Metal Man

by Ben Stevens

  ‘I remember, several years back, when I was in Frankfurt…’ began Amsel in a low voice. ‘Some Brownshirts started shoving this old Jew around; he had the hat, the beard – the full works. I made them stop all that, actually hit one of them; he shouted ‘Jew-lover’ at me as he and the others ran off…’

  ‘There was Kristallnacht – the Night of Broken Glass, in ’38…’ said Bach, his own voice sounding similarly distant. ‘It was always going on; I just didn’t think they were building places like this to put them in…’

  ‘Didn’t you?’ said Weber, his expression dark. ‘I knew it, even before I saw that ghetto on the edge of that town. I just never tried even to think of it – like so many Germans…

  ‘Then again…’ continued Weber. ‘You know, I was in Berlin when Kristallnacht happened. I saw children clapping their hands and shouting with excitement as a synagogue was set on fire. Well-dressed women holding up their babies, so they could better see the ‘fun’…

  ‘Jews then on their hands and knees, the police forcing them to sweep up the streets with a dustpan and brush after their property had been burnt, smashed and looted. People passing by laughing at them, egging each other on to give one of the Jews a kick up the ass, to throw stones at them, the police doing absolutely nothing when this happened…

  ‘Even then, you know, I thought – What the hell is happening to this country?’

  There was a few moments’ silence, none of the soldiers liking even to look at one another. The Poles had also moved so that they stood slightly, but still noticeably apart from the four German men. As though concerned they would otherwise be mistaken for the enemy by the inmates stood watching in their striped, ragged uniforms.

  The silence was broken by Mayer.

  ‘The guards for this place – where are they?’ he questioned quietly.

  ‘My guess is that they were ordered to clear out – or did so of their own accord,’ returned Bach. ‘They must know the Russians are only a couple of days away, at most.’

  ‘One reason why we should keep pushing on, then,’ stated Mayer determinedly. ‘We’ll skirt round this… place, find this town, and…’

  He shrugged. Pointless speculating until they actually got to Tornik. There might be some food there. More likely not.

  The group started to move on, keeping well back from the barbed-wire fences at the same time as they followed them along. They realized they were at the rear of the camp; it was a couple of minutes before they reached one corner, and began to move along another side of the many wooden huts and brick-built buildings, some partially destroyed.

  On the other side of the soldiers, barely twenty feet away, was the deep quarry.

  ‘What were the chimneys used for?’ asked Amsel.

  The look he received from Weber was like a slap in the face.

  ‘Shit…’ he breathed.

  There was a road some distance ahead. Also a train-track, which seemed to run directly into the front of the camp.

  ‘The cattle-trucks,’ nodded Bach. ‘I’ve seen them, full of people.’

  ‘Men, women and children,’ sighed Amsel. ‘Oh, Jesus Christ… Those chimneys…’

  The inmates of the camp, behind the two separate barbed-wire fences, were cautiously shadowing the movements of the soldiers and the five Polish men and women. One of them was gnawing at something in a strangely furtive manner – a piece of bread, perhaps, or a potato.

  ‘Why don’t they get out of it?’ demanded Amsel. ‘Just leave, if the guards have all gone?’

  ‘And go where?’ returned Weber. ‘Look at what they’re wearing; the condition they’re in. This place may be death, but it least it’s got a roof, some wood they can now burn for warmth. Smell the smoke? Perhaps they’ve broken into the food stores, as –’

  ‘Over there – what’s that?’ questioned Mayer suddenly. He pointed in the direction of the road.

  A lorry had appeared – a German military lorry.

  Mayer briefly viewed it through his binoculars, and then looked puzzled.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Amsel, noticing his expression.

  ‘That lorry,’ returned Mayer, scratching one bearded cheek. ‘I’ve seen it before. That time at the ghetto which had all the… Jews in it. It’s the specially-adapted vehicle they use to transport – him.’

  ‘‘Him’?’ repeated Amsel quizzically.

  ‘Him,’ nodded Mayer. ‘The one they call the Metal Man.’

  21

  It was one of Ackermann’s soldiers, leaving the main track and heading into the forest to answer a call of nature, who discovered the feverish man dressed in a dark-grey uniform. The soldier dragged him out onto the track, in front of Ackermann, the other troops and the three Panzer tanks that were being driven in a single line.

  ‘Found another one, sir,’ the soldier reported to the SS officer. ‘Hiding out, just like the others were…’

  ‘No, no, no,’ said the man quickly, his fever-flecked eyes wide with fear. ‘I am Milan Havel – a Czechoslovakian who has worked for the Germans for three years now. I am supporter of Adolf Hitler! Heil Hitler!’

  The man spoke German quickly, and well enough. He raised his arm as he shouted the last two words.

  Ackermann’s narrow, wolf-like eyes showed slight confusion as he stared at the Czechoslovakian’s uniform.

  ‘Where did you get that?’ demanded Ackermann.

  ‘They give it to me at camp where I am guard,’ replied Havel almost proudly. ‘I am taken there from my country, and told to look over Jew. I am given truncheon and position of trust. I do my job very well!’

  Ackermann stared for several seconds at the man, nodding slightly.

  ‘What camp?’ he asked quietly.

  The man pointed vaguely in the direction Ackermann and his men were already heading.

  ‘Is call Mittlebruck, close to town of Tornik. Can get to through forest, but there path is too narrow for the tank. But just keep follow this wider track; it go round forest and take you to front of camp. Maybe fifteen, twenty kilometer.’

  Ackermann nodded; and then said suddenly –

  ‘Why did you desert your post?’

  Havel held up his hands in protest, his flabby, sadistic face contorting with concern.

  ‘No, no – I not desert! Just wake up one morning – just yesterday, I think – and all German soldier are going. They have already blow up some of camp; shoot some of the Jew but not all. Then, later, we guards go too.

  ‘But then I get sick and I am… left behind by other.’

  Havel’s last statement was evidently given in a desperate attempt to elicit some sympathy. But absolutely none was forthcoming.

  ‘Were you given orders to abandon your post?’ persisted Ackermann.

  ‘But when German soldiers go, we think – ’

  ‘I repeat,’ interrupted Ackermann, his voice rising – ‘Were you given orders to abandon your post?’

  ‘But many Jew prisoner still alive!’ protested Havel in a trembling voice. ‘Without German soldier there, they now have chance to attack and kill us!’

  Once again, Ackermann nodded, as though something he’d already suspected had just been confirmed.

  ‘So – first you and these other swine desert your posts, and then… Well, where you thinking of heading to now, eh?’

  ‘I… I…’ stammered Havel.

  ‘Because it wasn’t to Germany, was it, or you’d be heading in the opposite direction!’ barked Ackermann. Already, he was starting to loosen the strap covering his holster.

  ‘No, no – I am loyal to Germany!’ declared Havel, his fleshy face turning white as he again held up his hands. ‘I just get sick, not know where I am – ’

  ‘Liar.’

  Ackermann’s cold voice cut through the former concentration camp guard’s claims like a whip. ‘You’re heading towards the Soviet forces – you’ve heard they’re only a day or so away and you want to surrender! You’re just like every other degenerate Slav – happy
to work for the Reich when it suits you, and then running out like a rat as soon as the going gets a little rough!

  With these final words, Ackermann pulled his pistol from its holster and took aim. Havel gave a hideous shriek as the shot was fired, his hands instinctively moving up further to his face.

  The bullet blew away the last two fingers of his right hand. Havel gave another shriek, seizing his right wrist with his left hand as he stared glassy-eyed at the bloody mess.

  ‘Shit,’ sighed Ackermann, taking aim again. ‘Now there’s a waste of ammunition…’

  He fired again. This time the round entered into the Czechoslovakian’s forehead, exiting out the back along with most of the man’s brains.

  ‘Berg,’ said the SS officer, calmly replacing his weapon in its holster.

  ‘Sir?’ replied the man whose body protruded from the top of the turret of the front Panzer tank.

  ‘How much fuel do you have left?’

  ‘Doubt we’ll even make it to the border on what we’ve got, sir,’ returned Berg. ‘Goes for the other tanks, as well.’

  Ackermann swore slightly, but nodded his head resignedly.

  ‘And shells?’

  ‘Two for this tank; same number for the one behind. The one furthest back has got three. Hardly any ammunition left for the front-firing machineguns either, sir. Oh – there’s also the bazooka we’ve been carrying in this tank for months. Though that’s got only two rockets left.’

  ‘I think we should use everything up before we have to abandon these three vehicles because of a lack of fuel, don’t you think?’

  ‘Sir?’ returned Berg, secretly exchanging a quizzical look with two SS soldiers who were stood beside his tank.

  ‘That Slav said that they – our soldiers – tried to destroy this camp, before moving out. But if what he said is true, they didn’t manage to complete the task – nor kill all the kikes they’ve got shut away in there…

  ‘So, we’ll find this place – and fire what shells we’ve got straight into it. Should just be a simple clean-up operation then; a bullet a head, or just the knife.’

  Ackermann at once spun around.

  ‘Okay?’ he demanded.

  His men instantly returned a volley of ‘Yes, sir!’ They were starving, filthy and exhausted, longing only to get to the German border. But they were all of them well-trained: they would follow Ackermann wherever he led them first.

  Besides… Eradicating a camp full of Jews hardly seemed to pose any major problem. And then onto the border – where (most of them were certain), there would be fresh supplies and a wealth of gleaming new machinery awaiting them.

  Indeed, some talked almost desperately about a secret new ‘super-weapon’ the Fuhrer was about to unveil – something which would decimate the Soviet forces currently advancing behind them, and which would make even the Metal Man look laughable in comparison to its awesome destructive capability...

  ‘So we follow this track on,’ said Ackermann.

  Just before the tank’s engines rattled back into life, steadily consuming the meager amount of fuel remaining, Ackermann instructed Berg –

  ‘Find this place Tornik on the map, if you can. The directions the Slav gave seemed straightforward enough – but we can’t do with taking any wrong turns now.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ returned the tank commander.

  22

  Once Jonas Schroder had gotten used to driving the large military lorry with the Metal Man sat in the back, heading out of Germany and entering into Poland had proved a surprisingly simple task.

  Schroder followed the map Reinhardt had given him, and leaving Berlin basically followed the same main road all the way towards Poland. It was a journey of approximately 250 kilometers, and took some six hours to complete.

  The closer Schroder got to the border, the more people he saw retreating back into Germany. Soldiers, but also peasants, and other men and women dressed in casual clothing.

  Schroder vaguely wondered if these people were Germans, previously assigned some job in captured territory, now desperately fleeing from the Russian advance. There were stories of the Russians shooting out of hand any German prisoners – having raped the women first…

  The sides of the road leading towards the bridge over the river Neisse, and the border, were soon thick with soldiers (clearly starving and filthy, many with bloodstained bandages wrapped around their head or a limb, some on crutches) and the refugees pushing their belongings, the sick and the elderly in wooden carts, some others leading bony animals – a cow, a donkey…

  There were also a multitude of abandoned vehicles – cars, lorries, several tanks…

  Schroder witnessed this bizarre scene as a grey dawn broke over the bleak, freezing landscape. The soldiers manning the checkpoint were clearly preparing to retreat themselves. They seemed surprised that Schroder should wish to drive into Poland – and a little suspicious at his appearance – but he showed the form which Reinhardt had given him, signed by Hitler (just as he had when leaving the courtyard that was above the secret research bunker in Berlin), and so they immediately waved him on without any further question.

  Schroder had driven barely a mile on Polish soil when he saw a sign for Tornik. It was on an ancient wooden post which had partially collapsed at an angle of forty-five degrees. Schroder could only hope it was still pointing in the right direction.

  He drove on, passing overgrown fields and semi-derelict dwellings. More refugees at the sides of the road, their faces thin and hard. Tornik came into view – a church spire, more dilapidated buildings. Doors creaking in the winter wind. Cracked roofs partially covered with ice and snow.

  Does anyone still live here? wondered Schroder.

  But this camp – he had to find this camp… Reinhardt had said his mother was in hell; the letters saying how happy and content she was had all been faked…

  Schroder gave a snarl as he continued to drive along, his eyes scanning everywhere. He had his creation sat in the back of this lorry; he’d order it to tear this camp apart – and to destroy anyone who tried to stop him from finding his mother…

  The road was long, straight. Ahead, on the left hand side, Schroder saw what looked like a cliff. There were rocks below.

  A train track appeared, to run close beside the road on the opposite side. Parallel.

  And then…

  …it seemed almost to materialize out of the low grey horizon. Crude blocks of black transforming into buildings of brick and wood; a tall, thick chimney...

  A vast, sprawling place, located behind two separate barbed-wire fences…

  His mother was – here?

  Schroder gave another snarl, this time mixed with a choked sob…

  Was she even still –

  He didn’t allow himself to complete this thought. He was coming to a halt a short distance away from the camp. Ragged figures stood watching his approach behind the barbed-wire fences; scarecrows in striped uniforms, not even appearing human… Their heads shaved…

  And outside of the camp, saw Schroder now, was stood a curious group. Four men dressed in filthy camouflage uniforms, machineguns dangling from shoulder straps. With them a group of five men and women, wearing clogs and giving the appearance of being peasants. The four soldiers’ prisoners, no doubt.

  German soldiers – the only ones Schroder could see. But were there more, somewhere further inside that camp?

  It didn’t matter. A hundred such soldiers weren’t going to be able to stop the Metal Man. Who would do exactly as Schroder ordered. He turned off the lorry’s engine, opened the door and got out.

  The soldiers were staring at him, clearly confused by his sudden appearance. A German military lorry, being driven a small man wearing glasses, an outsized bowtie and a cardigan.

  But as yet, the soldiers weren’t making any move to come over.

  While he still had the advantage of surprise, Schroder walked quickly to the back of the lorry and opened up the two large doors. The Metal Man was
sat in its special reinforced steel chair at the back.

  Schroder spoke to it –

  ‘Stand up and get out of the lorry! You will obey everything I say from now on.’

  The Metal Man first inclined its head, then picked up its huge gun and stood up. The lorry shook slightly as it walked towards the open doors. It got out, walking down the three steel steps that led to the ground.