Operation Iraq

by Leo Kessler

  Standing on the sidelines, von Dodenburg, face still pale from his month in an Athenian hospital, leaning on his stick for support, envied them, as did his chief, the Vulture. For Wotan wasn't going in the first wave of the great attack, as was the Leibstandarte. Wotan hadn't recovered yet from its ordeal and losses in Iraq. Indeed, they were still waiting for reinforcements from the Reich. But, as the Führer had assured the two officers immediately after his arrival at this new front-to-be, "Never fear, my dear Colonel Geier – and you, too, von Dodenburg, SS Wotan will see action soon enough. I can always use my heroes of the Führer's Fire Brigade!" Hitler had laughed, and for one dreadful moment, von Dodenburg thought the leader was about to pinch his cheek, as he was wont to do with his teenage SS men.

  "When this attack starts," Hitler was saying to the Leibstandarte officers, "you can take it from me, gentlemen, the world will hold its breath and tremble. For then our friends and our foes will realise that we can take on the world, if necessary, and beat it. So we made a mistake in Iraq. But it was only a minor one, and our allies weren't as efficient as we expected them to be. Now, however, for the time being we are on our own – and we shall still achieve our aim and make the world tremble at the power of German arms." He stamped his foot down and clenched his fists in an upward movement, as if he were doing some kind of peasant jig.

  The Vulture sniffed at the words, but said nothing. Neither did von Dodenburg. Instead he was thinking of all those dead young Germans who had left their bones to bleach in the Iraq wastes for no important purpose. What use had it all been? The English had triumphed in the end; they were in control once more, and what had been left of Wotan had only escaped by the skin of their teeth, a bunch of hunted fugitives, racked by injuries and sickness. Now, on this June morning in 1941, as Hitler prepared to attack across the River Bug into Russia, all they were capable of, militarily, was to act as a flank guard to the Leibstandarte. "How the mighty have fallen..." he commented bitterly to no one in particular.

  The Vulture turned and peered at him through his monocle, as if he were seeing the younger man for the first time. "Once the gentlemen of the Leibstandarte start taking serious casualties, von Dodenburg, they'll need us. We can provide the cannon fodder for the Führer's favourites. Then they – and the Führer, too – will realise the worth of SS Assault Battalion Wotan."

  Von Dodenburg was appalled by the Vulture's callous attitude. Was that all the men of Wotan – perhaps 'boys' would be a better description now – were worth? Cannon fodder, dying merely to bring Wotan, and naturally the Vulture, to the attention of the military authorities? He opened his mouth to protest, but then thought better of it. He knew the Vulture of old. Instead he raised his night glasses and focused them on the enemy side of the river. Nothing seemed to move there. No smoke came from the thatched little Russian cottages – the isbas. Not even a dog howled at the night shadows. For all that, von Dodenburg could see the whole countryside over there might well be totally devoid of human life.

  But he knew he was wrong. There were people out there, perhaps already awake and just waiting for them to come in their stormboats to be mown down in their hundreds, thousands. He shivered suddenly.

  "A louse ran over your liver?" the Vulture queried, without interest.

  "Something like that, sir," he answered.

  "Don't worry, von Dodenburg, we'll go through them like shit through a goose."

  "Spect so, sir," he answered the CO without conviction.

  Now there was movement to their immediate front. The staff was seeing the Führer off before the battle commenced. No one wanted to have a dead Hitler on his conscience; he wouldn't live long anyway, if anything happened to the Leader. There was a clicking of heels. Arms went up rigidly. Hard voices cried, "Heil Hitler!" The Führer was on his way back to the safety of his headquarters.

  Von Dodenburg raised his arm in the Hitler greeting without enthusiasm. It wasn't just his wound. It was really a feeling of let-down. He had been here before, Poland on 31st August, 1939; Holland on 10th May 1940... All those beginnings over the last two years, when excitement had run high, as the tanks massed, the artillery swung into position and the infantry readied to march. What hopes they all had had. Naturally there had been victories, deeds of great daring, medals, honours. But each time the cost in human life had seemed higher, and in the end the great victories seemed to have solved nothing. Now, this dawn of June 22nd 1941, they were fighting once more, against perhaps the strongest enemy of all, Soviet Russia. But would a victory in this enormous country bring a final peace and a stop to the slaughter? Von Dodenburg, a puzzled young man, didn't know.

  A kilometre or so away, well camouflaged in his hide, not far from the Russian first line of defence, another young man, dark-skinned and handsome, dressed in a uniform with the green stripes of the Russian NKVD, lowered his night glasses too. Ever since he had been first sent to Germany as a teenager of wealthy Indian parents, he had been fighting fascism for the cause of the Soviet Fatherland. Now, as he surveyed the SS fascists, whom he had almost led into a trap only weeks before, he was convinced that this time they wouldn't escape. This time they were doomed. Satisfied that he had done all he could for the time being, the one-time Lieutenant Singh of the 'Indian Legion' crept out of his hide to the waiting motorbike that would take him back to Army HQ.

  – THE END –

  Plunge back into World War chaos with SS Wotan

  in another Wotan novel:

  DEATH FROM ARCTIC SKIES

  by LEO KESSLER

  Available as an e-book now.

  Turn over for the first chapter...

  Death From Arctic Skies – Chapter 1

  "Haul ass, you lousy Kraut bastards," the big Ami sergeant yelled against the howl of the wind. "Make schnell!"

  The guards herding the long column of prisoners ever eastwards took up the relentless chant once more in their pathetic German, "Make schnell, Krauts... LOS!"

  The column shuffled off, too weary, too hungry, too frozen to be still frightened of their white-helmeted guards who waded into them at periodic intervals if they thought the prisoners too slow slamming their cruelly brass-shod rifle butts into the Germans' skinny ribs or digging their bayonets into them.

  Like some great, stinking serpent the prisoners wound their way among the frozen snow dunes, trying to find the road whenever possible, giving off an overpowering stench as they evacuated their bowels time and time again, leaving their steaming trail of wet, yellow faeces. All of them were suffering from what they called the 'thin shits' because they had used the frozen, dirtied snow to quench their thirst.

  Obersturmbannführer Kuno von Dodenburg, once commander of the elite SS Assault Regiment 'Wotan', fought his weary way forward with the rest of the POWs. His eyebrows were glistening white with hoar frost, his emaciated, pinched face an ugly purple, and every time he breathed, it was as if someone had plunged a sharp knife into his frozen lungs. All around him the survivors of the beaten army – tank men in their black uniforms, sailors in floppy, beribboned caps, Luftwaffe paras in camouflaged coveralls and ordinary infantry in shabby ankle-length greatcoats –struggled to keep up. For all of them knew once they had dropped, they would remain lying there until they perished and the drifting snow covered their skinny bodies. This bitter December, their captors knew no mercy.

  Again the numbness caused by the freezing temperature had worn off and his wounds – thank God they had ceased bleeding – had commenced hurting once more. The pain was almost too much to bear, but he was determined to keep going. Once they had reached the Reich and the makeshift Wehrmacht hospitals and camps on the other side of the border, he knew the rabble all around him would need leadership. Otherwise all of them would be condemned to an early death on the starvation rations their Ami guards allowed them. He had seen it all before when he had been a temporary prisoner of the Ivans – the Russians –the year before. For them to survive they needed someone to lead them and stand up to the guards. It was the o
nly way to get out of the mess they had now found themselves in. "March or croak, comrades!" he had encouraged hoarsely more than once when they had been tempted to give up, lie in the snow and wait for death to take them.

  He breathed out hard with exasperation and the next moment wished he hadn't. The icy breath ripped at his lungs like the blade of a razor-sharp stiletto. He knew there was no hope for him. Not only was he in the SS – "those Nazi bastards who murdered our guys in cold blood," as the big red-headed sergeant in charge had snorted more than once ever since they had commenced this death march to the Reich and the POW camps – but he was also the former commanding officer of the most feared regiment in the whole of the SS. "A Kraut Al Capone," he had told himself bitterly, "with a Tommy-gun under each arm, only too eager to waste some poor innocent Ami."

  In the American field dressing station to which they had taken him immediately after his capture to patch up his wounds, they had made it amply clear what the fate of Obersturmbannführer von Dodenburg of SS Assault Regiment Wotan was going to be. His wounds had been treated without benefit of any kind of anaesthetic. As the fat, harassed little Jewish doctor who had tended nervously to his wounds had whispered in Yiddish so that the rest of the place's nursing staff couldn't understand: "Sorry, Colonel, I've been ordered not to give you a shot. You'll have to grin and bear it, I'm afraid." He had wiped the sweat from his plump cheeks and continued his probing as if he was feeling the pain just as acutely as the tall, lean German officer with the harshly handsome face stretched out on the stretcher in front of him.

  Von Dodenburg had nodded, not trusting himself to speak, as the American doctor's scalpel had penetrated ever deeper into the raw, bloody wound, the blood pouring down his skinny ribs unhindered, for none of the aid men were making any attempt to staunch the flow. Obviously, they too had been ordered to make life hellishly tough for their high-ranking SS prisoner.

  Finally it had been all over. Carelessly, an orderly had dusted the wounds with sulpha powder and bandaged them up, while the fat Jewish doctor tut-tutted and constantly shook his head, as if he were saddened by the whole bad business. His body lathered in sweat, despite the freezing temperature outside, von Dodenburg, exhausted, had fallen back onto the blood-soaked stretcher, But not for long.

  It had been 'rounds' shortly afterwards. The tall, angry-faced colonel in charge had come bustling into the tent filled with wounded, both German and American, followed by his junior doctors and the sister in charge. Underneath the hissing white glare of the lantern hanging from the central pole of the tent he had stared in a bored manner at the check-list which the sister had presented him. He had seen it all before ever since Normandy. His concern was to get the 'bodies' (he always thought of his patients as 'bodies') capable of fighting again, fit for another spell in the line. Otherwise his sole concerns were his weekly booze ration of scotch and the nubile body of Nurse Smithers who was his current 'GI with the built-in foxhole', as crude men referred to the US Army's female soldiers.

  Suddenly he started. Behind his steel-rimmed GI glasses, his grey eyes hardened and then became angry. "What the frigging Sam Hill is this, Finkelstein?" he demanded.

  The fat Jewish doctor looked apprehensive. "What's that, sir?" he had asked timidly.

  The colonel had glared at him. "Don't bullshit me, Finkelstein," he had snarled his face growing an even deeper red with anger. "You know what the Christ I'm talking about. I know, goddamit, you're not one of us. But you can understand English plain and simple, don't yer!"

  Tamely, ignoring the insult to his race, Finkelstein had nodded but said nothing until the colonel cried, "Put a 'sir' on that, Finkelstein!" he threatened, "Or I'll send you up to one of the fighting battalions. Surgeons don't survive long up there." He had smiled maliciously, obviously noting the sudden look of fear on the junior doctor's face.

  "Sir," Finkelstein said, red-faced and embarrassed at this dressing down in front of his patients.

  "Good," the colonel had relaxed a little. "The trouble with you and your, er, fellow co-religionists," he pontificated, "is that you've not got enough fighting spunk. That guy," he indicated a semi-conscious von Dodenburg, who had raised his left arm and was showing the black tattoo mark of the SS under it, "is a big shot Nazi who has probably murdered a whole shoot of your, er, people. Yet you pussy-foot around with him when everybody knows that all the guy deserves is a swift polka at the end of a length of hangman's hemp."

  Finkelstein said nothing, but looked at his feet in an embarrassed sort of way.

  "And that's why," the colonel poked a finger at Finkelstein's plump chest as if accusing him personally, "you Jews have always been persecuted throughout your history. You've never learned how to hit back. You've always believed in turning the other goddamn cheek – and see what it's got ya." He let his words sink in before adding, "Well, me, I'm a doctor, I know, but I'm also a red-blooded American, who doesn't forgive a wrong that easily. So I want that Kraut dressed and out of my hospital in five minutes flat, or there'll be trouble – plenty of trouble for somebody." So saying he had swaggered away followed by his entourage, slapping his riding boots with the leather swagger stick that he affected.

  Five minutes later, as the hospital commandant had ordered, von Dodenburg, swaying badly, his face twisted in a grimace of acute pain, was standing in the howling snowstorm outside. Opposite him, a worried Finkelstein looked anxiously at his one-time patient before reaching into the pocket of his bloodstained white overall and bringing out two packages. "More sulpha powder," he whispered so that none of the men inside could hear him, "and something to deaden the pain... Oh, yeah, and a few smokes." He tendered a dazed von Dodenburg a battered, half-full pack of Camels. "The best I can do under the circumstances, I'm afraid."

  Despite the acute pain that ran through his emaciated body in electric shock waves, von Dodenburg was moved. "Thank you, doctor," he croaked and reached out his hand slowly, "Do you mind shaking the hand of an SS killer, Doc?"

  Finkelstein took the hand a little hesitantly. "You're a sick man after all," he had said. "It's my job as a medic to treat you, whoever or whatever you are. Good luck, Colonel."

  Von Dodenburg had wondered what Reichsführer Himmler, the head of the SS, would have thought if he had been able to see that little scene, with the snow whirling around the tents and the big, wounded colonel towering above the fat, undersized, obviously Jewish doctor. Now he grinned weakly at the memory. But at that moment he had had no time for amusement, for, abruptly, the head guard, the US Military Policeman the other guards called Red, had appeared out of the snowstorm bellowing that cry which von Dodenburg was going to learn to hate, "All right, you Kraut bastard haul ass!"

  The American colonel commandant's attitude towards the beaten Germans, especially those of the SS, had made up von Dodenburg's mind. Ever since his surprise capture, he had been unable to make plans: he had been too weak and miserable at the knowledge that his beloved regiment had been wiped out, save for a handful of soldiers under Sergeant Schulze's leadership who had managed to survive the debacle and escape.

  His manner of release from the American military hospital, when he knew that his wounds needed far more attention if he wasn't going to succumb to gas-gangrene that stinking killer created in untended dirty wounds, had made up his mind for him at last. It wasn't because he was concerned about his personal future. He knew that in the end his life was forfeit; after all, he had commanded the most infamous regiment in the whole of the million-strong SS. But for the time being he wanted to do what pathetic little he could to help his beloved Fatherland in its hour of defeat. What had that big ox Sergeant Schulze said to him more than once before they had finally walked into the trap: "Sir, we've always had it drummed into us for these last years that we must learn to die for Germany." And he had inevitably stroked his pugnacious, unshaven jaw at that moment before adding, "Now we've got to learn how to live for our country!"

  As that long column of stinking human misery trailed ever eastwar
ds, leaving their dead and dying behind them, soon to be swallowed up by the raging snowstorm, von Dodenburg knew that that rogue Schulze, for all his undoubted faults, had been right. The days of dying on the 'field of honour' for Folk, Fatherland and Führer were over. Now one had to live. The question was – How?

  Death From Arctic Skies – Chapter 2

  The raging snowstorm had ceased now. From one horizon to the other, the new snowfield glittered and sparkled beautifully. A cold sun stood high in the hard, steel-blue sky. On the hills to both sides of the remote Eifel farmhouse, the firs marched up the steep slopes like spike-helmeted Prussian grenadiers. All was quiet and muted by the snow save for the distant rumble of the permanent barrage to the east where the Americans under Patton attacked yet again, being driven forward relentlessly by "that cowboy general", as the Führer called him scornfully.

  It could have been a scene from a pre-war Christmas card, with rosy-cheeked village children in woolly hats, dragging their sledges, heavy with holly sprigs and fir trees, back home to celebrate that most holy of German festivals, the family Christmas Eve.

  But the silver, noiseless shapes of the Ami bomber squadrons knifing high across the hard blue sky, dragging their white vapour trails behind them, gave the lie to that. The Flying Fortresses, hundreds of them, were on their way to wreak vengeance on the Reich's already shattered cities, making the enemy pay for that great surprise offensive in the Ardennes which had come as such a huge shock to the Allied Supreme Commander, General Eisenhower, and his so-confident generals who had thought the war would be over, in the Allied favour, by Christmas. No, the war on the frontier of the Reich with Belgium still raged in its full fury, and many thousands more, both German and American soldiers, would die before it was all over and Germany was finally defeated.