The Constant Soldier

by William Ryan

  She hung up her coat and began to set herself a place at the table. He watched her – the way she moved, stiffly and avoiding looking up at him. He thought about the Western Allies approaching the Rhine and the Russians to the east. He thought about Hubert, who must surely be hiding in the hills. He thought about how quickly the days were passing – and how few of them might be left.

  ‘Father said you went to see a friend?’ Brandt posed it as a cross between a statement and a question.

  ‘Helga Dorfmann. She lives over on the other side of the reservoir. You know them, her father owns the Red Farm.’

  He knew the family and he knew the farm. The father was quite elderly, a contemporary of his father’s. He watched Monika take the plate from the oven and remove the metal cover. That side of the valley, the western side, was steeper and more wooded than their side. She would have had to cross the dam and then cycle several kilometres along the road that ran along the reservoir, before climbing up a winding, poorly surfaced track. He thought about the Red Farm and its remote location.

  ‘Have you heard from Hubert recently?’ he asked.

  He was surprised by the bluntness of his question. Monika showed no reaction – which in itself was all the confirmation he needed. He watched how she placed her plate on the table, carefully positioning it between her knife and fork. He noticed the small movement of her chest as she breathed. She didn’t speak.

  ‘I would never tell anyone anything about you and Hubert,’ he said. ‘You must know that.’

  She sat down, scraping the chair along the stone floor. He found himself looking at the top of her head. She picked up a fork but only to hold it. She was thinking how to respond, he knew. She wanted to keep her thoughts to herself until she decided what she might say. She had never rushed into anything.

  ‘Monika,’ he said, when the silence became oppressive, ‘I need to explain to you about the hut.’

  She lifted her gaze to meet his. Her expression was calm and her words, when she spoke, were almost maternal.

  ‘I barely know you, Paul. You came back from the war, which I’m happy about, of course. But for all those years we had almost no contact with you. Why should I trust you?’

  He found himself nodding in agreement.

  ‘Perhaps I need to trust you first,’ he said.

  ‘Go on,’ she said.

  And he told her about the women. About Vienna. About Neumann and Peichl. About the perimeter fences and the guards’ routines. About where the keys were kept and how the generator might be dealt with.

  And all the while, she listened.

  23

  THE EVENINGS shortened, the weather turned colder and in October the news came that the Führer had ordered the formation of a new military formation to defend the borders of the Reich – the Volkssturm – to be made up of the very old and the very young, the final dregs of the Fatherland’s manpower barrel. The village was required to provide this new military force with a platoon of fighting men and the mayor, as the local Party leader, appointed himself its commander. Brandt found himself, three days later, standing by Weber’s side, looking at a room full of grandfathers and grandsons.

  ‘Men,’ the mayor began and let the word hang in the air for a while. Brandt thought the description was stretching it for half the attendees, but the boys looked pleased and that was something.

  ‘The Führer has placed great trust in us. This is a crucial time for Germany and for National Socialism. We face our moment of destiny.’

  Brandt had heard this speech, or variations of it, more than once. He knew what the mayor would finish up by asking them to do and it disgusted him. He found himself looking down at the men gathered together to listen to it. Many of them had only the red and black Volkssturm armbands to mark them out as soldiers, while others wore parts of uniforms that dated back to the first war. The mayor, however, had had Rachel at the hut run up a new uniform for him as soon as he had been confirmed in his position. Brandt suspected the meeting had been delayed until the uniform was ready. The mayor was proud of the two silver lozenges at his throat and the jacket’s tailored fit.

  ‘As a sign of our importance to local readiness we can feel honoured, comrades, that the responsibility for protecting the dam from enemy infiltrators has been passed to our unit from tomorrow.’

  Brandt turned his head slightly to look at the mayor. This was news to him. The Order Police had been guarding the dam up until now. The mayor caught his covert glance and gestured towards him.

  ‘We are fortunate to have amongst our number Paul Brandt, who, as we all know, served with great distinction on the Eastern Front. He will be squad leader under my command. With brave men like him amongst us, we can be certain we will be ready to face the enemy.’

  Brandt nodded gravely. His father had been exempted by reason of his age but his uncle, Ernst, had not been so lucky. Brandt saw him smile at the announcement – a solitary friendly face amongst the older men. Brandt knew how wary they were of him. And of the boys, for that matter. Everyone knew the Hitler Youth were capable of informing on an overheard conversation. And everyone knew Brandt worked for the SS and what that must mean. He understood their closed expressions but they didn’t bother him as much as he would have thought. He wasn’t here to be friends with them, after all. Instead, while the mayor talked, Brandt counted the number of men and began to work out a sentry rota for the dam. Three should be enough at night, with less during the day. It was a gesture, after all – if the partisans wanted the dam they would likely take it, even if the whole platoon was dug in around it.

  The mayor was coming to the end of his speech – his voice rising with each word, slapping a fist into his hand to emphasize each point.

  ‘If we do not fail the Führer, the Führer will not fail us. Remember – we fight for our home, for our families and for our future. We cannot fail.’

  The mayor stopped, waiting for applause. There was a silence and Brandt saw that the men weren’t certain how to react. The mayor looked across at Brandt expectantly, as if he thought Brandt could clap with only one hand. Brandt considered his dilemma for a brief moment, then stamped his foot three times to signal an approval he certainly didn’t feel.

  The Hitler Youth, on cue, threw their right hands upwards in stiff-armed salute and shouted Hitler’s name. The older men, many of whom had fought in the first war, were more reserved. Brandt couldn’t help his wry smile, which he knew, from his shaving mirror, would look more like a grimace. Not only did they know better, the older men, but he also realized, looking along their ranks, that fewer than half of them had lived in the valley before the war. It wasn’t even really their home. Why should they fight?

  §

  The day after the mayor’s speech, American aircraft attacked a chemical factory in a nearby town, and if anyone had any doubts that the war was coming ever closer, then the rumble of the bombing echoing along the valley and the drone of high-flying aircraft removed them. Brandt wondered how the Volkssturm men were meant to fight against bombers and artillery with a few pop guns and a speech.

  24

  POLYA KOLANKA had pulled the engine out of her tank. It hung from a hoist above its usual resting place and now she was taking it apart piece by piece. She whistled to herself as she worked.

  The battalion had been in reserve since they’d lost most of their tanks, and a quarter of the men, in the big operation around Minsk during the early summer but now the time for taking it easy was over. There was a sense of urgency to the preparations they were making these last few days. Everyone knew that another operation was in the wind.

  The battalion had been reinforced, of course, with new T34s – faster, with bigger guns and an extra crew member. They could have had one if they’d wanted but she and Lapshin had decided to stick with Galechka. She’d seen them through two battles now and, as the saying went, only a fool changed his horse when crossing a river. Not that that had stopped Polya upgrading her with new extractor fans, heating, r
adio and anything else that she could borrow or, if necessary, acquire by other means. She was loyal to Galechka but she wasn’t stupid. She knew Galechka was a lucky tank – but it wouldn’t do any harm to make her luckier still.

  Polya didn’t concern herself much about her life before tanks. She had memories, yes, but they belonged to her childhood, which was a long time ago. Or to her time at the orphanage, at which point her childhood was over.

  She only had some scattered recollections of her father. The scent of pipe tobacco on his wet woollen jumper. His prickly moustache. A kindly smile that she couldn’t be sure was his. They’d come for him when she was only seven, after all. Polya had clearer memories of her mother, of her kindness, the warmth of the bed with the two of them in it. Polya didn’t know what her mother had been arrested for – it wasn’t sensible to ask, even if you were a relative – and she wasn’t sure it mattered. There must have been a reason. There always was. Anyway, her mother wasn’t coming back and it was best to leave her in the past where she belonged. Polya was all about the future – what was the point of spending your life peering into the past when the future was bright and full of hope?

  She did remember, however, how her mother had embraced her that last time – when they’d come for her. She had squeezed Polya so hard that she hadn’t been able to breathe. It was only the Chekist dragging her mother away that had saved Polya from passing out. She remembered that. She remembered the hot tears on her cheek. Not her own – she’d been half-asleep and hadn’t known what was happening. And she remembered her mother’s big brown eyes, bulging, shining wet in the candlelight, and her saying: ‘Go see Aunt Tonya. Tonya will look after you.’

  And then her mother was gone – just like that – and she’d been left sitting on the stairs with her belongings all wrapped up in paper. Her mother had taken the only suitcase. A State Security seal had been placed on the door to the room they’d lived in – her and her parents – for as long as she could remember. The seal had been made of red wax and string, and it was clear poor Polya didn’t live there any more.

  It was clear, as she sat there, that that part of her life was over. It was two in the morning, in February, no less, when she stood up and walked out the front door of the building and left it all behind her. She made her way across Kharkiv, in the dead of night, in the snow, with her tears freezing on her cheeks, and knocked on Aunt Tonya’s door.

  Tonya looked after her all right – just not how her mother had thought she would. A phone call to the Militia and a trip to the orphanage was what she got from her: ‘First the father, then the mother – it’s you who’ll be next, Polya, my girl – and it’s better for all of us if you’re somewhere else when they come for you.’ Ten years old and her own mother’s sister brushed her out of her life like dust. Well, she’d survived. And Aunt Tonya had been the one arrested in the end. The Party knows everything.

  She couldn’t complain about the orphanage – she’d been lucky it had taken her in at all. There were plenty of children like her who died on the streets that winter – and that summer too. Not just kids either. The peasants were starving in the countryside – and while they hadn’t been fed well in the orphanage – they’d all come through it. They even sent her to school, which had been good of them, though she’d had to sit at the back of the class with the other socially tainted girls. Perhaps she had some happy memories from back then, somewhere. She couldn’t recall them, and even if she could have, she wouldn’t. They’d taught her to read and write and scrub floors and count and curse them to hell under her breath and then, at the age of twelve, they’d sent her to the Kharkiv Locomotive Factory to work off her debt to the State. She thanked them for that, if nothing else.

  The Kharkiv Locomotive Factory no longer built railway engines by then, as it turned out, but tanks. Well, tractors too – but she’d never had anything to do with the tractors – nor with the people who worked on the tractors. She was a tank woman from the first – she’d known it from the moment she set foot inside the assembly building. Steam and metal and the noise and smell – the roof so high above you might think it was the sky, and the far end of the building so far away you could barely see it. The heat from the furnaces, the crashing assembly lines. The power of the place. It was like being inside a great, thundering, rattling machine. And while a person was just a tiny part of it – the truth was that without each of them working together the whole place would fall apart. She felt she belonged. More than that, she knew she was needed here.

  The foreman, Nikolai Nikolayevich – bless the man – had taken her by the shoulder and said in that stern voice of his, even if his eyes were always gentle: ‘Comrade Kolanka – welcome to the Kharkiv Locomotive Factory. You, Comrade Kolanka, will be judged on your contribution to your brigade’s effectiveness – both in its work and in its political activities. I don’t care what you were before, or what your mother and father did. Comrade Stalin tells us the sins of the parents shouldn’t be visited on the children – and I’m not one to disagree with Comrade Stalin. So what do you say? Will you give us your all?’

  She’d said nothing – she hadn’t needed to. This time her tears were tears of joy and he patted her cheek and said: ‘You’ll do.’

  She’d found a new home and never looked back – well, not too often, anyway. And for five years she had given her all to the Kharkiv Locomotive Factory, and when the fascists had invaded she’d been one of the few – out of thousands – who’d been chosen to go on the first train – all the way across Russia and over the Urals – to Nizhny Tagil. And she’d been the one awarded a medal for her efforts in building the new work shed so quickly that tanks were rolling out the door of it before even a month was past. And she’d been the one who’d organized the work brigade fund raising, and it had been their brigade – of all the work brigades – who were the first to buy their own tank and give it to the State. And when its driver had broken his arm – it was customary for the tank crews to work in the factory while they trained and he’d been clumsier than most – it had been Nikolai Nikolayevich, now Political Commissar for the whole of Factory Number 183, who’d had the excellent idea that she should be its driver. That no one would drive that tank as well as she would. And that, from a political perspective, nothing could inspire the workers of Factory Number 183 more so than to have one of their own driving a tank they’d built. And a girl like Polya to boot.

  And he was right. Eight years hefting tank metal had made her as strong as most men – and there was nothing about the T34 that she didn’t know the truth of and the trick for. And this tank was perfect – the girls in her work brigade had seen to it. There wasn’t a bolt or a spring or the smallest ball bearing on their tank that hadn’t been sweated over. The welding was so fine you might think it had been done by jewellers – not the rough-and-ready job they’d normally make do with. She’d seen the look on Senior Lieutenant Lapshin’s face when the new tank had rolled through the doors of the Assembly Hall – shining silver, yet to be painted – with Polya Kolanka at the steering levers. She’d seen his slow smile. He’d known she was perfect – the tank, that was, of course, not her. She smiled to herself at the thought of Comrade Lapshin looking at her in such a way – it was inconceivable. He was a serious man with no time for romantic interests.

  Even if she liked to think of the tank as her tank, that wasn’t quite correct. All right, she’d built her and had a hand in paying for her – but that was in the past. Comrade Senior Lieutenant Lapshin was the commander and the tank did his bidding now – she was only one of the crew. Still, the tank was hers in that its well-being and its readiness were her responsibility. She was the one who made sure it kept moving and it was she who checked each tread of track, each wheel, each bearing, each cog, each welded joint – each centimetre of her. It was she who had chosen the tank’s name: Galechka. Even if she hadn’t told the others why.

  Only Comrade Lapshin came close to giving as much attention to the tank as she did.

&nbs
p; And the fact was that Lapshin and she – and Galechka – were still here when plenty of others hadn’t made it through the summer operation. That was why she’d spent so much time making sure Galechka’s motor was in perfect running order. She knew it mattered – that it was the difference between this life and the next. And if a lot of the other drivers had been busy chasing the nurses in the nearby field hospital, that was their foolishness. A wise person did his best to stay well clear of field hospitals. Lapshin understood that. He’d been in the thick of it since the first day of the war and he made sure the other men in the crew understood it as well. Stick with us and you’ll see your villages once more, he’d told Avedyev and Vitsin, the new men assigned to their tank – they’d spread the veterans across the whole battalion so they’d lost the old gunners. And Avedyev and Vitsin may have been young but they were smart enough to listen up. They would do their part – she was sure of it.

  And Galechka would be ready. The only question was whether Polya herself would be. She hoped she would. She felt confident she and Galechka could give Lapshin whatever he needed when the time came. She might not be the strongest – it pained her to admit that, of course. On the other hand, it wasn’t just strength that made a good driver. You had to know your tank’s limitations, how it interacted with its surroundings – it was almost scientific, all the factors you had to take into account. The ground was cold now, which made things easier, of course – but if the weather became milder and the ground cut up, her skill would become more apparent. She knew how to move in the open as well, to take advantage of the contours of the land – to always keep the thick armour at the front pointed at the enemy. Lapshin knew this – he valued her. He wouldn’t want anyone else driving him when they went on the offensive. And she wouldn’t want anyone else in the commander’s seat.

  The tank was her life now. It was as much a part of her as her skin was. It was her world. The truth of it was if she strayed more than a hundred metres from her tank these days, she was lost. Even if she knew exactly where she was.