Winter of the World (100 page)

‘We want you to back the Four-Power Pact.’

It was the standard answer, but Volodya decided to persist. ‘This is what we don’t understand.’ He was being candid now, perhaps more than he should have, but instinct was
telling him to take the risk of opening up a little. ‘Who cares about a pact with China? We need to defeat the Nazis in Europe. We want you to help us do that.’

‘And we will.’

‘So you say. But you said you would invade Europe this summer.’

‘Well, we did invade Italy.’

‘It’s not enough.’

‘France next year. We’ve promised that.’

‘So why do you need the pact?’

‘Well.’ Woody paused, collecting his thoughts. ‘We have to show the American people how it’s in their interests to invade Europe.’

‘Why?’

‘Why what?’

‘Why do you need to explain this to the public? Roosevelt is President, isn’t he? He should just do it!’

‘Next year is election year. He wants to get re-elected.’

‘So?’

‘American people won’t vote for him if they think he’s involved them unnecessarily in the war in Europe. So he wants to put it to them as part of his overall plan for world
peace. If we have the Four-Power Pact, showing that we’re serious about the United Nations organization, then American voters are more likely to accept that the invasion of France is a step
on the road to a more peaceful world.’

‘This is amazing,’ Volodya said. ‘He’s the President, yet he has to make excuses all the time for what he does!’

‘Something like that,’ Woody said. ‘We call it democracy.’

Volodya had a sneaking suspicion that this incredible story might actually be the truth. ‘So the pact is necessary to persuade American voters to support the invasion of Europe.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Then why do we need China?’ Stalin was particularly scornful of the Allies’ insistence that China should be included in the pact.

‘China is a weak ally.’

‘So ignore China.’

‘If the Chinese are left out they will become discouraged, and may fight less enthusiastically against the Japanese.’

‘So?’

‘So we will have to bolster our forces in the Pacific theatre, and that will take away from our strength in Europe.’

That alarmed Volodya. The Soviet Union did not want Allied forces diverted from Europe to the Pacific. ‘So you are making a friendly gesture to China simply in order to conserve more
forces for the invasion of Europe.’

‘Yes.’

‘You make it seem simple.’

‘It is,’ said Woody.

(iv)

In the early hours of the morning on 1 November, Chuck and Eddie ate a steak breakfast with the US Marine 3rd Division just off the South Sea island of Bougainville.

The island was about 125 miles long. It had two Japanese naval air bases, one in the north and one in the south. The marines were getting ready to land halfway along the lightly defended west
coast. Their object was to establish a beachhead and win enough territory to build an airstrip from which to launch attacks on the Japanese bases.

Chuck was on deck at twenty-six minutes past seven when marines in helmets and backpacks began to swarm down the rope nets hanging over the sides of the ship and jump into high-sided landing
craft. With them were a small number of war dogs, Dobermann Pinschers that made tireless sentries.

As the boats approached land, Chuck could already see a flaw in the map he had prepared. Tall waves crashed on to a steeply sloping beach. As he watched, a boat turned sideways to the waves and
capsized. The marines swam for shore.

‘We have to show surf conditions,’ Chuck said to Eddie, who was standing beside him on the deck.

‘How do we find them out?’

‘Reconnaissance aircraft will have to fly low enough for whitecaps to register on their photographs.’

‘They can’t risk coming that low when there are enemy air bases so close.’

Eddie was right. But there had to be a solution. Chuck filed it away as the first question to be considered as a result of this mission.

For this landing they had benefited from more information than usual. As well as the normal unreliable maps and hard-to-decipher aerial photographs, they had a report from a reconnaissance team
landed by submarine six weeks earlier. The team had identified twelve beaches suitable for landing along a four-mile stretch of coast. But they had not warned of the surf. Perhaps it was not so
high that day.

In other respects, Chuck’s map was right, so far. There was a sandy beach about a hundred yards wide, then a tangle of palm trees and other vegetation. Just beyond the brush line,
according to the map, there should be a swamp.

The coast was not completely undefended. Chuck heard the roar of artillery fire, and a shell landed in the shallows. It did no harm, but the gunner’s aim would improve. The marines were
galvanized with a new urgency as they leaped from the landing craft to the beach and ran for the brush line.

Chuck was glad he had decided to come. He had never been careless or slack about his maps, but it was salutary to see first-hand how correct mapping could save men’s lives, and how the
smallest errors could be deadly. Even before they embarked, he and Eddie had become a lot more demanding. They asked for blurred photographs to be taken again, they interrogated reconnaissance
parties by phone, and they cabled all over the world for better charts.

He was glad for another reason. He was at sea, which he loved. He was on a ship with seven hundred young men, and he relished the camaraderie, the jokes, the songs, and the intimacy of crowded
berths and shared showers. ‘It’s like being a straight guy in a girls’ boarding school,’ he said to Eddie one evening.

‘Except that that never happens, and this does,’ Eddie said. He felt the same as Chuck. They loved each other, but they did not mind looking at naked sailors.

Now all seven hundred marines were getting off the ship and on to land as fast as they could. The same was happening at eight other locations along this stretch of coast. As soon as a landing
craft emptied out, it lost no time in turning around and coming back for more; but the process still seemed desperately slow.

The Japanese artillery gunner, hidden somewhere in the jungle, found his range at last, and to Chuck’s shock a well-aimed shell exploded in a knot of marines, sending men and rifles and
body parts flying through the air to litter the beach and stain the sand red.

Chuck was staring in horror at the carnage when he heard the roar of a plane, and looked up to see a Japanese Zero flying low, following the coast. The red suns painted on the wings struck fear
into his heart. Last time he saw that sight had been at the Battle of Midway.

The Zero strafed the beach. Marines who were in the process of disembarking from landing craft were caught defenceless. Some threw themselves flat in the shallows, some tried to get behind the
hull of the boat, some ran for the jungle. For a few seconds blood spurted and men fell.

Then the plane was gone, leaving the beach scattered with American dead.

Chuck heard it open up a moment later, strafing the next beach.

It would be back.

There were supposed to be US planes in attendance, but he could not see any. Air support was never where you wanted it to be, which was directly above your head.

When all the marines were ashore, alive and dead, the boats transported medics and stretcher parties to the beach. Then they began landing supplies: ammunition, drinking water, food, drugs and
dressings. On the return trip the landing craft brought the wounded back to the ship.

Chuck and Eddie, as non-essential personnel, went ashore with the supplies.

The boat skippers had got used to the swell now, and their craft held a stable position, with its ramp on the sand and the waves breaking on its stern, while the boxes were unloaded and Chuck
and Eddie jumped into the surf to wade to shore.

They reached the waterline together.

As they did so, a machine gun opened up.

It seemed to be in the jungle about four hundred yards along the beach. Had it been there all along, the gunner biding his time, or had it just been moved into position from another location?
Eddie and Chuck bent double and ran for the tree line.

A sailor with a crate of ammunition on his shoulder gave a shout of pain and fell, dropping the box.

Then Eddie cried out.

Chuck ran on two paces before he could stop. When he turned, Eddie was rolling on the sand clutching his knee, yelling: ‘Ah, fuck!’

Chuck came back and knelt beside him. ‘It’s okay, I’m here!’ he shouted. Eddie’s eyes were closed, but he was alive, and Chuck could see no wounds other than the
knee.

He glanced up. The boat that had brought them was still close to shore, being unloaded. He could get Eddie back to the ship in minutes. But the machine gun was still firing.

He got into a crouching position. ‘This is going to hurt,’ he said. ‘Yell as much as you like.’

He got his right arm under Eddie’s shoulder, then slid his left under Eddie’s thighs. He took the weight and straightened up. Eddie screamed with pain as his smashed leg swung free.
‘Hang in there, buddy,’ Chuck said. He turned towards the water.

He felt sudden, unbearably sharp pains in his legs, his back and finally his head. In the next fraction of a second he thought he must not drop Eddie. A moment later he knew he was going to.
There was a flash of light behind his eyes that rendered him blind.

And then the world came to an end.

(v)

On her day off, Carla worked at the Jewish Hospital.

Dr Rothmann had persuaded her. He had been released from the camp – no one knew why, except the Nazis, and they did not tell anyone. He had lost one eye and he walked with a limp, but he
was alive, and capable of practising medicine.

The hospital was in the northern working-class district of Wedding, but there was nothing proletarian about the architecture. It had been built before the First World War, when Berlin’s
Jews had been prosperous and proud. There were seven elegant buildings set in a large garden. The different departments were linked by tunnels, so that patients and staff could move from one to
another without braving the weather.

It was a miracle there was still a Jewish hospital. Very few Jews were left in Berlin. They had been rounded up in their thousands and sent away in special trains. No one knew where they had
gone or what happened to them. There were incredible rumours about extermination camps.

The few Jews still in Berlin could not be treated, if they were sick, by Aryan doctors and nurses. So, by the tangled logic of Nazi racism, the hospital was allowed to remain. It was mainly
staffed by Jews and other unfortunate people who did not count as properly Aryan: Slavs from Eastern Europe, people of mixed ancestry, and those married to Jews. But there were not enough nurses,
so Carla helped out.

The hospital was harassed constantly by the Gestapo, critically short of supplies, especially drugs, understaffed and almost completely without funds.

Carla was breaking the law as she took the temperature of an eleven-year-old boy whose foot had been crushed in an air raid. It was also a crime for her to smuggle medicines out of her everyday
hospital and bring them here. But she wanted to prove, if only to herself, that not everyone had given in to the Nazis.

As she finished her ward round she saw Werner outside the door, in his air force uniform.

For several days he and Carla had lived in fear, wondering whether anyone had survived the bombing of the school and lived to condemn Werner; but it was now clear they had all died, and no one
else knew of Macke’s suspicions. They had got away with it, again.

Werner had recovered quickly from his bullet wound.

And they were lovers. Werner had moved into the von Ulrichs’ large, half-empty house, and he slept with Carla every night. Their parents made no objection: everyone felt they could die any
day, and people should take what joy they could from a life of hardship and suffering.

But Werner looked more solemn than usual as he waved to Carla through the glass panel in the door to the ward. She beckoned him inside and kissed him. ‘I love you,’ she said. She
never tired of saying it.

He was always happy to say: ‘I love you, too.’

‘What are you doing here?’ she said. ‘Did you just want a kiss?’

‘I’ve got bad news. I’ve been posted to the Eastern Front.’

‘Oh, no!’ Tears came to her eyes.

‘It’s really a miracle I’ve avoided it this long. But General Dorn can’t keep me any longer. Half our army consists of old men and schoolboys, and I’m a fit
twenty-four-year-old officer.’

She whispered: ‘Please don’t die.’

‘I’ll do my best.’

Still whispering, she said: ‘But what will happen to the network? You know everything. Who else could run it?’

He looked at her without speaking.

She realized what was in his mind. ‘Oh, no – not me!’

‘You’re the best person. Frieda’s a follower, not a leader. You’ve shown the ability to recruit new people and motivate them. You’ve never been in trouble with the
police and you have no record of political activity. No one knows the role you played in opposing Aktion T4. As far as the authorities are concerned, you are a blameless nurse.’

‘But Werner, I’m scared!’

‘You don’t have to do it. But no one else can.’

Just then they heard a commotion.

The neighbouring ward was for mental patients, and it was not unusual to hear shouting and even screaming; but this seemed different. A cultured voice was raised in anger. Then they heard a
second voice, this one with a Berlin accent and the insistent, bullying tone that outsiders said was typical of Berliners.

Carla stepped into the corridor, and Werner followed.

Dr Rothmann, wearing a yellow star on his jacket, was arguing with a man in SS uniform. Behind them, the double doors to the psychiatric ward, normally locked, were wide open. The patients were
leaving. Two more policemen and a couple of nurses were herding a ragged line of men and women, most in pyjamas, some walking upright and apparently normal, others shambling and mumbling as they
followed one another down the staircase.