Another Kind of Country (19 page)

His training was brief and on the job. It seemed inevitable that his knowledge of engines would lead him to the Panzer Korps. And he was small, wiry, the right size and shape for the cramped belly of a tank. With the 3rd Panzer Division he
fought his way into the Ukraine. He learned how to catnap, how to keep alert while he napped. He learned that the distance between life and death could not be measured. He was the assistant gunner in his first tank when death came for the chief gunner, pierced through the eye by a stray bullet in the push towards Kirovograd; the following day, he and the assistant driver were the only ones to scramble free when their tank took a direct hit and burst into flames. Trained men were scarce; they made him a sergeant.

He was hardly used to being called ‘Sergeant’ when a field commission followed and he was Lieutenant Reder. He couldn’t remember exactly why or how he had won the Iron Cross. He remembered the long barrel of the Soviet tank poking between the walls of the ruined farmhouse, the thud of the shell on his Panther, the loss of power, the great tank grinding to a halt. A sitting duck. He was the tank commander, he roared at his crew to get out. When he tumbled through the hatch he saw his men bleeding in the snow. In an unremembered madness he ran towards the advancing Soviet tank. He heard the ping and thud of bullets in the dirty snow, wondered why he was still alive, rolled the grenade between the tracks, raised his pistol and fired, saw the Red commander slump in the open turret. Two numbed Soviet tank men exited the crippled tank, their hands in the air. He marched them back to base, handed them over for interrogation. An hour later he saw them lying face down on the ground, skulls blasted open. He remembered their frightened faces as they’d come up out of the tank turret, country fellows with flat faces, not so unlike some of the boys in his own village outside Danzig.

No, you couldn’t write the script for the battlefield. Now he was
Major
Hans Reder, promoted by General Bayerlein himself, waiting to lead the 3rd Panzer Division into a
dawn battle. His mother, milking her cows in the early morning in West Prussia, surely wouldn’t believe it. Hans Reder did believe it. Believing it was part of his job – the job of keeping his men alive.

And keeping himself alive.

The tanks rolled in the darkness. Under the steel tracks of a hundred Panthers the earth shook. Standing in his turret, Reder could sense rather than see the tanks on either side. And he could hear them, a rolling rumble that seemed to come from deep in the frozen belly of the earth.

Ivan could hear the growling earth too; he’d be listening, preparing, priming his artillery. Waiting for them.

On cue, the barrage started.

The shells fell further back, in the ruined city.

Ivan hasn’t got it yet, doesn’t realize we’re all making a hell-for-leather dash for it, thinks it’s just a bit of reorganization behind our lines.

Reder ducked below to check his crew.

‘Everyone OK?’ He had to shout above the engine noise. Nods, thumbs up. Like him, they wouldn’t have slept much. Like him, they were hungry. Like him, they wanted to get out of this godforsaken wasteland.

‘Springtime in Paris, lads!’ The men smiled at his rally. No one in the tank had ever been to Paris but everybody knew about French women.

Reder hadn’t told his group that their job, along with Schmidt’s group, was to swing north, away from the main advance, in an attempt to mislead the Russians. It was a strategy he had agreed on with Schmidt: each tank commander had to be told but there was little to be gained by letting the men know that they ran the risk of being cut off.

He shivered, drew his field cap lower, pulled
his leather gloves tighter. The gloves were a necessary encumbrance: lay your naked fingers against the hull of the tank and you’d leave a patch of your skin on the frozen metal. It was minus 20 degrees, too cold to snow. The sky was lightening.

Reder could see the tanks on either side now, grey monsters growling through the grey darkness. The exhausts of the tanks pumped their fog-like fumes into the frozen air.

No radio contact
. Schmidt was waiting for his signal, saw his wave. Schmidt’s group of four – one tank was frozen solid – swung right, followed by Reder’s group of five. Ahead lay the unending snow, dark and dirty in the breaking dawn. Ahead lay Ivan.

As the sky lightened further in the January dawn, Reder could see that they had pulled away from the main body of the advance.

Now
. He bawled instructions at his gunner, distance and elevation, saw the long barrel move and find its direction and level, heard his own command: ‘Fire!’

The Panther shook as the gun roared. Even with the ear-covers he was almost deafened. It was still too dark to see the explosion in Ivan’s quarters but he heard the boom, thought he heard cries but maybe he imagined that. The other tanks fired at intervals. You had to husband shells, playing the decoy left you exposed.

The response was fierce. Salvo after salvo falling in front, then behind, then stepping towards them, finding the range.

Time to beat it
. Together with Schmidt he’d decided their best prospect of survival was to make for a small forest – under this barrage, did it still exist? – and somehow try to loop round the Russian lines to join up with the main advance.

Daylight had arrived. Dark, dirty light under a dark, dirty sky. A sky that flared with the orange
track of artillery shells. A sky that boomed with the roar of guns, the screaming of men and beasts.

Through the smoke and exploding earth he signalled to Schmidt. He watched the small convoy of tanks make for the questionable shelter of a forest that might no longer exist. At least all nine tanks were still moving.

And then, disaster.

In the split second before the shell hit them, Reder knew:
the one that had your name on it
. He ducked, felt the shell hit, heard screams, the huge bang as metal met metal. He felt the Panther lift, tilt, thump sideways on the ground. And then nothing, blackness.

He came to on the scorched snow. The stricken Panther lay on its side, its tracks shattered, hanging like metal guts from the smoking undercarriage. Somehow he’d been thrown clear. He levered himself into a sitting position, cautiously swung each arm, each leg. All intact, unharmed except for the blood leaking from a gash on his forehead. Intact, but alone and too close to the Russian lines. A hundred metres away another Panther belched smoke and flames. The rest were gone, hidden in the mix of murky light and the fog of battle.
Move
. An early-morning encounter with Ivan was best left for another day.

Reder got to his feet, shook the snow from his leather greatcoat. If Ivan didn’t get him, the icy cold would.

He heard faint moaning from the belly of the tank. Through his gloved hands he could feel the throbbing heat of the metal. The cockpit of the tank was a pit of darkness.

‘Who is it?’ He kept his voice low: sound could carry for miles across the frozen space.

Only groaning answered him. He focused his eyes, saw the hand move slightly in the dark interior. Reder levered himself through the hatch. The smell
hit him, blood and shit and piss. But the driver was alive: Muller, the lad from outside Munich who liked to show photos of his girlfriend, a blonde with a gap between her teeth and a pair of large, well-upholstered breasts. Muller didn’t look to Reder like somebody who’d be taking any interest in any kind of breasts for a long time. He manoeuvred Muller through the hatch, lowered him to the ground.

Blood was leaking from the fellow’s mouth. Reder moved him, saw the huge dark stain on the snow where Muller lay. His shirt and tunic were seared to his back and buttocks; it was hard to know where flesh ended and clothing began. It was obvious that Muller’s groaning wouldn’t last long. But he couldn’t be left like this, haemorrhaging in the snow, waiting for the Russians.

Waiting no longer.

Reder saw the Soviet truck breasting the low rise in front, soldiers spread out on either side of the slow-moving vehicle. No tanks, just a small truck, unguarded except for infantrymen. A small group on a sweep for prisoners and wounded – and you knew what Ivan did to the wounded.

Reder drew his pistol, the dark Walther P38, and put Muller out of his pain.

The shot seemed to galvanize the approaching Russians. Reder saw the soldiers break into a run, heard the barked command to drop his weapon. Reder knew what awaited him, wondered for just a second if he should turn the Walther on himself.
But you never know: where there’s life
. . .

He dropped the weapon and stood waiting with his hands in the air.

The officer in the truck waited until Reder had been given the customary bruising and kicking before ordering the soldiers to stop. On his knees, Reder found himself looking at a pair of knee-high, fur-topped boots. He heard the Russian order him to stand up – Reder had some
grasp of the language: it was vaguely akin to the Polish spoken by the kids back home in West Prussia – but he looked up blankly into the round Slav face. For his troubles he got a kick in the face from one of the fur-topped boots. A pair of Ivans dragged him to his feet to stand facing an angry-looking officer in a fur hat drawn down over his ears.

More snarled instructions.
My coat
, Reder thought, the bastard wants my coat. The soldiers unbuckled his belt, began to undo the buttons of the leather overcoat. Reder snarled at them, swung his arms free and unbuttoned the coat. He heard the officer shout at the soldiers not to strike him, saw the glimmer of a smile cross the Slav features as Reder shook the snow from the coat, folded it neatly, and handed it to the Russian.

‘
Danke
.’ The Russian nodded the single word of German.

‘
Bitte schön
.’ You’re welcome. And you can leave me to freeze but you’ll not have the satisfaction of hearing me cry out in protest or in pain.

One of the soldiers took the folded overcoat from the officer. For a moment Reder met the officer’s gaze, then lowered his eyes.
It doesn’t look like you’re going to get out of this but don’t antagonize the bastard
. Behind the Russian he saw the endless sweep of snow, the clouds of smoke rising over the enemy lines in the near distance. He was wondering if General Bayerlein had managed to break through the Russians when the rifle butt struck him on the head and he collapsed into the darkness of the snow.

The small one-room farmhouse seemed chaotic. A huddle of Red Army officers bent over a map. Three radio operators shouted into field telephones. Two fellows in the corner were smoking, drinking from tin mugs. The smell of burning dung from the fireplace carried on the smoke that
blew back through the open doorway.

Reder was at the front of the line of German prisoners outside the door. Coatless, he tried not to shiver. Smell or no smell, the glimpse of the fire inside was tantalizing. But getting near to it had its own price. The young army lieutenant who was being interrogated was paying that price now. Reder couldn’t hear the questions but he could see and hear the blows struck. Blood trickled from the lieutenant’s nose and mouth; one of his eyes was closed.

The Russian wearing Reder’s coat sat at the interrogators’ table but it was the fellow in the insignia-free grey greatcoat who did most of the talking.
Political, commissar
. Reder had heard about these commissars, the thought police who told their soldiers what to think, what to love and hate.
Like our fucking Gestapo
. He watched the German prisoner’s mouth move, knew that he was reciting the prisoner’s permitted litany of name, rank and number. The commissar shrugged, nodded to the NCO standing beside the table. This time the NCO’s kick in the balls brought the prisoner to his knees.

Reder, watching through the open doorway, shivered despite himself. The Russian guarding the line of prisoners caught the shiver, chuckled, stamped on the frozen snow more enthusiastically. A pair of Russians dragged the lieutenant outside and dumped him, groaning, on the ground.

A smack of the guard’s rifle butt on his shoulder told Reder it was his turn. He felt the eyes of his fellow prisoners follow him as he was shoved into the makeshift HQ.

He did his best to stand upright before the commissar. He was a lean fellow, clean shaven, his fair hair close-cropped. And he asked his questions in the kind of upper-class German that was spoken only by the doctor and the pastor and the schoolmaster in Reder’s home village.

Reder declared his name
and military serial number.

The commissar shook his head, lit a cigarette.

The officer wearing Reder’s leather greatcoat whispered something to the commissar, fingered the lapel of the coat, laughed.

The commissar said something sharp and the laugh died.

‘I am Captain Nikolai Kulakov,’ the commissar went on in German, ‘Commissar to Captain Bukanin’s company.’ He nodded in the direction of the leather greatcoat. ‘I am told that you kindly gave your coat as a gift to Captain Bukanin. The good captain,’ a faint curl of the commissar’s lip, ‘is impressed by his booty. Personally, I have no interest in such plunder. As a fluent German speaker I have been entrusted with the task of obtaining essential intelligence from all prisoners in this sector. I intend to obtain whatever information our prisoners have – even if they don’t know they have it. Now, Major,’ a glance at his notes, ‘Major Reder, there are many prisoners to be interrogated and I don’t have a lot of time. Do we understand each other?’

Reder clicked his heels, bowed.

‘So, a small detachment of your Panzer Division broke away from the main group – what was the plan?’

Reder repeated his name, rank and number.

The commissar nodded. The NCO’s clenched fist smashed into Reder’s jaw.

‘I’m not impressed by your bowing and heel-clicking, Major Reder.’ The commissar drew deeply on his cigarette, tossed the butt into the smoking fire. ‘You have information about your Third Panzer Division which is crucial to us and I mean to have that information. If
you
don’t give it to me, somebody else will.’ Kulakov picked a shred of tobacco from between his thin lips, studied the tiny black
flake for a moment before flicking it from his fingers on to the earthen floor. ‘The choice is yours, Major Reder.’