by Aeryn Leigh
Mein Gott.
"The general?" said Wolfgang. The corporal pointed upstairs. Wolfgang made his way through the smoky Regimental Headquarters ground floor, the din of a dozen typewriters clanging, typing reports for a war long lost, and with heavy feet clambered up the rackety, wooden stairs. He came to the first landing, then kept going up the wobbly stairs, to the top landing, where yet another young conscript stood. This time however, the guard standing on the other side of the door frame, looked twice his age, dour, the stubble of someone who hadn't shaved in days. The sergeant saluted. Wolfgang returned it, and took a battered pack of cigarettes from his top breast pocket. He put one between his lips, and offered it to the sergeant.
Wolfgang produced his U.S. Army Zippo lighter, and lit the sergeant's cigarette, and his own. Damn theses Russian cigarettes were atrocious. What the hell was in these things? Rat droppings? But they held tobacco, nicotine. That’s all that mattered.
"I'm here to see the general," said Wolfgang, showing his orders.
The sergeant grunted. Took a deep lungful of Russian cigarette, and then exhaled, smiling, blowing the blue smoke right up at the cobweb encrusted ceiling. "The General is currently engaged. You shouldn't wait be waiting long."
The Major barely tilted his head. He relaxed a little, and moved to the side of the sergeant, twisting his back against the thin, wooden panelling. "What's the situation with the evacuation?"
The sergeant gave a small laugh. "It's a shiessen-fuck. The Gustav was torpedoed two days ago, virtually all hands were lost. Eleven thousand souls, injured and civilians alike."
Wolfgang clenched his right hand. "Bit of a shooting gallery then?"
"You said it," said the sergeant, lighting a fresh cigarette. "It will be a miracle anybody gets out of this scheissen place alive. Desertions are up, regular soldiers are pretending to be military police and commandeering ships to leave, soldiers on checkpoints are grabbing mother’s babies then pretending the child are their own. And another half-dozen desperate acts, every day."
Wolfgang shook his head, and took another deep lungful. He swore as the end of the cigarette hit his lips, the embers searing tender flesh. He spat the cigarette out, extinguished it with his boot. Why do they burn so quick?
Footsteps. Then the door opened, creaking, and a young German woman in her mid-twenties walked briskly out, hair slightly dishevelled, heading straight for the stairwell without giving all three of them a second glance. The sergeant stuck his head around the doorway, and knocked. "Major Mauss is here, sir."
"Send him in, Sergeant."
Wolfgang straightened his tank jacket, covered in engine oil and odd bits of grease, the best he could, and walked around the sergeant and into the of commander's office. "Shut the door behind you," said the general, adjusting his belt and pants whilst staring out at the bay only three-hundred yards away, full of noise, shouting and mayhem, rats deserting a sinking ship.
Wolfgang shut the wooden antique door, then briskly walked over to the front of the desk. "Heil Hitler," he said.
The general threw back an equally unenthusiastic Hitler salute. "At this point in the war Wolfgang, I think we're past such pleasantries."
Wolfgang pulled out the cigarette packet. And with the general looking at him, gesturing to the cracked, leather chair, Wolfgang sat down.
The commander eased back in his own chair, pulling out his own pack of cigarettes, he threw it at Wolfgang, who caught it with his left hand. "Take one. The American cigarettes are just a little bit better."
Wolfgang took one of the Lucky Strikes, put in his mouth, and tossed the cigarette packet back. Wolfgang lit it, immediately started coughing.
The commander of the Seventh chuckled as the head of the 501st Heavy Tank Battalion did his best to cough a lung up. "How much time did you buy us," he asked. "It was, after all, your initiative."
Wolfgang thumped his chest. "A day, maybe two. Remnants of the Fifth dug in about two kilometres down the road."
"That should be enough time," said the general. "However, their gun batteries are more than sufficient to reap discord," and both of them stopped to listen to another screaming whistle of an incoming artillery shell. It stopped. A faint splash of water. They both breathed out. "No doubt you've heard about the liner Gustov. What is a miracle, is that more ships haven't. There's more ships, men, civilians, and material being evacuated hourly to make Dunkirk look like a dinner party." He regarded the paperwork in front of him, and picked up the top, yellow manila folder. Wolfgang saw it was stamped with the SS seal. "My orders were, to this morning, evacuate the Seventh, including the 501st, and leave our tanks and war material behind. However, by some divine act of God, five additional transports have been allocated to us, enough to carry the division and most of its operational strength, and those arrived this morning."
Wolfgang was utterly surprised. The last two times the Seventh had been evacuated, they'd left all the tanks, artillery, motorcycles, flak guns, you name it, all behind. Maybe things weren't so bad after all.
"The 501st is all that remains to be loaded. How long should it take you?"
Wolfgang answered immediately, by reflex. "Eighteen hours," he said.
The general smiled at him. "You have twelve. We leave at oh four hundred. Dismissed."
Major Wolfgang Mauss stood up, saluted. And with that, turned on his heels and walked to the door but before he reached it, the general spoke. "Did you bring back your Königstiger?"
Wolfgang halted, and stared long at the iron handle. "Unfortunately, it was lost in enemy action." He heard a grunt behind him, and with that, Wolfgang opened the door, past the two saluting guards, down the stairwell, out through the noisy typewriters and back into the streets of the Polish city, wondering how the bloody hell he was going to load the entire 501st in twelve verdammt hours.
But first things first. He owed his crew a barrel of beer, and by the Gods, Wolfgang kept his promises.
Twenty minutes later, and the verbal agreement to give one German inn-keeper and his family, safe passage out with them at dawn, Wolfgang had what he wanted. At this point, reichsmark money was practically worthless. The reputation of Major Wolfgang, the man who'd ridden with Rommel, founding member of the Ghost Division, the legend – Wolfgang's word was iron-clad. And priceless.
He entered the rickety, half shell of the Polish warehouse, the factory now an impromptu repair shop for both his battalion and the 7th. Jagdtigers, Hanomag half-tracks, Panzer IV's of all types and descriptions filled it, and Wolfgang walked down the breadth of the factory, the small barrel of beer on his right shoulder. In amongst the tanks that looked operational, just as many armoured vehicles were being ripped apart for parts. The war wasn't a battle against the Russians. It was a war against shortage shortages, lack of spare parts. And fuel. Always running low on fuel.
The Major made his way down the clanging, smoky, gods-awful din of a workplace, until he found what he was looking for, the mechanics of the 501st. Where the grease monkeys were, there would be his friends. And sure enough, right at the very end of the factory, he found Haplo halfway along the eighteen-foot long 88mm barrel of a Tiger II, the driver's legs straddling either side of the gun barrel, a paintbrush in one hand and paint tin the other. Haplo spied Wolfgang, gave a hearty cheer. Wolfgang grinned, and saw the halftrack bike sitting next to the seventy-ton tank, the Kettenkrad engine covers off. The Major eased the beer barrel down to the ground. His gunner cheered, putting down the engine pieces they were working on, rubbing their hands with quite oily rags, and went looking for the cleanest drinking receptacles they could find.
"You've found us our new tank?" said Wolfgang. He could just make out the red numerals five-oh-three on the right side of the turret, for someone had scrubbed it off recently. The 503rd Waffen SS Battalion. His eyes narrowed.
"Don't worry Mouse," said Haplo from above, "the 503rd are no more. This tank had suspension trouble, was in the shop here when the 503rd were decimated by Katyusha rockets. "We
have the 7th's Quartermaster's blessing." He winked.
Wolfgang made a slow circle around the Königstiger. It didn't have the early Porsche model turret, the curved frontal bits of those turrets deflecting incoming artillery straight down into the thin armour above the driver's compartment, a natural shot trap. A good start then, it having the safer Henkel turret. And a Command Tank, fitted with another radio set and extra antennae. Excellent. It had already been modified a little, headlight modifications, side-shielding, and when Wolfgang reached the rear, he stopped and regarded the engine bay. The engine wasn't stock either. The twenty-three-litre Maybach V12 seem to have a supercharger grafted on it. Wolfgang peered closer. What the bloody hell is a supercharger doing on the back of a Tiger II? Wolfgang instantly loved it. He rubbed his hands together. At seventy tonnes, the Königstiger was twice as heavy as Panzer IVs or T-34s. It was thirty tonnes heavier than the already underpowered Tiger I, and the Panther for that matter, and used the same scheissen engine as it. With that underpowered Maybach V12 trying to push seventy tonnes of metal, Wolfgang grimaced at the amount of times his tank battalion had run out of fuel, busted track treads or transmissions or suspension, because the tanks were just too damn heavy. On flat, level tarmac, the Tiger II only managed 163 metres for every litre of petrol. He shook his head.
Fucking Hitler, he thought. What the entire German army wanted was just more solid, reliable, Panzer IV's, just lots more Luftwaffe Messerschmidt 109's to guard the skies above. But no. Squandering precious war resources on ill-fated, foolish, super heavy weapons on both air and earth.
He studied the supercharger. Anything that gave him more power however, was a good thing. He craned his upper torso in further, trying to get a good look at the metal adapter plate, noticing the Luftwaffe stamp on the supercharger lower housing. Supercharger from an BF 109 by the look of it. A great big grin formed, just as a commotion burst out on the far side of the tank.
"That's my Kettenkrad," said the voice, loud and upset. "And that's my tank. I've worked quite hard to get this broken tank back together, so you just can't come in here like you own the Gott-damn place."
Wolfgang strode around. Haplo was still up on the barrel, painting letters onto the barrel, and below, a clearly amused gunner, loader, and radio operator were already starting on the beer keg, laughing at the stocky man waving his arms around. The Major took in the man's visage in three strides, before standing right in front of him. The man stopped waving his arms around, noticing for the first time the officer, and ripped off a very smart salute. "Major," the man said.
The man in front of him was covered in grease, head to toe, his expression was of a complete, utter, fanatic.
A motorhead.
Wolfgang stepped sideways, picked up two steel cups, and poured two foaming cups of lager. He turned, stuck one mug towards the wild eyed master mechanic, and spoke. "So, you're the genius behind the Kettenkrad, and I take it, this Königstiger. Share a beer with me and my crew, and tell me all about. But quickly."
PIERS HAHNDORF, head mechanic of a Luftwaffe Experimental Testing facility in Magdeburg, deliberately aimed the flare gun over the nose of Ella Gruder's Messerschmidt Me 262. In the aftermath of that debacle, not even a year ago, when the fires been brought under control in the dark dawn, and the investigations started, Piers came close to wishing he had put a flare right into the jet fighter, still knowing that he could never hurt his friend.
But it hurt. Verdammt did it hurt, knowing she'd left without him.
When he'd been picked up by the Gestapo that very morning, he thought he was a dead man. But after a few hours of relatively constrained interrogation, he'd been free to go. Ella just disappeared off the face of the earth, and only days later, to find out that SS Colonel had gone AWOL as well. The same one which had given them so much grief.
But by that stage however, the damage was done. Piers had been stripped of his rank, and sent to the Eastern Front as penance. Just a regular, hard-done-by mechanic. But with this shortage in manpower and those with hard-fought experience, it hadn't taken Piers long to display his mechanical brilliance, his way with machines, and carve out a little spot for himself within the Mechanised Unit of the Seventh Panzer Division.
Now, with the Soviet advance so close, everything once more seemed to fall apart. He woke up one morning, found his personal transport, his modified, supercharged baby tractor, gone. The one thing he'd salvaged from the disaster of Magdeburg. Requisitioned by some dunderhead from the 501st. So, between repairing tanks, scavenging parts, and trying to out-drink the ocean, Piers sidetracked it himself by repairing the biggest, meanest tank that sat moldering in the Polish city, given up as a lost cause, beset by mechanical gremlins.
Those rare, quiet moments at the enlisted tavern, drinking beer no better than horse piss, he thought of Amelia, and Ella, dead over the English Channel, or somewhere worse.
"And here I am," said Piers, slamming back the rest of the beer. He'd been unusually honest with the tank commander and the crew, obviously leaving out the most salacious details, i.e. their sham marriage and the reason why both he and Ella had to hide – but everything else just came blurting out. Major Mauss’s reputation was indeed, true.
"Supercharger's off a Bf 109E. It's taken quite a lot of work to flatten the manifold down enough to squeeze it in, but I rebuilt the Maybach a little tougher, she'll get maybe a hundred more horsepower, a lot more torque, which will help with going up and down inclines, and bump up the top speed a little. She will still drink fuel quite heavily, however.“
Wolfgang chuckled. Three good omens in one day. First, the news that he would get his entire battalion out, tanks and all. The second, was finding a mad, genius mechanic. Third, finding a worthy replacement for his lost Konigstiger, a command tank as well. And there was beer. And Russian cigarettes. And for the next half hour of luxury he allocated himself, before he spent the next twelve hours – correct that – before the next eleven hours straight whipping his battalion into gear and onto the troop and transport ships, for the sixth time since he raced across the fields of France in 1939, for the sixth time, Major Wolfgang Mauss stopped, and enjoy the serenity, amongst friends, tanks, and beer.
Teutonic Odin be praised.
Chapter Fifteen
CAVERN
AMELIA SNUCK the dried meat of the table, down into her lap. She hummed quietly to herself. Her morning breakfast of dried fish – again? was getting pretty boring by now. All that seemed to be available to eat on the island was fish. However, she thought optimistically, more fish meant more food for her friends. Whistling what she thought was a surreptitiously innocent tune, she fed Fang the entire dried sardine. The nose was slightly warmer than usual. She peered underneath the table, Skippy regarding her, tail wagging. "Oh, you sneaky little geeky." Skippy looked at her with brown-black innocent eyes. Eyes that said Woe is me, I have not been fed all century. At this rate, I might die of starvation. Harrumph. Her large puppy placed his head on the other knee, side-eying his mother.
She regarded her plate, three sardines remained. Amelia stretched arms out and yawned, trying to blend in to the kitchen furniture, as Lucius and Daniel were having a heated discussion about something called Pearl Harbour. Pearl Harbour sounded nice, she thought. Not that she could ever go back there, or anywhere on Earth, but that still sounded pretty nice, yet tuning out to the entire table now engaged in heated, passionate argument. There were no fish on her plate, as her hands tucked one up her sleeve under the table, made sure she definitely gave one to Fang this time, and kept the other for Zia. She excused herself, to which no one seemed to acknowledge, the men arguing about encrypted radio signals and something about Roosevelt, and she skipped out of the room, the pack of furry German shepherds following.
She raced up the floorboard hallway as stealthily as a charging elephant, threw her canvas backpack to her bed, and began packing for the day. She had only the morning off before being required at school, that was all she needed.
&nb
sp; Just one more trip to the cavern, to see how my tiny spiky friend is doing! It was time to show the adults.
She patted Zia, tore the sardine in half, and put it Zia's bowl, none of the other dogs dared approaching her. The cat was psychopathic. Even with their tails wagging, front limbs bowed, spine arching in downward dog, in the attitude and posture of let's play, those razor claws would try to rip your jugular out. With a quietly flicking tail, Zia began gnawing and munching fishbones.
She packed the school work, and then skipped on back down the hallway, with all the dogs, and met Marietta and Volfango outside.
Volfango was just finishing watering the three warhorses, in preparation for their morning gallop. Marietta waved, glad to be actually doing something not involving paperwork, bored completely out of her skull doing the quarterly stock take. She'd leapt at the chance to go horse riding with Volfango. Anything but more abacuses showing how little remained.
"Good morning Volfango, Marietta," said Amelia excitedly. "Can we go to the caverns again this morning, before we do martial practice? There's something I need to do there again, and show you both."
Volfango raised his right eyebrow. "How many more mornings are we to go there?" he said. "We can't go every morning, you know. It's not safe. You should know that."
"I know," said Amelia, rolling her eyes. "This with the last day, I promise." She did her best crossing the heart and hope to die impression.
Even Marietta laughed.
"Right," he said. "I'll hold you to that."
Amelia regarded her warhorse Buttercup. Had the great warcharger known its name was Buttercup, buttercup meaning quaint flower, and not a fearsome creature to inspire awe and respect, there would have proceeded to be a small riot happening in the Fairholm back street. Yet Buttercup was a smart horse. The small child, the human's head barely reaching its knee joint, quite enjoyed the lack of weight upon its back, and the light, deft touch. When the little human was on its back, she felt as spirited as a young foal all over again.