‘Fall back!’ Johann called to his Kameraden. ‘Stay low.’
Beside him, Sturmmann Sachs opened fire with his P08, the pistol issued to the soldiers of the Leibstandarte known as the Luger. An ‘Ivan’ had tried to charge their position from the cover of the trees, but he had fallen before he reached half way.
Johann’s assessment of the situation was dire. He had counted two more of his Kameraden, lying lifeless on the woodland’s wet undergrowth. Only three now held the position they had been forced to defend when the encounter with the Soviets began, and the enemy, with their increasing numbers, now appeared to be growing more confident. Johann unleashed another burst of bullets as the first of his men crawled towards him. The second man followed soon after, and the third, clearly in a hurry now to join his Kameraden, panicked and ran.
It was to his end.
The Schütze’s agonising scream drew Johann’s attention in time to see the blood spatter from the exit wound in the man’s chest just before he fell. Without a moment’s pause, Johann led the men out of the death trap they had unwittingly stumbled into, retreating fast towards the ferns, pursued all the way by a hail of bullets. Random shots were returned, but Johann and what was left of his small reconnaissance troop were firing blind. There was no time to take proper aim. Just before they reached the cover of the ferns, Johann felt a tug at his right thigh and he knew he’d been hit. He gritted his teeth as the pain hit him, and he was forced to remind himself of the maxim that had been drummed into him during his time at the training school at Bad Tölz.
‘Pain is in the brain,’ he uttered to himself, biting hard as he threw the heavy MG34 ahead of him and dove into the ferns after it. He didn’t know if he was going to make it out of that woodland alive, but he did know that if he were to stand any chance he had to stop his leg from bleeding. When he reached the fallen tree he had first taken cover behind, he stopped and quickly removed his belt.
‘Keep going!’ he told his Kameraden, waving them on. ‘Sturmmann, join up with the rest of the unit at the farmhouse.’
‘We won’t leave you, Obersturmführer. You know what those Ivans will do to you if they capture you.’
Johann knew only too well. He had heard the stories and had seen the evidence first hand. Captured Waffen-SS soldiers were often tortured and mutilated before they were allowed to die at the hands of the Soviet Army, who had not signed the Geneva Convention. In some cases, as he had seen for himself, prisoners were subjected to the Handschuhe torture, whereby their hands were placed in boiling water until they turned white, and then the skin would be cut around their wrists before being pulled from their flesh. Only then, and if he were lucky, would the soldier be shot in the head to end his suffering.
Johann looked up at the faces of the men before him and knew it would serve no purpose to order them to leave him. It made him hurry all the more. He looped his belt around his thigh as shots were exchanged. As he suspected, the enemy was not holding back. He pulled his belt as tight as he could bear it and tried to stand, hoping that the bullet had passed clean through his leg and not hit the bone. It would have shattered it if it had, making it all but impossible to put any weight on it. Sturmmann Sachs helped Johann to his feet as their few Kameraden continued to fend off the enemy.
‘I can make it,’ Johann said.
Sachs, a big man even among a division of Leibstandarte soldiers, who were typically chosen for their size and strength, picked up the MG34. As the unit continued its retreat, he sprayed what bullets remained on the ammunition belt into the trees, sweeping left to right to keep the enemy down, hoping to buy them enough distance to make it out of there. But the Soviet bullets kept coming, even if for now the soldiers firing them did not.
The air was alive with the fizzing sound of hot lead and splintering wood. When the MG34’s bolt clicked back and stayed back, indicating that the ammunition belt was spent, Sachs dropped the weapon from hands that now seemed too weak to hold it. He wheeled around, and Johann saw that the torso of his camouflage smock was glistening with blood. He appeared to have been shot several times, but had somehow managed to remain standing and firing until his ammunition ran out. A moment later Sachs closed his eyes and slumped to his knees before falling flat onto his face. Dead.
Johann fired several shots in anger before he turned away from the fallen Sturmmann. It was easy to blame himself for his death, and he did so without question. Sachs was another Kamerad to add to every other who had died under his command.
‘Gehorsam bis in den Tod,’ he told himself. It was the oath they had all sworn to stand by: obedience unto death.
Shortly after Sachs fell, the shooting stopped. His heroic act of bravery had bought Johann and his few remaining men the distance they needed in order to lose themselves from the enemy’s sight. Now it became a matter of remaining unseen. They trod carefully through the trees, minding every twig and fallen branch so as to make as little sound as possible, while maintaining as much haste as they could manage. Johann doubted the Soviets would give up the chase so soon, but he was to be proved wrong. At least, the attack soon took on a different form.
‘Take cover!’
Johann heard the mortar shell screaming like a banshee over the woodland canopy. It landed ahead with a thump that was followed by exploding steel. Trees began to creak and fall, crushing everything in their path, adding to the danger.
‘They’re finding their range!’ Johann called. His eyes darted here and there, looking for shelter, but there were no trenches here—no foxholes to scurry into. Johann knew they had to clear the trees, and quickly. The next shell would fall shorter. It would not take the Soviets long to find their target.
Another shell went over, this one to the right. Then another landed to their left. To escape the trees Johann realised they would have to pass through this killing zone, and yet to remain where they were, as the enemy advanced on their position, offered no better odds. Around him, Johann’s unit had frozen to the spot, unsure what to do next, looking to him for guidance—for leadership. All Johann could think to do was to wait for the next shell to fall ahead of them, and then run after it, hoping the enemy would not fire so soon at the same spot. It was a gamble, but the time to make a decision was fast running out.
‘When I run, follow after me,’ he told his men.
Another shell erupted, and it was so close that the sound rang in Johann’s ears. It was to his right. He waited. Then another shell screamed overhead.
‘Ready!’
It thumped down and exploded barely more than fifty metres ahead. Johann ran towards it, limping most of the way. He was quickly overtaken by his Kameraden.
‘Keep going!’ he called. ‘Don’t stop until you’re clear of the trees.’
He reached the site of the last shell and was slowed further by sharp and ragged splinters of wood where several trees had fallen over themselves. The pain in his leg was agonising, but he tried to shut it out. Pain is in the brain … Pain is in the brain …
The last sound he wanted to hear at that moment reached his ears then and he glanced up just as the whistling stopped. He knew that was bad. A second later the shell burst ahead of him and he felt something thump into his chest with such force that it spun him round, stopping him in his tracks. He felt suddenly dizzy. He sat down on the trunk of a fallen tree and tried to make out the scene before him, but his vision was blurred. For a moment he had no idea where he was. Then his arms were raised and two of his Kameraden were beside him, propping him up onto his feet, which they began to drag through the debris.
‘It’s Schütze Hartmann, Obersturmführer. Can you hear me?’
The voice sounded distant and eerily hollow. ‘Hartmann?’
Johann recalled that he had ordered the young Schütze and the rest of his unit to retreat to the cover of the farmhouse they had passed. He imagined that he had chosen to remain at the edge of the woodland to provide cover for their return. He had disobeyed an order, but Johann was glad. He had to ad
mire the young Schütze’s initiative and bravery.
‘We’ve seen the main division, Obersturmführer. They’re close.’
As his men continued to drag him along, Johann felt so light-headed that it was as if he were being borne on wings that would carry him home. No, not home. To Ava. He felt himself trying to smile as he saw her face—her blonde hair pinned up as it had been when he first saw her, her pale complexion and her button nose, and the warmth in her blue-grey eyes that he hoped he would someday see again.
He began to drift, seeing only shadows around him, and the soft green light of the woodland canopy, which every so often seemed to pass over his eyes and close them. He had been such a fool about Ava. He knew that now. The last time he had seen her—when he had met her at the Park Cafe in Munich over a year ago now—he had intended to ask her to marry him. But his courage, which had since been proven time and time again on the battlefield, had abandoned him that day. They had talked, and they had even held hands once or twice, but the ring his friend had given him—the ring he had so many times imagined slipping onto Ava’s finger—had remained in his pocket all the while they were together, and it was still there now.
Johann thought about the ring again—Volker’s ring—and was suddenly overcome with worry. In her letters, Ava had told Johann that Volker had been visiting her, not just that once to apologise for his behaviour the evening they had dined at the Osteria Bavaria, but several times since. Had Volker taken his failure to act as a sign that he no longer desired to marry Ava?
Johann feared he had, but it was a matter he was unable to dwell on. The shadows around him suddenly grew darker until all thought and sensation left him, and he was aware of nothing more.
Chapter Fourteen
Vienna, Austria. September 1941.
Johann Langner awoke to the familiar sights and smells of the hospital ward that, as for several of his Waffen-SS Kameraden, had been his home for the past few weeks. His bed, the most comfortable he had known in many months, was in a corner of the ward beside a sunlit window that looked down over a busy street and out across the city rooftops towards the Danube. In the bed next to his was a Scharführer from SS-Wiking Division called Ernst Köhler. The Sergeant Major was an older man, close to thirty, and he had become Johann’s jovial companion since he’d been brought in—jovial, despite losing both of his legs during a Soviet mortar bombardment near the Ukrainian city of Tarnopol in one of his Division’s early engagements on the Ostfront.
‘A Waffen-SS officer leads from the front, eh, Johann?’ he had said when first describing how he received his injuries, which Johann understood to be a dig at the officers of the Wehrmacht—the regular army—who on the whole seemed more inclined to lead from a safer distance.
Köhler was already sitting up as Johann stirred, and Johann noticed that he was gazing along the line of beds to his right, towards the entrance. Looking around, Johann saw that he was the last on the ward to wake, and that several of the men were also looking towards the entrance. Johann sat up to get a better look, and the sharp pain in his chest caused him to wince, reminding him that he was not long out of surgery. His movement drew Köhler’s attention.
‘Looks like an inspection,’ Köhler said.
‘At this time of the morning? We’re in hospital for pity’s sake.’
‘Well, that’s what it looks like from here. Why else would we get a visit so early in the day from such a high-ranking officer?’
Johann tried to glimpse the detail on the officer’s uniform to better gauge his rank. He was certainly highly decorated, and Johann noticed that his collar tabs bore silver oak leaves, meaning that he had command of a regiment-sized unit at least. His adjutant was beside him, holding what Johann thought must be the senior officer’s briefcase.
‘He’s working his way along the beds,’ Köhler said. He laughed to himself. ‘Do you think I should tell him one of my jokes?’
‘No, Ernst. I don’t.’
‘Not even the one about Hitler and the French prostitute.’
‘Definitely not that one. Not unless you want to be shot. And keep your voice down. He might hear you and have us both shot.’
When the senior officer arrived beside Ernst Köhler’s bed, Köhler sat to attention. He raised his right arm in salute, all trace of mirth gone. Now that Johann could see the officer more clearly, he saw that his collar tabs bore two silver oak leaves, signifying that his rank was that of SS-Oberführer—a senior leader of the Waffen-SS. He was a slim-figured, softly spoken man who looked to be in his late thirties. As he addressed Köhler, Köhler began to tell him how he came to be at the hospital, and Johann got to hear how Scharführer Köhler received his injuries all over again. They spoke for a few minutes, and then the Oberführer and his adjutant came to Johann’s bedside.
The Oberführer studied Johann’s chart at the foot of his bed briefly before greeting him with a sympathetic smile. ‘And how are you doing today?’
Lying in a bed next to that of a double amputee, Johann felt he had no cause or right to complain. At least his limbs were intact, which meant there was a good chance he would soon be able to rejoin his Division. ‘I’m looking forward to seeing my release papers, Herr Oberführer.’
‘That’s the spirit. Your country is most proud of you. How were you wounded?’
Johann recalled his encounter with the Soviet Army in the woods north of Romanovka the previous month—how he and his small Reconnaissance Company had found themselves cut off and heavily outnumbered by the enemy. His account of the events was not of bravery or courage, but of the mistake he felt he had made in his eagerness to push forward, which to his mind had cost the lives of several Kameraden under his command. It was a mistake that now haunted his dreams.
‘You are too hard on yourself,’ the Oberführer said. ‘And while it does you credit, it does little to serve our cause. It is, after all, a Reconnaissance Company’s duty to venture into harm’s way. You are often at the very tip of the spearhead of your division. I might add that such fighting spirit that drove you forward in the first place is the very thing that makes the Leibstandarte the elite Division it is.’
Johann knew the Oberführer’s comments were well meant, and he could not deny that they had put him a little more at ease over what had happened, but it was perhaps too soon for Johann to accept that he was without blame for the deaths of his men. He nodded sharply to the Oberführer, and had he been standing he would have clicked his heels.
‘And what of your wounds?’ the Oberführer continued. ‘I saw on your chart that you received more than one.’
‘They tell me I’m lucky to be alive,’ Johann said. ‘I was shot in the leg, but that was no more than a flesh wound. After that we became caught in mortar fire and a piece of shrapnel struck my chest. From the clearing station I was initially sent to a temporary hospital in Western Ukraine, but the shrapnel was very close to my heart and they didn’t have the facilities to remove it without running a high risk of killing me.’
‘So they sent you here. I’ve heard the facilities in Vienna are first class.’
‘Yes, Herr Oberführer. I’m sure they are.’
‘And how is your family bearing up under the strains of war?’
‘So far as I know they’re managing quite well. I was able to write a few letters before I arrived here, but I suppose the mail service is having a difficult time keeping up with my whereabouts.’
The Oberführer nodded. ‘Well, good luck,’ he said, and with that he moved on to the next bed, across the ward from Johann, to continue what was evidently a morale boosting visit.
‘No medals for us yet then,’ Köhler said, his shoulders slumping. ‘For a moment I thought the Oberführer might have had them in that briefcase of his.’
Johann turned to Köhler and smiled. ‘I wondered the same thing.’
Just about everyone on the ward had been told they were to receive awards of one kind or another. For Johann, the Wound Badge Third Class in black, and th
e Iron Cross Second Class for his bravery in combat. He was glad to know that Sturmmann Sachs, who had gone with him to rescue their Kameraden in the woods near Romanovka, had also been awarded the Iron Cross, albeit posthumously. Ernst Köhler was to be awarded the Wound Badge Second Class in silver for the loss of his limbs, which, following a decree from Adolf Hitler the previous year, meant that he was also automatically awarded the Iron Cross Second Class. Johann thought Köhler deserved it far more than he did.
Later that morning, after they had eaten their breakfast and the nurses had been in to wash those who could not wash themselves, Johann was told that he had a visitor. The news came as something of a surprise to him because he didn’t think anyone who knew him enough to want to visit him could possibly know where he was. He had supposed then that it must be another high-ranking Waffen-SS officer, come to hand out the medals, but Ernst Köhler had received no such news.
‘Then who is it?’ Johann asked the nurse who had come to see him. ‘What does he want?’
‘It’s not a man, it’s a young woman,’ the nurse said. ‘And she didn’t say why she was here, other than to see you. She told me her name was Fräulein Bauer.’
Johann couldn’t believe it. At first he thought Ernst Köhler was playing another trick on him. Johann had talked about Ava Bauer often enough for the mischievous Scharführer to have come up with some self-amusing jape at his expense, but as Köhler was giving nothing away, Johann knew there was only one way to find out.
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