“They didn’t offer us troops,” Horst added. “Did you notice?”
“We were going to refuse, if they offered,” Gudrun reminded him. “I don’t know how well they’d fight, but the SS would turn them into a propaganda weapon.”
“True,” Horst said. “But they didn’t even make the offer, when they know as well as we do that an SS victory means their destruction. I find that rather odd.”
He leaned back into his seat, staring out at the French countryside. “We’ll get the latest reports when we return to Berlin,” he added. “And we’ll see what the council has to say about it.”
Chapter Six
Near Warsaw, Germany Prime
2 September 1985
The town wasn’t much, Leutnant Kurt Wieland thought, as they drove into the town square and parked the lorries under a giant statue of a soldier he didn’t recognise. A few dozen homes, a handful of shops, set a couple of miles from the autobahn… it was the kind of place his parents had talked about going to live when they retired and their children had flown the nest. He suspected that he would have found it rather boring, if he’d had to live there, but he was still in his twenties. His parents might have a different attitude.
He jumped down to the ground and barked orders to the soldiers, who scrambled out of the lorries and hurried to take up position near the Town Hall. The entire town was due to be evacuated and turned into a strongpoint, hopefully one that would slow up the SS for a few hours before they continued advancing towards Berlin. Kurt had no illusions about just how weak the defence line actually was, even though his actual experience of combat was practically non-existent. Between the resignations, the deaths and a number of desertions, the forces facing the SS were badly disorganised. It would take longer than they had, he feared, to get the army into proper shape.
“The population should have left already,” Oberfeldwebel Helmut Loeb commented. “But some of them won’t have left.”
Kurt nodded. The young men and military veterans would have already been called up, although it was anyone’s guess just how many of them would bother to report to the training camps. They’d signed up to fight the enemies of the Reich, not their fellow Germans. Quite a few veterans had already been caught trying to slip across the border to the east, or merely hiding in the countryside and hoping not to be found. They found it impossible, they’d claimed when they were caught, to choose a side.
And I would find it difficult too, if I hadn’t been in Berlin, Kurt thought, as the town was rapidly searched and a handful of stragglers pushed into the square. I saw the SS mowing down innocent Germans as if they were Slavs.
He glanced down at his hands, wondering if he should feel guilty. He’d broken his oaths when he’d opened fire on the SS, triggering off the Battle of Berlin. It wasn’t something he should feel guilty for, he told himself, but he knew he’d feel responsible for everyone who died in the coming war. There could be no doubting it would come, either. Everyone knew the SS was moving troops up to the borderline and preparing their offensive. It was only a matter of time before the shit hit the fan.
“This is an outrage,” a loud female voice declaimed. “We paid for our house!”
Kurt tried hard to suppress a flicker of tired – and utterly inappropriate – amusement. The speaker was an older woman, easily twenty years older than his mother if she was a day, standing next to a skinny older man who looked thoroughly henpecked. Kurt wouldn’t have cared to try to impose his will on that woman, no matter what the law said about German womenfolk obeying their husbands. She was swinging her fists around like a navvy as she argued with the soldiers. Kurt wouldn’t have been surprised to hear she’d been a boxer in her youth, even though women were technically forbidden to take part in blood sports.
Which would have merely driven them underground, he thought, as he strolled over to rescue his men. His first trip outside the wire, during basic training, had been an eye-opener in more ways than one. There were all sorts of forbidden pleasures available in the Reich, if one knew where to look. And now… who knows what will happen?
“Gute Frau,” he said, dismissing his men with a nod. “This town is about to become a battleground.”
The woman glared at him. “We have lived here for thirty years and…”
“And it is no longer safe,” Kurt snapped. The nasty part of him was tempted to leave the woman for the SS, but her mouth would probably get her and her husband shot down. If the rumours from the front lines were true, the SS was purging Germany East of anyone whose political loyalties were even slightly suspect. “The SS is coming!”
“The SS?” The woman repeated. “Why would they come here?”
Kurt swallowed his first angry reaction. It had been nearly two weeks since the Battle of Berlin. The news had been on the radio… although, he had to admit, he had a habit of not believing what the radio said either. But surely she must have heard rumours of the change in government, if nothing else. He doubted she was the kind of woman who disdained rumours and gossip as beneath her.
“A civil war is about to begin,” he said, instead. “You and your husband will be shipped to a refugee camp to the west, where you will be held until the war is over. At that point, you will be allowed to return home.”
If your home is still there, he added, silently. When they hit this town, they’ll advance with all the force they can muster.
He kept his face impassive. He’d seen footage of the SS pacification troops in action, burning down entire Russian towns and villages in response to a handful of shots aimed at them from a distance. There was no way to know – even – if they were getting the right village, but the SS didn’t care. Spreading terror was more important to them than capturing or killing specific individuals. And yet, their terror tactics hadn’t put an end to the South African War. It had only burned brighter than ever.
The woman’s expression tightened. “And if we choose not to go?”
“Then you will also be shipped west, but not to a refugee camp,” Kurt said, allowing his voice to harden. Too many people were already in the detention camps, simply because they couldn’t be trusted… he had no desire to add two more. “We do not have time to debate the issue. Pack yourselves a bag and prepare for the journey.”
He glanced at the woman’s husband, wondering if he could be relied upon to say something to his wife. But it didn’t look like it. Kurt couldn’t understand how any self-respecting husband could allow themselves to be so dominated in public – he couldn’t imagine his father allowing his mother such freedom – but it wasn’t his problem. All that mattered was getting them out of the town so it could be turned into a strongpoint.
The woman turned and marched back towards her home, muttering angrily to herself. Her husband shot Kurt an apologetic look, then followed; Kurt watched them go, shaking his head at their antics. But as long as they were happy, he supposed it was none of his business what they did in private. Turning to the other refugees, he was relieved to discover that none of them looked willing to question him. Most of them were older men and women, the former too old for military service, but there were a handful of younger girls and children amongst them. The town’s teenage boys would already have been conscripted.