by Jack Murray
Drexler was about fifty years of age. He might have been older, probably not younger. It was hard to tell. His hair was closely cropped. Lines marked his face like trenches. They rose vertically on his cheeks, looped around his eyes and continued horizontally on his forehead. There were no laugh lines. A life lived without joy etched on the face of a man without pity.
The two men stood in front of Drexler who eyed both of them. They were dying to sit down. It was clear Drexler understood this and seemed intent on dishing out yet more torture.
‘Sore?’ he asked piteously.
‘Wiser, sir.’ replied Manfred. It was risk but Manfred was too sore to care.
Drexler looked at him suspiciously but said nothing. Finally, he stood up and walked up to each man. He looked at them, deep into their eyes. It was as if he wanted to reach into their souls. There was a ruthlessness in his eyes or was it something else? Manfred was still too young to understand lies, truth and everything in between.
Now, standing before this man, he thought he saw something else now. It was no longer just anger. The eyes no longer had that mad intensity, the hatred. If pushed, Manfred would have described the look on Drexler’s face as one of curiosity.
‘Your uniforms are very clean,’ said Drexler. This much was obvious. They were spotless. Neither Manfred nor Gerhardt had given any thought to this. Instead, they glanced at one another in confusion. ‘Yes, the magic laundry fairies cleaned them for you while you slept,’ continued Drexler.
Gerhardt was the first to realise. He said, ‘Who should we thank, sir?’
‘Your friends were up until midnight cleaning and drying them. Perhaps you should thank them’ answered Drexler. There was a faint shake of his head as if in disbelief.
The two men looked at one another guiltily. They owed Mattias and Lothar one.
‘Yes, sir,’ chorused both men.
Drexler walked behind them and then back round to his desk. He sat down and picked up some sheets of paper. Without looking at them he said, ‘Dismissed.’
Manfred and Gerhardt hauled their carcasses out of the room. Haag followed them out of the office. They walked towards the barracks.
‘You were lucky there,’ said Haag as they arrived at the barracks. ‘But I will be watching you. Trust me. You so much as take half a step out of line and I’ll have you back on that parade ground faster than you can say “heil”.’
-
‘What happened?’ asked Lothar as he and the three others walked towards the main hall.
Manfred told them about what had prompted the punishment. Neither Matthias nor Lothar would listen to any thanks from their grateful companions. When they arrived at the hall, Manfred’s heart sank when he realised there were no seats. They would have to stand. He was already on the point of collapsing again. The beads of sweat on Gerhardt’s forehead suggested he, too, would not last much longer.
The colonel of the camp stood before them on a small stage. Draped behind him were large red flags with swastikas. He looked out across the several hundred men that comprised the entire camp. The opening of the talk was a welcome to the new recruits, if welcome it was. There was little in the manner of the black uniformed man that suggested hospitality would be the order of the day. He opened with a short observation about the German army and its role in German society.
The speech lasted half an hour. The colonel spoke without notes but with great passion. Manfred would have been bored by the end had he not been in such agony. His legs had locked into position. He feared moving a muscle, lest he be singled out again.
At the end of the speech, much to his amazement, a reference was made to him and Gerhardt, although their names and the relative recency of their arrival were not mentioned. The colonel reminded all about the importance of discipline and how infractions would be punished.
Afterwards, as they left the hall, Manfred could feel the glances of other men on him as he limped beside Lothar. Matthias, meanwhile, was surreptitiously helping Gerhardt. The rest of the morning was given over to lectures on how the next sixteen weeks would progress. Each of the discipline heads explained the scope of the training and the expectations.
Much to Manfred’s surprise, the lecture by Drexler was oddly moving. It was less about a specific discipline and more a philosophical reflection on the nature and brutality of war. He left no one under any illusion about what they were being trained to do. They would become killers.
With each lecture, it was clear that Matthias was becoming increasingly glum. After one break, Matthias spoke to Manfred about his worries.
‘This is a mistake. I should never have come,’ admitted Matthias.
‘Why not? You’ll be fine,’ reassured Manfred.
Matthias shook his head sadly.
‘Look at me. I couldn’t have done what you and Gerhardt did last night. You know that one of the men here told me that this has happened a few times. No one has lasted longer than an hour. You two were out there for much longer. One guy only lasted ten minutes. That would be me. Even assuming I could carry that damn pack, I would have been crying on the ground in no time. Everyone here thinks you’re both supermen.’
‘The pack wasn’t that bad,’ lied Manfred, ‘Thirty kilos or so.’
‘Thirty-six, you idiot,’ corrected Matthias, with a rueful smile.
‘We’ll look after you,’ said Manfred.
‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea. This camp isn’t about brotherhood, it’s Darwinian.’
Manfred looked confused for a moment.
‘Survival of the fittest,’ clarified Matthias. ‘Before they started burning books, I read a lot.’
‘Probably best to keep that to yourself. I know what you mean. Charles Darwin. I don’t think our leaders like to think of good-looking Germans like you, Matthias, being descended from apes.’
‘My arms are long enough,’
This seemed to relax him a little, but it was clear that he was worried. Manfred felt for his new friend. He had every reason to be concerned. All around him he saw young men like himself, hunger in their eyes and full of youthful vigour, itching to burn off their energy in as violent a way as they were allowed. Very few people looked like Matthias. Few sounded like him. Manfred wondered how long it would be before the likes of Haag started to pick on the weaker men.
The rest of the morning was given over to drill in the parade ground. Manfred and Gerhardt were excused and allowed to return to the hospital section for their injuries to receive further treatment.
Lunch was the main meal of the day. All of the soldiers went to the dining hall to eat at 1230 hours. This gave the four companions a chance to catch up properly following the previous evening. Lothar confirmed what Matthias had said about their epic effort. Gerhardt, like Manfred, was too sore all over to care much. A few men came over and congratulated the pair, shaking their heads at the same time in disbelief.
‘My God, that was extraordinary,’ said one young man. He had also been on the train the previous day but in a different carriage.
‘I’m Dassler. Fred Dassler, I saw you yesterday on the train.’ Fred was joined by another boy, of seventeen. ‘This is Willi. He’s from Heidelberg also.’
‘Hello,’ said Willi, clearly a bit nervous of being with the older boys, especially two celebrities like Manfred and Gerhardt. The six chatted through lunch that lasted an hour. Then all of the recruits reassembled on the parade square. The parade was taken by platoon sergeants.
‘Not many officers around,’ observed Gerhardt in the square.
A voice from behind said, ‘They do that. They want to teach you how to survive without officers wiping your arse for you.’
Gerhardt glanced behind and saw a big man with a gap-toothed smile.
‘Thanks, my friend. Good to know.’ Gerhardt glanced at Manfred. ‘You hear that?’
‘Interesting,’ said Manfred. ‘They want us to obey automatically but they also expect us to be independent.’
‘Indeed,’ nodd
ed Gerhardt.
After a fairly easy drill, the new recruits were taken to the shooting range and given basic instruction on shooting. Most of the young men were familiar with guns, and even Matthias showed fluency on loading and reloading that belied how he looked. He grinned sheepishly at Manfred
‘I’m not completely useless.’
He then proceeded to knock out half a dozen bullseyes in as many shots. By the end of the shooting practice, Manfred was matching Matthias bull for bull.
The men trooped home wearily from the rifle range. Gerhardt walked slowly with his new friends.
‘Did you hear the sounds from further down the range?’
‘Yes, machine guns. I can’t wait,’ said Lothar. ‘I can’t hit the side of a barn door with the rifles. The machine gun is what I need. No messing there – rat, tat, tat, tat,’ mimicked their friend. The group laughed.
It was early evening now. This was the time for cleaning. First, the uniforms were cleaned followed by the rifles and the machine guns. Finally, the room itself had to be made spotless. They assembled for the evening meal at 1830 hours. It was relatively light, but the evening was not over yet. After the evening meal the recruits were expected to polish their boots then make sure their area in the barracks was clean and would pass inspection.
After having spent the first night in hospital beds, Manfred and Gerhardt found the new beds much less to their liking and did little to ease their aching muscles.
‘Boys, I mean it,’ said Gerhardt, ‘We have to defeat the British quickly, I’m not sure if my body can take these beds for long.’
Around him, the group laughed but the rest of the young men in the barracks, unaware of the joke told them to keep quiet. Lights were out by eleven on their second day at the camp.
4
Reinsehlen Camp, Lower Saxony, Germany: March 1941
Just after five the next morning the men were woken and told to get ready. Over the next sixteen weeks the pattern stayed the same. The men washed and shaved and made ready for the morning run of around five kilometres. In the first week, Manfred and Gerhardt joined Matthias among the stragglers. Lothar also found it a strain, but then again, as his friends pointed out, he had more to carry with him. This was usually responded to with a punch on the arm. Even when he did it lightly it could still be painful. Matthias never made this mistake. He was fighting his own battle with his body. His inability to progress physically was being noticed.
Haag, in particular, seemed to delight in picking on Matthias and often forced him to skip breakfast to run a further two kilometres. It seemed as if Haag was on a mission to break the young student. The other boys smuggled some bread for him to eat from their own allowance.
Breakfast consisted of coffee and bread. It followed the run just before seven. As grateful as Matthias was to his friends, the strain was growing worse for him by the day. His friends felt powerless to do anything about the bullying from Haag. Even his exemplary performance on the rifle range with pistol, rifle or machine gun was not enough to offset his physical limitations.
As the weeks progressed, Manfred and Gerhardt overcame their initial physical discomfort and rose to the top by virtue of their natural athleticism and an awareness, from Gerhardt’s original intelligence, of what the instructors were looking for in their recruits. Both of the young men were natural leaders. This was borne from their experience in the Hitler Youth. They stood out among the recruits of their intake and even among the wider body of men.
Aside from the physical side, both excelled at the weapons training which consisted of firing artillery, throwing grenades and dozens of hours at the rifle range. They mastered the techniques related to mortar bombing and the use of artillery. Their experience in the Hitler Youth of map reading, the use of compass and squares, understanding 8 figure grid references and how, generally, to orient themselves meant they were soon followed, quite literally, by the rest of the recruits.
Both responded well to the German army approach of training all men to a rank above themselves. Experience had taught the army that promotion in the field was often rapid and that men needed to be ready to make the transition quickly.
Confirmation of their status came six weeks into their training when both were called into Drexler’s office. This was the first time their section commander had spoken to them since the incident on the first day. Gerhardt looked at Manfred when the order came.
‘What now?’
Manfred shrugged, ‘Let’s find out.’ The two men rushed to the office and knocked on the door.
‘Enter.’
They marched in and stood to attention. Drexler rose from his seat and stood in front of them. For the next minute there was silence.
Finally, Drexler said, ‘I’ve been watching the two of you over the last six weeks. You’ve done well. I’m recommending that you each lead a small gruppe in the upcoming divisional exercises.’
‘Yes, sir,’ chorused both men, straining hard to contain their delight.
Drexler nodded and then dismissed them. He walked over to the wall and looked at the photograph of his old battalion. He was sitting at the front. His height made it pointless placing him anywhere else. His eyes ran along the ranks of the men. They were all so young just like these boys he’d just dismissed. Cannon fodder all. Ordered to commit suicide in their thousands. He could still name most of them. Klaus, Hans, the Seeler twins. The list went on in his head.
All dead.
Tears welled in his eyes. Every time he stood in front of this photograph, he swore an oath he would never send any man into battle as badly unprepared as he had been. All of his men would be ready for what faced them. They would be stronger, smarter and readier than the men they faced. The rage within him rose and then died away. He returned to his desk and preparations for the exercises ahead.
5
A steady beat of rain on the tin roof greeted Manfred on the morning of the company exercise. He’d barely managed any sleep. In preparation for the day ahead, a battery of artillery had boomed nearby all through the night. By the time the recruits had risen and made ready, they were all as sleep-deprived as Manfred. And there was no breakfast.
‘Did you sleep much?’ asked Manfred to Gerhardt.
‘No. You?’ replied Gerhardt groggily.
‘I did, no problem,’ said Lothar with a big grin. He was set upon immediately by the other two; all three of them laughed like kids.
After they were washed and dressed, the recruits jogged two kilometres to the ‘battlefield’. Their first view, when they reached the crest of a hill, was of an enormous, open plain. It stretched for a couple of kilometres. In the distance they could see hills and trees. At the end was an escarpment rising up to reveal battlements.
Although mostly flat, the plain was not featureless. There was plenty of cover on the plain. Several ditches ran like scars along the landscape. They looked like they had been created by previous attackers. Small clumps of trees, studiously avoided by the artillery, dotted the landscape. As you got closer to the escarpment, there were a few knolls which meant any approach to the defender’s area was a tremendous challenge. The ‘defenders’ area was protected with barbed wire. The landscape was also pitted with holes from field guns, providing additional cover for attacker or defender.
The recruits who had been in training for six weeks or longer were the participants. They were split into attackers and defenders. Disappointingly, Manfred and Gerhardt found themselves on opposing sides, each leading their own gruppe from their intake.
The artillery continued their bombardment firing real ammunition. At a point just before they took up positions, this changed to blanks. The bombardment continued, however, causing the ground to feel like it was shaking under their feet. The sound and the impact of the shells set everyone on edge. As they took up positions, the noise level seemed to blast out its own greeting.
The exercise began. All at once Manfred could hear the crack of gunfire as the recruits began to fire their
machine guns and rifle blanks at imaginary enemy.
Manfred watched as groups of men rushed forward, flinging themselves flat when artillery fire whistled overhead. Officials wearing white arm bands were dotted around the battlefield. They would appear from time to time and order some men off the range designated ‘killed in action’.
Manfred observed all of this. He quickly recognised the futility of a frontal attack. He ordered his men together and pointed to a nearby field on the other side of a fence over a kilometre away.
‘We’ll go around their flank and attack their rear.’
‘Can we do this?’ asked Matthias, shocked. It felt as if they were cheating.
Manfred looked down at a sheet of paper in his hand. His orders. He looked back at Matthias and ripped up the sheet. Then he smiled.
‘We’re doing it. And yes, my friend, we’re going to cheat if we have to. Who’s with me?’
To a man they cheered, albeit quietly. Manfred’s gruppe waited for a particular heavy barrage of fire and then he led them away from the main field towards a large clump of trees on the outer perimeter. Peeping between the trees they could see a wooden fence. The trees provided cover for the Manfred’s group and they were soon lost in the chaos of war. Scaling the small wooden fence was a simple matter.
‘Are you sure about this?’
This was Matthias again. He was now less worried about cheating than the obvious smell emanating from the field. The rest of the men laughed. All were now feeling slightly more sympathetic towards Matthias. This was high risk with the added disadvantage that it looked very much like the field had recently been spread with manure. The ripe farmyard smell of cows and pigs permeated the air.