Into the Darkest Day: An emotional and totally gripping WW2 historical novel

by Kate Hewitt

  “I am,” Matthew said after a moment. He’d been advised to use discretion when telling POWs he was German, for if he were captured himself, he could be executed by his captors for, ironically, being a deserter of the Germany army, not to mention a Jew.

  The man raised his eyebrows. “How did you end up there, while I am here?” He gestured to his seat.

  “I emigrated to America in 1938, after stormtroopers beat my father to death,” he answered shortly. A wave of sudden, unexpected rage rose up in him, threatening to engulf him, but Matthew forced it down.

  The boy’s eyes widened. “You are Jewish?”

  “Yes.” It was reckless, perhaps, to admit as much, but Matthew knew he couldn’t have kept himself from it. He wanted this man—this paltry, pathetic little tool of the Fuhrer, a tiny cog in the vast machinery of the Nazi party—to know who he was. What he was.

  If he expected some sort of jibe or barbed retort, he did not get one. The man let out a defeated sigh as he flicked some ash from the tip of his cigarette. “What is it you wish to know?”

  Matthew masked his surprise with a cool look. In his training, he’d learned the four methods of interrogation, from building rapport to playing on fear, and how to use each of them effectively to gain information from a prisoner, often without him even realizing he’d given it. This fatigued compliance was not something he’d ever expected. The instructors who had pretended to be prisoners during his training had surely never given it. Was it some sort of trick?

  Matthew reached for a chair and sat down opposite the man. “What is it you wish to tell me?”

  The man shrugged. “I don’t know how much I know. I’m just an Obersoldat. But I am tired of this damned war, and I want to go home. We’re going to lose anyway.” He drew deeply on his cigarette as he gazed at Matthew with a deadened defiance.

  Matthew stared back evenly. The rage he’d felt a moment before had trickled away, replaced with a weary numbness. “What were you doing before you were captured?” he asked.

  “I was laying mines along the road to Sainte-Mère-Église.”

  Matthew kept his expression neutral as he asked in a diffident voice, as if it didn’t matter very much, “Would you be able to show me where they are?”

  The man shrugged and dropped his cigarette. “If you like.”

  Fifteen minutes later, pistol in hand, Matthew was following the soldier along the road, accompanied by a lieutenant and a private who walked along warily, rifles at the ready.

  “Here,” the man said with a shrug, as he pointed out the place where a mine had been buried. “And here. And here. And here.”

  By the time they returned to the village several hours later, over fifty mines had been discovered and, thanks to the help of the German Obersoldat, dismantled. Matthew felt a weird mix of exultation and fury; what might have happened if those mines hadn’t been dismantled? And the Obersoldat had seemed almost indifferent to it all, to the lives he had saved, or those that might have been lost. He just wanted the war to end, so he could go home.

  “There’s another one for you, Lawson.” Matthew turned around at the sound of the voice, and then he nodded and headed back to the dusty bar with its broken chairs—and another German prisoner.

  This one, he saw, was completely different to the first. He was sitting up straight in the chair, his military bearing evident, shoulders thrown back, chin poised at a haughty angle. Matthew took in the insignia on his uniform—he was a Wehrmacht Oberleutnant, with an impressive Knight’s Cross on his tunic, granted when fighting in the Afrika Korps. A seasoned soldier, then, who would not volunteer information when offered a cigarette.

  As Matthew approached, the man’s eyes narrowed and his lips twisted in scorn, even though Matthew hadn’t said a word.

  “Name?” he asked shortly, in German.

  “Hahn, Dieter.”

  “Rank?”

  “Oberleutnant.” The single word rang out proudly.

  “Serial number?”

  The man gave it.

  Matthew stood in front of him, surveying him coolly. He could not bring himself to act out the camaraderie he’d first intended on, and he felt instinctively Dieter Hahn would mock it, anyway. Instead, he relied on a silence that spun out several minutes until finally Hahn broke it.

  “You are German.” It wasn’t quite a question.

  “Yes, and a Jew.” Again he could not keep himself from saying it. He watched impassively as the man spat on the floor.

  “You left,” Hahn stated, a sneer in the words.

  “Isn’t that what you wanted?” Matthew didn’t know how it had become so personal so quickly; he knew it wasn’t meant to be. He and the other German-born Jews had been coached again and again not to make their interrogations emotional. They needed information, not justice.

  Hahn turned his head, as if dismissing him. “This is your revenge, I suppose.”

  “No.” Matthew kept his voice even. “This is my job. But justice will come, Oberleutnant. It is only a matter of time.” Hahn did not reply. “There are fifty thousand German soldiers in cages on the beaches of Normandy.” That was the estimate that had been given, at any rate. “And many more are surrendering every day. Your time has come and gone.”

  Hahn turned to stare at Matthew with cold blue eyes. “Das ist mir Wurscht,” he said, his lips twisting cynically.

  Matthew let out a huff of humorless laughter as he acknowledged the other man’s deliberate barb. That is sausage to me—an idiom to express his complete and utter disinterest in what Matthew had said. Hahn had said it as one German to another, and yet Matthew knew this man thought him less than human, less than the mud caking his fine leather boots.

  “That may be,” he answered. “But your defiance will not change the outcome of this war, of that we can both be very sure.”

  Hahn gave a regal nod, unmoved. “Then let it be so.”

  Matthew stared at Hahn, with his air of cool, indifferent acceptance, in frustration and a growing fury, directed as much at himself as the man before him. He had not found out one damned thing from this man. He’d failed as an interrogator in order to pursue his own emotion-driven agenda. How could he have been so childish?

  “Where is the rest of your regiment?” he asked abruptly.

  Hahn just smiled coldly and shook his head.

  “How many tanks are left on the Cotentin peninsula?”

  Another shake, along with a small, knowing smile.

  “Where is your commanding officer?”

  This time a shrug.

  Matthew clenched his fists. This was going badly. Very badly.

  “Do you realize you will be tried for war crimes?” he demanded.

  For the first time the man looked the tiniest bit uncertain. Shaken. But it was only for a second, like a shadow in his eyes, and then his expression hardened all the more.

  “Let it be so,” he said quietly, and Matthew knew he’d lost him for good.

  He turned on his heel and strode out of the room, slamming the door behind him. A private, guarding the door with a rifle and a cigarette, stood to attention.

  “Return him to his quarters,” Matthew snapped, and kept walking.

  Back in his quarters, an abandoned house he shared with Guy West, his fury had abated, leaving only a scathing self-loathing that coated him like a slick oil.

  Only his second interrogation and he’d lost it. What was wrong with him? He was good at his job. At least, he could be good at his job. Matthew knew he could. Back at Camp Ritchie in Maryland, he’d been applauded for his cool head, his clear thinking. His instructing officers had appreciated his careful reserve, the way he kept his own counsel, gave nothing away, not even to friends. Yet in the space of a few minutes he’d shed all that like some deadened skin, and emerged raw and red and vulnerable, clothed only in naked emotion. He could not let that happen again. He would not, for the sake of this war. For the sake of his family.

  The door to the house opened and Guy came i
n, his dark hair pushed back from a high forehead, his eyes narrowing as he caught sight of Matthew standing in the middle of the dusty room; the only furniture was a mattress of straw ticking and a broken chair.

  Sometimes Matthew wondered what the French people thought, being taken over a second time, the battles raging all around their villages, homes, and farms. Then he saw some remnant of the Nazi occupation—a tattered flag, a blood-spattered wall—and he knew they had to be grateful. They certainly seemed grateful, when he caught sight of their haggard faces split into smiles of both relief and joy. The end was in sight.

  “What happened?” Guy asked in German. “The man was useless?”

  Matthew shrugged. “I was useless.”

  Guy lit a cigarette and passed one over that Matthew took silently. They smoked without speaking for several minutes. “It happens,” Guy said at last.

  “It shouldn’t.”

  Matthew had met Guy on the boat over; they’d trained separately at Camp Ritchie, and although they saw in each other shared pain and a kindred spirit, neither of them had spoken much of their families or former lives in Germany. The only thing Matthew knew about Guy was that his father was a tailor and he was from Berlin. They’d all emigrated to America in 1936. They were all safe.

  Guy shrugged. “There is much that shouldn’t happen in this war.”

  “He wasn’t even that bad.” Another wave of self-loathing rolled over Matthew. “Just an arrogant bastard, nothing more.”

  “Then remember that for next time.” Guy gave him a brief smile, a humorless twisting of lips in a face marked by weariness. “He probably wouldn’t have given you anything, anyway. Arrogant bastards usually don’t.”

  That evening, by the light of a smoking oil lamp, Matthew tried to write Lily. He hadn’t written her since the day before he’d dropped down in that muddy field a fortnight ago, although it felt like an age, a lifetime lived in days and weeks, sometimes in minutes.

  He raked a hand through his hair, his eyes gritty with fatigue, his body grimy with both mud and sweat; he hadn’t had a proper wash since Leicestershire. Although vague rumors had begun circulating that the 508th might be shipped back to England on leave sometime in the next few weeks, Matthew could barely imagine it; England felt like another universe.

  And while part of him relished the thought of clean sheets, a hot, or at least a warm, bath, and, most of all, Lily, part of him didn’t want to go. Here in Normandy, as the Allies pressed forward, he was closer to finding his family, or at least finding out what had happened to them. Leaving felt like defeat, a personal one he couldn’t stand.

  For a moment, Matthew looked up from his blank page, his gaze unfocused. He wasn’t naïve. He knew it was likely at least some of his family members had died in the war—from bombing, illness, starvation, or simply being killed. It was more than likely.

  Rumors, most too vague to be trusted or believed, had started drifting through the rest of the world like vapors of smoke—stories of Jews rounded up in ghettoes, denied basic food, water, and clothing, living in virtual prisons.

  Then, later, there had been stories of Jews being shipped east on trains, to populate Poland, or even somewhere more distant. When Matthew had first enlisted, a story had broken in the US newspapers that Jews in Russia and Lithuania were being summarily executed. While the stories had chilled him, they’d always brought a treacherous, shameful relief.

  At least it’s not German Jews, Matthew had thought, utterly ashamed of his thinking, yet unable to keep himself from it. They wouldn’t do that to German Jews. Then he remembered the look of savage glee on the stormtrooper’s face as he’d kicked his father to death.

  Now a shudder ran through him at the prospect of what might—or might not—await him back in Fraustadt. Had his mother been clever enough to hide Gertie? She’d been such a tiny thing, with her dark eyes and hair. Such a tiny, little slip of a girl, although she’d be sixteen now, practically a woman. Where was she? What had happened to her, to all of them?

  He thought of Franz and Arno, mere boys, just twelve and fourteen when Matthew had left, six years ago. They were young men now. Young Jewish men in a country that had chosen to despise them.

  Matthew glanced down at the blank page again, and wrote Dear Lily.

  He stopped, unable to think what to say next. In the months of their letter writing, neither had ever said very much. Lily had taken him through her days, expressing shy pleasure at small moments—a crocus poking through the shattered bricks of a bombed-out building, a seaman who had been missing, presumed dead, only to be found alive hanging on some wreckage—and Matthew had done his best to communicate about his life, although both the secrecy and monotony had made it difficult.

  In the end, though, he didn’t think it mattered. Lily could have written about anything at all and he still would have eagerly devoured her words. Her gentleness shone through even the most mundane of letters, and that was what had drawn him to her in the first place. Sophie’s alluring boldness and charming manner had put Lily’s quiet nature into stark relief; Tom had called her mousy, but Matthew recognized her for what she was. Kind.

  Now he pictured her—her brown eyes as soft as pansies, her light brown hair curling about her small, homely face. He could see her slightly crooked front tooth and the freckles on her nose that he didn’t think she liked. He remembered how sweet her kiss had been, hesitant and yielding all at once.

  How could he tell her about any of this? When I interrogated a man today, I felt as if I could throttle him with my bare hands. I saw a dead German lying in a field and I thought—“Good”. I want to go home, but I don’t think such a place exists anymore, anywhere. I know this war will end one day, but I’m afraid it never will for me.

  With one hand, Matthew crumpled the nearly blank page into a ball and tossed it onto the floor. Then, by the light of the oil lamp, with its greasy smoke curling upwards towards the ceiling, he smoked silently until the flame had gone down, sputtered out, and then was dark.

  Chapter Eighteen

  July 1944

  The beach was a scar. It had been over four weeks since the D-Day landings, and the twisted metal skeletons of wrecked tanks and Jeeps were still strewn across the grimy sands of Utah Beach. Matthew gazed out at the litter of abandoned equipment and vehicles, and then at the metal cages that zigzagged across the hills and held thousands of German prisoners. Here were the vestiges of victory, the price of war. He looked at it all and he did not know whether to feel triumphant or defeated.

  He’d been rattling in the back of a truck for several hours, across ravaged countryside towards the beaches that had borne the brunt of the assault, and then back to England. The rumors had been true, and the 508th were being shipped back to be refreshed and restocked. From the two thousand that had dropped into France just over a month ago, only a thousand remained.

  In the last few weeks, as the 508th had reorganized and continued operations to secure the peninsula, Matthew had interrogated dozens more prisoners, most of them tripping over their words in their eagerness to be helpful to the Allies. It had become painfully clear to the Axis forces that they were losing, and the average German soldier wanted only to go home.

  One medic had drawn Matthew a map of all of Normandy, with the positions of German forces and weaponry. Another officer had been able to give approximate numbers of all the troops positioned in northern France. While Matthew was glad of the information, it hadn’t assuaged the sense of vengeance he’d felt burning through him when he let it. At least he’d learned to hide the strength of his feeling; he’d never lost his composure with another POW the way he had with Hahn. He’d never written Lily, either.

  Now he glanced at all the prisoners in their cages waiting to be processed and he wondered who they were. His countrymen, certainly, and some might be former school mates, friends, neighbors. How many of the blond, blue-eyed boys he’d gone to the gymnasium with had ended up as Nazis? Where were they now—here?

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p; At least this distant curiosity was better than the rage he’d first struggled with, and that he knew others had felt. He’d heard stories, over the last few weeks, of revenge enacted by his fellow soldiers. A division of paratroopers had massacred thirty captured Wehrmacht officers in an abandoned village. A private had shot two Germans in the head after they’d surrendered, and no one had said a word.

  Matthew had heard such stories, and he’d felt pity for both the soldier and the captive, the killer and the killed. War was grim, grimmer than he even realized, or wanted to think about, or write to Lily.

  And yet he wanted, needed, to go back to England and see Lily, and yet he was afraid to do so. Afraid of what she might see in him, what was surely growing in him like a canker.

  The beach was strangely quiet, almost peaceful, as Matthew walked across it towards the tank landing ship that was taking the 508th to Southampton. He’d been given five days’ leave and he intended to spend them in London, before he had to report back to duty in Nottingham.

  He had no idea what the rest of the war held for him, if he would be put on active duty in England, interrogating prisoners of war there, or if he would go with the 508th back to France, into Germany and the end of the war. Sometimes he wasn’t even sure what he wanted, and then he felt a curdling rush of shame that he could have been conflicted for a moment. He had to get back to Fraustadt. He had to find his family.

  London felt like a battered paradise when Matthew stepped off the train and into a rainy summer’s evening. The sky was a dull pewter with intermittent drizzle, and everything looked tired and dirty and gray, but he could breathe easily as he walked down the street, grateful for the strange silence of a place that was not being constantly shelled, except he soon found out it was.