by Pirate Irwin
It was as much of a feast as they had had for a year, fresh bread, pickles, roasted chickens and a roasted suckling pig with sweet potatoes, and given their reduced manpower there was enough for a second helping for everybody while the vodka was plentiful, though its roughness of taste would normally have put anyone off, even the most rustic of farmers. However, they gritted their teeth and downed large quantities, ignoring the headaches and stomach rot they would experience in the morning. Sebastian noticed that Eric was drinking heavily and wandered over to him, taking him aside and suggested they take a walk in the evening sunset. They walked in silence for several minutes, Sebastian letting Eric talk when he wanted to. He thought how extraordinary, that last night in Kessler’s club before Eric’s wedding when they had toasted each other and hoped they would remain friends when the war was over, and here they were, Sebastian renamed Rupert Murat and dressed in a Wehrmacht uniform walking alongside Eric in his captain’s outfit, collars unbuttoned, of course. No parade here, sir, surrounded by corpses, animal and human alike, why let’s count them up as carcasses instead, for that is all they are regarded as by those goons back in Berlin, even back at so called frontline headquarters. Yes, sir, we went on a glorious hunt today, killed as many human animals as real ones, thank you, sir, yes really good fun, though of course we had to take a few human casualties as well of our own but all in a good cause, eh, sir. That was the report Sebastian would like to write but knew such impudence would land him in one of those camps or worse that Johns had threatened him with. Why, though, he might end up with Herzog’s family and he could tell them what a hero their boy was, fighting those damned Bolsheviks out there, suffering the privations of the hot summers and then the freezing cold winters, with barely a scrap of food to pass his lips for six months, while at least you get fed three times a day and yes, he really does feel he is doing it for you and yes, he has kept that food you had prepared that fateful night warm for your return. Provided of course the Allies haven’t bombed the hell out of it. Oh, don’t worry, Sebastian could imagine himself saying to a distraught Mother Herzog, or whatever her real name was, he’ll be right as rain after the war is over, back to normal as if nothing had happened. Sebastian stopped suddenly, shocked at what he was descending into, the same spiral staircase of insanity that his silent friend beside him was already nearly the whole way down.
Why was he thinking of Herzog and his family? Was it because he couldn’t countenance how he would explain his disgrace, some would call it treason though he didn’t, to them, even to his mother, for while he had been embarrassed to have her down at Eights week at Oxford he still loved her and this would really break her, and as for Steiner, wherever he may be, the little ungrateful runt, he would laugh his head off with that loathsome father of his and gloat at Mirabelle and declare: “what did we always tell you, darling, he was always going to end up betraying his country after what he did to us.” Eric finally broke the silence, much to Sebastian’s relief, as it pulled him back from taking one more step down the staircase and the all consuming darkness which lay at the bottom.
“Remember that day in the tea house with Steiner?” asked Eric.
Sebastian was slightly taken aback that Eric should bring up that particular incident.
“How could I forget it, dear boy!” he replied in as humorous a fashion as he could muster.
“It’s funny how one is so assured in one’s views when one is young and hasn’t really experienced anything. But the arrogance of the self-belief instilled into you by your parents or the circumstances you have grown up in give you this inalienable right to enforce your prejudices on those around you,” he rambled. Sebastian let him carry on, judging it better for him to unburden himself rather than keep it welled up inside and hopefully it would have a beneficial effect of easing the pressure on him.
“Now three years later, baff! All those ideals and prejudices have been exposed for the illusion they really are. The thousand-year Reich and all that shit, the pure German race and the war to justify it, more like Anne of a thousand days, or replace her name with that of Asshole Adolf!” he sneered dismissively.
“Hush, Eric, keep your voice down. You don’t need the sentries or whoever else might be in the vicinity hearing this from their commanding officer,” urged Sebastian.
Eric just laughed bitterly and carried on regardless, taking a swig from the bottle of vodka he had sequestered.
“You were right then, Sebastian, for punching me and telling me I was just a bigot, regardless of the fact Steiner was a jerk of the highest order. But out here in the wilderness, whether it be summer or winter, the reality doesn’t change. Germany has shamed itself, the land that produced Blücher, Frederick the Great, Kant and Marx has been replaced by the barrenness of ideas, music and culture of a group of people who failed in their ordinary lives and have imposed all their bile and frustrations on the rest of us. The pity is that our so-called peers and elders laid down, spread their legs, and let them take us spawning this bastard of a state.
“Meanwhile, we young have been sent forth to spread the message of the bastard. I am the commander, yes, of this company but of what exactly? Is this the way to convince people that the Germans are the superior race? Yes, if it is to hammer them into the ground but no, if it is to cover them with kindness and patronage. I don’t question why you are here, Sebastian, I never will, and indeed I am comforted by your being alongside me. However, I will never come to terms with the fact that I have served under such a group of people in the respectable uniform of the Wehrmacht, which has been sullied to such an extent that all the reputation of chivalry and fair-mindedness it has established even in wars has been stripped from it. And if I am feeling this bad, heaven knows how you must be feeling bearing the uniform as a foreigner and an enemy at that. You must have a hard as iron conscience,” he smiled sadly at his friend.
Sebastian tried to shrug off the latter comment with a flippant comment, but he could find none and once again the spiral staircase beckoned but he fought to withdraw from it.
“That is something I will have to make peace with once this war is over, Eric. For the moment, all I am interested in is surviving the war with you and the rest of the men, because judging by what we have seen here today and last year it is going to be difficult enough. What I do need, though, is for my commanding officer to remain calm and to return to the person I knew and adored before, because he too will find some solace in that and retain some semblance of sanity. And I am sure Henrietta would like that too so she recognizes you the next time she sees you and not this dispirited cynical figure that is your current personage,” Sebastian said.
Eric drank from the bottle again and offered some to Sebastian, who declined it and suggested to his friend that he would feel better if he stopped himself because it would only make his mood worse.
“Thanks for the advice, but I think I can handle myself. It’s not as if you are paying for it, you mean old bastard!” laughed Eric and stumbled off into one of the still erect cottages where he promptly collapsed on to the straw mattressed bed that had belonged to one of the dead partisans still lying out in the square.
Sebastian went in after him and removed the bottle from his hand, untied his boots and swung Eric’s legs onto the bed so at least he was in a comfortable position, laid another cushion he found on a chair under his head and left him, though he left the door open in case he awoke in the middle of the night and panicked in the unfamiliar surroundings. Sebastian was concerned by him but believed he would shake it off, and with the cracking hangover awaiting him in the morning Eric would have enough to worry about just putting one foot in front of another, quite aside from issuing orders in a coherent fashion. He strolled around in the gathering darkness ensuring that all the sentries were awake and alert in case of a reprisal from any other surviving partisans, which was always a possibility and with their vastly diminished strength and their ensuing feast they could easily be overwhelmed without proper warning. He ordered tha
t the bodies of the partisans be removed and placed in one house so that at least in the morning they wouldn’t have their stomachs churned by the stench of their rotting corpses and made his way into the church to see how the wounded were faring. There were about eight of them lying in various forms of distress within the dark and cold stone nave, laid out on the faded wooden pews, which were hardly wide enough to fit them. The altar, though wider, had been declared as out of bounds as there was a limit to what one could inflict on the house of God in war, even if few other units observed such niceties and more often than not were keener to burn them down than leave them standing. Sebastian checked on Beckmann, who was asleep, went to the front pew which was unoccupied and sat down seeking a moment of silence and eventually knelt and said a prayer, which was the last sort of recourse he would have sought prior to the war when in those heady hedonistic days he believed he was answerable to nobody. It wasn’t just Eric who had discovered war changed a lot of one’s ideals, though Sebastian would never admit it. At some point he must have dozed off because the next thing he knew he was being shaken awake by Berthold.
Berthold had a distressed look on his face, which made Sebastian think that they had been attacked.
“What is it Berthold? Are we under attack?”
Berthold shook his head.
“It’s the Captain, sir. Please come with me immediately!” replied Berthold.
Sebastian jumped to his feet fearing what Eric might be up to now, he had obviously awoken and just as he had thought gone stumbling round the village disturbing everybody in his drunken state. Well, I’ll slap him into shape, thought Sebastian, and he will never repeat this behaviour. However, he realized it was something more serious than that on leaving the sanctuary of the church and seeing all the remaining members of the company, Beckmann shattered arm and all included, lined up outside the house he had left Eric sleeping in. Sebastian, heart pounding, ran past Berthold, pushed past the crowd surrounding the billet and entered it. His legs gave way at the sight of Eric’s lifeless corpse still on the bed, but with his left hand hanging from the bed, his fingertips touching the floor, still grasping the pistol. Sebastian edged on his knees towards his friend’s body, vomited and carried on regardless, his trouser legs soaked in the bile he had dredged up. He wanted to scream but nothing emanated from his mouth, tears came freely and poured down his cheeks as he released the pistol from the offending hand and threw it violently against the opposite wall. He pressed his ear to the chest of Eric hoping that it wasn’t too late, but he had long since drawn his last breath and Sebastian began pounding it with his fists not to resuscitate him but in anger at the stupidity of what he had done. “You stupid, selfish bastard!” he yelled and repeated it and repeated it again and again, until Berthold placed a sympathetic hand on his shoulder and asked him softly to get up, as there was nothing to be done. Sebastian reluctantly rose and wiped his tunic, which was now a mixture of vomit and blood, and ordered everyone to disperse. He would remain and spend the rest of the night sitting over the corpse as a sign of love and respect to his best friend – yet another innocent person who had decided that the evil perpetrated by his country was too much guilt to bear. Sebastian vowed as he stood over the bloodied face of Eric that this death would not be in vain, for he was at last prepared to stand up for what was deemed good in this immoral world and avenge his death, come what may.
CHAPTER NINE
The funeral was over and the mourners had returned to the von Preetzs’ house to engage in the wake, that bizarre ritual where drinks and food were served as if it was a more joyous occasion, but was in fact a way of others helping the family in the immediacy of the death to celebrate the life of the person in swapping tales of his or her life, which in Eric’s case and for many others would not take too much time, given their youth. Sebastian could not but recall the last time that many of the same group had come together had been Henrietta and Eric’s wedding and how different not only evidently the atmosphere was but indeed the people themselves, most no longer their self-confident selves and definitely aged, particularly von Rieckenbach, whose boss Goering was very much out of favour after successive failures to hand the Führer the victory he had promised, whether at Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain, the Desert and now the Eastern Front and it looked as if the pressure of those reverses were having an undesirable effect on Eric’s father-in-law. The only one who seemed to have drifted through the horrendous events of the past few years untouched was Victoria as she retained her beauty and her sexuality was never far from the surface, she had certainly not made an exception for the funeral. The only concession she had permitted was that she had worn black, but the dress was suitably low cut, covered by a transparent net drape while when she sat on the pew her dress edged up her legs revealing the suspenders and the white flesh of her lower thighs, making Sebastian furious at her lack of sensitivity at such a moment but also mad with desire which was exactly the effect she wanted to create, though whether it was just for his benefit was unlikely given her exhibitionist tendencies. Henrietta by contrast displayed the difference in class between them; she was no cheap whore, dressed formally with her beautiful features hidden by a veil to disguise also what not even make up could cover, the tearstained face of a broken woman, while the Baron held himself together for the service but inside Sebastian knew he was torn apart. The Baron had come to the airport to greet Sebastian, who had gained special dispensation to return with his friend’s body from General von Pressner, who himself had wanted to travel back to pay his respects to his old friend but there was little room for sentiment when you were directing a front for the divine moustachioed one back in Berlin so he stayed at his post like the faithful Prussian officer he was and let Sebastian return to explain the how and the why to the family, he had been suitably evasive and sketchy in the letter he had written to them. Even though the von Preetzs were friends of his he had become so used to writing these letters, unfortunately, that he had grown progressively distant from the process and it had become an automatic form of address: “Dear Sir, Madam, I regret to inform you that private/sergeant et cetera was killed in action serving his country to the fullest of his abilities and loyalty. He will be much missed but if there is a consolation it is that he was doing it for a just cause, blah, blah, signed General von Pressen,” when he really wanted to write, killed for bullshit reasons serving a group of sociopath bandits and I really don’t know how he was killed or whether he was a damned coward and got one in the back from his officer or men running away from the field of battle. No, reasoned the General, better to stick to the script and in von Preetz’s case it had been better to do that; how can one tell a friend his son had cracked as no matter how much one understood it on the front those back at home could never come to grips with the circumstances of what they were enduring out here, so he left it at the most obtuse he could, adding the sop that he would be recommending Eric for the Knight’s Cross for his actions in taking the village which was a vital position on the way to Moscow. Sebastian, too, kept his story suitably vague and judged it better to equivocate, declaring he had been tending to the wounded in the church when there had been a volley of shots to the east of the village and he had rushed outside but been beaten back inside as the attack grew fiercer and when finally he had been able to surface outside again the partisans had been seen off but that Eric had been killed in the process, defending the village heroically. The Baron had gripped his hand appreciatively in the back of the car but remained silent throughout the tortuous drive back to Dahlem. Sebastian was relieved that his lie would now stand as the official truth; there was little chance the remainder of the men in the company would ever chance upon the Baron and Victoria was unlikely to stoop below her exalted status to sleep with a common soldier unless she was thrown out onto the street which was most unlikely as her infidelities had been borne this long; the Baron could probably bear them for the remainder of his life having lost the two dearest people in his life. Sebastian felt guilt seeping
through every pore of his body, that he had not stayed in the house with Eric that fateful night, given his state of mind, but he mused there was little point in retracing that ground now and there was no one, Beckmann excepted, he could confide in as the story was now one of heroism and not of a broken man taking what he considered the only way out of escaping the hell they were experiencing. Sebastian, for one, was determined he would not return to the company for it held too many memories, Herzog and the rest could fend for themselves under new officers because he could see himself descending into the same chasm of despair as Eric; he had already trod those first few steps down there and he did not want to get to the bottom and face the same dilemma as his friend. Desertion was out of the question given his status and his nationality, even if he were to be sent back to a prisoner of war camp it wouldn’t be long before some helpful soul informed his fellow prisoners of his interim period between his first internment and his second one and then it would be “Hallo Macready, Liebenberg and Eric, I’ve come to join you, it was getting a wee bit light in friends down there so I decided the best option was let them take me and I could come and see how peaceful it was up here.” No thank you, I’m not ready for that yet, reflected Sebastian, I’ll try and see if the Baron can use his influence and connections to have me moved elsewhere.