Last Man to Die (21 page)

He set a desultory pace as Eisenhower followed him into the secluded garden, where the mellow red-brick wall was covered in climbing plants and the lawn liberally sprinkled with daffodils and early tulips in abundant bloom. The cherry tree would soon be in blossom, encouraged by the unseasonably warm sunshine. Churchill had put on a floppy Panama hat which he used while painting to guard against the sun, and beside the cherry tree stood a table with comfortable wicker chairs and two large china cups.

‘And coffee. Scalding hot. Just as you like it,’ Churchill commented as a secretary brought out a steaming jug to stand beside one of the cups, accompanied by a more modest pot of what Eisenhower
concluded could only be that piss-tasting English tea. They busied themselves with the formalities of pouring and stirring, using courtesies to avoid serious discussion. It was the first time they had met, even spoken directly, since that morning above Xanten; both were taking care not to scratch at half-healed wounds. It was only when they had settled and the wicker creaked and complained beneath them that Churchill decided the time had come.

‘Your message was intriguing, General. “Face to face … not to be entrusted to any other means of communication”. I have to admit that I have turned every corner of my mind to discover what could be of such magnitude as to bring you hurrying here, but to no end.’

Eisenhower sipped his coffee carefully, watching over the rim of the cup as Churchill slurped away unselfconsciously, wiping a dribble of tea from his chin with the back of his hand. He waited until Churchill had replaced his cup in the saucer.

‘It’s about Berlin. And the redoubt. I felt I had to come and tell you personally.’

The Old Man’s eyes were instantly alert, the glaze of weariness gone. They reflected disquiet, and anger. The hurt of their last encounter had not yet died but he said nothing, waiting.

‘You know, I’ve been a military man all my life,’ Eisenhower continued as though telling tales around a fireside. ‘And I’m pretty damn good at it – one of the best. But the military is all about manpower and firepower and beating all kinds of hell out of the other guy’s army, and how you do it is almost secondary. That’s why I’ve never been able to understand why you seemed so … passionate about getting to Berlin and rejoicing in the ruins.’

Churchill was about to intervene to protest that he had never described his ambitions in those terms, but held back. He wanted to hear what Eisenhower was trying to say. Anyway, it was true.

‘But I’ve begun to realize that in one sense you were right. You can’t judge an enemy solely by the size of the barrel he’s got pointing at you. There are more ways to die in war than simply getting blown to pieces …’ The folksiness was gone, a sadness crept into his voice. ‘You know the reports we’ve been getting out of Poland of camps full of prisoners and bodies. I don’t know about you; I always treated the reports with a touch of caution. Those camps weren’t military targets, they didn’t affect the way the war was being fought. Anyway, there was always the suspicion they were exaggerated by Stalin’s propaganda machine. Deep down, perhaps I didn’t want to believe.’

‘The reports have been insistent, and growing in frequency. I dread to imagine what we might discover when the final curtain is drawn back on the Nazi stage.’

‘No need to imagine any more. Four days ago I went to a place called Ohrdruf Nord, just outside Gotha which we captured last week. The local divisional commander called me direct. Said I must come. He was almost in tears. Believe me, it’s all true and more.’ He moistened his lips, his mouth felt parched, as the taste of vomit not yet gone. ‘I saw bodies lined up in great avenues, hundreds of them, stacked one upon the other, just cast-off pieces of bone and skin lying out in the open waiting to be burned. Men, women, even children. The scale of what has happened passed anything I could comprehend. I thought they had brought me to the gates
of hell, yet by the day we are discovering more camps, places like Buchenwald and Belsen. As we drive deeper into Germany they’re getting bigger and far, far worse. Seems the Germans are running out of time and furnaces to cover their tracks, they simply can’t dispose of that many corpses quickly enough …’

He was sitting tensely on the edge of his chair, leaning forward across the table, his voice flat and deliberately unemotional but, as the general had raised the ghosts of his visit, Churchill saw the colour drain from his face.

‘So I don’t need any more lessons about war being more than just military objectives. Now I understand your passion. There’s no man alive who wants so much to dance on that bastard’s grave, and if it meant leading a column to Berlin myself and digging the hole with my bare hands, I’d do it!’

‘But I’ll warrant you haven’t come here to offer me second-in-command of this hypothetical column.’

The American shook his head. ‘Nothing would give me greater pleasure. I can tell you with all my heart that I haven’t cared for the … misunderstandings which have come between us recently. We shared so much in the months we were planning the campaigns in North Africa and Europe together. I had come to regard you as a close friend.’

‘You were right to do so, General.’ There was a determined set to Churchill’s jaw as he contemplated what he might say next. He was still battling inside with his pride. ‘This seems to be a moment for honesty. Well, let us not dance in shadows. We have had no “misunderstandings”, as you put it – we have understood each other all too well. We have
shared differences of opinion which were profound and we both fought our cases hard. You have won, and I accept your victory with considerable regret. I fear that when Marshal Stalin gets hold of half of Europe, as he now certainly shall, it will be the prelude to a forest of concentration camps which will spring up through a long Siberian winter, and the peoples of Eastern Europe will have exchanged one terror for another. But the die is cast. In politics, as in life, we must move on.’

Having conceded defeat as gracefully as he could, Churchill stopped to take a cigar from the flap pocket of the one-piece siren suit he had himself designed and worn almost every day throughout the war. He had worn it today largely out of nostalgia; the war was all but over, it would soon be time to dispatch such wartime trivia to the back of the closet.

Eisenhower leaned across to light the Old Man’s cigar. ‘There’s more.’

‘Thought there might be,’ Churchill muttered, still full of hurt. ‘Didn’t have to come here to tell me yet again that I wasn’t going to get Berlin.’ He was staring moodily into the flame which rose and fell as the tightly packed tobacco leaves began to smoulder, his broad and upturned nose seeming to point at the General like an artillery piece made ready to fire.

Eisenhower’s tone was as soft as his words were chilling. ‘When I said I’d lead a column to Berlin to dance on his grave, I meant it. But he’s not going to be there.’

The flame stopped dancing.

‘The Germans have gathered all their leading atomic scientists in the Black Forest, just south of
Stuttgart,’ Eisenhower continued. ‘They’re also transporting a small pile of uranium and other supplies to facilities around Berchtesgaden.’

‘Dear Lord, is it really happening …?’

‘And worse than we ever thought. The Alpine redoubt a reality. Endless war. And Hitler with an atomic bomb.’

Churchill sat silent as the words sank in.

‘No one knows for sure how close they are to putting together a bomb, but sure as hell doesn’t look as if Hitler’s ready to give up yet.’

‘Now I see why you came yourself.’ Churchill slumped back in his chair, cigar forgotten. ‘General, I must confess that when I contemplate what my scientists tell me about the power of the atomic bomb, I am filled with awe. I begin to believe the world is changing so fast and for such terrible ends that I no longer wish to play a part. Or perhaps I am no longer capable …’ His head went back and he looked to the heavens. ‘Roosevelt gone. Hitler and Mussolini soon to follow. The French Republic swept away. Poland, the country for whom we went to war in the first place, practically ceased to exist … There is a tide of history and it seems to have turned against me.’ His words faded as he slumped back in his chair looking aged and vulnerable, like a discarded rag doll, a crumpled old man in a child’s siren suit.

‘Wouldn’t be the first time, would it?’ the General countered in a loud, belligerent voice. ‘I’ve lost count in recent weeks of how many times I’ve cursed and fretted, called you stubborn, cantankerous, cussed – and plenty of other things besides. You got in the way, held things up, went behind my back.’ His diction slowed to emphasize his words.
‘
But
… Never once have I lost sight of the fact that if it hadn’t been for you, and your infernal stubbornness and your mule-headed refusal to accept defeat, then this war would have been lost long before we Americans even got here. You talk about a tide of history. Well, there are some occasions when one man seems to stand his ground and just refuses to accept getting washed away. That’s how we arrogant Americans won the New World. And that’s how you, Mr Churchill, have saved the Old World.’ He leaned over to grab the other man’s hand, trying to rekindle the friendship and trust. ‘But for you, the whole of Europe would by now be one vast concentration camp. Nobody’s ever going to forget that.’

For a while Churchill continued to stare at the heavens, hiding the turmoil. When eventually his head came down his cheeks were moist. ‘Thank you, General.’ He nodded his gratitude, yet the eyes stared fierce and uncompromising, the bottom lip jutting forward. ‘But I was right about Berlin. You’ll see.’

‘It would have been empty … deserted.’ Eisenhower threw his hands up in exasperation. ‘Hitler’s not going to be there!’

‘We should not have let him escape. Dealt with him, sir, like a mad dog! No mercy. No Fuehrer. No Redoubt. No endless resistance. No bomb. And we would have had Berlin!’

The military man shook his head. ‘Kill him? Ridiculous.’

‘Why? We slaughter his armies freely enough.’

‘It would have been …’ Eisenhower searched for the argument.

‘Immoral?’ There was no mistaking Churchill’s impatience. He slurped his tea dismissively.

‘Impractical. We never know precisely where Hitler is. Nothing we have could get through that much concrete. There’s no way of getting at him, not even with a whole army of parachutists.’

‘Not an army. One man. On the inside.’

‘Be serious!’ Eisenhower exclaimed in astonishment. He had tried, dammit he had tried, to bring the Old Man back on side but the stubborn bastard wasn’t prepared to give an inch. His hand slapped down, the coffee spilled, his trousers stained but he did not notice. ‘Where in mother’s name could you have got one man? On the inside …?’

On the other side of the North Sea, on a spit of sand which before the war had been a favourite loitering place of North Germans seeking sun and relaxation, a figure, scarcely discernible in the pale moonlight, was washed up on the shore. For several minutes it made no movement except for the languorous waving of the legs in the receding tide. Then it coughed and threw up before starting to cough again. Slowly and with obvious pain the figure began to claw its way up the sandy beach to the dry dunes and to safety.

Peter Hencke was home.

‘War sets the stamp of nobility upon the peoples.’ He couldn’t remember who had said it, the words were but a vague echo in his mind from one of the interminable pre-war wireless broadcasts. Nobility … He wondered how close the author could ever have got to the stench of battle. Never as close as this.

The journey from Hamburg to Berlin would normally have lasted only three hours, but already it had taken eight and they had still another sixty miles to go. In many places the autobahn was impossibly cratered or blocked by ruined vehicles and the stretches still open were being bombed and strafed regularly by British Mosquitoes. One moment they were forced to climb cautiously around potholes and piles of vehicular wreckage, the next manoeuvring past the bloated, gas-filled carcasses of dead horses, frequently being left with no option but to leave the autobahn altogether for the side roads that ran through the towns scattered along the banks of the Elbe. It was there the journey became even more hazardous and disjointed as they encountered a flood tide of humanity streaming towards them. The whole of Germany seemed to be on the move, shuffling west, away from the advancing Russians, carrying with them what they could. In two hours Hencke reckoned they must have
passed almost 100,000 refugees, old women pushing barrows laden with linen and decrepit husbands; lines of young girls, many barefoot, shuffling behind as they pushed prams or dragged carts; mothers struggling to carry wounded children who stared out of dirty bandages with enormous, frightened eyes. There were farm girls driving cows or pigs, or trying to round up stray chickens, women in fur coats covered in dirt, women in their best suits, women in rags and women in peasant costume still marked by the signs of toil on the land. But there were no men, at least none capable of walking, and there were precious few boys above the age of ten. They walked and stumbled, heads down, carrying whatever they had salvaged of their lives on their backs, resigned to the idea that whatever lay ahead could be no worse than what they had left behind.

These were the survivors, what was left of Germany, trudging away from terror towards a future which none could comprehend. And this was but one road, in one corner of the country, a small piece of a kaleidoscope of misery which was being repeated throughout the land as the German people were scattered like chaff.

The tide of shattered humanity was so thick that choking grey-brown dust rose in great clouds as far as the eye could see and no amount of bellowing, leaning on the horn or threats could part it. The shouts of the driver were met with red, exhausted eyes that did not understand, while in those few that did began to smoulder the spark of hostility as they saw the black Mercedes, clearly an official limousine complete with curtains and cocktail cabinet, trying to batter its way back to Berlin. Hencke sank deep into the red leather of the seats and his companion
couldn’t fail to notice the blaze of anger that spread across his face.

‘I can understand how you must be feeling, you of all people. When you see sewer-Deutsch like that it makes you wonder why we bothered,’ the other man sneered. ‘In my book deserters like these should all be shot. Still, maybe they soon will be. The British front line is less than ten miles from here. That’s why Reichsminister Goebbels sent his personal car for you. We couldn’t afford to take the risk by plane.’

Captain Otto Misch sat erect and resplendent in his SS uniform with its FBK insignia, staring straight ahead and trying to avoid the hostile glances cast at him from the straggling crowd of refugees. He toyed nervously with the Iron Cross pinned at his neck. It wasn’t that he was afraid of the human flotsam outside his window, he simply didn’t understand them and the lack of understanding made him uneasy. This wasn’t the valiant resistance against the enemy which had been planned in Berlin and which he had been led to expect. As he twisted at the medal he noticed Hencke staring at his mangled hand.

‘Moscow. I left the fingers in Moscow.’ He waved his hand with a casual pride. ‘I’m going back to reclaim them one day.’

‘Not in this bloody car you’re not,’ the driver muttered as he swung the wheel sharply to avoid another crater, but his violent efforts succeeded only in running the car into a charred beam thrown across the road by recent bombing, and their progress came to a jarring halt moments before they would have run into yet another group of refugees.

‘
Scheisse
, it would be quicker by bulldozer!’ the captain swore.

‘And a damn sight safer,’ the sullen driver
responded. ‘The front wheel’s gone. I’ll have to change it. I’ll need help.’

‘Then get it!’ Misch snapped irritably as an artillery shell landed less than a hundred yards away, sending up a malevolent plume of cement and brick dust. So close to the front not even Goebbels’ bulletproof limousine was safe.

It was dusk and they were on the outskirts of a small town, semi-derelict and ghost-like, over which a pall of brown smoke drifted as British artillery sporadically pounded what was left. Through the dust thrown up from the ruins of houses and by the tramp of a thousand feet they could make out a group of people gathered around a campfire which stood at the centre of a crossroads; in front of them lay a tram which had been thrown on its side and filled with rubble. It was a primitive barricade behind which the defenders would be expected to fight tanks armed with little more than rifles and the one-shot
Panzerfaust
being churned out from back-street workshops and bicycle sheds – anywhere with a bench and a primitive set of tools. The driver set off towards the barricade in search of assistance, leaving his two passengers listening to the radio which was tuned to pick up warnings of air raids in their sector. He was soon back, shaking his head.

‘They say they’re too busy to help – got problems of their own,’ he reported glumly.

‘Did you tell them that this was Reichsminister Goebbels’ personal car?’ Misch, instantly annoyed, slapped his gloves into his half-hand.

‘Sure. They said if that was so it was the first official car they’d seen all week which wasn’t headed full speed for the British lines.’

Misch ground his teeth in fury.

‘I told them they were wasting their time with the barricade,’ the driver continued laconically. ‘That it would take the British only twelve and a half minutes to get past it.’

‘Twelve and a half minutes?’ queried Misch, taken aback by the exactitude of the estimate.

‘Sure. Ten minutes splitting their sides with laughter, two minutes to bring up an artillery piece and thirty seconds to blow the whole fucking thing into the river.’ Insolence was written all over the driver’s face. Hencke noted that although he was in uniform, the driver hadn’t saluted Misch once. This was not the German army he remembered. But this was scarcely the Germany he remembered, either.

Consumed by rage the captain slammed the door of the car and stalked off in the direction of the barricade. Hencke followed and found still more to astonish him in the new Germany. In the rapidly failing light the campfire threw lurid patterns on to the buildings surrounding the crossroads, all of which had been reduced by battle to empty hulks standing sightless and open-mouthed where once had been windows and doorways, homes. Dust and smoke drifted like witches’ breath through the gaping apertures, as the thunder of exploding artillery shells rolled all around. By the fire in the centre of this primeval setting stood an elderly man and a dozen boys. Scattered around them lay a motley collection of rifles of varying vintages, some from the First World War with fixed bayonets, and by the kerbside lay a canvas bag which appeared to be filled with grenades. The man was perhaps in his sixties, the empty right-hand sleeve of his jacket pinned to his side. None of the boys was older than fifteen, all were filthy and covered in grime, a few were in the
uniform of the Hitler Youth and one who had a split lip and a bruised temple was sobbing pitifully. Into their midst strode Misch and instantly there was silence. The old man looked up at the tall captain and his face filled with anxiety as he saw the unmistakable markings of the SS uniform.

‘Heil Hitler!’ Misch barked, snapping to a straight-armed salute which demanded a response. Immediately he flushed with self-ridicule as he noticed the empty sleeve, and his awkwardness did nothing to improve his temper. ‘What the hell is going on here? I ask for assistance to repair my car. How dare you refuse!’

‘I’m … sorry, Captain. I am the local schoolmaster, these are my boys,’ the man stammered. ‘We were having a little difficulty …’

Immediately the tearful youngster resumed his crying.

‘What difficulty?’

‘Nothing, nothing at all, really. Perhaps we can help you fix your car now.’ But the schoolmaster’s tone was a little too nervous, his words too rushed to hide his anxiety.

‘What difficulty, you bastard? I want to know!’

A conspiratorial silence fell over the group, punctuated only by the youthful sobbing and the spitting of the fire. The old man, overwhelmed, cast his eyes down to the ground. Misch hit him hard, a single blow across the cheek.

‘Tell me!’

Blood trickled down the old man’s cheek where Misch’s heavy ring had caught him and fear flooded into his eyes, but still he said nothing. Several of the boys were looking in the direction of the sobbing youth.

‘As members of the
Hitlerjugend
you are all under military discipline. I order you to tell me what is going on here. You!’ Misch pointed to one of the boys who already bore two medals on the breast of his uniform. ‘Come here!’

The boy, who appeared no more than eleven years of age, ran forward.

‘Tell me! No, don’t look round at the others.’ Misch shook him savagely by the shoulders. ‘Tell me!’

‘It was Hausser, sir,’ he responded in a shrill treble. ‘He … ran away. So me and Pauli had to go and drag him back.’

‘Ran away. Where?’

‘To his mother, sir. They were preparing to hang out a white sheet …’

Quiet fell across the gathering once again, but it was of a different, more menacing kind. Gone was the silence of conspiracy, replaced by oppressive guilt. All eyes were on the youth, tears still trickling down his cheek and mingling with the blood smeared across the adolescent down on his upper lip. Misch strode towards him.

‘Get up, soldier.’

The boy made no move.

‘Get up I said.’ Misch kicked him hard on his bare thigh just below his shorts.

‘There’s no need for that,’ the schoolmaster pleaded, rushing across to grab Misch’s arm. ‘Leave him alone. For God’s sake what’s the point? Can’t you see? It’s all over.
Verloren
. Lost. Lost.’

Misch threw him off and the old man fell heavily to the pavement. ‘Nothing is lost while there are decent Germans still willing to fight!’ he screamed.
His face was blue with anger, his knee trembling; he was losing control of himself. ‘It is only cowards and deserting pigs like this one who are losing us the war.’

‘Let them all go back home, they’re only children.’ The schoolteacher stretched out his arm in supplication.

‘They are soldiers defending the Reich. And this one is a deserter.’ Misch looked around the group of boys, saw the look in their eyes which grew more haunting and fragile with every falling shell. He had seen it before, in front of Moscow, in the eyes of conscripts just before they turned and ran away through the snow and slush. It was why they had lost Moscow. It was why he had lost his hand. And it was why they were losing the war. As the suffocating dust thrown up from a nearby explosion drifted across the scene, he knew that one more near-miss and they would be gone, blown away like autumn leaves even before they had sight of the advancing enemy. For Misch, and for the forces which had taken him as the hungry son of an unemployed printer and turned him into a feared and bemedalled warrior for whom people stepped out of the way and over whom women drooled, it was almost over. It was all crumbling away in front of him. A savage tremor ran through his body. He was about to be thrown back on the bloody rubbish heap, or worse. Because of cowardice like this!

‘If any of you soldiers are thinking of deserting your posts, remember. There is only one punishment for vermin who choose to run away and leave their defenceless mothers and sisters to get raped!’

‘This boy has already lost his father and three elder
brothers in the war. For God’s sake how much more do you expect him to give?’

‘Shut
up
, teacher!’

Misch’s voice had an edge of hysteria and his mutilated hand felt as if it were on fire. His revolver was already raised, pointing at the boy, who stared straight at him, face flooded with incomprehension as he looked into the twitching eyes of this stranger. He still did not understand, even when the bullet struck him an inch above the right eye. For a moment his body twitched and froze, his eyes still staring straight at Misch, until belatedly and slowly his whole form seemed to crumple. He fell back, bouncing once off the bricks beneath him, and lay broken amongst the rubble.

No one moved, no one screamed. No one knew who might be next.

‘Hang him from that lamp post,’ Misch ordered. ‘As an example to anyone who cannot remember his duty.’

‘As a monument to the Third Reich,’ whispered the schoolmaster, still on the pavement where he had been thrown.

‘You want to join him?’ Misch turned the pistol on the old man and his hand was shaking violently.

‘I no longer care to live. What is there to live for? You have murdered our future.’