by JH Fletcher
Franz eyed his back with concern. ‘Your offer of a post still stands?’
‘Certainly. I shall be only too happy to have you join us.’ Fussily, he arranged the refilled cups on the table. ‘As soon as the present emergency is over.’
Franz did not understand.
‘Mobilisation,’ Meissner explained. ‘First you must carry out your military duties.’
Franz’s first reaction was indignation. He had not returned to Germany to play soldiers. ‘Our research …’
It seemed there were priorities higher than mathematics. ‘Later, perhaps, you will be able to take up a post. Soon, no doubt. I am sure none of this war business will come to anything.’
On reflection Franz found he liked the idea. To bear arms for the Fatherland … There was something glorious, Wagnerian, about it. ‘I shall apply for the SS,’ he decided. The sword arm of the Führer. How better to serve, if service were required?
Meissner was dubious. ‘I doubt they’ll take you.’
‘Why not?’
‘They are very particular. I’ve heard one filled tooth is enough to disqualify you.’
‘I don’t have any filled teeth.’
‘But you were born in Australia,’ Meissner pointed out.
‘My parents were born in Germany.’ Hotly, hating the accident of birth that might make him sub-standard.
‘But you weren’t. I suspect they will regard that as more important even than a filled tooth.’
Franz remembered the train inspector and feared the professor was right. He decided eventually to forget about the SS. Better not apply at all than risk rejection. Instead he joined the Wehrmacht.
Still nobody mentioned war. For the second time in twenty-five years Europe was poised on the brink yet, despite the bellicose speeches, the rallies, the endless manoeuvres and air raid drills, nobody believed it would come to anything. The Führer would get what he wanted without fighting. The Allies would cave in, as they always had.
The tanks rolled into Poland. The French and British issued their ultimatums. No one took them seriously. Three days later, on Sunday 3 September, both Britain and France declared war, followed rapidly by Australia, Canada and South Africa.
Australia.
It might have spelt trouble for Franz but his party card protected him. He had never reckoned on war but hid his feelings from himself as from others. I have turned my back on the past. The fortunes of the Reich are my fortunes now.
People stopped each other in the street, asked, ‘What happens next?’
Nothing happened. The sense of fear that for a few days swept the country did not last. The Allies did not move. The Polish campaign was soon over. Joseph Goebbels screamed triumph, endlessly, on the wireless. The Russians had been the great enemy; now they were allies. People shrugged and went about their business. But for the blackout, the rationing and increased air raid drills, there might not have been a war at all.
An army mate, Heini Hausser, invited Franz to spend Christmas with his parents and three sisters on the family farm near Hannover. The ground was iron-hard with frost but indoors a great fire blazed. There was a tree with candles, gaily-coloured cards. On Christmas Eve they stood around the tree and sang carols and Eva, the oldest of the sisters, turned her braided blonde head and smiled secretly at Franz as they sang. The following evening, Christmas Day, he stood with Eva outside the farmhouse door. It was dark, very cold, the stars were snapping with frost and it was impossible to believe in the war. He kissed her and touched her pointy breasts through her clothes and she sighed and put her arms around his neck.
‘What is Australia like?’
The dream had come to him again the previous night. He did not want to talk about Australia. ‘Nachlässig,’ he told her. Slipshod.
They went back into the warmth.
Later she reverted to the subject. ‘They say it is a land of deserts.’
‘It is. In the interior, at least.’
‘Have you been there?’
‘Once.’
When he was eight a schoolmaster had taken a group of boys into the Outback. To familiarise yourself with your heritage, the man had told them. Franz discovered the emptiness of the interior, the ancient mountains eroded by age, the bed of what the master said had once been sea. They visited sites where they saw traces of Aboriginal paintings. Daubed in ochre, the forms and faces of men and women capered across the russet rock, a skeleton fish burnt like white fire in the shadow of a cleft, stencilled hands, red, white and brown, patterned the gorge.
The schoolmaster did not dignify the paintings with the name of art but thought they were interesting because of their age and the mystery that surrounded them. They are part of your heritage, he told them. As Australians.
When they got back to Kapunda there was trouble.
‘Australian? Franz is German,’ Irma declared with savage vehemence. ‘Why waste his time with these daubs?’
It seemed that other parents agreed. As for the paintings being part of anyone’s heritage … Outrageous.
There were no more trips to the interior. Yet part of Franz’s being must have absorbed the emptiness and aridity, the sculpted silence, the figures frozen forever upon the sun-roasted rock. Fifteen years later the recurrent dream continued to evoke the memory of those images.
Resolutely he denied them. ‘There’s nothing there,’ he told Eva. ‘Nothing.’
After Christmas Franz and Heini went back to their unit. Franz and Eva exchanged letters. He told her he would see her again as soon as he could yet at Easter, when their next leave fell due, Heini suggested they should go to the Black Forest instead.
‘The country is wonderful,’ Heini told him. ‘Mountains and streams and forests. And there’ll still be snow at this time of year.’
So to the Black Forest they went. Franz had written to Eva to say he was coming to Hannover. She would have made arrangements, told one or two of her friends, perhaps, and now he had let her down. For a day or two he felt bad about it but the feeling did not last. He suspected Eva was thinking beyond a casual relationship and he did not want to get into anything like that. Not with the war on, he told himself. I could be killed. He did not believe it but the thought made him feel noble. It would be wrong to involve her in anything, he told himself. In the circumstances.
The Black Forest was indeed wonderful country, streams and mountains and pine woods. As Heini had promised, snow still lingered on the mountain tops and the air was sharp and clear. The meadows were bright with flowers, the streams cold. They stripped and plunged into the water, thrashing about until their blood iced, then scrambled out, rubbed themselves dry, ran up and down the bank until they were warm again. They were twenty-four years old and lords of the universe.
They went back to the army and in May formed part of the backup troops that entered France behind the panzer spearheads.
Fields of wheat stretched westwards, their borders outlined by rows of poplars. The tracks of the panzers showed clearly where they had crushed the growing crops. Here and there the trucks passed the remains of burnt-out French tanks and equipment. Abandoned vehicles clogged the roads or lay on their side in ditches where they had been shoved unceremoniously by the advancing armour. The sun blazed out of a summer sky, grasshoppers and birds sang in the hedgerows, and for what seemed the thousandth time the advancing column of motorised infantry had been brought to a halt by a hold-up somewhere along the road ahead of them.
Stifling under the canvas canopy, the platoon sat in the back of the truck and waited. For six days they had done little else. Surrounded by petrol fumes and the endless grinding of engines, they had driven in low gear along endless country roads, had waited interminably for things that never happened.
The first sign that this time was going to be different came with a sound like ripping cloth as a machine gun opened up somewhere across the field. The bullets scythed through the branches of the trees bordering the road. Twigs and leaves pattered down. NCOs yellin
g, the platoon flung itself out of the truck to take up positions in the ditch.
Franz peered cautiously, turning his head from side to side as he tried to see through the wheat. Beside him Heini did the same.
‘See anything?’
‘Nothing.’
The machine gun did not fire again. A few yards away Sergeant Kurtz barked staccato orders. Three members of the platoon, bent almost double, began to inch their way along the ditch towards the crest of the hill.
Kurtz’s head turned. ‘Hausser, Vogel, you go with them. And get a move on.’
Shit.
Stumbling, cursing, they followed the others along the ditch. ‘The only way we’ll survive this bloody war is make sure the sergeant never sees us,’ Heini said.
Too late now.
They joined the others at the top of the hill. There was a closed wooden gate. Beyond the gate the wheat field sloped back into the valley. To the right another hedgerow ran away from them along the crest of the hill.
Franz kept well down in the ditch as he stared between the horizontal bars of the gate. The machine gun opened up again from the far corner of the field and he saw the glitter of cascading shell cases as the gunners aimed at the tops of the trucks, clearly visible above the line of the hedge.
‘If we follow the hedge,’ he told the others, ‘we’ll be able to get to the gun without them seeing us.’
The men who had been first to the gate were newcomers to the platoon and neither Franz nor Heini knew them. Now they looked at each other but did not move.
‘He told us to find the machine gun,’ one of them said. ‘Nobody said anything about hedges.’
‘What’s the point of finding it if we don’t do anything about it?’ Heini asked him.
‘Orders,’ the other man said. ‘We were told to find —’
‘We heard you the first time.’
Franz stared across the field. That gun’s got to be fifty metres away, he thought. The longer they lay there the harder it would be to find the courage to do something about it. ‘They’re holding up the whole column,’ he said. ‘Let’s go and sort them out.’
One of the men spat in the dust. ‘The whole French army could be on the other side of that ridge.’
‘The French army is running like rabbits,’ Heini said.
‘You don’t know that.’
One of the men eyed the swastika on Franz’s tunic. ‘You believe all that master race crap. It’s only right you should have the honour of going first.’
‘Show them your armband,’ the second man suggested. ‘Maybe if they see the swastika they’ll put their hands up.’
‘Up what is another question,’ the first man said.
Franz could see that they were quite happy to stay where they were, making jokes at his expense. They clearly had no intention of moving out of the ditch or of doing anything that might endanger them in any way.
‘We’re not heroes,’ the first man said. ‘We leave that to the master race.’
‘I’m going,’ Franz said to Heini. ‘You coming?’
Heini did not answer but followed him as he wormed his way out of the ditch.
‘Two heroes,’ one of the men said behind them. ‘The Führer would be proud.’
‘Knock out that machine gun, he’ll probably make them gauleiters.’
‘Gauleiters of the ditch,’ the third man said.
They were all jokers, willing to let Franz take out the machine gun for them. If he got away with it they might not even have to explain themselves to the sergeant.
Franz did not open the gate for fear the French gunners would see the movement but slithered beneath it into the field.
Cautiously he looked along the hedge. The machine gun looked a lot further than it had when they’d been in the ditch and the crops along the hedge offered less cover than he had thought.
The hedge itself was dense and choked with brambles; there was no way they could fight their way through it into the other field without attracting the gunners’ attention.
Cautiously he turned his head to look back at Heini. ‘We’ll have to follow the hedge to the end,’ he whispered.
‘They’ll have flankers out, surely,’ Heini said, ‘to protect their position?’
He was probably right yet Franz could see no sign of them. He began to wish he had not embarked on this damn-fool exercise but he would sooner face a dozen machine guns than the ribald comments of the trio in the ditch if he turned back. The only thing to do was follow the hedge and hope like hell he saw the French soldiers before they saw him.
He gritted his teeth, grasped his rifle firmly in a hand slippery with sweat and inched his way forward. Every few yards he raised his head to peer through the massed wheat stems but saw nothing. Yard by yard they advanced. From time to time the gun opened up but it was impossible to tell what it was firing at. None of the bullets came anywhere near them and for the moment that was enough.
Halfway along the hedge Franz paused to rest, lowering his face into the dirt. He tasted the dust upon his lips, the warmth of summer earth, knew that any minute he could be dead. He was not afraid, had no clear image of what dying might mean, yet wanted passionately to live. Life was the roughness of wheat between his palms as he rubbed away the chaff. It was the first apricot light of morning, the stillness before the sun came up. He remembered dawns he had seen in Australia, the weathered bones of the landscape emerging stealthily from the darkness. That was life, too. And life was Heini’s sister, smiling at him with the candlelight brilliant in her eyes. It was her eyes and lips and the sweet taste of her breath, the groin-tightening feel of her breasts through her dress. He wished now that he had gone back to Hannover as he had promised and resolved not to treat her or any other person lightly ever again.
He raised his head. Five yards away the unshaven face of a French soldier stared back.
With piercing clarity Franz saw the lines of fatigue on the man’s face, the sweat and stubble along his jaw. Saw him snatch at his rifle while shock drained the blood from his cheeks. The rifle sling snagged a branch protruding from the hedge; desperately he tried to yank it free. Franz saw the terror and despair that already he knew was the true stamp of war. The haft of his bayonet was smooth against his palm as he wrenched it from its scabbard. Without thought he flung himself at the Frenchman, his hand going forward in a vicious, deadly thrust. He felt the momentary hesitation of the blade before it shrugged aside the infinitesimal resistance of cloth and skin and flesh and berthed itself in the Frenchman’s chest.
The force of Franz’s rush threw the man away. Eyes round, mouth round, he fell back upon the summer-scented earth. Franz’s hand was fierce upon the rictus of his straining lips, stifling the cry, stifling the man. No blood. The body thrashed momentarily. Grew still. A bloom of pollen flowered upon one cheek.
There was no time for regret, for thought. The gunners must have heard them. His only chance was action, as rapid and violent as what had preceded it. He was on his feet, running. Sunlight flickered through the leaves. He stumbled on a fallen branch, recovered and raced on. He had thought the machine gun only a few yards away; now he seemed to be running forever. Plenty of time for the French to hear him coming, to swing the barrel to cover the hedge. Plenty of time to die.
He saw the gun. It had been sited well back in the hedge; its muzzle stared through a screen of leaves. Despite his fears it still covered the wheat field, the line of hedge bordering the lane. It was five yards away. He flung himself forward, finger tight on the trigger, burst through the last fall of leaves and grass. Stopped in mid-stride. The machine gun was untended. The French had gone. He and Heini looked at each other. The frenzy leaked away. They laughed. Heini slapped him on the back. The scent of the meadow returned in full force. Franz took a deep breath, letting the air seep deliciously into his lungs. He thought how unbearable it would have been to leave all this.
Heini said, ‘I let you con me into doing anything like that again I’ll deserve eve
rything I get.’
Franz laughed. Everything was so vivid; the light, the varied scents and sounds of summer, of living. Something flickered above him. He looked up, saw the sideways slide of the hawk, pinions raked to grasp the wind. He stepped back to watch it. There was a tiny sound, like a cough. Something touched his cheek, a momentary flicker of air that might have been a feather from the gliding hawk, so lightly it brushed past him. He turned to say something to Heini, saw his friend’s mouth open, a look of stupefaction on his face.
‘What’s the matter?’
Heini said nothing. His eyes stared blindly at Franz. He coughed. A slow trickle of blood ran down his chin.
‘My God, Heini —’
Franz stepped towards him but it was too late. Heini’s eyes darkened. He fell backwards without a sound, lay on his back in the grass as though resting after the frenzy of their long charge.
Franz knelt, holding him frantically.
‘Heini —’
No good. He was gone, as the Frenchman had gone.
I let you con me into doing anything like that again …
One of the Frenchies must have turned in the moment of retreat and fired at his attackers. At Franz. Who had stepped back at that instant to watch the hunting bird and left his friend exposed.
It should have been me.
I let you con me …
NO!
A scream of protest. Unuttered. Desperate.
Heini had lost his helmet as he fell. Franz cradled his friend’s head but it was no use. There was nothing there.
He remembered the farmhouse, the iron ground, the peaceful candlelight. All gone. With Heini’s death he had lost so much, as though a part of him had died, too.
I shall have to write to his parents, he thought. To Eva.
Something else that was a part of life. To honour with appropriate ritual the passage of the dead.
One day towards the end of 1943 Feldwebel Franz Vogel, as he had now become, took a bullet in the shoulder during a skirmish with partisans near Smolensk. The bullet tore away a chunk of flesh and muscle and chipped his left shoulder blade. It probably also saved his life. After the wound healed it was found that he had not regained full movement in the shoulder. The doctors told him that in time he would make a full recovery but for the present a one-armed soldier would be of little use in the hand-to-hand fighting that had become a feature of war on the Eastern Front. At the beginning of December Franz found himself seconded to the third battalion of the 95th Security Regiment and posted to Gautier, a small town in the south-west of France twenty miles south-east of Limoges.