Last Citadel wwi-3

by David L. Robbins

  Anti-aircraft stations opened up, punching at the Anglo bombers seen and unseen. There were many 88 mm gun emplacements throughout the city. Cannons stood on top of buildings like the IG Farben headquarters in Pariserplatz, there was one at the Red-White Tennis Club. The inner-city’s air defense was principally handled by three huge flak towers with eight big guns each. The towers were designed by Albert Speer, built in 1941: at the Zoological Gardens behind the bear cages, in Humbolthain Park, and in Friederichshain Park. These were massive fortresses, intended by Speer to inspire faith among Berliners. They were gun batteries, as well as bunkers and communications towers, but also castles, almost medieval, meant to be the first of the new buildings for Germania, Hitler’s city of the future that would replace Berlin after the war. Breit listened to the three giant bastions open up, heard the woof of smaller guns around the city. Beneath the guns and the sirens was the piping of tumbling British bombs.

  The initial barrages landed south of the park, on Wilmersdorf and Shoneberg, residential districts. The first bombs were incendiary, meant to start fires to light the way better for the waves of bombers following, the ones with the big payloads. Berlin was to be handed the butcher’s bill tonight for the Reich’s failure in Russia. The British wagged a finger in Hitler’s face. More fire bombs landed around the city, north and east of Breit, in Mitte over the administrative offices of the Reich, along the river Spree, perhaps on the hospital Breit had just left. The city tried to make itself dark, blast curtains hung over every window, every light was doused, even those of the emergency vehicles running crazy in the erupting streets, but the fire bombs did their work. Berlin burned for them, accommodating the bombers with wooden roofs, kindled ancient spires and domes, blown-open gas lines, flaming cars and trucks, scorching grass. An ignited wind crossed Breit’s nostrils, the smells of carbon and fuel. He wrapped his knees in his arms, the instinct was to be small.

  Once the city was on fire, the British drone above swelled. Ranks of bombers powered into range, the searchlights went wild with them. The sound was apocalyptic, Breit had never heard anything like this. The sky, as immense as it had been in Russia, seemed even larger this night over Germany, venting the noise of what must have been a thousand bombers. Then came the whistles.

  Breit steeled himself, waiting, staring into the trilling night. The searchlights flashed left and right until they caught sight of the falling bombs. The things rushed down through the beams, packed so thick as to be preposterous, they were no more than small gray points in the searchlights but looked like a bed of nails descending on the city. Then the first burst of them landed.

  Breit gasped. The explosions raised fireballs in the city. The flames that had come first danced a sort of glee, like demons welcoming the greater members of their kind to the ground. He watched the entire city under onslaught, a carpet of carnage in every direction. Buildings disappeared in great spouts of blaze and concussion. Places Breit knew, that he could erect in his mind from memory, were scythed to their foundations under the bombs, hammered into shards of stone, broken brick and melted glass, scored timbers. Bombs fell, too, in the Tiergarten. The closest landed a hundred meters from him. Trees became torches, the soil trembled under him. Anti-aircraft batteries emptied themselves straight up at the English, adding their own sharp bits to the night. He made no move to go. He studied the bombardment, every part of it. He listened to the many peals of the attack; soon, the bombs, guns, and sirens blended into one long and unremitting rumble, like a bolt of lightning that would not end.

  With every explosion, Breit adjusted his image of Berlin. He blacked out structures and destroyed whole blocks on his mental map table, reshaping the city with the bombs. By dawn Berlin would be changed; how much depended on the firefighters and luck. Breit tried to regard the bombs as allies; wasn’t this attack on civilians something for him to cheer for? But just as he was unable to appreciate the Red partisans – they were brutes to him – these English bombs were horrors. That was the lesson tonight. Everything in war, even destruction and killing that serves your own ends, is horrible.

  In an hour, the British were spent. They flew away, and the guns firing up at them silenced. Breit could not tell how many planes there had been, or how many of them had been shot down. No matter. The German city they left behind crackled and simmered under a rising, flickering haze. The raid was English vengeance. Breit listened to them fade away west. The British are a cold people when angry, he thought. Not like the Russians, so hot to spill blood. And we Germans, what are we? We’re the worst. We believe war is glorious.

  Breit rose. His legs and ribs hurt worse now. The adrenaline of the raid had kept him in a clench for an hour. When the tension released he was sore from head to toe. The Tiergarten was not on fire. The park was a dark oasis inside a ring of burning city.

  He walked south to Charlottenburg, to see if his boarding house survived. He didn’t dwell with worry that it would be standing or not. Abram Breit had been transformed by Citadel. He was a historic figure, he’d effected the result of a massive and pivotal battle. Those pages in history would always bear his imprint, if not his name. Germany would lose this war now. Breit possessed more power than the Führer because he had changed the outcome and Hitler no longer could.

  Breit ignored the aches in his body. He searched for an avenue where there was fire and smoke, the sounds of Berlin licking its wounds, patching itself up. He wanted to see how bad things were. He wanted to watch Germans put out flames, dig though rubble, save their city and nation, do what he’d been trying to do.

  He crossed the Landwehr Canal to Lützow Plaza. A vapor cloud shimmered with firelight. Water cannons hissed and bucket brigades shouted. Bells clanged on the rushing fire trucks. Breit headed toward the ruckus.

  He rounded a corner to a street half in conflagration, half threatened. Several hundred Berliners rushed up and down, each with a task, a bucket, a hose, an axe, a child protected in a skirt, a megaphone. Another two fire trucks raced past, furiously tolling their bells. People leaped out of the way to let them through. Breit followed in the wake of the second truck. He was an SS colonel, no one denied him passage right up to the flames.

  He walked so close to the worst building that the heat began to dry the water in his eyeballs. It was a tall stone house, three stories high with an Italian facade. Every window was licked by shoots of flame, this building could not be rescued. Several fire trucks were arrayed along the block, spraying hoses to contain the spread of fire. Breit noted the house next to the doomed one was not yet burning. None of the firefighters paid any attention to it, their water and ladders were aimed at the buildings next to it and across the street. Breit approached a fire brigade officer directing the two trucks that had just arrived. The new men were fast deploying their forces on the opposite side of the street.

  The officer saw Breit coming and nodded but kept directing the crews. Breit did not lag back at the man’s curt acknowledgment. This was a fire scene, the SS had little jurisdiction here. He drew close to the officer, a fire captain, a red-jowled man Breit’s age.

  ‘Captain,’ he had to shout over the din, ‘Captain!’

  The fire officer turned only his head to answer Breit. ‘Colonel, I’m quite busy, as you see.’

  Breit had to yank to turn him. ‘Captain, why are your men not spraying this building?’ He pointed at the house next to the one burning faster now. ‘It’s not on fire yet. You can save it.’

  The officer shook his head, his mouth curled in a rebuke. ‘This was a Jew house, Colonel. Jews lived there.’

  Breit stared. The captain must have figured he did not understand.

  ‘We’ll let it burn.’

  ‘Put your hoses on it,’ Breit ordered.

  ‘No,’ the officer answered. ‘Now if you’ll excuse me, Colonel.’

  With this the captain turned away and trod forward, pointing and bellowing at the firefighters under his command. Breit was left standing behind, gazing up at the face of the J
ew house. It was big, all the houses on this block were sizable, these were the homes of the well-to-do. He wondered if the Jews of this home on this street had owned paintings.

  He turned from the fire and walked to a policeman.

  He held out his hand.

  ‘Officer, give me your sidearm.’

  The policeman, seeing Breit’s black and silver uniform, did as he was ordered. Breit took the pistol.

  He came up behind the fire captain.

  He pushed the barrel of the pistol into the shoulder of the fire captain’s tunic.

  Breit repeated his command. ‘Put your hoses on that house.’

  ‘Look,’ the captain, starting to turn, said, ‘I told you…’

  Breit fired.

  The man jolted and spun from the gun. The report of the shot was devoured in the roar of flames and water. No one moved toward Breit to disarm him, no one heard or perhaps even saw what he’d done. The captain doubled over. When he came up, his hand was clamped over the hole drilled clean through his shoulder. Breit let the gun hang. The fire captain had a new look on his face.

  ‘Put your hoses on that building, captain. And when you’ve put out these fires, Berlin will have one more building instead of one less.’

  The fire captain glared. He was a tough man, but not so much that he dared another word. He straightened, his eyes fixed on Breit, he did not wince. Breit had no idea what to do with the pistol now, he had no holster for it, and he did not want to tuck it in his belt like a tough guy or the partisans. He walked back to the policeman and returned it. He would not need it again. The fire captain turned his water on the Jew house and soaked it, saving it from the gobbling flames of its burning German neighbor.

  Breit stayed for an hour, retiring into the crowd until all the fires on this block were extinguished. He walked fifteen minutes more to his own street, arriving just before midnight. His boarding house was fine, the bombs had missed his neighborhood. No one was outside, no one saw him come home.

  CHAPTER 32

  July 16

  2240 hours

  German troop train

  five kilometers south of Belgorod

  Luis set another cracker on his tongue. He closed his lips around it and sucked, waiting for the wafer to become mush. He gazed out his window at the vast plains and swallowed salty pulp.

  With his left hand he raised a glass of water. Even the glass was a misery to lift, the broken ribs on his left side stabbed him. His right arm was no use to him, it was wrapped in a heavy plaster cast, limp in a black sling. He chased the cracker down his throat with little gulps, the five stitches in his chin bleated every time he stretched his jaw to eat or speak. Because of the stitches and the gauze around his head to hold the bandage in place, he ate little. This kept his appetite inflamed. The busted ribs made it hard to drink. Luis stayed hungry and thirsty every waking second now. He made no conversation with the other soldiers in the passenger car who passed his seat, men who saw his wincing efforts to move and offered to help in some way. He grunted in Spanish at the doctor who checked on him and the porter who brought him baskets of bread that went stale waiting for him to eat; the hard mouthings of German made his head hurt, so he stuck to his smoother mother tongue and didn’t care if they understood.

  The man across from him had sat down only a minute ago and already prattled on. He’d put on such a happy face at seeing Luis on this train leaving Belgorod. Luis answered him with a nod at the padded seat across from him and regretted the offer within seconds. He let the man’s words flow past, like the night steppe outside the train, going by and going by, with no more meaning than that, just lost things. He did not turn his head to the fat officer sweating in the seat, the man’s knees were too close, they knocked Luis’s sore shins whenever the train rattled. Luis laid one more cracker on his tongue and closed his eyes.

  ‘I’ll tell you, I’m not sorry to see the last of Belgorod,’ Major Grimm said. ‘I think I must have smoked two packs a day without ever lighting one cigarette, being cooped up with Colonel Breit like that. Oh! Did you hear about his adventure with the partisans…?’

  Luis did not need to look at the chatty man, he smelled the perspiration, could hear the officer’s hands run over his belly across the stale cloth of his uniform, even through the torrent of talk. In the imposed stillness of his injuries, Luis was turning inward. He found a soothing darkness there, the darkness that first came to him bleeding in the snow at Leningrad and came again beside his burning Tiger at Prokhorovka, and now on his way out of Russia, headed south for Italy, it seemed not to leave.

  ‘…meant to check on you in the hospital at Belgorod when I heard you’d been brought in,’ the major rambled, ‘but there was so much to do in the last several days, you understand, Captain. Besides, I’m sure you were in a great deal of pain and needed…’

  Luis had made himself stand on the battlefield. He’d been thwarted in Russia but he would not lie like a skewered bull in his own blood. He’d survived the destruction of his tank, a fantastic blast when the Red shooter’s shell pierced his Tiger’s side armor; a secondary explosion ignited when all the stored rounds went off in the Tiger and the T-34. Everyone died instantly, except Luis. He’d been blown into the air on top of the Tiger’s flying turret. When he landed he was somehow alive.

  He’d rolled over on his back and raised a hand to God, one last prayer, certain he was about to die. When he did not, there was no more reason to lie there, nothing to wait for. The pain propelled him to his feet. He was in awe again of his flimsy body, what it could endure. Even more than the burning Tiger, it seemed. A Mark IV in his company spotted him and ferried him out of the valley.

  ‘…you were fighting at Prokhorovka, the Americans landed 160,000 men on Sicily, and six hundred tanks. That, of course, changed everything. Hitler’s obsessed that Mussolini is going to be overthrown. He summoned von Manstein and Kluge to Rastenburg for a meeting. And on the thirteenth, of course, while you were in the hospital, Hitler called off Citadel.’

  Yes, Luis thought, Hitler has taken Russia from me. With it, he’s taken Spain. I can’t go home.

  Tomorrow Hitler will order the rest of Leibstandarte out of Russia. So I am to be given Italy next. And the Americans for an enemy. Bueno. What do I care? What hasn’t been taken from me?

  ‘…Papa Hoth, as you can imagine, was furious and wanted to keep up the attack. Hitler agreed to let the battle in the south go on for a few more days, you know, to try and siphon off the last of the Russians’ reserves. But that was destined to be no good at all, you see. And then today, the Russians started their counteroffensive in the north against Orel. Early reports have the Reds already across poor Model’s first defense lines…’

  Luis had begun to mutter curt replies, ‘Yes,’ ‘Hmm,’ ‘Really?’ He issued these like boulders or downed trees to try and stem the flow of the major, wanting to dam him up with a blunt, final word.

  The porter walked by with a pitcher of water swathed in a white kerchief, the thing looked as bandaged as Luis. He refilled Luis’s glass and handed Grimm a full glass. The major downed the water with one swift raise of his arm, the arm that did nothing at Kursk but push toy blocks and lift sheets of paper. Grimm swallowed and said, ‘Ahhh,’ with satisfaction. Under his tunic Luis’s rib cage was wrapped tight. Every breath for him was a task. He glowered at the officer. The fat man would not be plugged.

  ‘…problems began with Totenkopf on your left flank. The hope was they would advance far enough to threaten Prokhorovka from the northwest. But the rain made a mess of their river crossings, and resupplying the division across the Psel became impossible. Totenkopf couldn’t hold their beachhead and had to fall back.’

  Luis imagined Grimm in the map room sliding the black blocks backward. He wondered how long until the glass of water Grimm had just gulped ran down his forehead as sweat. The darkness outside his window and inside him was emptiness. Luis looked at this man, his opposite, and considered how full Grimm was, how bu
rsting with noise and memory and need. Look at him, swollen with it all, talking just to keep from popping. The dark required none of this from Luis. The dark was pain, and if you embraced the dark’s pain you felt nothing of the world’s. That was real power.

  ‘…Kempf, but too little too late. Kempf’s linkup with Das Reich didn’t come until the fifteenth. By then, for all intents and purposes, the battle was over. Oh, you SS chaps might have made a go of it, certainly, but with due respect, Captain, Leibstandarte’s inability to take Oktyabrski state farm in the center doomed the attack. Neither Totenkopf nor Das Reich could defend their flanks after that. By the night of the thirteenth, Prokhorovka was a stalemate. That’s when Hitler called it off. And now the damn Ivans are hitting back. Well, it’s to be expected. It’s what I’d do. It’s only a matter of time, I’m afraid…’

  Late that afternoon a nurse had come to Luis’s bedside. She’d handed him orders to report to this train at the Belgorod station. Apparently Grimm got the same orders. Luis was being sent to defend another yappy fat man, Mussolini. Luis would recuperate in Rome, then take over a panzer company. He would get another Tiger in the sunny south, in a coastal town named Anzio.