Last Citadel wwi-3

by David L. Robbins

  ‘…put you in for a medal, you know. The Iron Cross Second Class. I heard about all the Red tanks you knocked out in that damn sunflower field. Splendid, Captain. You deserve it! And since this is the second time you’ve been wounded in battle, you’ll be getting your silver wound badge…’

  Luis heard the talk of medals the way a man listens to the plops of stones landing at the darkness of a well. He dropped the medals into the darkness, plop, plop. They were not enough to give him back Barcelona, the Ramblas, his father. He was starting over. In Italy.

  He watched Russia recede in his window. Adios. The moonlit flats were heaped with Grimm’s assessments of failure here, describing the expanse as impregnable, no one had ever conquered it for long. Maybe he’s right, Luis thought. Perhaps it was better to get out of here and head south. He thought about Prokhorovka. What had happened? What in hell was that old T-34 driver screaming at the end? What was he saying? What did he want?

  Luis licked his dry lips. A dart of pain pricked in his stitched chin. The pain swept the Red driver out of his head, out into the bland deluge of Major Grimm’s monologue. Luis didn’t care what the crazy old Russian had been yelling. Whatever it was, Death had answered him. The Russian was not going to haunt Luis, there would be no more throbs in his hand like the partisan or the bulls, no. The darkness in Luis left no room for the weakness of curiosity, no dilution of the mind or will, no pride, and certainly no ghosts.

  Stay empty, the dark told him. See how powerful you have become. It’s simple: first the bullet outside Leningrad, then that crazy old Russian at Prokhorovka. They were sent to you, to change you and make you stronger.

  You have nothing.

  You are nothing, nothing but la Daga.

  It will take something stronger than Russia to kill you.

  CHAPTER 33

  July 16

  2350 hours

  fifty kilometers north of Khar’kov

  Ukraine/Russian border

  Colonel Plokhoi was first out of the bushes. A moment after the blast on the rail mound, before the echo was gone from the trees where they hid, he ran from cover with his submachine-gun braced at the hip, chasing his bullets over the open ground. Katya leaped out with the waves of dark partisans, following Colonel Bad, shouting and shooting their weapons into the roofs and sides of the tipping train.

  The locomotive careened off the splintered rails and continued on, teetering on its betrayed wheels until it crashed over. Momentum carried it another twenty meters on its side until it plowed to a halt in the scarred earth. The locomotive lay on its side steaming and hot, a ridiculous posture for a great machine. There it lay dying in gushes. It was ignored by Plokhoi and his swarming partisans, who dashed for the five passenger cars. The locomotive had dragged each of the cars off the blown tracks, so that the entire train spilled down the rail mound into a heaped jumble. Smoke roiled from the C-3 explosion and the dirt spewed into the night air, and now the barrels of many weapons added their gunsmoke. Bullets punched holes in the cars’ thin frames, paint chipped and bare metal halos showed around every puncture. Partisans ran close and tossed grenades into the shattered windows. The blasts shook the downed cars again, fabric inside began to burn. The partisans stepped back and fired, fired, fired into the cars. Katya lowered her rifle. She hadn’t shot it more than twice, she’d seen little need to add her small bark to the furious baying of Plokhoi’s men.

  Three machine-guns were hustled forward and flung down on tripods. When they opened up the sound was like hail, ting ting ting ting, faster than a drum roll. The machine-guns shredded everything in front of them, the shooters swiveled the barrels back and forth without aim, loaders lavished them with belts of ammunition. The partisans emptied their guns into the German train. The night glimmered to the constellation of muzzle flashes, all else was black and grisly. Nothing answered from the cars themselves, not even screams. Where was the time to scream or shout to surrender? The soldiers who’d been asleep awoke to the shock of their world tilting, they tumbled off their seats and benches, dashed against shifting walls and railings, then danced on the strings of these ten thousand bullets fired by a hundred angry fighters who had no interest in taking prisoners.

  Katya ran close to Plokhoi. The partisan leader shouted with his trigger pressed, until his magazine was emptied. He dropped the spent gun on the ground and stood spent as well, out of breath and bullets at the same time, a perfection for him.

  Plokhoi fired a flare pistol into the air. When the green light struck, everyone quit shooting. Katya gazed into the rent darkness of the besieged cars. Nothing came from them, no light or sound, not even a creak. They were dead, when seconds before they’d been steaming past, headed out of Russia. Now they would stay. The only noise left to the night was the locomotive sighing, sounding sad for this carnage. Katya stepped forward, past Plokhoi, to do her job. She was joined by Ivan, Josef, and Leonid.

  The rest of the partisans receded into the trees without a word. This massacre required nothing more from them. The three machine-guns were lifted off their tripods and hauled back. Plokhoi held his ground, standing over the cooling weapon at his feet.

  ‘You’ve got five minutes.’

  Josef answered, ‘Yes, sir,’ into the darkness feathering around the partisan leader.

  Katya slipped her hand under Leonid’s elbow. ‘You shouldn’t be here, Leonya. It’s too soon.’

  ‘Shit,’ he grunted, leaning on her arm to keep up. ‘So this is what fighting on your feet is like. No wonder we became pilots.’ A rifle hung in his free hand. She’d never seen him carry a gun before.

  Katya hurried Leonid as much as his healing injuries allowed over the last of the open ground. Ivan and Josef went ahead, reaching the first of the passenger cars. Josef peeked inside through the sieve that was made of the roof, then moved to the second fallen car. When Katya and Leonid caught up at the third car, Ivan had boosted Josef over the perforated roof onto the tilted side. The old man walked along the row of blasted-out windows, peering down into the shambles inside, gripping a ready pistol. Katya gaped at the number of holes in the car, amazed that the remaining metal did not buckle under his weight.

  ‘Alright,’ Josef said to the three of them waiting. ‘This one will do.’

  With that, he disappeared, lowering himself into the bowels of the car. Katya would not let herself imagine what he landed on, what he walked among.

  Josef’s voice strained through the perforations in the roof.

  ‘Someone get up on top. Let’s go!’

  Ivan pulled from his ever-present backpack four muslin sacks. He tossed them to Leonid, then moved close to the car. He linked the fingers of both hands to make a step.

  ‘Up, Witch,’ the big soldier said to her.

  Katya jerked back at the notion. ‘Me? No. Ivan, you go. We’ll stay down here. No.’

  ‘And who’s going to give me a boost? You? Maybe Lumanov? Come on. Up.’

  ‘He has a point,’ Leonid said.

  Josef growled inside. ‘Now.’

  Katya slung her rifle across her back and stepped into Ivan’s hands. The big man heaved and she rose easily to land her boots on the side of the car.

  Josef’s hand speared up through a broken window. He hoisted a machine pistol.

  Katya took the German weapon and tossed it down to Leonid. The pilot caught the gun and gave it over to Ivan, who rammed it into a sack.

  Josef scavenged among the scattered Germans for their guns, ammunition, and money. She watched from above, aghast at first at the piled corpses. There were seventy men or more, black blooded in the light of a full moon. In the first minute, Josef lifted up a dozen weapons. His hand thrust out of the windows and grew more stained with each rifle or pistol. Katya’s hands grew slick with blood. Josef kicked through the bodies like trash, he waded in them and walked on them, tripped and fell among them without a curse or any word, as grim as any of the dead.

  By the second minute, the killed mounds at the bottom of t
he car were nothing to Katya. They were merely arms and legs to be pried out of the way by the dark walker Josef to get at their only worth. She tossed the weapons down to Leonid and watched him stagger to catch them, his legs still bad, his shoulders not recovered. She reveled in Leonid’s life, and the fact that she had saved him. The heaps of German dead, by comparison, became just loose figurines. Katya felt this change, a twinge in her gut, something soft stiffened. This is war, she decided, war. She fixed her eyes on Josef. She watched the old man walk through the dead, doing what he had to do. Papa, too, shirked nothing that needed to be done. She wanted to be like that as well, and he could teach her. Katya felt strongly the need to talk with him. She sensed her father was too far away and made herself a promise to write him a letter tomorrow. With that, Papa felt closer.

  Ivan called up that their time was running out. Josef heard this and thrashed around the bodies for a last check of weapons. She walked above the old man’s head, tracking him while he made his way to the front of the passenger car. There only two bodies lay. By their uniforms and their privacy in the car, these two seemed to be officers. One of the officers was high ranking, a fat man, a big target for the machine-guns and riddled with bullets. The other lay on his back. This one was in a sling with a broken arm, his gaunt face was framed by a gauze wrap. He wore black and silver, an SS officer like Colonel Breit. Katya had never seen an SS officer before. He was horrid looking, white and gossamer thin, the gauze and cast made him even paler, already a ghost even before he was turned into one by the partisans. She shivered to look at him, that place in her that was hardening somehow did not defend her against this one. He was different, not German, what was he? Barely human, thin like a blade. Josef rifled the body’s belt for a holstered Luger pistol. He handed the gun up to Katya. She did not take her eyes off the corpse while Josef clambered on a bench to climb out.

  Below, Ivan had divided the weapons among the four satchels. He lapped the fullest one over his back and turned to make for the trees. Leonid struggled with the smallest sack, loaded only with papers and ammo clips.

  Josef came up on the deck beside her. Katya held on to the Luger.

  Josef slung himself to the ground. He lifted a hand to help her down.

  Below, someone moaned. Katya glanced down into the dark recesses, into the piles of upturned and stolen life. One thing moved. The SS man, a gaunt white thing in silver and black, the body of a knife.

  Katya lowered the Luger and fired. The thin body settled back.

  It was wrong to leave anything alive in this train, that was what Plokhoi had come for. To kill all of them, even the ones leaving Russia, to send that message. She fired again, to do what she had to. Josef glared up at her. Ivan and Leonid stopped with the sacks over their backs and turned to look.

  The pistol smoked in Katya’s hand. A gray spirit trickled from the barrel and drifted past her face – smelling of oiled things, machines, and leather – then moved on.

  CHAPTER 34

  July 17

  1210 hours

  Old National Gallery

  Berlin

  Odd, Breit thought, how suddenly, once again, the numbers don’t seem to matter as much.

  He rested his eyes on three panels, Gauguin side by side with van Gogh and Degas. The Impressionists again. Humanity. Emotion, randomness, illogic. On the canvas, in the streets, on the battlefield, on the rectangular pages of history, there is in the end nothing but the squiggles of the human hand.

  Breit chewed his sandwich. Today he was alone in the gallery except for the museum staff. The air raid over Berlin five days ago was still being dealt with by downtown Berliners, they were not out strolling this afternoon for their luncheon. Hitler himself was not in his Reich capitol to hear the catcalls of sirens and see the trees burst into flame or the giant looping water sprays from fire brigades to put them out. Hitler was in his Wolfsschanze castle in East Prussia. It’s fine, Breit thought. Hitler doesn’t need to see this, the man is miserable enough.

  Four days ago in Prussia, Breit had been in Hitler’s presence. The morning after the air raid, he was called to Hitler’s eastern command lair to report on the battle for Kursk. He was also expected to speak on the Russian partisan movement, since he’d seen them with his own eyes, as if being tied up by one, being kicked by that witch woman, and then escaping them on horseback in a frenzy during a botched raid qualified him to talk about the partisans. He knew nothing about them, except they were determined, they were not ignorant, and they could be vicious. He did not know why the Witch did not come after him, as must surely have been her orders, she could have done it with no trouble. Instead, she’d ridden down the old twin. Breit did not see what happened when she caught him. But she rode like a demon, and a demon, Breit knew, she must have been.

  On July thirteenth, the day after the slaughter at Prokhorovka, he was ushered into the large meeting room at the Wolfsschanze. He’d heard about the great one-day battle in his sanatorium cafeteria, gathering as much as was known about the aftermath, then he was summoned to Prussia. There’d been no winner at Kursk, he knew only that Germany was badly hurt. Now the Reds would answer, and the end game would begin.

  In the meeting, von Manstein urged them to continue Citadel. Victory in the south was still achievable, the Field Marshal argued. He asked Hitler to permit him and von Kluge to relaunch the offensive. The Soviets were pummeled; they would not withstand one more concerted blow. Their reserves were spent defending Prokhorovka, there was nothing left of them. The SS force in the south was paused but not halted. Tiger and Panther tanks were being repaired every minute; if cut loose again, they would retake the battlefield. Kempf was catching up, he would link with II SS Panzer in a day, two at the most. Together they could punch through Prokhorovka, the Reds were reeling there. Von Manstein claimed to have reserves, three panzer divisions, in position. There was nothing the Reds could do to buck up their defenses at Prokhorovka. All their available armor was committed; if they withdrew anywhere along the lines to shore up their positions, their entire defense would collapse.

  Hitler listened. Breit watched from the shadows.

  Next, von Kluge spoke for himself, instead of letting his rival von Manstein rope him into more offensive operations. The leader of the forces on the northern shoulder advised Hitler that he could not resume any attacks at the moment. He needed all of Model’s remaining strength in 11th Army to stem the gathering Soviet counter-assault, which was gaining momentum every hour. He beseeched Hitler to allow his force to go on the defensive. His men and resources were exhausted, they would do well to hold their ground, much less take any more.

  Von Manstein had come to Hitler prepared with rhetoric, strategies, and pleas. Von Kluge came with numbers. The Reds had suffered terribly in their defense of Kursk, von Kluge began. In two weeks of combat on three defensive fronts, the Soviets had lost one hundred and seventy thousand dead and wounded of the million and a half men they’d begun with. They’d lost a third of their five thousand tanks.

  The attacking German force of three-quarters of a million men had been ground down by fifty thousand. Their thirty-three hundred tanks had been depleted by a number von Kluge could only guess at: He predicted a thousand gone, maybe more. And these numbers would grow immensely for both sides now that the Reds had launched their counteroffensive in the north, total losses for the Russians would swell to a million men before the summer ended. As for the German force, the Field Marshal could only shake his aristocratic head. ‘It may be catastrophic,’ was how he summed up the encroaching costs for the Fatherland. ‘We may never recover from Citadel.’

  When von Kluge had succumbed to his mournful pause, von Manstein re-took the floor. ‘Where is the man?’ he asked, peeved, not seeing Breit right away. Breit stood. His uniform coat lacked his medal for administration, and the new jacket fit badly. He stood from his dark chair along the wall and tugged at his hem. What could he say to offset von Kluge’s gruesome numbers? Numbers are absolutes, he thought,
standing in front of the Führer. Plead all you want, imagine all you can, but numbers dictate reality. Numbers are the damning brushstrokes.

  Breit waited, unsure.

  Hitler erupted.

  Hitler did not want to hear any more about Russia. He was sick, near to vomiting, with Russia! His complexion was pasty, his hands flew about and trembled. Breit sat down. He would have left the room, but he stayed to the end, to hear the rest. Hitler calmed, some of his color returned. Without more screaming, he called off the offensive. He reassigned his SS tank corps in Russia; Leibstandarte was to head for Italy, effective immediately, Totenkopf and Das Reich were pulled from the front lines and relocated south, to help fend off the Soviet counterattack directed toward Khar’kov.

  Von Manstein objected. Hitler would not yield. The Field Marshal succeeded only in talking Hitler into allowing a few more days for General Hoth to continue southern operations, to inflict a little more damage on the Soviets, but that was all.

  Citadel, the last German offensive in Russia, was over. Breit stayed at the Wolfsschanze two more days and nights, silent and listening. Then he returned to Berlin.

  This afternoon, in the empty museum in the smoldering middle of the capital, Breit finished his sandwich. He thought of the Night Witch, a striking young Russian woman, caught up in war, wearing men’s dirty clothes instead of dresses and bows. She so clearly has passion, she ought to be in love. Instead she’s in battle, surrounded by killers, she is likely one herself. What has this war done to her, cost her? These thoughts of the grim young Witch led Breit to consider what he had done to Germany, what he had cost it in terms of lives and strength. How many souls were circling him unseen, how many? Far more than the Witch, surely, or even her wild partisans. He looked into the cool air of the gallery and wondered, if he could see them, what would a hundred thousand spirits look like? A million before his work was done? A cyclone of invisible souls would swirl over his head. Still he would add to that number. There was no place he would stop now, no number too horrible, to save Germany from itself.