The three generals began whispering and Herzog could see them nodding and shaking their heads. He could not hear what they were saying. It was probably just a matter of deciding whether he should be shot, hung or beheaded. He began picking at his sleeve again, interrupted by the harsh banging of Reinman’s gavel on the desk top.
“Prisoner will rise,” he said and Herzog did so.
“The verdict of this court,” Reinman began, “is that the prisoner is guilty of disobeying orders.” Herzog’s gaze never faltered as he awaited sentence.
The general looked straight at the sergeant and coughed as if he had difficulty speaking the words. “In the past you have shown ability as a soldier, an ability which will be needed when the Führer decides to mount his counter-attack.” Herzog dropped his head in weary astonishment. ‘Counter-Attack’, Jesus Christ. Reinman continued, “Therefore we have decided that you are more use alive than dead. Your sentence is that you will forfeit your rank and be sent immediately to the Eastern Front where you will join a front-line unit.”
The gavel swung down again. “Next prisoner,” shouted Reinman and Herzog found himself being marched from the courtroom. He glanced over his shoulder at the man who followed him to the single chair in the centre of the room and he saw that it was the man with one arm. He hesitated a moment but Lieber pushed him out. The door slammed behind him and the wheels of justice spun on.
“You were lucky to keep your head,” said Lieber, grinning.
Herzog ignored him.
They reached the end of the corridor and Lieber pushed him into the office. “In here, Private,” he sniggered, emphasising the last word. Herzog stood to attention before the desk and saw a new uniform layed out before him.
“Put it on,” snapped Lieber, throwing the garments at him and Herzog climbed out of the prison overalls into the uniform. Finally he adjusted the belt around his waist which bore the words, ‘God with us’.
Herzog marched outside to a waiting truck and here, Lieber handed him what few personal belongings he had. The close-combat clasp which he immediately clipped onto his jacket, the cork from a wine-bottle, a half-eaten bar of chocolate and, finally, the Iron Cross. Herzog took the medal and, carefully, slipped it into his top pocket. Lieber handed him his papers and jumped down from the truck, banging the side as he did so. The driver started the engine and soon the lorry was speeding away from the prison. Herzog looked at his watch.
It was two fifteen in the afternoon and the rain was dropping fast. By three, he had reached the station and, by three thirty, he was on a train bound for Poland.
PART III
THE EASTERN FRONT
POLAND 1944
Chapter Fourteen
Herzog held out his papers for stamping and watched as the corporal scrutinised them with his one good eye. He looked at Herzog, then banged the rubber stamp down twice on the papers before handing them back. The former sergeant folded them carefully and pushed them into his pocket before stepping onto the platform. Wind whipped the drizzle into whirlpools across the tracks and Herzog pulled his coat tight around him. He glanced up the track once or twice to see if he could see his train, then he went and sat on a bench in front of the ticket-office. Sighing quietly, he pulled a crumpled yellow sheet from his coat and began reading it. Contained within it were the details of his new regiment, their present strength, their fighting position. Herzog guessed that he must have been about eighty or ninety miles from the front line, where they were, and the train he was waiting for would take him right to the heart of the battle area. Somewhere near Turek although the orders weren’t specific on account of the fact that the position changed daily. A slow retreat, withdrawing a mile or two every day, until they were within three hundred miles of the borders of their own land.
Herzog shook his head and stuffed the sheet back into his coat pocket. He pulled out a half-eaten bar of chocolate and proceeded to devour it.
The train arrived half an hour later and he boarded it finding himself an empty carriage to travel in. As the train moved off again he took off his steel helmet and layed it on the seat beside him, wiping a few spots of rain from it with the corner of his greatcoat. He put his feet upon the opposite seat and lay back, watching the countryside dashing past. It changed noticeably as they drew nearer the battle zone. German troops began to appear in greater profusion, some moving back from the front line in trucks, others trailing in long lines along the shell-pocked roads. The train passed through a station which had been practically demolished by a bombing raid. It couldn’t have been long ago either, thought Herzog, because amongst the remains of gutted buildings lay the bloated corpses of German soldiers. One of the tracks had been blown up and a wrecked train had skewed across into one of the platforms. The entire thing was a wreck, still smouldering in places. Huge lumps of masonry were spread across the goods yard, remnants of the pulverised engine shed.
The train hurried through and at last Herzog began to hear the booming of the guns. He pressed his face to the window and winced through the drizzle towards the noise of the cannon. From behind a range of low hills he could see long geysers of smoke slowly unfurling to form black umbrellas. He guessed that it was no more than two or three miles to the front line.
The walk took him around fifty minutes from the station. Following a straight road and the sound of gunfire, he came to half a dozen Krupps parked in a small hollow behind a hill, itself topped by sparse woodland. There was a dirt track leading up through the trees, he assumed to the frontal positions. A group of tents were set up next to the Krupps. Officers’ quarters. If anything should go wrong, they would be the first to run. Only the poor bastards in the trenches had to stand where they were until ordered.
He was met and directed to his new unit by a smiling corporal who walked the first few yards with him. He told Herzog what had been happening in the last few days and offered him a cigarette. The former sergeant declined.
There was a loud whoosh and an almighty explosion which showered both men with mud.
“Howitzer,” said the corporal, authoritatively, “they’ve been using them for weeks now. Fucking incendiary shells too.” He smiled cheerfully and walked away, leaving Herzog alone on the crest of the hill, just in front of the trees. From his vantage-point he could see what were hastily constructed attempts at defence works. Piles of sandbags had been heaped along the top of a few quickly dug trenches, makeshift dugouts which looked as though they were going to collapse at any moment were dotted about like gigantic badger sets. Away to the right a battery of 88s were blasting away at the Russian positions. To the left lay the remains of Turek itself, now barely recognisable as a town after three days of constant shelling from both sides. Nearby lay the smouldering wreckage of a King Tiger, one of the Wehrmacht’s newest tanks. It had been blown apart and Herzog could still see the remains of the crew inside the hollow shell.
Another shell exploded near him and he took shelter behind an overturned armoured car. As he stood there he saw a pile of rotting corpses being used as a firing platform for an MG 42. The crew were wearing gas-masks, so foul was the stench rising from the mound of corpses. They had been dragged back from no-man’s-land three days earlier with the intention of burying them but a more practical use had been found for them. Herzog bypassed the machine-gun position and vaulted the low barbed-wire fence which protected the rear of the foremost trench. He looked around and found that there was a man standing on the firing platform. He took one look at Herzog and burst out laughing.