The Constant Soldier

by William Ryan

  ‘It is the best there was in the cellar. The Obersturmführer picked it out. “Rather us than the Russians,” he said.’

  ‘Typical of him.’

  ‘He said we may all be dead in a few days’ time. Just scraps of flesh under a tank’s tracks.’

  The mayor’s glass paused in mid air. He didn’t say anything for a moment, but then he moved the glass a little higher, holding it so he could look at the colour against the candlelight.

  ‘French?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘They lost their will – in nineteen forty. Look where they ended up.’

  ‘Quite so,’ Brandt said, listening to Neumann returning.

  ‘It’s for you, Weber. In my office. Party Headquarters.’

  The mayor lifted himself from his seat, avoiding Neumann’s gaze.

  ‘Have I offended him, do you think?’ Neumann asked when the mayor had left.

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘A shame.’

  Neumann didn’t sound particularly concerned. Brandt tried to rub some of the tiredness from his eyes.

  ‘Why don’t you like him?’ Brandt asked.

  ‘Weber? I’m not even sure I do dislike him. He’s like all of us, a willing fool for the last ten years and where did it get us? We all have reason to fear the end of this war. He won’t admit it, of course.’

  ‘Do you think he’ll stay to the end?’

  ‘I’m not certain. I think he thinks he will. What about you, Brandt? Will you stay? What holds you here now, even?’

  Brandt shrugged. ‘Duty.’

  ‘To whom?’

  Brandt avoided Neumann’s gaze, grateful when Weber reappeared at the doorway. The mayor stood for a moment, his eyes downcast and his expression difficult to read in the candlelight.

  ‘New orders, Herr Zugführer?’

  The mayor looked up and shook his head.

  ‘No. It was Schneider from Regional Headquarters. He said the Gauleiter and the Party hierarchy are pulling back towards Breslau.’

  ‘And us?’

  The mayor considered the question.

  ‘Our orders are unchanged. We continue to defend the dam and keep the roads open.’

  He didn’t appear pleased at the prospect, or displeased. It was more like resignation. Brandt rose from the table.

  ‘If you’ll excuse me, I must go to the toilet.’

  It was time, he decided, to retrieve Jäger’s pistol from the cistern. It was small and snug and would fit in his pocket.

  76

  ‘EAT.’

  ‘I’m not hungry.’

  She wasn’t. The smell of burning flesh and diesel still filled her mouth. Her throat was raw from it. Each time she swallowed she felt as though she were swallowing the dead.

  ‘Eat, Polya. Eat, or I’ll be upset.’

  She looked up at Lapshin. He was sitting on the other side of the table in the cottage’s kitchen, with only a candle to light his face. She could see the concern in his eyes, even in the way he held the chocolate out to her. American chocolate. It looked small in his large hand.

  ‘Sometimes you need to have something to take your mind off unpleasant things, Polya,’ Lapshin said. He peeled off the paper wrapper and broke the bar in two. He handed her the larger piece.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said, taking the chocolate all the same. She took it to please him. For the same reason she broke off a square and placed it in her mouth. He was watching her, waiting for her to eat some of it. She chewed.

  ‘It tastes good,’ she said.

  She wasn’t telling a lie.

  ‘Do you want something to wash it down?’

  He held up a German canteen and shook it from side to side. It was half full.

  ‘Water?’

  ‘Schnapps. German schnapps. Buryakov gave it to us in exchange for a watch.’

  ‘You gave Buryakov your watch?’

  ‘No,’ Lapshin said, smiling and pulling back the cuff of his jacket to show his watch safely where it should be. ‘Avdeyev did.’

  ‘Avdeyev’s watch?’

  She found she was frowning. Why would Avdeyev swap his watch for schnapps?

  ‘Not Avdeyev’s own watch, Little Polya. Some German’s watch. He doesn’t want you to feel bad about that thing. None of us do. These things happen. War isn’t a tidy business where only soldiers get hurt.’

  ‘I should have seen them.’

  ‘They shouldn’t have been there. What were they thinking? If it hadn’t been us, it would have been someone else. One of ours or the Germans. There were bullets and shells flying all over the place. What could we have done anyway? The road was narrow and that German gunner knew his business.’

  Polya reached across for the canteen and unscrewed the cap. If Avdeyev had given up a watch for it, she had no choice.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Anyway,’ Lapshin said, ‘I gave the order. So it was my fault, if anyone’s.’

  ‘I was the one driving.’

  ‘Under my direction.’

  She hesitated, not wanting to say aloud what he must already know. That sometimes she ignored his feet on her shoulders. She saw his slow smile.

  ‘So you admit you don’t always obey my orders,’ he said. ‘At last, I have an admission. I should have you sent to a penal unit.’

  They’d stopped for the night in a small village – she didn’t know where they were. All she knew was that once again they had to wait for supplies to catch up with them. They’d been in and out of action for most of the last forty-eight hours and Galechka’s white paint was chipped and scraped all over, her fuel tank nearly empty, and they’d fired off nearly all of their ammunition in one action or another. There were only fourteen tanks left out of the thirty-two that had crossed the Vistula and Lapshin was now second in command of the whole battalion. He’d many other things to be doing – and yet he was making time to talk to her. A silly little girl.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m better now. I was just tired.’

  And cold. And filthy. She looked down at her overalls. They were almost black with dirt. That was the problem with tanks. There was the oil, the grease the ammunition came in and the fact you could never take them off, even when you slept. It was unpleasant but everyone was the same. She couldn’t expect to be different just because she was a woman. Especially as none of the men had burst into tears at the blood that was sprayed all over Galechka’s front armour.

  ‘It wasn’t the cart that upset me.’

  She stopped herself, considering the statement. Of course the cart had upset her. They’d rolled right over it – they’d come to a crossroads and a German cannon had blasted a shell at them from less than fifty metres, so close they heard it scrape along the side of the turret. Lapshin had told her to get the hell out of there – down the road to the left. The only problem was the family of refugees that was in the road ahead of them, a huddle on their cart. For an instant she’d been face to face with the mother. She’d been looking straight into her hatch – a blonde woman. It was hard to tell what she had looked like because she’d been screaming, turning to try and shield two children, wrapped up in scarves and hats so that only their eyes were visible. Polya could have reached out and touched them if she’d wanted to. And then they were gone – all of them, and the wagon as well. Galechka just rolled over them.

  ‘It was Yermakov,’ she said in a quiet voice.

  In the same village as they’d killed the woman and her children, Yermakov’s tank had gone up like a match. And they’d been stuck behind it, twisting back and forth and from side to side while Yermakov and his boys roasted, their ammunition exploding inside until it blew the turret off. She’d been sure they were going to be hit next, the heat of the flames had made Galechka’s metal hot to the touch, but she’d managed to ram them through some carriage gates and into a courtyard that had led to safety.

  Lapshin took a drink from the canteen.

  ‘Here’s to Yermakov.’

 
She nodded and reached across to take another sip, feeling it burn her throat – but in a good way. Not like – well, she didn’t like to think about Yermakov and his flaming tank. She would put all those thoughts away now. She’d faltered, that was true. But no one, not even Lapshin, hadn’t shown themselves to be human at one time or another. Her moment of weakness was behind her – she was stronger for it, she was certain.

  ‘Back to work, then, Little Polya. The supply vehicles will be here in an hour. We need to be ready to move in two.’

  He reached across the table and took her hand. It felt tiny in his – which wasn’t really the case. But it felt that way. And when he squeezed it tight and held it for longer than was necessary, it was as though he squeezed all the breath out of her as well.

  She sniffed and dried her eyes and smiled and – whether it was the schnapps, or the chocolate, or Lapshin’s fingers wrapped around her own – she found she felt much better.

  77

  IN THE MORNING, Brandt rose when it was still dark and rousted out the relief watch and took them down to the dam. The sky, when they walked out the gate, was that chocolate grey that comes before the dawn, the few stars still visible slowly fading into the lightening sky. The first refugees were already on the road and Brandt wondered where they were coming from. There couldn’t be many more left up in the hills and surely, if you were on the Czech side, you’d stay there rather than come over in this direction.

  There was no sentry guiding traffic at the dam, although wagons and pedestrians were crossing it. And when they looked in the bunker they found no one there, and no sign that anyone would be coming back. The power station was also empty, although the generating wheels still turned. Everyone was gone.

  ‘Do you think the partisans got them?’ Fischer asked.

  Brandt shrugged.

  ‘What then, Herr Brandt?’

  Brandt shrugged again.

  ‘The power station workers may have run. Maybe the others decided it was a good idea to join them.’

  The four boys said nothing, and he saw the way their gazes fell away from his. Except for Wessel’s.

  ‘They’re cowards if they ran.’

  Brandt shook his head slowly.

  ‘Who was here? Frick and Jünger? Kurtz? Frick’s only twelve. I can’t blame them if they went to join their families. Most probably it’s where they belong – where you all do, for that matter.’

  He could see Wessel’s irritation building and reminded himself to be careful.

  ‘What about you, Herr Brandt?’ Müller asked. ‘Will you stay?’

  ‘I’ll stay until I’ve done what I have to do, Müller. Of that you can be certain.’

  The beeping of a motor vehicle’s horn came from towards the village. A military truck was decanting a handful of men and boxes beside the bridge. An officer peered over the parapet, pointing down at the arches. The men moved quickly to follow his instructions and, seemingly satisfied, he climbed back into the truck which was soon speeding up towards the dam. They seemed in a rush.

  ‘Engineers,’ he said. The Russians must be close.

  §

  Brandt pulled wide the curtains in the mayor’s bedroom. The room smelled of stale alcohol and the kind of sweat that went with fear. He opened the window to let the air in.

  ‘What time is it, Brandt?’ The mayor sounded as though he might be still drunk.

  ‘Nearly seven, Herr Zugführer.’

  As he finished speaking, three aeroplanes roared across the hills that overlooked the hut, banking right as they did so – red stars and bombs visible on the undersides of their wings. The sound of their engines rattled the windows. The guardhouse machine gun threw up a line of tracer after them – someone trying to get them all killed. He turned to find the mayor standing in his bare feet, his face a match for the yellowing long johns he was wearing. He had lifted a hand to his chest, placing it on his heart.

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Ivan fighter-bombers,’ Brandt said. ‘Maybe they’re after the railway station in the town. Or one of our positions.’

  The crump, crump, crump of exploding bombs echoed up the valley a few moments later, along with the sound of anti-aircraft fire. Weber’s legs, Brandt noticed, were shorter than he’d thought. His gut was wide-hipped and heavy – as if he were six months pregnant.

  ‘Fighter-bombers? Here?’

  ‘They’re past Katowitz now. The army is in full retreat. They must have overrun one of our airfields.’

  ‘That can’t be. Not Katowitz. Not so soon.’

  ‘I’m afraid there’s a Leutnant of engineers down at the dam with orders that say differently.’

  As if to make Brandt’s point, there came the sound of a massive explosion from the village. It wasn’t just the windows that rattled this time – the whole building shook.

  ‘What the hell is going on?’ Neumann appeared in the doorway, a towel around his waist.

  ‘The village bridge, Herr Obersturmführer. I was just telling the Zugführer – the Russians are past Katowitz.’

  The bridge had stood for over five hundred years. Gone, just like that.

  ‘And those aeroplanes?’

  ‘Theirs.’

  Neumann considered this for a moment before nodding.

  ‘Will they blow the dam, as well?’

  ‘Not until the last moment.’

  ‘Very good.’

  Brandt noticed the white scarring of ancient shrapnel wounds on Neumann’s shoulders as he left the room. From the first war, it must be.

  ‘Christ,’ the mayor said. Brandt had almost forgotten him.

  ‘Also, I’m afraid we lost the guard on the dam last night, Herr Zugführer.’

  ‘Lost?’

  ‘Well, they aren’t there this morning. The power station staff are gone as well. Maybe they deserted or maybe the partisans took them.’

  The mayor’s thinking was almost visible – a silent film played across the rounded screen of his face. He wasn’t so keen on the war when it wasn’t all talk. Or when people were likely to shoot back at him. Or take him up into the hills to make him answer for his crimes.

  ‘I’d better get dressed as well,’ he said, but Brandt saw none of the enthusiasm for the Volkssturm uniform he’d shown the night before. The Soviet fighters roared overhead once again and the mayor dropped to his knees. Brandt counted the planes as they returned the way they’d come. No losses.

  ‘I’ve organized some breakfast in the kitchen.’

  ‘Get out, Brandt.’

  The mayor’s annoyance was understandable. It wasn’t an ideal way to start the day.

  78

  NEUMANN TRIED calling the camp but the local exchange was no longer answering. He would have liked to speak to the mining camp as well, but short of getting on his bicycle and cycling over there, or sending one of the Ukrainians with a message, there was no easy way of communicating with them. With the situation changing so fast, he wondered if the march might have left already. He looked out the window at the guardhouse. A silhouette appeared, moving across to the machine gun. It looked like Adamik. If he were in the guards’ shoes, he’d want to leave sooner than five o’clock this evening. Neumann tried the phone one more time. Nothing. In some ways, it was almost liberating. The last of the hut’s papers had been burned and all he had to do now was leave. He could just go. He could tell the Ukrainians that they should make their way to the mining camp and then just leave.

  But if he left, he would end up in another camp, and who knew what the arrangement would be there? The Commandant had promised to take him with him, but in the end he’d left him to make his own way there. The Commandant, his old friend, was no longer looking after him in quite the way he had – perhaps the promises he’d made after the horrors of the train no longer applied. Perhaps the Commandant would require Neumann to take a more active role when he reached the Nordhausen camp. The situation was difficult – perhaps an exception for him could no longer be made. The chill made
him reach out to hold the wall for support.

  But what did it matter anyway? Once you had killed even one innocent person, then the number became irrelevant. Look at the Commandant. No one would ever know for certain how many deaths he had been responsible for in his role – and would it make him any more guilty if they did?

  They were both of them guilty past the point of any form of redemption – on any scale. Neumann helped himself to a brandy from the drinks cabinet. He drank it down straight. He whistled for Wolf and made his way outside. When he reached the gatehouse he called up to Adamik.

  ‘All in order?’

  ‘Yes, Herr Obersturmführer. Nothing to report.’

  He turned at the sound of the shouting. The mayor, white-faced, was pushing the men out of the barn.

  ‘Line up, line up, line up.’

  He shot the first one before Neumann realized what was happening. And by the time he had reached him, there were six dead men lying beside the barn and blood on the snow. The victims hadn’t even tried to run.

  ‘You shot them.’

  ‘I should have hanged them. They were traitors.’

  He heard Brandt’s footsteps coming along the gravel path and turned to see the steward stop and reach in his pocket.

  ‘Herr Zugführer?’

  ‘What do you want to say, Brandt? This is martial law. These men were traitors and they had been dealt with. Do you object?’

  Behind Brandt, in the distance, Neumann saw three dots in the sky. Aeroplanes that were coming low along the valley. There must be anti-aircraft guns up there now as the puffs of exploding shells bloomed behind them. They were flying so fast that by the time Neumann pointed them out, the planes were only a few hundred metres away and the roar of their engines was shaking snow from the roof of the hut. Neumann watched the mayor trying to fire his empty pistol at the Soviet fighters as they flew past. The mayor looked at his pistol, screamed then threw it at the planes, which were no longer visible.

  ‘Have the women bury them,’ Neumann said when the mayor had walked off, swearing and waving his fist after the disappeared fighters.

  He watched one of the boys pick up the mayor’s empty pistol from the snow.