Devil's Guard- The Complete Series Box Set

by Eric Meyer

  I didn’t envy them their work, the ramps were huge lengths of steel, massively heavy that they positioned for the tanks to roll off the flatcars. While he went to bring the ramps we continued preparing the Tiger. With a roar, the engine started and as we released the last of the security chains, the driver slewed the giant vehicle around, locking one track and driving around with the other until it pointed at ninety degrees to the side of the flatcar, as Mundt came up with the ramps. There were ten men to each of the long lengths of steel. They positioned them under the Tiger tracks, hooking them over the lip of the flatcar. Mundt waved to the tank commander and we jumped clear as the driver engaged the gears and gently drove his Panzer onto the ground. He waved a thank you as he went past and I looked at Mundt who had come up beside me. One side of his scalp was almost bald where the fire had burned away his hair and his uniform was charred and ripped.

  “That was damned fine work, Willy, we could have lost the engine.”

  He shrugged. “It was nothing, someone had to do it, Sir.”

  “But the someone was you, Willy, I’m putting you in for a medal, you could have burned to death.”

  “Put someone else in for a medal, Sir, I’m not interested in all of that fuss,” he said, but I could see that he was both embarrassed and proud of the praise for his courage. We looked around as the yard supervisor came running up to us, a tubby, bald German railway worker who had undoubtedly been promoted several times above his abilities just because he was a civilian who had volunteered for service in Russia. He may have been brave, but his management skills were not in evidence.

  “What are you men doing standing there idling? The rest of the Panzers need to be unloaded, you soldiers are all the same, lazy swines! Hurry up!”

  The only sign that he had been involved was the sheen of sweat on his forehead and baldpate. Other than that his uniform was unmarked. I couldn’t help it, I swung at him and connected with his jaw, a punch that sent him sprawling to the ground. Mundt and I bent down to pick him back up and I put my face next to his.

  “Listen to me you little piece of shit, while you were hiding from the air attack my men were fighting the fire and risking their lives to release the locomotive and begin unloading the tanks. You talk to another of my men like that and I’ll have you drafted into the SS and sent to the front.”

  He tried to get away, I could feel him trembling, but we had a firm hold of him.

  “Do you hear me, answer me?” I shouted.

  “Yes, yes, my apologies.”

  “Go away and do your job then.”

  We released him and I gave him a push that almost sent him sprawling again. He regained his balance and walked hurriedly away.

  “I’m not sure you should have done that, Sir,” Mundt said, but he was smiling.

  “Nasty little bureaucrat, skulking in the rear areas is one thing but insulting the soldiers that do the fighting is another, it’s unacceptable. But I’m afraid he’s right in one respect, we do need to make better progress on unloading these tanks.”

  We called the men to move the ramps to the next flatcar and continued with the heavy, backbreaking work of unloading the armour. At one stage we had a scare when we heard the roar of aero engines, but this time it was the Luftwaffe. I heard someone shout, “It’s about damned time. We never see them these days!”

  The commander of a Tiger we were unloading leaned down. “It’s not always their fault, they’re short of everything. Pilots, aircraft, ammunition, everything! Petrol is the worst, we only have enough to drive these tanks fifty kilometres.”

  “You can’t be serious? You’ll barely get to the front with that amount of fuel, surely they’re refuelling you before you deploy?”

  He shrugged. “We hope so, but if not they’ll have to drain the tanks of the more obsolete tanks to fill our own, it’s getting critical.”

  “What are they doing with the petrol, I thought we had plenty of fuel?”

  “We’ve never had plenty it’s always been a problem for tanks and aircraft because we burn so much. We failed to take the Caucasus oilfields and apart from that small oilfield at Maikop we haven’t had the success we needed in finding oil. They’ve even tried making synthetic fuel from coal, but it’s not entirely successful, most of our shortfall is brought in from Romania. Even the Romanians are not so free with their supplies these days, they still blame the Fuhrer for leaving their troops in the lurch at Stalingrad.”

  “How will you cope in the coming offensive?”

  “They’ll bring in supplies from somewhere, I expect, they always do, but it will mean taking it from somewhere else where it’s not needed as much.”

  Mundt grimaced. “What a way to fight a war. They can always use the Tigers as fixed artillery if they get desperate.”

  “If that becomes necessary, we ought to use the new Panther V tanks in that role,” the commander laughed. “They’ve had problem after problem, they still haven’t worked out how to stop the engines catching fire.”

  Mundt and I exchanged glances. The tanker was describing an army in chaos with massive shortages, unreliable armour and even now the Luftwaffe failed to defend the vital railhead. We worked on until the last of the Tigers was unloaded and finally went back to our HQ to find food in the cookhouse. There was silence while we ate, the combination of exhaustion after the efforts together with the terrible picture painted by the Tiger commander left us all dispirited. None of us wanted to say the unthinkable, that the war was at risk of being lost, here, in the smoking pyre of the Eastern Front. We’d seen massively increased numbers of Soviet aircraft overhead and more frequent absences of the Luftwaffe. We’d suffered from artillery barrages as the Russians moved nearer to our positions and our guns seemed incapable of sufficiently accurate counter battery fire to deal with them, and we’d seen the massive reinforcements of tanks and men that the Soviets were bringing into the Kursk salient. Russia had rapidly become the most inhospitable, unwelcoming place on earth for us German soldiers, almost a graveyard. They could keep their Lebensraum, the living space that Adolf Hitler had espoused since the days of his book, Mein Kampf. They could keep their fields of wheat in the Ukraine, their oilfields and their massive mineral resources. We were coming to an end and a new mood of pessimism was sweeping through the German military. Even in our elite Waffen SS formations there were few who still believed that victory was possible. We could win an overwhelming victory in the Kursk salient, but if we didn’t have enough petrol to drive on to Moscow, it would be a hollow victory indeed. But for most of us, the prospect of that victory was receding fast, it seemed that the best we could hope for was to minimise our losses. And what then? At that moment, I didn’t believe many of us wanted to think the unthinkable.

  I checked my watch, I had half an hour before we needed to drive to Kharkov for the first of our evening patrols with the funkwagen. I needed a clean uniform, we all stank of smoke, soot, coal and exhaust fumes. It would be uncomfortable spending the rest of the night like this, yet I’d used my only spare after von Meusebach’s order to clean up. I’d have to manage with what I was wearing. We had no hot water so I stood naked in the yard at the back of the inn while Bauer played a cold stream of water on me from a hosepipe. I went back in feeling refreshed, although when I dressed in my dirty uniform I felt grimy again. At seven-thirty I joined Mundt, Bauer and Wesserman and we drove into Kharkov in the Kubelwagen with Bauer at the wheel. The city seemed ever more grey and dismal, even the bright spring evening couldn’t add any lustre to the bomb damaged streets and buildings. There were soldiers everywhere, evidence of the build-up for the coming battle. We passed tanks, dozens of them, Tigers, Panthers and smaller, more obsolete models, most parked along the main streets as if their crews had driven them into the city for a shopping trip. We drove to the Gestapo Office and went around to the enclosed courtyard. The funkwagen was parked inside.

  It was an Opel Blitz, normally used for transporting infantry and supplies, but this one had been converte
d to have a square, boxy cabin built on the back. On top of the cabin roof was a strange looking device, like a network of rods that had been assembled to make a giant frame. I knew the principle of how these things worked, the operator inside the cabin rotated the array on the roof, the stronger the radio signal the louder the tone heard inside the operator earphones. In this way he could guide the truck to the source of the radio signal. There was no sign of von Betternich, but when I went back around the front of the building Wiedel was waiting in the foyer.

  “Hoffman, excellent, are you all ready?”

  “What do you want us to do, Wiedel?”

  His rank of Kriminalkommissar was the Gestapo equivalent of my SS rank, Obersturmfuhrer, the correct mode of address to an officer of the same rank was to use the surname.

  “Follow the truck, don’t let it out of your sight but try to be a little discreet. If there is a chance to catch these bastards in the act, I’d like to take it. Listen, if you do manage to grab anyone I want them taken alive, do you understand? There are many questions that we would like to put to this traitor who is sending our secrets to the enemy.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  We went back around the building and into the courtyard. The crew of the funkwagen, the radio truck, were warming up their equipment, the engine was running and someone inside was doing something with the radio, periodically the aerial array rotated and we could hear strange crackling and squealing noises. The operator finally peered out of the door and looked at Wiedel.

  “It’s all functioning, Sir, if he transmits we’ll get him.”

  “Very well, it’s almost time, you may as well proceed.”

  We followed the radio truck in the Kubelwagen. It was a boring hour spent slowly following the lumbering truck as it attempted to sniff out the radio signals of an enemy spy. At the end of the hour we seemed to have seen every dingy back street in the city, every burnt out building, as well as numerous prostitutes lounging on the street corners waiting for trade. The funkwagen eventually drove back to Gestapo HQ and we parked nearby. The Kriminalassistent in charge of the radio came across to us.

  “Not a whisper tonight, I’m afraid. We’ll try again tomorrow, maybe we’ll have better luck.”

  I nodded and wished him a good night. We climbed into the Kubelwagen and started out of the city back to Podvirky. We almost ran into a young woman who was stumbling along the road, Bauer halted the vehicle. At the last moment I had recognised Irina.

  “Jurgen, thank God, I need you to help me!”

  She was dishevelled, her face streaked with dirt and tears, her clothes obviously thrown on quickly as her coat wrongly buttoned.

  “Irina, what’s wrong, why on earth are you running along the road at this time of night?”

  “It’s my parents,” she said, “they have been arrested!”

  “You mean the police?”

  “No, it was an SS police unit, they called themselves Einsatzgruppe C.”

  I felt a sense of foreboding. Most of us knew of the Einsatzgruppen and what we knew was nothing good. They were the very dark side of the SS and most of us in the Waffen SS wished that they wore a different uniform. This group was based in an old school close to Gestapo HQ, Kharkov.

  “Irina, there’s nothing I can do tonight, you must get home. I’ll find out what is happening tomorrow and let you know. Please, go home now. We’ll give you a lift, you shouldn’t be out on your own on a dark country road.”

  She nodded her agreement, climbed in and squeezed next to me. She held my hand tightly all the way back to her house, as she got out she looked at me with huge, damp eyes.

  “Jurgen, please do what you can to get them out, they haven’t done anything wrong.”

  I kissed her and promised to do my best, but as we drove back to Podvirky I had a feeling that it may not be enough.

  On the way back we passed more lines of Panzers, assault guns and hundreds of support vehicles, limbers for the field guns, half-tracks, armoured reconnaissance vehicles, trucks and motorcycles. It seemed that every tracked and wheeled vehicle on the Eastern Front was here, waiting. I had no doubt that inside the Kursk salient the mechanised forces of the Red Army would be similarly prepared, together with their colossal reserves of infantry, minefields and tank traps that they were strengthening and extending every day. The men looked at them silently as we rolled past, the question on their minds the same as the question on the mind of every German soldier in this sector. When would we attack and why were we waiting when every day we waited was a gift to the Soviets?

  Chapter Four

  ‘The enemy holds every trump card, covering all areas with long-range air patrols and using location methods against which we still have no warning. The enemy knows all our secrets and we know none of his’.

  Grand Admiral Doenitz

  I’d split the platoon for the night patrols so that we would at least get sleep on alternate nights whilst we were doubling up with escort duty for the Gestapo funkwagen. Mundt took the men out and got back in the early hours without incident. In the morning I found an excuse to go back into Kharkov, Bauer drove the Kubelwagen and I went to the Einsatzgruppe C building. When I walked in there was no sentry, not even anyone walking around the corridors. I heard voices coming from behind a closed door, knocked, and walked in. The Sturmbannfuhrer who sat behind the desk looked up, surprised to see a visitor. Two other soldiers were in the office, an Obersturmfuhrer and an NCO, a Scharfuhrer. I saluted.

  “Sir, I’ve come to enquire about the parents of a friend of mine. Mr and Mrs Rakevsky, you arrested them yesterday.”

  He picked up a clipboard from his desk and looked through several sheets of paper. “Yes, that’s correct, they were picked up in an anti-partisan sweep. What do you want to know?”

  “It’s a mistake. Their daughter has acted as a guide for my Waffen SS unit, taking us into enemy territory. The whole family are friends of the Third Reich, they are definitely not partisans.”

  He shrugged. “So? What do you expect me to do about it?”

  The two other men both laughed, when I looked at them closer I could see they were very scruffy, unshaven and flabby, more like concentration camp guards than front line troops.

  “What I’d like is for you to release them to my custody, Sir. I’ll have a word with them, but as I say, they are not partisans.”

  He stood up, hands on hips, looking angry. “Look, Obersturmfuhrer, I don’t know what kind of war you are fighting here, but our job is to deal ruthlessly with partisans. That means making arrests and carrying out sentences straight away. It’s a hard, dirty, dangerous business and we don’t mess around. As soon as we knock down one partisan unit, there’s another one to be dealt with around the corner, so we have to move fast.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.” There was something in his voice, the way he spoke, a kind of subtext, a hidden meaning.

  “Then I’ll make it clear to you. We arrested them for treason and sabotage. They were both shot an hour later. Was there anything else you wanted?”

  “Shot? Are you sure?”

  He sneered. “We always shoot traitors immediately, my friend. Why would we waste time on them?”

  I walked out of their building in a daze. It was wrong, terribly wrong, but what could I do about it? I was close to Gestapo HQ, on an impulse I went inside. They showed me through to Kriminalkommissar Wiedel.

  “Ah, Hoffman, no luck on the wireless detection?”

  “Not yet, no. I’ve come to see you about Einsatzgruppe C.”

  He looked up warily. “They’re not the best people to tangle with. What have they done now?”

  I explained about Irina’s parents. “She helped us, guided my platoon across enemy lines, now this.”

  “Hoffman, it’s way above my jurisdiction. The Einsatzgruppen were created under the direction of SS-Obergruppenfuhrer Reinhardt Heydrich and they’re separate from the Gestapo, a different department. Since Heydrich's death, RSHA has kept ti
ght control of them. Their principal task as you know is to deal with the Jews, gypsies, partisans and Soviet political commissars. The important thing for you to bear in mind is that they are Reichsfuhrer Himmler’s pet project. Nobody interferes with the Einsatzgruppen, nobody, they are almost a law unto themselves. Take my advice, leave this alone and get back to your unit.”

  “But surely there is something...”

  “You haven’t heard me,” he interrupted, “they cannot be controlled. Even the Gestapo or the SD can’t intervene, I’m afraid you just have to accept it, otherwise you’ll find yourself under arrest and put in a camp, or worse. Look, they’re both dead so forget it, go back to Podvirky.”

  I got up and stormed out of his office. It wasn’t his fault. It was the fault of the whole, rotten Nazi system that I was fighting for.

  We Germans were an advanced civilisation. We had music, philosophy, science and a world of culture behind us. Why were we allowing these murderers and thugs to blaze a trail of wanton death and destruction amongst the civilian population? Wasn’t it enough that we were fighting at the front, where at least it was soldiers fighting other soldiers? Did we have to go into innocent people’s homes, drag them out, and murder them? For one mad moment I thought about making a formal complaint to Reichsfuhrer Himmler, but I recalled the fate of others who had criticised the Reich. The concentration camps were full of them. Instead, I asked Bauer to drive to Irina’s house. She was at her home, still tearful and very pale.

  “Jurgen, did you find anything out about my parents?”

  I shook my head. “I did, yes, but it’s not good, I’m so sorry!”

  “You mean they have been sent to a camp?”

  “No. No. They were shot.”

  She screamed with terrible anguish. Then she started beating me on the chest, punching me, she slapped me around the face. “You fucking Germans, you come here and invade my country, even when we try to help you all you can think to do is murder us. That is your culture, is it?”