The End of War - A Novel of the Race for Berlin - [World War II 02] (65 page)

Ilya walks behind the squad, pleased with their execution. Outside, the rest of the platoon keeps up the drumbeat against the upper floors. More men flow across the busted transom. Ilya’s collarbone aches. He works the stiff shoulder.

Dying flares illuminate a dozen German bodies on the first floor, killed by Misha’s grenades. At least twenty men from Ilya’s platoon are now in the building. Explosions sound farther in the interior. The first floor will be secure in a few more minutes. The rest of the Germans are trapped upstairs. Five men of the platoon point their guns up the stairs, screaming in Russian: Drop your weapons! Come down, hands up! The Germans scream back. No one understands the tongues, but everyone here knows this fight is decided. That doesn’t mean no one else will die.

Outside, the squads stop firing. The yelling inside the house halts. Ilya hears the rhythm of grenades and rifle fire from the other buildings around the circle. Each one plays out a different violence.

Misha steps in through the doorway. The last fading flare bathes him in scarlet. Smoke trails off him, his scar glows redder than his face. Misha looks like a demon.

There is a big, smoldering hole in the chest of his padded coat.

He drudges up to Ilya, gritting his teeth with every step.

Ilya asks, “What happened to you?”

Misha pats his hands over the hole. Scorched bits of cloth fall away.

“I landed on a fucking flare. It hurts.”

Misha puffs his cheeks, tired and sore. He treads to the foot of the stairs.

Ilya calls after him. “Anton Danielovich?”

Misha shakes his head.

He goes to stand behind the men aiming their guns up the stairs. Ilya gives a corporal an order: Bring the rest of the platoon inside. He’ll arrange half of them along the rear windows facing the traffic circle to take up firing lines at the other buildings. The rest of the platoon need to be ready to rush the second floor.

Ilya moves beside Misha.

“Tell them to come down or we’ll kill every one of them.”

Misha shouts in German.

A hysterical voice from above answers.

“Nein! Heil Hitler!”

Misha is visibly disgusted at this. He slumps, turns to Ilya.

“What the ... ? Did you hear that?”

He reaches up to Ilya’s sore shoulder to pull down the strap of the submachine gun. Ilya lets it slide off him.

Misha points the barrel up the stairwell. He pulls the trigger, unleashing a four-second burst, sixty rounds. This shreds the wall at the head of the steps.

Into the echo and tumbling plaster, Misha hollers up,
“Idioten!”

He stuffs the weapon back into Ilya’s hands. The barrel warms.

“Go get them, Ilya.”

Misha steps aside. Ilya unbelts two grenades. He draws two more from the men around him. He’ll give a signal. The men will fire their guns into the ceiling, pushing the Germans away from the stairwell. Ilya will dash up the steps, heave the grenades and duck, then lead a rush into the upstairs hallway. Once established on the second floor, the platoon will move room by room like they did on the ground level, killing every one of them as was promised. If anyone is on the third floor, the same will follow.

Ilya takes a firm hold on the first grenade. The others he cradles in his left arm. He sets his foot on the first step. The tread squeaks. Twelve men raise their rifles as though to fire a salute.

Ilya climbs the second and third steps. He drops his hand to fling the first grenade. He expects every second to see a German grenade bounce the opposite direction.

He stops. Voices scream in the rooms above. The language is addressed not at the Reds below but at each other, in vicious argument.

A shot rings out. Ilya crouches by instinct. Another shot. Ilya slips his thumb through the grenade’s pin, it will pull out with the fling. Men and arms rustle below him. The platoon readies to fire into the ceiling at his signal.

Upstairs, a door opens. Heavy footsteps drag over the floor to the edge of the stairwell. Ilya glares upward, ready to act, but his machine gun is not in his hands, his mitts are full with the grenades. He’s a sitting duck if the Germans counterattack now.

Something crosses the banister over his head. A hand. Then an arm and a head. Ilya freezes. Footsteps shuffle above. Three men appear. Ilya locks eyes on them.

One of them leans over the railing, as though to speak to Ilya. But he leans too far. He is limp. Blood spills over his chin. His feet fly up behind him, the other two dump him over the railing onto the steps. The body lands and tumbles a few steps, bumping and jumbled to stop beside Ilya’s knees. The two heads beyond the railing look down for a moment, then disappear.

The body is an SS major.

“Wir kommen,”
a voice calls down.
“Ja? Wir kommen unten. Nicht schiessen, bitte. Bitte.”

Ilya hooks the grenades on his belt. He takes the PPSh in hand. Over his head, metal and wood clack as weapons are dropped. Ilya stands. He gives the SS officer’s corpse a nudge with his boot and lets the body cascade the rest of the trip. At the bottom, the men sling it out a window with the rest of the German dead.

Ilya mounts the steps, his gun level. Enemy soldiers crowd the hallway, hands high on their helmets. In the hall he nods to the ones in front, the two who shot the Nazi fanatic who would trade their lives for nothing, for Hitler. More than twenty soldiers surrender.

While the prisoners walk past him, Ilya looks at their boots. He doesn’t want their faces in his memory beside Anton Danielovich. He’ll have these Germans bunched into a corner and guarded until they can be turned over in the morning. Then he’ll have the body of the fast boy brought inside and covered.

Now that the first building has fallen, the other two will collapse. Ilya’s platoon takes up positions and begins firing at them from this vulnerable angle. A few leftover flares are shot across the circle as well.

The battle churns around the ring for another hour. Misha and Ilya do nothing more. They slump side-by-side in an empty room and sleep.

Zhukov’s forces barge in at dawn. The three buildings at the head of the road have been captured and form a protected bridgehead into Seelow. The company is fed and reinforced. Tanks stream past, spreading into the rest of the town, setting off melees on every block. Tank crews run into German houses and emerge carrying bedsprings; they hitch these to the noses and flanks of their tanks. Someone figured out the coils will deflect
Panzerfaust
rockets.

At midmorning, Chuikov’s artillery bombards the Heights again to soften the Germans for another massed infantry charge. Out on the muddy Oderbruch and against the slopes, several thousand lie uncollected.

By early evening the defense of Seelow is teetering. Only pockets of diehard resistance remain. Unorganized Soviet troops and vehicles jam every corner of the town. Looting begins. Prisoners are herded in droves into the streets, where they collapse on the cobblestones.

The following day, the last defense buckles. The Soviet army stands across the length of the Heights. The plain below shows the marks of the battle for it.

But the road to Berlin is thrown open.

~ * ~

April 20, 1945, 6:50
a.m.

Prime Minister’s residence at Chequers

Buckinghamshire, England

beyond churchill’s bedroom window, sunlight spreads over
British fields. Already, tillermen are at work. Cows trundle well-worn paths to the barns. Village chimneys smoke when the night’s ashes are stoked. Churchill rolls his head on his pillow to look out over an England that Hitler did not defeat.

Today is Hitler’s birthday. Fifty-six years old. He wonders if the little corporal is buried so deep in his Berlin bunker, he doesn’t even see this morning? If he does, what does he look on? Surely not farmers and cattle, not peace or anything sweet. Churchill hopes Hitler gazes out over his own ruined nation and weeps.

A tray of quails’ eggs, bangers, and rye toast rests on a cart beside the bed. Churchill does not drink fruit juice, too acidic for his stomach. No coffee either. Chilled champagne first thing in the morning. He pats his belly beneath the silk pajamas, under the goose-down comforter. It’s like a trained and temperamental pet, his digestion. Spoiled rotten, perhaps, but at least he’s accustomed to it.

A glass has been poured for him. Not the slender dinner-table flute but a fat breakfast mug. He raises the champagne to the window.

“Your health, you bastard. Drop dead in your bloody tracks this morning.”

Churchill sips. He pulls aside the comforter and drops his feet into his monogrammed slippers waiting beside the bed. The cart is pulled close. He tucks a napkin over his lap.

“Ah, the old gang,” he says aloud, taking up the silverware. “They’re falling apart.”

Hitler will indeed be dead soon. The Russian assault has sealed that deal.

Mussolini is on the lam; reports say he’s trying to get into Switzerland with his mistress. Italian partisans are looking for him. He’ll likely swing when they nab him.

Roosevelt is gone. Poor bugger. A young man.

Well, Churchill thinks, looks like it’s just me and Joe left.

There is a new member, Roosevelt’s replacement.

What of this new President, Harry Truman?

Harry. That’s a solid name. Not like Franklin, or Winston, Adolf or Benito. Just Harry.

Churchill dices through the membrane of a sausage and forks the piece onto his tongue. The zip of spiced pork gets his mouth going. On the wall beside him a rectangle of tangerine light is pinned to the wall. Hitler’s birthday will come up clear and clement. A good bombing day. The Americans have decided to make their next-to-final visit to Berlin today, a one-thousand-plane armada to drop off some presents for the Führer. The RAF will follow with afternoon and evening raids. The Americans will finish up tomorrow morning. That will be the last of it from the West.

Berlin. What a trebly hard fate the city has suffered. To be first made the Nazi capital. Then destroyed as systematically as any city since Carthage. And finally to be handed over to the mercies of the Soviets.

Over his eggs and toast, Churchill ponders Truman. He’s never met the new man. Not even spoken to him on the telephone. Churchill wanted to attend Roosevelt’s funeral, had ordered an airplane, but affairs of state in England prevented him. It was clearly the place of the Prime Minister to deliver the tribute to the late President before Parliament and the world. Roosevelt’s death was sudden; schedules and debates in government over pivotal wartime matters could not be altered. For the moment, Churchill satisfies himself exchanging telegrams with Truman, judging the new

President’s mettle through alternate eyes and ears of those who’ve encountered him, principally Ambassador Lord Halifax and Anthony Eden.

The first reports on Truman are good. He appears resolute and fearless, not the sort who’ll be bullied. On the issue of Soviet treatment of Poland, Truman signals that Stalin’s attitude is less than hopeful, but insists the West should “have another go at him.” Halifax depicts Truman as a President whose “methods will be quite different from FDR,” describing a more organized and hands-on approach, relying less on personal relationships and more on responsibility and accountability. Interestingly, Truman’s hobby is the history of military strategy, on which he seems widely read. Halifax was surprised one evening at the depth of Truman’s knowledge on Hannibal’s campaigns. Eden’s latest telegram portrays Truman as
honest and friendly. He is conscious of but not overwhelmed by his new responsibilities. His references to you could not have been warmer. I believe we shall have in him a loyal collaborator, and I am much heartened by this first conversation.