Herman Wouk - War and Remembrance

by War

  Yevlenko's tone slightly moderated. "Have you reported yet to Harry Hopkins on your tour with us?"

  "I have not completed my report. I shall -include this complaint on Aircobras. Your statistical summary will go with it."

  "You will have that on Monday."

  "Thank you."

  "In return, may I have a copy of your report to Mr. Hopkins?"

  "I will deliver a copy to you myself."

  Yevlenko offered his left hand.

  Pug wrote a twenty-page report. Admiral Standley, delighted with this cornucopia of Lend-Lease intelligence, ordered it mimeographed for a large political distribution list back home, including the President.

  Pug also wrote a letter by hand to Harry Hopkins. He sat up late one night scrawling it, fueled by sips of vodka, and he intended to put it in the pouch an hour before the courier departed. Such surreptitious bypassing of Standley was distasteful, but it was his job, if in this formless assignment anything was his job.

  Dear Mr. Hopkins: Ambassador Standley is forwarding to you and to others my intelligence report on a recent eight-day observer trip through the Soviet Union with General Yuri Yevienko. All my facts are in that document. I add, at your request, some "Crystal ball" footnotes.

  As to Lend-Lease: the trip convinced me that the President's policy of freehanded giving, without demanding any quid pro quo, is the only sane one.

  Congress did itself proud by showing how well it understood that.

  Even if the Russians weren't slaughtering great numbers of our foes, it would be churlish to tie strings to our help. This war will end, and we will have to live with the Soviet Union. If we now start bargaining about the price of a lifeline, before we throw it to a man struggling in deep waters, he may pay anything, but he'll remember.

  As I see it, the Russians are starting to break the backbone of Hitlerism, but at terrible cost. I keep picturing the Japs rampaging ashore on our Pacific COast and sweeping halfway across the country, killing or capturing maybe twenty million Americans, ravaging all the foodstuffs, taking over the factories, sending a few million people back to Nippon as slave labor, and spreading destruction and atrocities everywhere. That's roughly what the Russians have been going through.

  That they've hung on and come back is amazing. No doubt Lend-Lease has helped, but it wouldn't have helped a gutless country.

  General Yevlenko showed me some soldiers in new Lend-Lease uniforms, and he dryly remarked, "Russian bodies." So far as I'm concerned, that's the first and last word on Lend-Lease.

  Just as amazing, however, is the German war effort.

  We see these things on maps and read about them, but it is another thing to, fly along a battlefront for more than a thousand miles and view the reality. Considering that Hitler is also maintaining large forces in western Europe from Norway to the Pyrenees, and conducting massive operations in North Africa and a ferocious large-scale U-boat campaign-and that I didn't visit the Caucasus at all, which has been another huge front in itself -this sustained onslaught on a country ten times as big as Germany, twice as populous, and highly industrialized and militarized, boggles the mind. It may be history's, most -remarkable (and odious) military feat. Could we and the British stamp out this monstrous predatory force without Russia? I wonder. Again the President's policy of keeping the Soviet Union fighting at all costs is the only sane one.

  This raises the question of a separate peace, on which you have specifically asked for a judgment. Unfortunately the Soviet Union baffles me; the people, the government, the smial philosophy, everything about it. Of course I'm not alone in that.

  I don't feel that the Russians love or even like their Communist Government. I think they're stuck with it by the accidents of a revolution that went wrong. Despite the blanket of propaganda, I think they sense too that Stalin and his brutal gang bungled the start of the war and almost lost it. Maybe one day this great patient people will have a reckoning with the regime, as they did with the Romanoffs.

  Meantime Stalin remains in the saddle, providing harsh driving leadership. He'll make the separate peace decision, one way or the other. The people will obey. Nobody's going to rebel against Stalin, not after the way the Germans have behaved here.

  At this point such a peace would be perfidious, and when I'm among Russians I don't sense or fear perfidy.

  War-weariness is something else. The German resilience as shown in the recapture of I(harkov is ominous! I ask myself, why did the Russian authorities permit me to go on this unusual trip? And why did General Yevlenko invite me to the squalid flat of his daughter-in-law in Leningrad, and prod her to tell me horror stories of the siege?

  Possibly to make our complaints of Russian ingratitude seem shameful.

  Possibly to drive home to me-for as described in my main report, I've been treated as your unofficial aide -that there may be limits even to Russian endurance. The hints here, sometimes subtle but usually very crude, about a second front in Europe are interminableI've been through some cruel warfare in the Pacific, but that's mainly a war of professionals. This one is all-out -two entire nations at each other's jugulars. The Russians don't mean to do us a favor by fighting for their lives, but it's working that way. Lend-Lease is an inspired and historic policy. But bloodshed on the battlefield remains the decisive thing in wars, and people can stand only so much of it without hope of relief.

  My "crystal ball" says therefore something very obvious: if we can convince the Russians that we're serious about a second front in Europe soon, we can forget about a separate peace. Otherwise it's a risk.

  Sincerely, Victor Henry "The matter of the Aircobras," Pug said, "is discussed on pages seventeen and eighteen."

  A weekend had passed. He and Yevlenko were exchanging papers:"a copy of his report to Yevlenko, a thick-bound document to him.

  Riffling through Yevlenko's summary, Pug saw pages on pages of figures, graphs, and tables, with long pages of solid text in Russian.

  "Well, of course I cannot read your report myself."

  Yevlenko's tone was chatty but hurried. He slipped the report into his travelling portfolio, which lay on the desk; his fur-lined greatcoat and a valise were on the sofa." I. am off to the southern front, and my aide will translate at sight on the plane."

  "General, I have also written a personal letter to Harry Hopkins."

  Pug pulled more papers from his portfolio. "I have translated it myself into Russian for you, though I had to use a dictionary and a grammar."

  "But why? We have excellent translators."

  "So have we. I don't want to leave a copy with you. If you care to read it and hand it back to me, that is what I prepared it for."

  Yevlenko looked puzzled and suspicious, then gave him a slow patronizing smile. "Well! That is the sort of cautious secrecy we Russians are often accused of."

  Pug said, "Possibly it's infectious."

  "Unfortunately, I have very little time just now, Kapitan Henry.

  "In that case, when you return, I'll be at your service."

  Yevlenko took the telephone and growled quick words; hung up, and held out his hand. Pug gave him the translated letter. Inserting a cigarette in the clip, still wryly smiling, Yevlenko began to read.

  The smile faded. A couple of times he shot at Pug the nasty glare he had first flashed in the Leningrad apartment. Turning over the last page, he sat staring at the letter, then handed it back to Pug. His face was expressionless. "You have to work on your Russian verbs."

  "if you have any comment, I will transmit it to Harry Hopkins."

  "You might not like what I would say."

  "That doesn't matter."

  "Your political understanding of the Soviet Union is very superficial, very prejudiced, and very uninformed. Now I must go."

  Yevlenko stood up. "You asked about my son on the Kharkov front.

  We have heard from him. He is all right."

  "I'm absolutely delighted to hear it."

  Yevlenko barked an order into the telephon
e and began putting on his coat, dead hand first. An aide entered and gathered up his luggage. "As for NESS Pamela Tudsbury, her visa has been issued. Your driver will return you to your flat.

  Good-bye.

  "Good-bye," Pug said, too startled to react about Pamela.

  He thought Yevlenko was offering him the live hand, but it went up to his shoulder for a brief almost painful squeeze Then Yevlenko left.

  No LOCOMOTIVE WILL ride the steel tracks that Berel Jastrow, Sammy Mutterperl, and the other Jews of Kommando 1005 are handling, nor will the heavy wooden ties piled nearby support the weight of rolling trains. The rails and ties are for railroad bed repair, but Standartenfuhrer Blobel has found another use for them.

  Since first light the kommando has been out at the job, setting up the steel frame. The frame is the secret of the 1005 operation. For a professional architect like Paul Blobel it was a simple thing to design, build, and put into use, but the thick heads at Auschwitz and the other camps still cannot grasp the advantage of it.

  Blobel has offered copies of the drawings to the camp commandants.

  So far, they have shown little interest, though that fellow Hoess at Auschwitz has indicated he will give it a try. The frame is the answer to the disposal problem about which he whines and makes so many excuses, and which in fact is a serious health problem. But the fellow obviously did not grasp the idea when Blobel described it, and was afraid to admit his stupidity, so he nodded and smiled and passed the thing off. Just an old concentration camp hand, no culture or imagination.

  This morning Standartenffuhrer Blobel is at the site when work begins. That is unusual. The procedure is cut-and-dried, and this latest squad from Auschwitz - a sturdy gang of Jews at last, hardworking physical specimens with smart work leaders-has caught on fast. Usually at this hour Blobel is in his van or at quarters in town if the section is not too far out in the sticks, quaffing schnapps to chase off the morning chill.

  This duty is lonely, repetitious, boring, and very hard on the nervous system. The SS men get their schnapps ration at night; during work hours they have to keep an eye on the Jews. The escape rate is very bad, worse than Blobel reports to Berlin. Rank has its privileges, and SS Colonel Blobel likes to start the day with a few shots, but this morning is special.

  He is cold sober.

  The pit was opened yesterday. Fortunately, the snowfall at night wasn't much. There are the bodies in rows, lightly snowed over. A medium-sized job, maybe two thousand. The smell as usual is awful, but the cold and the snow keep it down some, and the frame stands to windward, which helps.

  Blobel is pleased to observe how quickly the frame takes form.

  The Jew work leader "Sammy" had a good idea, utting numbers into the rails for sorting and matching. It is up, bolted, braced, and ready to go in less than half an hour-a long narrow sturdy structure of rails held together with steel crossbeams, like a section of track on stilts.

  Next will come the pileup: a layer of wooden ties, a layer of bodies and fuel-soaked rags, wood, bodies, wood, bodies, with a row or two of heavy steel rails to hold the mass down, until you have all the bodies out of the hole, or until the pyre is toppling-high.

  What Blobel has come to watch is the new search procedure. The looting has been getting out of hand. These are all early graves around the Minsk district, from the 1941 executions. Nobody had any know-how then. Jews were taken out by thif hundreds of thousands, and shot and buried with their clothes on, without even being searched. Rings, watches, gold coins, old paper money (plenty of American dollars, too) stiff with black blood but still good, are all over White Russia in these mass graves. Up the assholes and in the cunts of these cheesy bodies you are apt to find, valuable gems, no fun to make the search, but worth it! Here and there the local population has already been robbing the graves; to discourage the practice Blobel has had to Shoot a few kids, who tend to be adept at such ghoulishness. Germany needs all the wealth it can acquire to carry on its world-historical struggle. They are collecting pots and pans back home for the Fuhrer, and here is real buried treasure, amid all this rotting garbage that now has to be burned up.

  Until today the treasure has been icked over randomly, a lot of it carelessly given to the flames, some going into the pockets of the SS underlings; and some Jews have even become so bold in their Yiddish greed that they have been caught with loot. Blobel suspects that escapees may have bribed their way past the guards with looted jewels and money; on this duty SS morale and training tend to break down. He has had to make an example and shoot seven perfectly healthy Jews, who will be missed in the work force.

  He observes the new system go into action. Excellent!

  Jewish body-searchers, Jewish loot-collectors, Jewish inventory-writers, Jews with pliers for gold teeth, all under close SS supervision, go to work on the corpses as they are handed up and laid out on the snow in rows. Untersturmfuhrer Greiser is in charge. From now on that young fellow will do nothing else but attend to the "economic processing, as Blobel has termed it, so long as Kommando 1005 is obliterating the 1941 graves. Greaser is a good-looking idealistic rookie from Breslau, a fine SS type with whom Blobel enjoys philosophical discussions. Formerly an accountant with a university degree, he can be relied upon to handle this business. Kommando 1005 will be remitting plenty of stuff to the central bank depository in Berlin, and Blobel's promotion will duly record this.

  The search adds some time to the whole process, but less than he expected. It goes fast. Most of the people were poor and had nothing on them. The thing is, you never know when you'll come on a loaded one. The Standartenfuhrees orders are, "Search them all, even the kids!" It's an old Yid trick to hide valuables on the children.

  Well, something accomplished!

  It is finished. The rifled bodies are all piled up with the railroad ties and rails. As the Jews climb their ladders to pour waste oil and gasoline over the pyre, Blobel waves to his chauffeur.

  Gasoline for the pyre is getting to be a real problem. The Wehrmacht is becoming stingier all the time about this, just as it won't ever provide enough soldiers to cordon off a work area. Without gasoline the blaze just doesn't get going. You can have a terrible smoldering mess for days. But today there is plenty. In a moment as it seems, the pile of more than a thousand long-dead Jews bursts into towering flame. Blobel has to recoil a bit from the blast of heat.

  He is driven back to his van. Downing many glasses of schnapps, he drafts a report to Berlin on his procedure. It pays to get these things on the record. Nobody else can claim credit for the frame; he wrote a long report on it, pointing out that the great problem in the combustion of corpses, especially old ones, was getting enough oxygen to the conflagration.

  Those open pits in Auschwitz-well, he has used open pits, too: slow, visible far and wide at night, soaking up four times as much oil and gasoline as the frame does because oxygen can't get down in there.

  The pits at Chelmno burned cherry-red for three days, and there was still a big problem with bones. All he can say for a pit is it beats a crematorium.

  He has argued in vain against the Auschwitz crematoriums, and given up. He knows more about this business than anyone, but to hell with it. The gas-chamber concept is fine, it does a quiet smooth job with large numbers; but the damned fools who designed the installation gave it a gassing capacity four times the burning capacity. The overload in peak periods must end in a tremendous mess. Well, let those wiseacres in Berlin spend money and waste scarce material and machinery. Let them find out for themselves that no chimney linings will hold up against the heat of combustion of hundreds of thousands of human bodies, dead meat burning by the hundreds of metric tons on a twenty-four-hour basis. Those big complicated structures will give nothing but trouble. The height of foolishness; amateur architecture, amateur disposal techniques! Bureaucrats a thousand miles from the job dreaming up fancy installations when all they ever needed was plenty of God's open air and Paul Blobel's frame.

  Depending on the wind, the
burning time on the frame can be two to ten hours. Some Jews tend the crackling pyre with iron forks. Others, including Jastrow and Mutterperl, are down in the long narrow pit, passing up more bodies. It is starting to snow again.

  Black smoke and red flames climb into the white snowfall, a beautiful sight if any eye here can see beauty. But the forty-odd SS men surrounding the job, guns in hand, are bored and numb, waiting for their reliefs; and the Jews - those who are sane enough to notice things - are all driven and busy.

  Many of these Jews are now quite harmless madmen. They work because they will be fed if they do, and starved and beaten if they don't. Uncovering and descending into hideously foul mass graves; handling desiccated rotted corpses that can come apart in one's leather-gloved hands, that drip fat worms; piling up one's murdered fellow Jews and setting them afire, day in and day out; these things have been too great a strain. Minds and spirits have given way, fallen apart like old corpses. These docile lunatic automatons are no more trouble to their guards than cattle; which is how the SS men, handle the squad, with shouts and with dogs.