From high above them came the sound of Russian bombers, a big Tupolev squadron heading towards Vienna, as they did almost every morning. One plane dropped flyers, the Front News – even glancing at a copy was to risk punishment – which rained down just as the men stepped out of the barn, just as Fiete was being led into the courtyard by two paratroopers. He was in his stocking feet but still wore Walter’s coat, which was plainly too big for him; only his fingers peeped out of the sleeves. A ragged strip of his bandage, stained with old blood, hung from the neck of the coat.
He wasn’t handcuffed, and his escort only grabbed for his arms when he stumbled over a frozen molehill. One of them held a pistol and was telling the prisoner something out of the corner of his mouth, to which Fiete responded with a nod. He held himself straight and seemed at first glance to be quite calm; but his breath, visible in the early frost, came in short, quick pants. His little clouds were wispy and negligible compared to those of his guards.
They placed him with his back against the middle alder post. Troche took a rope out of his coat. The hemp whistled along the leather edge of his pocket and he tied Fiete’s hands behind the wood, a double knot, then gestured with his boot tips for Fiete to put his feet closer together and nearer to the post, before he tied them too. Then he produced a knife, cut the top metal buttons from Walter’s coat, and flapped the lapels back so that Fiete’s chest formed a smooth surface.
Fiete allowed him to do all this in silence, his eyes lowered, and shook his head almost imperceptibly when the officer, who had taken out a case, tried to put a cigarette between his lips. Fiete raised his chin and looked at the gunners.
His eyes were feverish, his nose and ears red with cold. He frowned and opened his mouth, but Walter wasn’t sure if the kid could see him or not, since the sun was shining into his face. Fiete craned his neck a little, lifting his shoulders, possibly looking for Walter among the men standing around, but, having looked, seemed not to recognize him – as if his hopelessness had turned even his best friend, with the steel rim of his helmet over his eyes, his rifle by his foot, into a stranger. He let his shoulders sink again.
A few other soldiers, clutching bread rolls and mugs of steaming tea, came and stood, curious, in the barn door. As Troche walked the barely ten paces from the post to the riflemen, the legs of his riding boots creaking, he studied each of the executioners very carefully. He lit up the cigarette that Fiete had refused, nodding to them, at which they shouldered their carbines and released the safety catches, a quick movement of the thumb, and while Walter held his finger under the metal button, the click of the other catches rang out in the clear, frosty air. Fiete, whose breathing had grown more violent, closed his eyes and moved his lips very slightly.
‘What’s up with your coat?’ Florian hissed from behind the butt of his rifle. ‘Are you really going to let him have it?’
But Walter said nothing, and looked past the tanner’s blue-dyed hands at Troche, who was now standing beside their rank, but who didn’t turn to face the condemned man. Instead, he reached under the gun barrel of one of the schoolboys, carefully corrected his aim, took a drag on the cigarette, then said quietly, almost in a whisper: ‘Everyone ready? And . . . fire!’ At which Walter, who had expected a different, louder order, already saw smoke in front of his comrades’ guns before finally pulling his own trigger, more a reflex than the execution of an order. The echo rang in his ears.
A bullet that had passed through the body sprayed up soil on the far side of the post. Blackbirds flew from the ploughed field, and faster than his amazement at the force of the impacts could register on his face, Fiete slumped slightly, standing there bow-legged. As children do when they feel an unexpected pain, one that they have never experienced and perhaps would never have considered possible. Fiete opened his mouth wide, but kept his eyes closed. Faint steam escaped from the entry holes. The safety catches clicked on again.
His whole body trembling, Fiete managed to straighten his legs once more, but his torso slowly tilted forward, his frown disappeared, and his sudden pallor was no longer that of a living person. The hemp rope scraped along the tree bark, which had burst here and there; blood gleamed on the pale wood; and laboriously, as if he still couldn’t believe it, Fiete shook his head. A clear thread of saliva on his lower lip turned bright red.
Then his chin sank to his chest, and Walter, clutching in his fist the hot barrel of his gun, closed his eyes for a moment. He felt dizzy, his guts grumbled, and he involuntarily gritted his teeth when someone behind them said, ‘Good shots!’ Pushing the brim of his helmet off his forehead, he wiped the sweat from his face with his sleeve, and then there was his friend lying twisted on the ground, and the officer who had cut him from the post ordered them all to present themselves for driving duty in five minutes.
He wrote something in his notebook. The men leaned their carbines against the wall and went into the barn. But Fiete wasn’t dead: his lower lip was trembling, his ribcage moved up and down, one of his hands reached into the air. As the doctor bent over him and moved aside the flap of Walter’s coat to count the entry wounds – he tapped them off with his pencil – the boy was still exhaling through his nose and mouth, a delicate, quick-panting breath, and now his eyes slowly opened again, so that his irises were visible: the last flash and the dimming blue of his already directionless gaze.
Throwing his head back, as if to offer them all his throat once more, Fiete seemed to be smiling in that old, reckless way of his, with just one corner of his mouth, and Walter, ignoring Troche’s voice, his curt instruction, stumbled across the frozen grass towards his friend, lifting his gun above the ground a little before dropping it again, Walter stopped short. Only his shadow fell upon Fiete, upon his face and his eyes, grey now, while Fiete’s last faint breath faded, and his open mouth stayed empty.
A bit of blood on his teeth. The doctor held his stethoscope to the dead man’s chest and with the thumb and forefinger of his other hand closed both his eyes. The paratroopers started digging. Their pickaxes and shovels clattered in the cold, and then everything turned pale, as if covered in fog, and Walter felt the molehills and the stones against his back and heard his comrades high above him, their shouts and their hard footsteps, treading the ground firm.
*
Dear Helene! I would like to thank you for your letters and the parcel! Everything got here in time for the party, even though we have changed garrisons several times. At least the mail still seems to be working, and perhaps we will spend next Easter at peace.
I don’t know if Mum told you: recently I had a few days’ leave and went in search of Dad’s grave. He died not far from here, but often the crosses are unmarked, and there are so many . . . You don’t know where to start looking. At any rate he lies somewhere in this area, and when the war is over we’ll drive over here. There is silence in the Puszta, it’s like a room or a vault – as if the dead were pricking their ears.
The biscuits you baked, particularly the chocolate ones, were delicious! Even the dried sausage found a grateful recipient. Incidentally, I’m in the field hospital at the moment, nothing serious. Just my nerves, the orderly says, a kind of shell shock even though I’m still at the base: my face twitches and quivers, there’s nothing I can do about it. Shaving now would be dangerous. But that will subside, they’re giving me porridge and red wine with honey, as if I was taking a spa cure.
The enemy is advancing rapidly, and we’ll be retreating soon, behind the Reich border, where I hope not too many partisans will be lurking. Perhaps we will be deployed near Vienna, and I’ll get to see a city at last.
At your age, Easter was still my favourite feast. Because after that everything gets brighter and warmer. I still like it more than Christmas. There are eggs here too, dyed with blue grease, camomile and beetroot, but no birch green – most of the trees have been cut down.
So goodbye, lovely Helene, they’re turning out the lights. I hope your cough is better, now that winter is over at last. If
you have a damp room, put panes of glass on the floor under the bed, that’s what people here do too. And say hello to Mum, if you like. Yours, W.
*
The last of the fuel had been used up, so all the food they had saved from the depots had to be lugged over the mountains in horse carts and ox carts. Walter led three young donkeys over the pass and was already far ahead of his comrades, who were struggling with the rickety carts and the stubborn draught animals, not least because he gave the beasts sugar from time to time. Nimbler than you’d have thought the bulging sacks on their backs would allow, the donkeys followed Walter across the scree washed down from the slopes by the spring thaw, and didn’t bolt the one time the rope slipped out of his hand. They simply stood where they were.
Often tree roots and whole trees had to be cleared from the path; it was midday before the men finally reached a reasonably well-made road, which wound its way down into the valley and towards a little church in a clearing. Then they heard a clear, metallic noise, the ground began vibrating, and small stones trickled down the slope. The animals put their ears back as an olive-green truck with enormous bumpers and barred headlights came round the corner. Armed Americans sat on the flatbed, and the driver, whose face Walter at first assumed had been blackened, stopped right beside him and said over his elbow, ‘Hey, man, where are your wheels?’
Grinning, he aimed a pistol at Walter, and even though Walter didn’t understand a word, he had to smile as well. As he did so he held his hands just wide enough apart to cover the SS runes on his collar, and looked at his comrades out of the corner of his eye. Some of them were jumping away from their carts and vanishing along the bushy side paths, even though no one was shooting or coming after them. But most of them did as Walter did – came hesitantly closer – and after the food had been unloaded they released their animals into the wild with a clap.
The camp to which the soldiers were brought, after a journey through the night on an open trailer, was in a valley near Wagrain – a good eighty kilometres south of Salzburg, an orderly told Walter. A high barbed-wire fence and steep rocky walls surrounded the area, formerly a meadow: a transit station for a large number of prisoners. The grass was crushed, the ground squelched with every step, their boots were quickly drenched. Latrines had been set up – long boxes made of rough tree trunks – but no cabins, tents or bivouacs for the men; some were already busy digging dips in the earth with empty tin cans or their bare hands to find some protection against the sun and rain.
There was nothing to drink, anywhere, and when the thirst became unbearable Walter lay on his belly like all the others and sucked up puddle water through clenched teeth. Decorations, medals and close-combat clasps shimmered in the mud, and after Walter had passed through the ranks for a while and had a good look around, he too threw away his belt buckle and his perforated dog tag and, borrowing a piece of broken glass from a Wehrmacht soldier, he cut the runes from his jacket.
Walter stood on a hill at the edge of the camp: white mountain tops were visible in the distance, rushes grew from the glittering snow, and a soldier – a corporal – got his attention and pointed out at the countless men. Turned to face the warming sun, many of them had taken off their uniform jackets and shirts and were dozing away, sitting up. Their shaved napes were gaunt, their shoulder blades were angular beneath their dirty undershirts and their arms and hands were scratched and scrawny. ‘Take a look,’ the corporal said. ‘Our thousand-year Reich. What did the Führer say in his New Year’s address? He who demands so much from fate is destined for greatness – or something like that. What did he mean, do you think? Diarrhoea and itching?’
The American barracks smelled of cigarette smoke, coffee and fried bacon, but there was nothing for the prisoners to eat, not for two days. Many cooked ‘spring soup’ in their steel helmets – a broth of young nettles, samphire and dandelion heated by fires fed with their pay books. Walter too crouched beside one of the pots and added his to the flame, and an engineer, a man of around forty, loaned him a spoon. Already grey-haired, the engineer reached into the breast pocket of his shirt and took out some tobacco, and when Walter asked how long they would have to stay there, he shrugged. ‘Only for a short time, I think. It’s not in the Yanks’ interest to keep prisoners. It’s too expensive for them.’
He rolled himself a cigarette. The paper had Cyrillic watermarks. ‘They’re looking for war criminals, SS men. And if you ask me, it serves those bastards right. They always had the newest weapons, the best food and the hottest women, who were always up for it. The Führer and his Himmler blew smoke up their arses and promised them the skies, and still they couldn’t save us, not at Balaton and not at Vienna. Let them all rot.’
Walter swallowed: green as spinach, the lukewarm brew smelled very bitter, and sand crunched between his teeth. ‘Why war criminals?’ he asked. ‘How are they going to recognize them?’
The man licked his cigarette paper. ‘Well, aren’t you a babe in the woods. How will they recognize them? By their tattoos, the blood groups. That’s the mark of Cain. And they’re checking every single man.’
Walter reached under his shirt and touched the slightly raised spot. A cool breeze ran over the back of his neck. ‘But is it –’ he asked, startled – ‘is it only the SS who have them? Don’t all soldiers have a tattoo like that?’
The engineer’s quiet ‘Aha!’ into the hollow of his hand, as he lit the cigarette, was full of mockery. He blew smoke out of the corner of his mouth and studied the collar of Walter’s uniform. ‘Not all of them, no. You’ll see when you’re being deloused . . .’
In the evening it started to rain, and they hung their jackets and coats over their heads. Anyone who still had a tarpaulin or a blanket stretched it with pegs over the hole in the ground where they slept or tried to sleep. But soon everything was full of water, and if the men pressed closer together to find some warmth, the Americans on the other side of the fence fired flares into the darkness. Then sharp-edged shadows grew over the rocky walls, and the burning magnesium dripped from the heights onto the exhausted men, injuring some. Their cries often turned into a loud weeping and whimpering, and when this went on for too long, someone from the barracks would shout, ‘Shut up!’
The rain eased off towards morning, the sky cleared, and now some of the men managed to get some sleep in spite of the waterlogged earth; you could even hear the occasional snore. The stars turned pale over the valley, the snowy tips of the mountains assumed a rosy glow, and the wind made the oval dog tags hanging from their chains on the barbed wire, thousands of them, rattle gently against one another.
*
Dear Liesel, I hope you are well and in good health. Given the circumstances, I am well. Do not be surprised by the scrawly handwriting. This is special paper that they hand out to us here – when you write on it with water it turns blue, but often it runs and you have to write very carefully.
After a few days near Salzburg in Austria I am now in a former concentration camp near Munich. The Americans are treating us decently. Even when we were being interrogated there was no shouting, and they didn’t hit us, or at least not me. Well, I’m young, and I was a forced recruit, and all I did was drive trucks around. We can shower twice a week and can wear their old uniforms, or the uniforms of their dead soldiers. But we have to write POW on the back. I did mine with toothpaste, Colgate. I can wash it out later.
We’re waiting and repairing the Americans’ cars, otherwise there isn’t much to do. Some men climb onto the roofs of the barracks to look into the women’s block. Wardresses sit there, real harridans from the Totenkopf-SS. They tied naked prisoners to the fences in the deepest frost and poured water over them, and if they didn’t die quickly enough they helped them along with kitchen knives. Now they have nothing to lose and are showing the men what they want to see.
Some men have reading evenings, others put on plays. Sometimes there are even films, and – just imagine – Göring was with us in the cinema yesterday, the Reichsmarsch
all. There’s going to be a big trial in Nuremberg. He came in like Lord Muck, still wearing that big ring, but all the slits for the medals on his jacket were empty. At least twenty military policemen with white helmets and belts sat down around him in such a way that no one could come too close. Then he sat down and watched ‘Romance in a Minor Key’ with us, and when, at the end, that poor betrayed husband said, ‘Finished, finished, it doesn’t even hurt any more!’ there were tears in his eyes. I saw them glittering.
It’s not clear how long we’ll have to stay here. Since yesterday they’ve been saying that young people from the mountains are getting a preferential release so that the economy can get going again, and because I was born in the Ruhr and my family lives there, I may be allowed to leave as a miner. At any rate I’ll try – a white lie to be back in the north for the summer. Or do you already have another squeeze? I’ve often thought of you, and that’s how I’ve stayed well, I fully believe it. One, two, three.
*
The domes of the towers of the Frauenkirche looked almost as they did in postcards or photographs, but in the ruins of the apse lay shattered pews and a crucifix that was missing a Jesus; only his nailed hands still hung from the beam. The paths between the piles of wood and brick were narrow, the dust tasted like chalk on the lips, and Walter joined the crowd waiting by a fire hydrant. They were all carrying buckets, jugs or empty beer pitchers with porcelain caps, and talked to one another in their dialect, of which he understood only a few words, if anything. Two girls, wearing sandals made of car tyres along with their traditional dresses, sharing a cigarette away from the queue, smiled at him.
The heat was oppressive. The pecking sound of the hammers with which the old mortar was being knocked from the bricks came from all directions, and Walter’s throat was so dry that he could hardly swallow. He kept trying to clear it. Many of the people in the line laid little boards or bundles of straw on the water so that it didn’t splash out of the buckets on their way through the ruins. He nodded to the guard when it was his turn, and held his hands under the tap. But the man looked first at the thirsty man and then at the girls and said, in German, ‘Have you got a cup?’ and then in English, ‘You need a cup.’
To Die in Spring Page 14