Men of Snow (2 page)

On other afternoons granny was peacefully in repose. Her breaths fluttered. Her white hair turned yellow in the light. Then she was his father’s mother, the woman in the photographs laughing and staring at the camera, the very old camera that had produced sepia prints of so long ago.

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In the school there were two hundred first year recruits, all of them competing against each other, all of them trying to prove they could cope. Deitrich, Haustein, Meikle, the lead sergeants treated them all with a mixture of respect and disgust at their frailties. Commander Husserl was seen only rarely. It was colonel Mannheim who would talk to them at the first year assemblies. He was short and pink faced with a harsh voice that stayed at the same pitch whatever he was saying.

‘You are the privileged few. You have to earn that privilege. You have been given the chance to attain the honour of the officer corps. An officer of the Reich is there to defend the Reich at all costs. This institution is to prepare you for every challenge you might meet. You will succeed gentlemen only by understanding the nature of what you are being asked to do.’

For Franz the need was to try and prepare himself. There was so much doubt, so much uncertainty. He had to realise all that his family wanted from him and yet still did not believe it was possible.

‘They don’t really want you to think,’ Frumm had said, ‘You’re there to pass on orders, that’s all.’

‘And I’ll never even manage that,’ Schaltz as usual admitted.

Often Steiner would encourage him or answer Frumm’s cynicism with a straight forward response.

‘You have to give it time,’ he would say, ‘Things will make sense. I’m sure they will. It’s not easy, what this place is trying to do.

Franz would watch him whenever he had the chance, trying to understand why Steiner had the effect he had. Even the sergeants appeared different with him. There was nothing he did that was outstanding. There were other recruits who were more successful, cleverer, stronger, and quicker. But still there remained a confidence around him that nobody could penetrate.

‘I’ve wanted to join the army since I was seven years old,’ he had once told his three dormitory companions after a night’s drinking in Meiteldorf. They had been staggering their way back along the country road towards the huge edifice of the college buildings before showing their passes to the guards at the main gates.

‘For the last twelve years I’ve been waiting to do this,’ he had continued as they had approached their dormitory block.

‘Another fool,’ Frumm had muttered.

‘I had no choice,’ Schultz had said, ‘No choice.’

‘And what about you Brucker?’ Steiner had asked as the huge wooden door of the dormitory block had shuddered open.

‘I decided a year ago.’

‘Why?’

‘Family pressure.’

‘Fucking hell!’ Frumm had exclaimed.

‘Fucking hell,’ Schultz had repeated as he had grabbed hold of the bannister.

‘Good for you,’ had been Steiner’s empty response.

‘Of course,’ Franz had said back while watching Schultz vomit everywhere, down the bannisters, over the steps, splashing against the walls.

The next morning the four of them were detailed to scrub the five levels of stairs.

‘If it was me I’d get you to lick up all of it, you filthy bastards,’ they had been told by a disgusted officer.

‘I’m sorry,’ Schultz had tried after the officer had left them to it, ‘I just couldn’t help myself.’

‘You never can, you fucking failure,’ Frumm had answered.

‘I was ill.’

‘Just shut up and get on with it. We’ll watch. Why the hell should we be cleaning up your mess?’

Steiner had glanced at Franz and had smiled as though there was an understanding between them which somehow separated them off from the other two.

The breakfast bell went. Suddenly there was an avalanche of recruits clattering down the wet stairs.

‘Heil Hitler,’ had been Frumm trying to joke.

‘For hell’s sake!’ had been from Schultz as he was pushed back against the wall.

‘You’ll have to start again,’ Franz had said after the last recruit had gone past.

‘But I’m hungry,’ Schultz had moaned.

‘What, and spew out some more,’ had been Frumm angry again.

‘We’ll leave you to it then,’ Steiner had said.

‘We’d all been drinking. It wasn’t as if I was the only one.’

‘Yes, but you couldn’t manage it, so get on with it,’ had been Frumm’s last words as the three of them went off down the stairs leaving Schultz with four buckets and mops.

Breakfast was held in the hall that ran the length of the school’s central block. The new recruits had breakfast first and then details had to clear and reset the tables for the second years. Before the start of any meal the recruits had to stand at attention waiting for the officers who would march into the hall behind the commander to the top table. And again at the finish of a meal the moment the commander moved his seat to get up all recruits would be off their benches and at attention within seconds.

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Schultz was in most of Franz’s classes. Over the first weeks he noticed how his tall, apologetic roommate was changing.

‘I want to succeed. I really want this. I really want to get into second year. I can see myself in an officer’s dress uniform marching down the main street of my town. My God I want to do that. I can see it, imagine it. I’d do anything to make it real. There’s going to be a war and I want to be in it. Germany has to grow and I want to be in the army that makes that happen.’

‘So that’s good Schultz. That’s what you should want,’ Franz said back to him as they marched briskly across the parade square that fronted the classroom block.

‘But I’m not sure if just wanting it is enough. Somehow I have to make it happen.’

Franz knew his pretence was working. He was still waiting to feel that becoming an officer was a possibility. So far everything was a challenge to him.

‘If you could I’d....I’d like you to point out things, anything that might help. You’re going to make it Brucker. That’s obvious.’

‘Hurry up gentlemen!’ one of the sergeants was calling, ‘Colonel Mannheim has already left his office.’

All the recruits started jogging towards the central block as the lowering of the flag detail marched past them in the opposite direction towards the commander’s house.

The new recruits hardly ever came across the second years except to see them coming back from the assault course or marching on parade. They were already the elite, a different category of soldier.

‘Look at the bastards,’ Frumm said as they had watched a second year parade from their dormitory window, ‘They think they rule the world.’

‘They will do soon,’ Steiner answered.

‘Yes,’ Schultz had agreed, leaning over the other two to get a better view.

‘They’ll be taking their oath next week,’ Franz thought out loud.

‘Pledging their lives.’

‘To the Fuhrer and the Fatherland,’ Schultz added.

‘Can you do it?’ Steiner asked him.

‘I’d do it right now if I could.’

‘Only twenty months to go.’

Schultz frowned at Frumm’s remark and said, ‘If I’m still here.’

‘You will be.’

The second years crunched in precise time across the parade ground.

‘It’s such a process,’ Schultz said as he went to sit on his bed, ‘We have to be somebody we weren’t four months ago. I just wish I could stop thinking about how to be that person and get on with it.’

‘If you’d stop moaning it might help,’ was Frumm’s suggestion.

‘There should be no doubts, none at all,’ Franz said strongly, as though he really wanted to believe this, ‘No doubts about your potential. It has to be right for an officer of the Reich.’

‘Fuck off Brucker.’

‘No, he’s right,’ Schultz tried.

‘Who cares if he’s right? Stop sounding such an arrogant bastard.’

‘That’s what we have to be, isn’t it?’

‘Not you.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because you really are an arrogant swine.’

Franz stared back at him and then smiled, ‘We will see Frumm. Like you said, there are twenty months to go. That’s a long time.’

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In the night he lay with the wind cutting through the high pine trees on the other side of the parade ground.

Frumm was snoring as Schultz shifted about. Only Steiner seemed to sleep as though absolved from the world.

‘Everything is a journey,’ granny had once told him, ‘Before we’re alive, after we’re gone, new journeys, new places.’

‘Where will you go granny?’ he had asked.

‘On a train, a very expensive train with crimson painted carriages, winding through the mountains in the winter and all the people I used to know will be with me.’

‘And grandpapa?’

‘He will be the driver,’ she had smiled, ‘He always wanted to drive a train.’

Franz remembered his father opening his bedroom door one night and standing in the doorway. He had pretended to be asleep. For a long time his father had stood there, something he had never done before. There had been tension in the silence between them, darkness, confusion, wanting his father to say something. The man’s breaths had been short and fast as Franz had listened and waited. Finally the door had closed and his footsteps had gone along the landing. Nothing had been said and Franz knew it never would be.

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‘So tell us, tell us,’ his mother demanded on his first visit home.

‘He will, in his own time.’

Father’s voice was restrained, held into the usual reticence.

‘Let me look at you again,’ was aunt Hildegaard, ‘Just look at him, so sharp in his uniform, a proper soldier. On God’s blessing your uncle would have loved to have seen you like this.’

In the evening after dinner his father asked Franz into his study.

‘Would you like a drink?’ was a question that had never been asked by him before.

‘No thank you sir,’ was Franz already irritated.

When they sat facing each other in front of the study’s small log fire it was some time before his father spoke.

‘And do they make it hard? I mean the discipline.’

Franz had to force himself to respond, ‘I know what you mean father.’

Then there was nothing to say again, time for the son to analyse the father, the yellow bags under his eyes, the veins ridged on the back of his hands, the way he stooped his shoulders when he was sitting down, the sound of his quick breaths.

‘I suppose that is the only way.’

‘Yes,’ Franz muttered.

‘That is if the country is to be as strong as we are promised.’

It seemed he would soon melt in front of the burning logs, becoming a viscous pool slithering off the chair.

‘The Fuhrer tells us so.’

‘And you believe him.’

‘Of course father.’

‘To make Germany great again, to repair all the damage.’

‘That will happen.’

‘And you will be part of it.’

‘Yes father.’

Franz as a child knew because of his father his family was the richest in their village. They had the biggest house and owned a car. He loved his village. Rarely had he been outside the valley in which the village was situated with its towering Alpine mountains on all sides, although he had always known that at some time in the future he would have to leave. The plans had always been there for him to board in Schunenberg, the nearest large town and attend High School before going onto a military academy.

‘We want you to do well Franz.’

‘Yes sir,’ he had replied, thankful that the discussion with his father seemed to be over.

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When he got back to school there were orders to prepare for manoeuvres. The next day all the recruits were on a train going north to join up with other recruits from other schools. These major manoeuvres would include the support of the Luftwaffe as well as tanks and artillery.

For all of them this was their first opportunity to put some of what they had learnt into action.

For the first time they were to experience live ammunition.  They were told the night before the battle games began.  The recruits were in large sixteen men tents in lines on the edge of the heath that was covered with low mist.