The Bloody Road to Death (32 page)

In a short time he lands in Prague. He bounds up the steps of the Bülow Hospital. His face is chalk-white and his eyes staring
.

Two doctors and a nurse attempt to stop him entering the operating theatre, but he pushes them brutally aside and kicks open the door
.

‘
Get out,’ he hisses to the doctors, who are about to commence the operation
.

Open-mouthed they stare at the little man in the mouse-grey uniform
.

‘
Get out!’ he repeats
.

‘
But Herr Reichsführer,’ stammers the chief surgeon. ‘The general is under anaesthesia!
’

‘
Wake him up. I must speak to him immediately
.’

‘
Impossible,’ answers the chief surgeon, shaking his head. ‘It will be three or four hours before the Reichsführer can speak to the general
.’

‘
He is to be conscious within at most three hours so that I can speak to him. If he is not you will be executed for sabotage,’ screams Himmler in a piercing voice and rushes from the operating theatre
.

SS-Obergruppenführer Frank comes hastily down the corridor and reports to Himmler
.

‘
Frank, you take over with immediate effect Heydrich’s position as Reichsprotektor for Böhmen-Mähren. Surround this hospital with SD-troopers and, mark this carefully Frank, nobody, absolutely
nobody,
not God or the devil himself, is to enter or leave this hospital without my personal permission, Frank. Your head will answer for it!
’

In the course of a few minutes the hospital is sealed off from the outside world
.

SS-Gruppenführér Ernst Kaltenbrunner reports to Himmler, who is raging up and down the corridor outside the operating theatre
.

‘
General Professor Sauerbruch is on his way to take over treatment of the case,’ says Kaltenbrunner softly
.

‘
By whose orders?’ asks Himmler angrily
.

‘
The Führer!
’

‘
Damnation! Is he flying from Berlin
?’

‘
Yes, Reichsführer! He has already landed in Prague
.’

Himmler presses his hands together so that the knuckles crack
.

‘
Did you know that the Führer had signed Heydrich’s appointment as Minister of the Interior and supreme head of all police units
?’

‘
Wha . . .?’ comes in amazement from Kaltenbrunner
.

Himmler nods sombrely
.

‘
And that is not all. I have heard other things. Go straight back to Berlin and assume command at RHSA. Post security guards on all Heydrich’s offices. Isolate Heydrich’s personal assistants, but cautiously. You are dealing with poisonous snakes!
’

‘
Trust me, Reichsführer,’ Kaltenbrunner smiles. ‘I know how to handle them
.’

‘
I hope you do, for your own sake,’ Himmler smiles coldly back
.

Two hours later Himmler bends over Heydrich’s bed and stares down into the pale, skull-like face
.

‘
Heydrich, can you see me?
’

‘
Very well, Herr Reichsführer
.’

‘
Where is your “explosives box”? Your secret documents
?’

Heydrich smiles with bared teeth. His slanted eyes stare coldly into Himmler’s
.

‘
The papers, damn it!’ snarls Himmler impatiently
.

Heydrich closes his eyes without answering
.

Himmler shakes him
.

‘
Heydrich, the papers? Heydrich, listen! You are Minister of the Interior today. You are Germany’s Supreme Chief of Police! The papers
?’

After a while Himmler accepts that Heydrich has fallen back into unconsciousness. He sits as if carved in stone by the side of the bed and stares at the long, sharp face with the crooked Mongol eyes
.

That evening Professor Sauerbruch operates on Heydrich. Himmler does not move from the patient’s side. Every word of his fevered mumblings is taken down by a stenographer. On the morning of the 4th of July Heydrich dies without having regained consciousness
.

Himmler flies back to Berlin and himself leads the search for Heydrich’s secret files. They are never found
.

At Hitler’s order a post-mortem examination is made of Heydrich’s body. The pathologist’s report states that the cause of death was infection of major organs and glandular tissue in the region of the spleen. Grains of explosive had penetrated the chest. It was possible for death to have been caused by toxic substances
.

1
. RSHA: (Reichssicherheitshauptamt): State Security Services HQ.

A
RISING
and falling rumble sounds continuously, broken now and then by the chatter of machine-guns. The earth beneath us seems to shiver like a dying animal.

There is an atmosphere of pressure. Fear catches at our throats. The only one of us who seems unaffected by it is Porta, who is playing away merrily on his piccolo. But as we get closer to the front line a strange don’t give a damn feeling takes hold of us. This is something everyone feels when they are continually exposed to death in brutal and violent forms. We march in close column of threes, and carry our weapons as we please.

Tiny rolls along, with the SMG over his shoulder as if it weighed no more than a spade.

‘Keep your distance!’ the shout comes from up front, but we are frightened and uneasy and clump together for fancied protection. From a military viewpoint it is madness to march so closely together. A single 105mm shell could wipe out the entire company.

An endless column of wounded passes us, going in the opposite direction. Most of them are from the 104th Rifles, who have been hit terribly by an unexpected barrage.

‘They’ve got caught by the new shells they talk so much about,’ explains Julius Heide, looking down his nose.

‘
What
new shells?’ asks Porta, jeeringly but unable to conceal a certain inquisitiveness. It is always nice to know what you might get killed by.

‘Jumping Jacks with compressed air,’ answers Julius, conceitedly. ‘They can finish off a company in a minute.’

Rasputin lumbers along beside Porta without paying any attention to the noise from the front.

Rumour has it that we are to get King Tigers. Heide affirms
that they are on rail already at Kassel. He has got the word from a comrade in the Party. Gregor says that they have only just got on to the drawing-board, and that the Wehrmacht is not going to get tanks any more. The SS are to have them. Porta thinks they will have to cut down on the whole mechanized aim. It is too expensive.

He has heard that they have begun to send people to the Red Army to learn to ride like Cossacks. ‘But it is top secret,’ he says with a warning wag of the forefinger. ‘It must not be talked about. We know nothing!’

We couldn’t really care less if we get tanks or not. There are advantages in belonging to the infantry.

The company makes a halt on the outskirts of the forest. Some begin to dig in immediately. They are the nervous types, who take cover at the mere sound of a pebble rolling down a slope.

The forest is a sinister-looking place. Shells have torn terrible holes in it. The waste material of war lies everywhere.

Porta, who has gone on ahead some way to obtain news, comes back filled to bursting with rumours.

‘We’re to take part in a bloody regatta,’ he shouts, while still at a distance. ‘Anybody who can’t swim, has got half-an-hour to learn. There aren’t enough boats to go round!’

‘What’s all this nonsense?’ hisses the Old Man, puffing anxiously at his silver-lidded pipe. ‘There’s no sea in the middle of Russia!’

‘Think again, Feldwebel Beier! There’s water in other places than the sea. Wait till you see the river we’re going to have to cross. There’s more water there than
you’ll
fancy and the bridge engineers say it’s so deep it goes all the way down to hell!’

‘An’ me as ’ates water,’ shouts Tiny resignedly. ‘D’you suppose Rasputin can swim?’

‘Bet your sweet life he can,’ answers Porta proudly. ‘He could take the Soviet swimming badge in gold, if he was human. They let him take the extended free-style tests when he was with the Moscow Officer Training School,
and
he came in first, my son!’

‘Is it a
very
big river?’ asks Barcelona, shuddering. His experience with rivers formerly has not been of the best.

‘Broad as the Atlantic Ocean,’ declares Porta delightedly, spreading his arms to show how wide the river is.

‘Up shit creek again,’ sighs Gregor Martin, despairingly, throwing himself down in the tall grass.

‘We must take things as they come,’ considers the Old Man, scraping away at his pipe with the point of his bayonet.

‘Why do we
stand
for it?’ asks Barcelona, shaking his head.

‘You should be the last one to moan,’ jeers Porta. ‘War mad
you’ve
been since you were seventeen years of age. Volunteer in Spain, where you had no bloody business to be at all!’

‘I feel it to be my duty to fight for the weak,’ protests Barcelona. ‘The dictatorship was forcing them into slavery.’

‘Piss and wind! Bullshit!’ snarls Porta. ‘There’s dictatorships all over, but I must admit the Reds are the most honest. They show themselves in their true colours. They
like
to see blood. Our lot do too, but they hide themselves behind their brown camouflage.’

‘You ought to go an’ get a trick cyclist to ’ave a peep inside your ’ead, Barcelona,’ suggests Tiny. ‘Maybe ’e’d ’ave a pill as’d ’elp you.’

‘Section leaders to the OC,’ comes a shout from within the forest.

The Old Man rises, swings his Mpi to his shoulder and trots off, his bowed legs twinkling. He goes straight through mud and water, puffing fiercely on his silver-lidded pipe.

‘
Mille diables
,’ cries the Legionnaire, ‘it will cost lives to get us across that flood. If they are just a
little
bit clever they’ll wipe us all out before we can get to the other side.’

‘We are German soldiers and will do what the Führer orders us to do,’ decides Heide, proudly. ‘We owe the Fatherland everything. I am happy to be serving in the Army. Only the best men belong there.’

‘I don’t give a short, sharp shit for the Fatherland
or
its fucked-up Army,’ states Porta, coarsely. ‘I don’t owe either of ’em a single thing. On the contrary they owe
me
plenty!’

‘Those engineer shits can’t be bothered to throw a bridge over that bleedin’ river, so we can march over it without wettin’ a
boot!’ shouts Tiny disgustedly. He throws a stone at two engineers who come puffing by with a large roll of barbed-wire on a rod.

‘Come to that, what’s it. matter if you kick it dry or wet,’ considers Barcelona, sorrowfully.

‘It’s supposed to be quite a pleasant death, drowning,’ remarks Heide, apathetically.

‘Jesus Christ, man, we’re shit lucky then after all,’ shouts Tiny, happily. ‘’Ere we’ve been thinkin’ we were gonna get it in some ’orrible way or other, an’ now we suddenly find out we’ve ’ad nothing’ to worry about at all. We’re all
right
! The Führer and our good German God ’as seen to it we’ll ’ave a pleasant bleedin’ death in a Russian bleedin’ river!’

‘I can tell you something a bit different from drowning,’ inserts Gregor Martin. ‘Me an’ my general came close to it when we were practising invading England. Out we go in these landing craft with the whole division at our backs. The Navy towed us a hell of a way out to sea. To start with my general gets seasick. When that happened the rest of us followed suit. Every good Panzer Division follows its general in everything.
He
gets seasick,
we
get seasick.’

‘“Let’s get ashore, lads”, he ordered, quite green in the face, between two bouts of sea-sickness. “This is no place for a Panzer Division. Let the Navy
keep
their blasted sea!”

‘He ordered me to start his Horch staff-car, so that we could get away from that rolling, dancing bath-tub those Navy shits had tempted us into, as soon as we touched land. The second we felt the bottom of the bath-tub scrape on something solid, my general roared:

‘“Flaps down, take off, and let’s give these Englanders something to remember us by!”

‘And
how
we took off. Believe you me, friends, inside one second we were up to top speed with that supercharged Horch. The general’s gold-braided dress cap flew off his bald head, and his baton took off through the air like a mini-glider. But, I said to myself, when my head stopped jolting enough for me to be able to see through the windscreen, where the
hell’s
France got to? There was nothing but that wicked, wet sea in front of me. Not a sign of land.

‘“Where the devil are you taking me, Gregor?” was all my general had time to ask.