Opposite Sides (47 page)

The presence of this SS
officer was making Hans uneasy and put him on guard. He watched the
man very carefully.

Ott leaned so far back in
his chair so that the front two legs were raised off the floor and
at the same time waved his hand with a wild unsteady gesture to
indicate that Streiter should take over.

“
You may have
been wondering why the Sturmbannführer is here, Leutnant.” Streiter
cupped his hand over his mouth and coughed slightly into it.
“Excuse me. I have been getting over a cold. The Sturmbannführer is
here because he has connections with the Kohler family. Herr Kohler
is well-known, a good businessman and supporter of the Führer.” He
paused and took a long deep breath. “His connections with the
highest officials are most exemplary.” Ott peered at Hans like a
cat watching a bird whenever Streiter paused. “Ah, yes,” continued
the older man after he had moved his injured leg again. “Herr
Kohler has a daughter. Elisabeth. She’s a healthy and robust girl.
A little older than the usual young ones on the market.”

His comment brought a
smirk from the Sturmbannführer.

“
An excellent
specimen of womanhood, if I may say. Just the right kind of woman
to provide a man of the Reich with strong, healthy
sons.”

“
And what
happens if I don’t like her? Or, more importantly, if she does not
like me?” Hans quickly added, looking first at Streiter and then at
Ott. He was not very happy about such an arrangement, yet he knew
to reject the offer would bring a flare of anger in his direction
and these were very powerful men.

“Duty has to be
paramount!” Ott weaved his head and hissed at Hans like a snake
about to strike. “Follow the example of your brother, if you know
what is good for you. If he were not already spoken for, he would
have been only too willing to have Elisabeth Kohler for a
wife.”

“
Renard?”

Hans wondered
what kind of woman would be acceptable to his brother. He had not
met the new love of his life since Uncle Karl had let it be known
that Renard and Magda had finally gone their separate ways. So much
for
until death do we part and everything
we had been taught by the church
, thought
Hans. Hans
followed the teachings of the
church most seriously on matters such as this, whatever the new
order teaches people to think. Obviously, not so Renard and he was
disgusted by his brother’s lack of morality. He could only guess
that Renard’s new lady friend was also a supporter of the
Party.

“
Yes, your
brother.”

Streiter shifted his
weight and rested a hand on the upright cane. He smiled slightly
and tried to look pleasant.

“
I think you
will find that,
Fräulein
Kohler is a very pleasant young woman, Leutnant
Resmel, with excellent connections. Quite a bit younger than you
but very mature in many ways.”

“
Oh, very
mature, I would say,” Ott affirmed. “Her participation in courses
for young German women has been excellent. Most perfect.”
Streiter’s eyes widened in anticipation. “You have no objections so
far I hope, Leutnant?”

“
None,
Sturmbannführer.”

“
Good! I am
pleased to hear that. As soon as the marriage is arranged, I’m sure
there could possibly be a rise in rank coming your way. Yes, I’m
almost certain of it.” He laughed and his shark teeth glistened in
the soft yellow light. “Much better than being demoted, would you
say?”

Secretly Hans thought the
man most objectionable but he did not give either of them any hint
to think otherwise.

“
Thank you,
Sturmbannführer Ott. I’ll give it my complete
consideration.”

“
That is most
pleasing to hear. I was banking on you being sensible. You’re a man
who knows what it is to show loyalty in his duty. I honour you for
that.”

Hans gritted his teeth.
Those two words juxtaposed together took him back to Miss Turner’s
office. How empty those two words seemed: loyalty to whom and for
what kind of honour? He waited as Streiter poured yet another
glass. The tip of his nose was turning red like the skin of a
polished apple.

“
Fräulein
Kohler lives with her
parents near Neubrandenburg,” explained Oberst Streiter. “That is
not not too far away from here. You have a few days leave. Here are
your travelling papers and immediately you get to the station, a
staff car will pick you up and take you to Herr Kohler’s house. He
will be expecting you.” Streiter handed over the papers and
documents. They were contained in a plain brown envelope. As Hans
took them and put them in his briefcase, Streiter held out his
hand. “Good luck, Leutnant.”

“
Herr Kohler
will be informed immediately.” Streiter quickly wrote a few words.
He clicked his fingers for the soldier standing guard at the door
to come forward. Streiter handed him the message. “Contact Herr
Kohler.” The soldier clicked his heels together, took the message
and immediately left the room. Sturmbannführer Ott stepped back to
make a clear passage towards the door. He flicked his hand upwards
mimicking the wave of a king.

“
We wait for
news, Herr Leutnant. Heil Hitler!”

Hans put on his hat and
returned a military salute, as did Streiter. He wondered what his
brother had told these men. Why did Renard have to involve him in
their plans to rule the world? Hans was prepared to do his duty for
his country. He was not happy to have connection with these so
called friends of this brother.

Never-the-less, the week was a pleasant one. Herr Kohler was
an excellent host and kept Party politics out of the conversation.
As for Elisabeth Kohler, he found her most aimiable. She was young,
no more than twenty or twenty-two at the most, yet she came over as
being a sophisticated and charming young lady and one who knew how
to be graceful in her entertainment. Her education had been
thorough for Hans discovered fairly quickly that she was capable of
discussing a wide variety of subjects from music and art to telling
him about all the new and exciting developments taking place in the
town. She spoke of the things the Party was doing to help young
girls in the
Bund deutscher Mädel
group to realise their own destiny and realise
how important it was to obediently do their bit in serving the
Fatherland. Elisabeth Kohler was very much a daughter of the times
and of the Reich.

When Major Streiter rang
from Turpitzufer four days later, Hans was able to tell him that
the meeting had, indeed, been a success.

The following evening, a
despatch rider arrived with orders for Hauptmann Resmel. In two
days time he was to be flown out from Tempelhof to a posting in
North Africa where Generalleutnant Rommel and the Afrika Korps were
ready to receive another man.

CHAPTER
16

North
Africa

Early 1941 a Junkers-52
plane flew to North Africa, a bumpy, sickening flight barely high
enough to miss the rolling waves of the Mediterranean. Had they
flown higher, they could have run into one of the British fighters
who were able to reach these parts from their airstrips on Malta.
Shortly after touchdown, Hauptmann Erwin Hans Resmel stepped
gingerly on to the African continent and was violently
sick.

A staff car arrived,
along with its Italian driver and lookout, whisked him off to his
new posting some 800 kilometres away: as POW interrogator for the
Wehrmacht. It was a long bumpy ride, from the small coastal
airstrip to the Holding Camp. A vehicle had arrived to collect the
Hauptmann with driver and lookout. The heat was terrific and every
half hour, the driver stopped to let the engine of the vehicle cool
off. The three men doused their heads with water and took long
thirst-quenching drinks from the water container. Never had Hans
experienced such heat during daylight hours and even though he wore
a light fabric uniform, his back was continually wet and beads of
sweat ran down his forehead and down his face. He soon discovered
that as soon as the sun set, the clear desert air temperature would
drop like a downed plane and within only a few hours, he would be
shivering from the cold. Coming straight from the freezing
snow-clad winter landscape of Northern Europe to this heat was
torture for his unaccustomed body and Hans wondered how on earth he
was going to adapt to such gruelling conditions.

After almost an hour and
a half, the vehicle turned off down a rough, narrow track and
bounced its way across the sand and rocky terrain towards some
towering rocks in the distance. The car rounded a looming lump of
dark rock, rising straight from the sand-coloured ground and
immediately ahead was a broken-down grey stone wall and a
scattering of small rocks like some giant’s knuckle-bones’ game. A
low barbed-wire fence surrounded a sea of army grey tent roofs. As
the vehicle approached, two armed sentries immediately jumped to
attention and saluted. One checked the vehicle and its occupants
and then nodded to the other who pulled open a flimsy wide wire
gate. The car rolled slowly through and headed towards a mud-brick
and stone building that was flying a swastika flag. What seemed to
be designated as a small courtyard was to the left.

The area had been marked
out by a row of stones, not accurately arranged but rough and hasty
by someone who had little time. He noticed that further on the left
were what appeared to be two other smaller buildings, dented and
shell damaged and missing a complete roof. A tarpaulin had been
thrown over the missing part of the roof and held down by ropes
which had been secured to the ground via several large boulders.
Hans leaned forward and asked his driver if he knew anything about
the place. The man responded, telling him that as far as he was
aware, the place the Hauptmann was indicating was the guards’
quarters. Hans then noticed that to the right of the courtyard were
four rows of rock-grey tents of various shapes and sizes and
immediately in front of their open flaps, was an open area where he
estimated about sixty to eighty battle-weary prisoners stood in
silence, each head mirroring the the direction of the slow moving
car.

As his vehicle got
closer, Hans noticed that the soldiers of the camp were also
guarding a much smaller group of people, possibly a dozen or
fifteen who were standing slightly to one side. They were obviously
not considered to be part of the main body. They were different. He
was not sure but he thought some of them appeared to be nurses for
they had a white covering on their heads. They certainly were not
Arabs.

The car came to a halt
just outside the main building. Hans noted the officer who came out
walked stiffly with a slight limp. He walked over to the vehicle
and stood to attention two metres from the front fender. The driver
skirted round the front of the vehicle to open the door for the
Hauptmann, who stepped out and gave a military salute. The officer
in charge of the camp returned the salute.

“
Oberstleutnant Specht. Welcome. I trust you had a good
journey, Hauptmann Resmel.”

“
Reasonably
quiet, thank you Oberstleutnant.”

“
There are
eighty two held here as of the the present time. The majority are
British. The number of prisoners changes from day to day. You will
notice that we are not as formal here the camps in the Reich,” he
explained. “That’s because we’re only a holding camp as the
majority of our prisoners are wounded men. As soon as they are well
enough to travel we load them on to trucks which transport them
where they are put on ships for Italy and from there they are sent
to POW camps within the Reich. The senior officers are flown out
from the same airfield you arrived in. Our main job is to patch up
the wounded and process any others as quickly as possible so they
can be deported. There has been heavy fighting on the front line so
over the past few weeks we have processed hundreds.”

“
Really?”
Hans walked slowly beside Specht, allowing the Oberstleutnant to
dictate the pace.

“
As well as
the prisoners, we also take any of our own casualties who are too
badly injured to be moved further down the line. Therefore, we are
classed as an evacuation field hospital. We have two of our own
doctors in charge and seven medical assistants. Working alongside
them is a British team.”

“
You keep the
prisoners separate from our own wounded?” Hans asked.

“
No. All the
badly injured are treated and housed together. They do not give any
trouble. However, you may find accommodation here is rather
primitive. This camp is not permanent. It used to be a British
field hospital just behind their front line but when our forces
pushed forwards, they had no time to evacuate everyone and we
inherited their tents together with their supplies and some of its
personnel; mainly nurses. Hence the British medical staff you may
have noticed. They are the group over there.” He pointed to the
small group Hans had noticed upon his arrival.

“
And are
those women I see with white scarves?” asked Hans. He had been told
about British nurses who had been shipped over to Egypt to help
stabilise those wounded on the battle field. With a heavy reliance
on tank warfare, there were many soldiers who had received nasty
burns to their faces and bodies. Hans had seen some of their own
casualties when his plane touched down.