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‘Hartmann, hold your position,’ Johann called. ‘Return fire!’

He stood up, aimed and fired his MP40 machine pistol at the first thing that moved among the trees ahead, and then he ran through the glistening ferns towards
Schütze
Hartmann. Behind him the buzz of the MG34 began to decimate the woodland at a rate of over 800 rounds per minute.

Two dead
Kameraden
greeted Johann’s eyes as he stepped out from the ferns. One was the medic he had called for when the shooting began. Across the clearing where these men had fallen, he could see the young
Schütze
. He was crouching behind a broad tree trunk that had been splintered time and again by enemy fire. Hartmann, armed with a
Gewehr
98 bolt-action rifle, stopped shooting and turned to Johann with cold fear in his eyes. At that same instant a heavy-set enemy soldier came screaming from the trees to Johann’s left with his bayonet fixed. He had flanked Hartmann’s position and was now charging straight at him.

The
Gewehr
98 was a long rifle with a five-round clip. It was well suited to the typically taller men of the
Leibstandarte
, and it was undeniably a useful weapon in the hands of a marksman, but it was less effective in close-range combat, especially as
Schütze
Hartmann had not thought to fix his bayonet. Fortunately, Johann’s MP40 was very effective at such close-quarter fighting. By the time the charging ‘Ivan’ saw him, it was too late. Johann had unleashed a hail of bullets into the man’s chest, and he fell just a few feet in front of Hartmann.

‘Fall back!’ Johann ordered. ‘
Schnell
!’

It was plain to see that they were heavily outnumbered. They had perhaps encountered a small reconnaissance unit much like their own, but being more used to the conditions, he doubted that their main division was far behind. He knew their position would soon be overrun.

Hartmann arrived beside Johann, bent double to keep low. ‘The rest of the unit are pinned down.’

‘Where?’

Hartmann pointed off into the tangle of branches and the dripping, rain-soaked leaves. Johann grabbed him by his webbing and pulled him back through the ferns to the machine gun crew and the MG34 that had now fallen silent in the absence of any soldiers left in the immediate area to shoot. He took the MG34 from the hands of the
Schütze
whose white-knuckled fingers were still clenched tightly around the handle.

‘
Sturmmann
Sachs, follow me. The rest of you fall back to the farmhouse we passed before we reached the wood.’

Hartmann nodded. ‘
Jawohl
,
Obersturmführer
.’

‘If we don’t make it back,’ Johann said, ‘try to hold out there until support arrives. It will give you cover and provide good visibility of the surrounding countryside.’

Johann and the
Sturmmann
, another old hare like himself, who had been with Johann since Operation Barbarossa began, headed off with the MG34 to the sound of the gunfire that was now constant. When they drew close enough to see what remained of his unit, and the whites of the enemy’s eyes, he dropped behind a tree stump and sat with the MG34 resting between his legs on its bipod. Sachs readied the ammunition, connecting another belt of bullets for sustained firing, and Johann pulled back the bolt, ready to fire. A Soviet bullet disturbed the woodland debris beside him, spitting up twigs. He opened fire and the man fell, but he was soon replaced by another until it seemed that every tree in the woodland had an enemy soldier hiding behind it.

‘Fall back!’ Johann called to his
Kameraden
. ‘Stay low.’

Beside him,
Sturmmann
Sachs opened fire with his P08, the pistol issued to the soldiers of the
Leibstandarte
known as the Luger. An ‘Ivan’ had tried to charge their position from the cover of the trees, but he had fallen before he reached half way.

Johann’s assessment of the situation was dire. He had counted two more of his
Kameraden,
lying lifeless on the woodland’s wet undergrowth. Only three now held the position they had been forced to defend when the encounter with the Soviets began, and the enemy, with their increasing numbers, now appeared to be growing more confident. Johann unleashed another burst of bullets as the first of his men crawled towards him. The second man followed soon after, and the third, clearly in a hurry now to join his
Kameraden,
panicked and ran.

It was to his end.

The
Schütze’s
agonising scream drew Johann’s attention in time to see the blood spatter from the exit wound in the man’s chest just before he fell. Without a moment’s pause, Johann led the men out of the death trap they had unwittingly stumbled into, retreating fast towards the ferns, pursued all the way by a hail of bullets. Random shots were returned, but Johann and what was left of his small reconnaissance troop were firing blind. There was no time to take proper aim. Just before they reached the cover of the ferns, Johann felt a tug at his right thigh and he knew he’d been hit. He gritted his teeth as the pain hit him, and he was forced to remind himself of the maxim that had been drummed into him during his time at the training school at Bad Tölz.

‘Pain is in the brain,’ he uttered to himself, biting hard as he threw the heavy MG34 ahead of him and dove into the ferns after it. He didn’t know if he was going to make it out of that woodland alive, but he did know that if he were to stand any chance he had to stop his leg from bleeding. When he reached the fallen tree he had first taken cover behind, he stopped and quickly removed his belt.

‘Keep going!’ he told his
Kameraden
, waving them on. ‘
Sturmmann
, join up with the rest of the unit at the farmhouse.’

‘We won’t leave you,
Obersturmführer
. You know what those Ivans will do to you if they capture you.’

Johann knew only too well. He had heard the stories and had seen the evidence first hand. Captured
Waffen
-
SS
soldiers were often tortured and mutilated before they were allowed to die at the hands of the Soviet Army, who had not signed the Geneva Convention. In some cases, as he had seen for himself, prisoners were subjected to the
Handschuhe
torture, whereby their hands were placed in boiling water until they turned white, and then the skin would be cut around their wrists before being pulled from their flesh. Only then, and if he were lucky, would the soldier be shot in the head to end his suffering.

Johann looked up at the faces of the men before him and knew it would serve no purpose to order them to leave him. It made him hurry all the more. He looped his belt around his thigh as shots were exchanged. As he suspected, the enemy was not holding back. He pulled his belt as tight as he could bear it and tried to stand, hoping that the bullet had passed clean through his leg and not hit the bone. It would have shattered it if it had, making it all but impossible to put any weight on it.
Sturmmann
Sachs helped Johann to his feet as their few
Kameraden
continued to fend off the enemy.

‘I can make it,’ Johann said.

Sachs, a big man even among a division of
Leibstandarte
soldiers, who were typically chosen for their size and strength, picked up the MG34. As the unit continued its retreat, he sprayed what bullets remained on the ammunition belt into the trees, sweeping left to right to keep the enemy down, hoping to buy them enough distance to make it out of there. But the Soviet bullets kept coming, even if for now the soldiers firing them did not.

The air was alive with the fizzing sound of hot lead and splintering wood. When the MG34’s bolt clicked back and stayed back, indicating that the ammunition belt was spent, Sachs dropped the weapon from hands that now seemed too weak to hold it. He wheeled around, and Johann saw that the torso of his camouflage smock was glistening with blood. He appeared to have been shot several times, but had somehow managed to remain standing and firing until his ammunition ran out. A moment later Sachs closed his eyes and slumped to his knees before falling flat onto his face. Dead.

Johann fired several shots in anger before he turned away from the fallen
Sturmmann
. It was easy to blame himself for his death, and he did so without question. Sachs was another
Kamerad
to add to every other who had died under his command.

‘
Gehorsam bis in den Tod
,’ he told himself. It was the oath they had all sworn to stand by: obedience unto death.

Shortly after Sachs fell, the shooting stopped. His heroic act of bravery had bought Johann and his few remaining men the distance they needed in order to lose themselves from the enemy’s sight. Now it became a matter of remaining unseen. They trod carefully through the trees, minding every twig and fallen branch so as to make as little sound as possible, while maintaining as much haste as they could manage. Johann doubted the Soviets would give up the chase so soon, but he was to be proved wrong. At least, the attack soon took on a different form.

‘Take cover!’

Johann heard the mortar shell screaming like a banshee over the woodland canopy. It landed ahead with a thump that was followed by exploding steel. Trees began to creak and fall, crushing everything in their path, adding to the danger.

‘They’re finding their range!’ Johann called. His eyes darted here and there, looking for shelter, but there were no trenches here—no foxholes to scurry into. Johann knew they had to clear the trees, and quickly. The next shell would fall shorter. It would not take the Soviets long to find their target.

Another shell went over, this one to the right. Then another landed to their left. To escape the trees Johann realised they would have to pass through this killing zone, and yet to remain where they were, as the enemy advanced on their position, offered no better odds. Around him, Johann’s unit had frozen to the spot, unsure what to do next, looking to him for guidance—for leadership. All Johann could think to do was to wait for the next shell to fall ahead of them, and then run after it, hoping the enemy would not fire so soon at the same spot. It was a gamble, but the time to make a decision was fast running out.

‘When I run, follow after me,’ he told his men.

Another shell erupted, and it was so close that the sound rang in Johann’s ears. It was to his right. He waited. Then another shell screamed overhead.

‘Ready!’

It thumped down and exploded barely more than fifty metres ahead. Johann ran towards it, limping most of the way. He was quickly overtaken by his
Kameraden
.

‘Keep going!’ he called. ‘Don’t stop until you’re clear of the trees.’

He reached the site of the last shell and was slowed further by sharp and ragged splinters of wood where several trees had fallen over themselves. The pain in his leg was agonising, but he tried to shut it out.
Pain is in the brain . . . Pain is in the brain . . .

The last sound he wanted to hear at that moment reached his ears then and he glanced up just as the whistling stopped. He knew that was bad. A second later the shell burst ahead of him and he felt something thump into his chest with such force that it spun him round, stopping him in his tracks. He felt suddenly dizzy. He sat down on the trunk of a fallen tree and tried to make out the scene before him, but his vision was blurred. For a moment he had no idea where he was. Then his arms were raised and two of his
Kameraden
were beside him, propping him up onto his feet, which they began to drag through the debris.

‘It’s
Schütze
Hartmann,
Obersturmführer
. Can you hear me?’

The voice sounded distant and eerily hollow. ‘Hartmann?’

Johann recalled that he had ordered the young
Schütze
and the rest of his unit to retreat to the cover of the farmhouse they had passed. He imagined that he had chosen to remain at the edge of the woodland to provide cover for their return. He had disobeyed an order, but Johann was glad. He had to admire the young
Schütze’s
initiative and bravery.

‘We’ve seen the main division,
Obersturmführer.
They’re close.’

As his men continued to drag him along, Johann felt so light-headed that it was as if he were being borne on wings that would carry him home. No, not home. To Ava. He felt himself trying to smile as he saw her face—her blonde hair pinned up as it had been when he first saw her, her pale complexion and her button nose, and the warmth in her blue-grey eyes that he hoped he would someday see again.

He began to drift, seeing only shadows around him, and the soft green light of the woodland canopy, which every so often seemed to pass over his eyes and close them. He had been such a fool about Ava. He knew that now. The last time he had seen her—when he had met her at the Park Cafe in Munich over a year ago now—he had intended to ask her to marry him. But his courage, which had since been proven time and time again on the battlefield, had abandoned him that day. They had talked, and they had even held hands once or twice, but the ring his friend had given him—the ring he had so many times imagined slipping onto Ava’s finger—had remained in his pocket all the while they were together, and it was still there now.

Johann thought about the ring again—Volker’s ring—and was suddenly overcome with worry. In her letters, Ava had told Johann that Volker had been visiting her, not just that once to apologise for his behaviour the evening they had dined at the Osteria Bavaria, but several times since. Had Volker taken his failure to act as a sign that he no longer desired to marry Ava?

Johann feared he had, but it was a matter he was unable to dwell on. The shadows around him suddenly grew darker until all thought and sensation left him, and he was aware of nothing more.

Chapter Fourteen

Vienna, Austria. September 1941.

Johann Langner awoke to the familiar sights and smells of the hospital ward that, as for several of his
Waffen
-
SS
Kameraden,
had been his home for the past few weeks. His bed, the most comfortable he had known in many months, was in a corner of the ward beside a sunlit window that looked down over a busy street and out across the city rooftops towards the Danube. In the bed next to his was a
Scharführer
from
SS-Wiking
Division called Ernst Köhler. The Sergeant Major was an older man, close to thirty, and he had become Johann’s jovial companion since he’d been brought in—jovial, despite losing both of his legs during a Soviet mortar bombardment near the Ukrainian city of Tarnopol in one of his Division’s early engagements on the
Ostfront
.