The Cross of Iron (21 page)

Then a pain flashed through him that swallowed up all the other hundred pangs, that cut like a red-hot iron into his body. There broke from him a scream that no longer resembled anything human, that came down like a club upon the women’s heads, so that they started back and held their ears. They clapped their hands over their ears, but the scream continued. A bestial roar, it reverberated horribly between the walls, on and on. Until one of the women shook off the paralysis of horror and with both feet at once jumped upon the bellowing, twitching, bleeding body, and then the others sprang upon him, stamping and screaming and kicking until the last twitching and the last whimpering was crushed out under their heavy boots. When they at last were done with him, and had filed out of the room, a ray of sunlight fell through the window, and the feet of the battered body lay in a pool of flickering light.

CAPTAIN STRANSKY HAD
decided after all not to put off his call upon Major Vogel. He set out that same evening. The 3rd Battalion’s combat headquarters was located north of Hill 121. 4, in the centre of a meadow that sloped off to the west. A small brook, its banks lined by dense shrubbery, flowed close by the group of bunkers. When Stransky opened the door to the commander’s bunker, he saw by the candlelight that Vogel already had a visitor. Kiesel was sitting across the table from him.

Vogel stood up. ‘Well I’ll be damned!’ he exclaimed. ‘What a surprise.’

Stransky smiled, trying to conceal his discomfort at the presence of Kiesel. ‘I hope I’m not intruding,’ he said.

‘Nonsense.’ Vogel shook hands with him vigorously. ‘I was expecting you yesterday; glad to see you any time.’ He busied himself in a corner of the bunker and then placed several bottles on the table.

Kiesel smacked his lips. ‘My respects, Vogel. Producing a 1937 Moselle here in the southernmost corner of Russia. Keep that up and you’ll be besieged with visitors.’

The major gave vent to a booming laugh as he uncorked one of the bottles. ‘Just takes a little organizing talent, gentlemen. Comes natural to an old soldier like me.’ He filled the glasses. ‘Then again, a bottle of Moselle is no more absurd in this region than we ourselves. Your health!’

They touched glasses. Stransky sipped the wine delicately. ‘Splendid, Major,’ he said. ‘It’s a long while since these parched lips have tasted nectar like this.’

The major nodded complacently and dropped a pack of cigarettes on the table. As they lit up, Kiesel, who had arrived only a few minutes before Stransky, looked around the bunker. The staccato light of the candles cast the men’s shadows on the rough boarding of the walls. The major’s bed, crudely knocked together out of wooden slats, was close to the door. At the head of it stood a chest, probably containing clothing. The major’s submachine-gun, cartridge-belt and raincoat hung from nails.

Stransky puffed hard on his cigarette, which was not burning well. When it caught evenly at last, he crossed his legs and turned to the major. ‘Incidentally, Major Vogel, why does our presence in the bridgehead strike you as absurd?’

Vogel’s massive head, capped with snowy, close-cropped hair, jerked up. He pushed his glass a little to one side. ‘I can tell you that, Herr Stransky,’ he boomed. ‘If we have to go on playing fire department, there’s no sense in our being several hundred miles away from the heart of the fire. Which is where we are now. That’s what makes our presence here absurd.’

Stransky frowned. ‘I don’t quite follow you. After all, we are here to carry out a highly important mission. It seems to me that your opinion springs from a certain prejudice. After all’—he smiled politely—‘even a force that has been cut off has a function to perform. Wouldn’t you say so, Herr Kiesel? Or perhaps you can tell me where our presence would be more useful. It seems to me that the tactical importance of the bridgehead is not open to question.’

Before Kiesel could reply the major’s fist pounded down on the table. ‘Tactical importance? You must mean decorative importance.’ He leaned forward, propping both elbows on the table. ‘You must be asleep,’ he said rudely. ‘Consider the events of this campaign up to the present day.’ He laughed cuttingly. ‘It’s like the staggering of a blind man, going in one direction until he fetches up against a stone wall, then turning and back-tracking. Left, right, here, there. You know what it amounts to?’ The major’s ponderous figure seemed to swell. His eyes flashed wrathfully under his bushy brows. Stransky watched him uncomfortably. ‘I’ll tell you what it is. Sheer waste of strength. Waste. Muddle. Criminal stupidity.’ Angrily he picked up his glass and took a long swig.

Stransky smiled superciliously. ‘That’s a matter of opinion,’ he replied coolly. ‘I do not doubt that you speak from a wealth of experience. But remember, please, that warfare has changed radically since the First World War. We no longer smash forward head-on until we’re covered with blood—as at Verdun, for example; instead we seek out the enemy’s weak spots. That takes mobility.’ ‘Bah!’ Vogel swished his hand through the air. ‘Spare me that rubbish. The weak spots, you say? We’ve picked out the strong points, not the weak spots. Prestige, big names, even if whole armies are chewed up. Look here.’ He raised his hands and began counting off on his fingers. ‘First the boil at Leningrad, then the bloody nose at Moscow, then the amputation at Stalingrad, and finally the carve-up of the Caucasus. And what have we achieved? Nothing, not a damn thing! Or do you think we have?’

Stransky suppressed an acrid retort. The major looked so choleric that it seemed wiser to him at the moment not to carry the argument too far.

The major refilled their glasses. ‘What I’d like to know is what we’ve done wrong,’ he said tightly.

‘We have only continued what was begun by others,’ Kiesel retorted. ‘And now, if I am not mistaken, we are on the point of introducing our successors and stepping off the stage of world history.’

‘You mean the peoples of the east,’ the major asked.

Kiesel nodded.

Stransky smiled sourly. ‘I’m more surprised than impressed,’ he commented. ‘It really astonishes me to hear such words from the lips of an active officer. After all, you have seen these Russians. How can you imagine these barbarians being capable of taking over from us?’

Kiesel grinned. ‘More easily than you think. You must remember that the history of a nation is not written in decades but in centuries and millennia. Communism, for instance, is nothing but the trumpet blast awakening the eastern peoples from their enchanted sleep. In a few years it will seem obvious that it was only a brief part of their evolution, though a necessary one.’

The major seemed to feel that the conversation was reaching a danger point. To change the subject he asked about the 2nd Company’s missing platoon. ‘You’ve had no word yet?’

 Uncomfortably, Stransky said he had not. The major shook his head gravely. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to write them off. There doesn’t seem much hope now. How many men were there?’

‘Eleven,’ Stransky replied reluctantly.

Vogel nodded sombrely. ‘That few won’t get far. I know how it is, was in a jam like that myself once. During the First World War, at Soissons. Damnable business, I tell you. When we started out we were a whole company; eight men came back.’ He lapsed into morbid meditation, staring gloomily into space. Stransky seized the opportunity to steer the talk away from the platoon. Turning to Kiesel he asked: ‘What do they think of the situation up at Division?’

‘The general situation or our own?’

‘Our own, of course.’

‘The Russian preparations indicate a large-scale offensive. Our intelligence people in Krymskaya report the arrival of more and more new divisions.’

‘Then I imagine we’re going to be in for something,’ the major remarked. ‘But we’ll survive this
bataille
too. At any rate they won’t drive me out of my trench,’ he added belligerently.

Kiesel smiled. ‘Spoken like a man!’ He had heard a great deal about the battle-scarred old fellow’s courage. ‘As a matter of fact, we have no choice. If the Russians break through anywhere, we’re done for.’

Stransky nodded animatedly. ‘I quite agree. Just today I spoke in precisely those terms to my company leaders. We must hold the bridgehead and we will hold it. That is my firm conviction.’

‘Certainly we will.’ Kiesel’s mouth twisted bitterly. ‘We will defend ourselves like madmen, convert the entire bridgehead into a huge mass grave, and all to the end that on X-day we can voluntarily withdraw from the heroically defended soil because the general tactical situation requires us to pull out.’

‘You paint too black a picture,’ Stransky objected. ‘Why are you unwilling to see the positive aspects of our situation? We are pinning down strong enemy forces and relieving the crucial points of the front.’

Kiesel said coldly: ‘You are talking in romantic terms, Captain Stransky. It is ridiculous to imagine that we here can ever make any important contribution toward deciding the issue of the war.’ 

‘Bravo!’ the major bellowed. ‘Really now, Stransky, you’re talking sheer rot. Every single man we lose is a useless sacrifice.’ He had worked himself into a rage, and his eyes flashed fiercely at Stransky, who looked sulky and offended.

Kiesel tried to save the situation. ‘Captain Stransky is entitled to his point of view. It seems to me’—he forced a polite smile—‘it seems to me that it is good, for all our sakes, to have officers in our midst who still contrive to see some sense even in a lost position. I wish I could take a similar attitude. It would make many things easier.’

Growling, the major applied himself to his glass again. The major seemed to recall his duties as a host; he took a conciliatory tone. ‘Good Lord, Stransky, don’t set your jaw like a steel trap. I was just shooting my mouth off for a change. No reason for you to get huffy.’ He turned to Kiesel. ‘It’s the ordinary soldier I’m most sorry for. You know, he’s the unluckiest invention of this twentieth century of ours. I think Captain Stransky will have to admit that, at least.’

Stransky had meanwhile recovered his aplomb; his customary superior smile covered his face like a mask. ‘I don’t see your conclusion,’ he said. ‘The fact remains that every soldier suffers privations in wartime. I really don’t see why the German soldier is worse off than any other.’

‘You don’t see that?’ Again the major pounded the table so hard that the glasses jumped. ‘I’ll explain the reason to you, by God. Our men no longer have any ideals. They are not fighting for world freedom or for the culture of the west, nor are they fighting for the kind of government they want. They’re fighting for nothing but their naked lives, for their bedeviled, unfortunate flesh. If you don’t see that-’ He fell silent abruptly.

Stransky regarded him coldly. ‘Is that nothing?’ he asked. 

‘Yes, it is a great deal,’ Kiesel interposed. ‘But it isn’t everything. Otherwise our men would have deserted long ago. Perhaps’ —he turned to the major—‘perhaps I may add something to your line of argument. Flesh is patient, as paper is patient. It will suffer anything that is on it. It can be used, and it can be abused. And it has been abused because it has been lured with the bait of so-called ideals; it has been killed, and it has been allowed to kill until it seems to exist only for its own sake. But behind all that there is the common soldier’s fundamental decency which doesn’t permit him to leave his comrades in the lurch. And there is also a last glimmering spark of hope that everything may still turn out all right in the end.’

‘In the present situation of our nation,’ Stransky said frigidly, ‘such talk borders on treason. I am a soldier and as such it is my duty to subordinate my own ideas to the interests of my country.’

Kiesel smiled easily. ‘We are all doing our duty, Captain Stransky. I hope that history will some day recognize the dreadful battle which responsible German officers have had with their consciences.’ He leaned forward with an expression of intense seriousness. ‘To fight for a conviction does not require heroism. Heroism begins where the meaninglessness of the sacrifice becomes the last, the only message the dead can leave behind. Never forget that, Captain Stransky.’

There was a brief silence. One of the candles had burned down and the wick, sagging into the liquid wax, snuffed itself out. The major sat with clasped hands, staring into space. Suddenly he stood up. ‘Getting late,’ he said tightly. ‘I must take another look around the positions, if you will excuse me.’

Kiesel drained his glass and slowly rose to his feet. Stransky followed his example. The major accompanied them to the door and shook hands with Kiesel. Then he turned to Stransky, his face set. ‘In this regiment,’ he said forbiddingly, ‘there are no traitors, only human beings endowed with reason. Some use their reason and some don’t. To say this may be dialectic and it may be tactless, but that is how I feel about it. Good evening, gentlemen.’

When the door had closed behind them, the two officers looked at one another. Stransky, quivering with rage, said: ‘An impossible person.’

‘Do you think so?’ Kiesel retorted. ‘My personal opinion of Major Vogel was formed long ago, and I have seen no reason to revise it. He is a first-rate soldier of the old school, and an admirable person in addition. It is interesting to hear your opinion of him. Good evening.’ He bowed formally and strode off.

Stransky started up the hill, possessed by a fury which made him incapable of any consecutive thoughts. The land lay motionless at his feet, dark and still as a beast with a crooked back, and Stransky felt cold shivers prickling his skin. The rude comforts of his bunker seemed very good to him and he hastened down the south slope. Half-way down he stopped abruptly. Out of the stars broke a whining noise that swelled rapidly to a fearful roar. Stransky threw himself to the ground instantly and pillowed his face on his arm. The shell exploded with a shattering boom. A fiery blast of wind swept along the ground, carrying with it the ugly odour of burnt powder. Stransky lay numbed, holding his breath and waiting faint with fear for the next impact. When the whining in the distance came again, he dug his finger-tips into the sandy soil and closed his eyes. But this time the whooshing sound passed high over his head and ended in a dull rumble beyond the hill. Then all was quiet. These were the first shells to fall upon Hill 121.4.