Panzer Soldier Read online

  Carl moved on, his feet automatically taking him in the direction of the fighting, his body moving under its own accord, following the built-in patterns of years of conflict; at times battle did ease pain and the Russians he knew were no better than the Nazis, so what difference did it make who he killed?

  Another winter was here; snow was in the air. His greatcoat fluttered around his legs, the pack on his back tugged familiarly at his shoulders, giving a hot spasm of tension in the muscles between the shoulder blades. He walked with his eyes on the road, joining in with the masses moving up. The steady, kilometer-eating step of the professional took over his subconscious and moved him. All that day, faces picked at the corners of his mind. A sense of emptiness all too familiar walked with him. The road turned to slush with a cold drizzle falling which softened the ground, and the treads of armor and trucks turned it into boot-sucking slush. Still, he moved on to the distant sound of thunder. With the dark, the first snow came, soft, fat white flakes that floated gently, melting at first, then increasingly one added its whiteness to another until the ground was covered. The temperature dropped, the mud began to firm, the snow fell steadily, one inch, then another. Before midnight he stopped and took shelter in a burned-down tavern. The beams were still holding, made of oak hundreds of years old. Time had turned them almost into iron; charred and discolored they still held up part of the roof. Langer settled into a corner. There, sheltered from the snow, he built a small fire in a forgotten metal wash pan and hunched over it, the red glow bouncing off his face, the warmth pressing against whatever skin was exposed. He leaned over, to soak it in. Taking his blanket out of his pack he wrapped it around him; sitting Indian fashion, he nodded and slept fitfully, head bobbing and jerking up for an instant, eyes opening, then just as fast, shutting again. Several times the waning fire woke him to feed it and restless sleep claimed him again, only to plague him with dreams and doubts.

  The soldier's mental clock pulled his head up, eyes open, fully awake. Just before dawn the night's snowfall had reached five inches and the road was gone, vanished under its covering; only the trees and brush lining the way showed where it lay under the blanket of white. Scrounging through the rubble he found another battered tin pot. Filling it with fresh snow, he sat it by his fire to melt and warm him at the same time. Eating a ration, taking small bites of black bread, he held each bit in his mouth until it turned sweet and dissolved and he washed it down with a swallow of lukewarm ersatz coffee that tasted more like burned nut shells than anything else.

  The Knight's Cross sparkled in the light of the fire as he took off his coat and tunic to wash in the melted snow water. Careful not to use too much of his remaining piece of soap, he gave himself what was known in less than polite circles as a whore's bath. Using a straight razor, he scraped at the stubble on his face, cursing at the tugs and nicks. Drying himself with one of his dirty undershirts, he redressed. A momentary flick of consternation ran across his face when he put the Knight's Cross back on. But what the hell did it matter.

  Thousands of passing trucks and men pulled him out on to the road. The rusting hulks of burned vehicles and tanks, both German and Russian, were common; relics from last year's battles, rusting skeletons that gave a sense of foreboding to those who saw them for the first time. For Carl Langer, they weren't even there.

  Shortly after noon he stopped to rest in the shelter of a burned MK IV. Leaning up against the rusting bogie wheels, he eased off his pack and lit up, holding his hand cupped over the match to keep the wind from blowing it out. He looked at the sky. It would be dark soon, now probably around five o'clock. He had a few more hours before packing it in; there was no rush, if he didn't move fast enough it was a sure thing the war could come to him. A passing Kübelwagen with three men and a woman in it stopped beside him. The woman caught his eye. The fact that she had been worked over was obvious from the swelling around her left eye and bruised mouth. Her escorts were members of a special counter-guerrilla detachment of the SS. Tough looking men, still wearing the distinctive SS leopard camouflage field jackets and helmet covers. The leader of the group, a Hauptsturmführer with a broken nose and crystal blue eyes, beckoned him over with a wave of the hand.

  The SS captain beckoned Langer to him with a snap of the fingers. "Papers!"

  Carl presented his paybook and movement orders to the "Golden Knight" of the new order, standing at attention. He glanced through the documents and quickly took in the decorations Langer had around his neck.

  "Good enough, climb on, I have a job for you, it won't take long."

  Langer knew better than to try and argue. Tossing his pack on the Kübelwagen, he climbed into the rear of the vehicle with the woman and her guards; it was crowded but the best they could do.

  The jeep ran down the road for a few kilometers and turned on to a side road; headed into the trees for a couple of hundred meters and stopped. The Hauptsturmführer led the way up a narrow tree-lined trail to a log cabin. Standing back he let one of his men enter the door first; after all, one could never tell where one might find a booby trap, and enlisted men were expendable and easier to replace than officers. Once inside, one of the Sturmen built a fire in the rock fireplace, and stood by waiting for orders from his leader.

  The captain pointed a gloved finger at Carl. "Sergeant, you will remain here with the prisoner until we return. We have to pick up a few more of the lady's compatriots being held for us further on. If she tries to escape, stop her any way you wish, but don't trust the treacherous bitch, she killed two of my men earlier today and we only caught her when a rifle grenade knocked her out and those that were with her left her behind. And besides," he said in a comradely fashion, "she's a Jew."

  With a snap of his fingers, his men headed for the door. He seemed to have finger snapping down to a science; it wasn't easy to do with gloves on. Before leaving, he turned once more to Langer and in an off-handed way added, "Oh, by the way, if you like, you may use her for your amusement. After we return and have time to question her, we're going to hang her anyway, so enjoy yourself, comrade."

  The sound of boots crunching their way off in the new snow soon diminished and they were left alone. Carl motioned for her to sit down in one of the two wooden straight-backed chairs at a plank table, careful to keep his weapons out of her reach. He had no idea about how dangerous a woman like this might be. He laid his pack down and sat in the other chair, taking a ration of black bread and a can of sardines out of his pack. He opened the tin and cut a slice of bread off and shoved them in front of her. "Eat! I'm not going to hurt you."

  She warily reached for the food, her hunger overcoming her pride. She greedily stuffed the bread into her mouth, almost choking in her rush to swallow the food. Langer said nothing, just opened his canteen and handed it across the table to her. Choking, she swallowed a gulp of water, helping to force the coarse bread down her throat.

  Softly, he spoke, "Take it easy, eat slow." He leaned back away from the table, aware of her feelings of hate for all who wore a uniform. Knowing the fear and hatred that was boiling inside her, he gave her time to relax and take some of the edge off as she finished eating and took the last swig of water. She screwed the red cap back on to the canteen and sat back. The swelling around her eye took nothing away from the defiance and hate showing there.

  In good German, her voice clear and strong, if a little shaky around the edges, she asked, "What now, hero? Should I take my clothes off so you can be paid for the food?"

  Langer shook his head. "No, I'm not going to do anything to you." He lit up a smoke and noticed the gleam in her eye.

  "Want one?" He passed the pack and some matches over to her. Lighting up she let the smoke drift up into her nostrils and inhaled deeply, then exhaled the smoke slowly.

  "Are you a Jew?"

  Her head jerked up straight, her back erect as that of a British sergeant major. "Yes! I'm a Jew."

  He nodded his head. "I thought so; even though the headhunters said you were, you
can't always believe those sons of bitches."

  She looked at him carefully; was this some kind of trick? For him to speak out against his own kind like this.

  "No, I'm not one of them in spite of the uniform. I'm a soldier, not a butcher; there's no love lost between me and the SS supermen, especially those of the Allegemeine, although I have to admit the Waffen SS troops are about as tough as any I have ever seen. But their field troops are not garbage like the SD and SA." He could see the doubt in her eyes; there was one way that he might get through to her. "Mah sheem-Hah?" He asked her name in Hebrew. Startled she looked back and answered, "Shem meesh-pakht-teh Deborah Sapir. Hah-Eevreet-yoht Ah-Tenn?"

  "No, I'm not a Hebrew, though I did spend some time in Judea a long time ago."

  The ice was broken; curiosity overcame some of her caution. She looked at the square-built figure as he took his coat off; the room was warming. True, he looked the part of a German, the close-cropped hair and scarred face, and there was something brutal about him, but it wasn't that insane cruelty of the SS or NKVD. His was that of a hunting animal who kills only for survival, not pleasure. There was something else too. She looked deep into the gray-blue eyes; behind them lay a great sadness, a feeling of terrible isolation and weariness. She shook her head to clear these feelings, as if she had almost been hypnotized. Taking a bite from his own chunk of bread, he chewed slowly, thinking. He caught her looking at the medals he wore, the fear and suspicion coming back. He leaned, back in his chair and spoke softly, but in a direct way, to her. "Don't let the uniform influence you. Most men are no different, no matter what color the uniform they wear. Most Germans are the same as men everywhere, with families that they love, but they, like the Russians, are victims of a few ambitious men, men gone insane seeking their immortality; and insanity is contagious, it can drive those about them mad with the same sickness of mind and spirit.

  "Those who fight this war, the soldiers, are caught up in that madness. It's too big to resist, and now they're committed to see it through to the end; it's gone too far to back away. I believed in the war in the beginning for reasons of my own. I felt that Russia had to be stopped before she grew so strong that no power would ever be able to resist her. The Communists are no better than the Nazis, they both feed on fear and power, but as wrong as the war was to start with, it has to go on a while longer. I know Germany is losing; the Allies have landed back on the European continent. Italy is almost gone, and every day we have fewer men to face the hordes of Russians that come at us."

  Deborah watched him closely; there was no doubt in her mind that he was telling the truth as he saw it. "But why then do you continue to fight, don't you want the war to end?"

  He nodded. "Yes, it's about time for this one to come to a halt, but not yet." He lit up another cigarette. "You see, the job now, though it will cost thousands of lives, is to bleed the Soviets as dry as we can every day, and hold them back long enough to give the British and Americans time to advance further into Europe and give more civilians time to escape to the West, ahead of the Russians. If we stopped now, there would be no stopping them, they would overrun all of Europe. In his own mind, Stalin is the Genghis Khan of this century and he wants to achieve what every conqueror has always wanted, to be master of the world and all that's in it. Hitler is no different, perhaps only a little madder."

  She still didn't understand fully; consternation showed in her facial expressions. "If that's true, why did you fight to start with?"

  He sucked on his smoke and blew the residue out of his nostrils. "In the beginning, as I told you, I believed the great lie, too. I have fought the hordes before. I believed, as did most of the other Germans, that war was inevitable between the West and Asia.

  "It was felt that the Soviets would someday advance with all the hordes of Asia at their command, to loot and destroy the Western nations. They had to be stopped by a united Europe if civilization was to survive, and not drop back into the dark ages. I couldn't believe that the Germans I knew were capable of the horrors that they later inflicted on the world, but by then, it was too late to stop. You just had to go on and hope for the best, and there was some indication that Hitler would not outlast the assassination attempt by members of the general staff, but somehow the madman survived. So now I wait, and do what I can. One man can never really do a great deal; everything is too big, you're lost among the rules and regulations, the habits of training and survival take over; you're just too small to fight insanity on a scale the size of this, so I go on. But recently a friend of mine died to prove something, and now I think it's time for me to try another way, to separate myself from the masses of this holocaust, although what I will do will have little, if any, real effect on the outcome."

  Rising, he stretched his arms and put another log on the fire, turning his back to the flames. The heat felt good against the back of his legs. "And you! What about you, Deborah Sapir?"

  Deborah thought carefully before answering; what difference did it make if he were lying, the SS were going to kill her anyway. "I was at Auschwitz for six months; the officers liked my looks so they let me live. I was being taken to entertain at a party for one of them when the car was ambushed by partisans.

  Since that time I have been with different organizations trying to do what we could to save the Jews remaining; there are very few left now."

  Langer moved a little bit away from the fire; it was growing too warm on the back of his legs. "Tell me what it was like there, I have to know." He moved to the table and sat opposite her again.

  Her eyes took on a vacant expression; the words came by themselves. She became an instrument for the sake of the pain and suffering that poured out; she had been a whore for the SS, not because she was afraid to die, but because they paid her off with her life and food, some of which she gave to the children in the camp.

  Through her eyes, he was drawn into the hell that was Auschwitz. Watching children torn from their mothers' arms and herded together to pass under a horizontal rod; those tall enough to touch it would live, for a while longer at least. Those too small were sent to the gas chambers immediately. Through the tears, he saw the young ones trying to stretch their necks, standing on tiptoe; anything to make them a little taller. The children knew somehow that something terrible awaited those who failed to touch that horrible high marker. The cries and screams, the stench of the ovens burning the waste that had once been people, while in the background the prison band played overtures from Schubert and Paganini. The tears running down her face, dropping on the table, made pools of sorrow for all mankind.

  He saw it all, the dark clouds that hung constantly over the camp. The ashes from the ovens that fell, even into what little food they had. But it was the faces of the children that tore at his mind. The children, always it is the children; the innocents stand out the most. They danced for the amusement of the SS officers and sang sweet songs of the fields and valleys. Then they were gassed. The Panzer Soldier cried. From within, his life source, came a groan that transcended anything he had ever felt. Great choking sobs tore at him as the children spoke to him from Deborah's tears; the Old One cried.

  The creaking of the door hinges swung him around; the SS Hauptsturmführer stepped inside shaking his shoulders loose from the snow. His two henchmen followed. The officer stepped forward to where Deborah sat, his face full of anticipation; he grabbed her by the hair.

  "Well, Jew bitch, it's time to go. Your three friends didn't take long to tell us all they knew. They're down the road a little ways waiting for your arrival." He laughed, enjoying himself. "They won't go anywhere for a while, though, so we have time to entertain you a bit first. You know the fat one? Well, he's at least four inches taller now than before. I suppose the extra weight made his neck stretch further than the others."

  Not looking, he asked the Panzerman, "Did you enjoy yourself, comrade?"

  He barely had time to notice the tanker's movement before the steel body of the Schmeisser crushed into his face, spread
ing his grin into a bloody smile as the bone crunched under the blow and the jawbone splintered.

  The two SS men froze for a second, then the taller of the two started to swing his weapon up to fire, only to feel cold burning pain as Langer's bayonet sunk into his stomach. He gave one weak whimper for his mother and fell. The other raised his above his head wanting to surrender.

  But Langer was beyond any act of mercy. The pleading was cut off as scarred strong hands went around his throat and raised him from the floor, shaking him like a dog.

  Tears ran in rivers as Langer shook until the SS man was no more than a crooked-necked broken doll waiting to be picked up and thrown away.

  The Haupsturmführer gurgled through his broken face as he tried to raise himself up from the floor on to his hands and knees. Turning, Langer gave him one solid kick under the chin, snapping the man's head back until the vertebrae crushed in on each other.

  The force of the kick flipped him over on his back. The grinning Deathshead insignia on his collar tab leered happily at another victim. Langer stood there empty-handed, stoop-shouldered and drained.

  The touch of a gentle hand on his shoulder brought him back to his senses. Deborah stood watching, her face torn with sorrow. "We have to go now," she spoke as she would have to a child. "We have to go before anyone else comes."

  Nodding weakly, he picked up the weapons from the floor and took the officer's pistol and stuck it into his own belt. He gave her one of the MP-40s and slung another over his shoulder. He knew they would need them before long. He had another war to fight now.

  Deborah led him by the hand out of the hut into the snow, leaving the SS men to be found later. Their feet crunched on the frozen surface layer and then sunk down to ankle deep. They moved into the darkness of the woods; their tracks would soon be covered by the gently falling large clean flakes. As they walked, Langer ripped the patches from his uniform and threw them along with his paybook and orders into the snow. Last to go was the Knight's Cross from around his neck. He let it fall from limp fingers and sink into the softness, the silver edges gleaming until it too was covered.