at Krüger’s hand on his arm, his eyes wide with incredulity, as if Krüger had just injected him with poison. ‘You dare challenge my authority?’ he seethed. ‘I can do this, and I will! Your men are in my command now and they will do whatever I tell them to.’

  Krüger dropped his hand to his side and took a step back, defeated. ‘I want no part of it,’ he said.

  ‘Fine,’ snapped Dietrich, turning his back and carrying on down the steps. ‘This is a mission for SS men, not lily-livered cowards!’

  Krüger’s mouth fell open. Stunned into silence, he watched as Dietrich got into his car, his sculpted features set hard as he sat facing straight ahead and barked instructions to his driver. Ragnar saw a look of nausea on Krüger’s face, and watched his mouth form the words, ‘God help them all,’ before he turned slowly and went back inside.

  Part 3

  Saturday 10 June, 1944 (Lunchtime)

  8: Oradour

  Alfred was one of the last pupils to take his seat in the noisy, bustling classroom at the School for Lorraine Refugee Children that Saturday morning. Rarely was he keen to get to school (there was always something far more interesting to do besides staying indoors and having boring old lessons with Mr Gravois), but on this particular Saturday he found it especially hard to drag himself through the school gate. It was the day before Corpus Christi, after all, and as many children would be taking Communion for the first time in the Sunday Mass, there was lots of excitement and activity in the village. The residents had been preparing for the festivities for days, appreciating the distraction from the worries and fears that accompanied German occupation.

  So even as Alfred trailed behind his sisters, Christelle and Sabine, across the fairground on his way to school, kicking at the early morning dew on the grass, the village was already beginning to buzz with expectation.

  The first tram had arrived from Limoges and a crowd of day-trippers scurried past Alfred down the street. A group of elderly men had stepped off first, helping one another to unload their fishing tackle before heading down to the river. Behind them came the ladies from the outlying villages, empty shopping baskets at the ready, eager to stock up on food provisions and beat the rush to find the freshest bread, the fattest sausages, the tastiest preserves, the plumpest apricots, the tangiest goats’ cheese or the freshest turnips – and the best of whatever meat was left after th
e Germans had taken their majority share.

  It didn’t seem right to Alfred that the French farmers worked so hard yet they had to surrender the cream of their crops. Not only did the Germans demand more than half of all the meat that was produced, they also took a good share of the fruit and vegetables. He would never forget the look of disgust on the face of his friend Monsieur Demarais from the wine store when he revealed to Alfred that the Germans had the nerve to claim eighty per cent of all the champagne that was produced as well. For Monsieur Demarais, that really was an arrow through the heart of French pride.

  Like Alfred, the headmaster Monsieur Gravois did not seem happy to be in school that morning.

  ‘Alfred Fournier, if you don’t sit down right away and get ready to listen to what I have to say, you will be spending the morning scrubbing the toilet floor,’ he yelled, as Alfred ambled into the classroom.

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ Alfred mumbled, as he took his place on the end of the row.

  Monsieur Gravois explained to the class how they were all going to have to sit and work very quietly that morning and get on with their essays about the fall of the Roman Empire. They would be called out, one by one, he said, to go and see Doctor Depaul for their health check and injection and, as there were so many children to see, including all those who had come into Oradour from the surrounding villages, they would have to come back into school after lunch.

  As this last sentence was met by a communal groan from the class, Monsieur Gravois relented.

  ‘I know it’s no fun having to come into school on a sunny summer’s afternoon, but if you are all well behaved and don’t dilly dally when it’s your turn to see the doctor,’ (at this point he looked directly at Alfred), ‘I might let you out for lunch a little early. And those of you who have already seen the doctor by then can have the afternoon off, as it’s a special day.’