“I did nothing wrong,” he said calmly and clearly the day when a truck came to pick Sasha up and transfer him, together with the rest of the POWs, to a Stalag. He was holding the Russian’s hand in his and smiling openly and without any regret. “I will stay and fight till the end. And when the end comes, I’ll face it like a soldier, not a cowardly deserter. And if they do find me guilty of any crimes, so be it. I’ll accept the responsibility. I’m not afraid.”
Sasha shook his hand firmly and smiled. He understood.
TWENTY-NINE
Berlin, May 1945
The truck rolled along the rubble filled streets and came to an abrupt stop next to a hastily erected barricade. It was a burned-out tram trolley, with We Won’t Surrender written on it. The slogan looked more like a mocking now, instead of its intended purpose to instill fighting spirit into Berliners. Harald had just about had it with that fighting spirit.
Their commanding officer herded them outside with his loud Los, los, los! Harald took his position at the beginning of the line; it should have been the tallest cadet’s place but the tallest one◦– Heini◦– was lying somewhere in Wannsee missing his head, just like the other next few “tallest ones” in line. Harald’s turn had come to be the adult◦– everyone else next to him was hardly thirteen.
After a short roll-call, ensuring that no weasels had leaped off the truck along the way, the commander instructed two youngsters to open the crates with ammunition. Harald was already leading his small squad to a position behind the tram, a heavy anti-tank Panzerfaust resting on his shoulder. With a grim smirk, he wondered, how many tanks he’d be able to take out before one of them took his head off, much like they did with Heini. They were rumbling somewhere in the distance. He could hear them already.
The shootout lasted well until the evening. As soon as the Soviets started pressing, the commander suddenly straightened full length in his foxhole, pulled at his disheveled tunic and, after a snappy salute to no one in particular and a loud Heil Hitler, shot himself in the head. Harald stared at his body for a few moments, then threw the Panzerfaust down and began fashioning a small white flag out of some metal rod that lay nearby and his grubby handkerchief.
The kindergarten, which the commander had left in his charge, stared at him with uncertainty on their young faces. Far too many corpses they saw hanging from lampposts◦– the traitors of the Reich, who wanted to surrender as well. But who would hang Harald now? The only adult that was there, now lay dead on the ground, with a bullet hole in his temple. They started dropping their rifles as well.
The Soviets poured through the barricade as soon as Harald climbed on top of it, waving his makeshift flag. They looked at the children in disbelief for a few moments, kicked Harald in the backside and with that, the defense of Berlin was dismissed. Harald was only too pleased with such a turn of events.
Not knowing where to go, he wandered around the ruins, ignored entirely by the Soviet troops, then remembered his brother’s letter that he still carried on his person. “I think it’ll be over soon, Harald. We’re stationed in Austria now; if you’re somewhere near her, please, try to find Mina and make sure nothing happens to her. Frau von Sielaff is in the country with both children, but Mina stayed in Berlin as far as I know and perhaps she won’t have time to leave before they surrender the city entirely…”
It was dated a month earlier. Harald wondered how it made its way to him without being censored. But then again, if children were the ones left to fend for their Fatherland, most likely all the censors were put to use as well, wielding a rifle instead of their black ink pen. Harald found his way into a building that still stood among the rubble and made his way to the second floor, feeling with his hands in the darkness. There was a body on the stairs; he stumbled upon it and carefully moved it out of his way. In one of the apartments, where he was fortunate to find a decent bed, a boy of his age◦– Hitlerjugend◦– was half-lying on the windowsill, where a sniper’s bullet had gotten him. Harald pulled him down carefully, studied a surprised look on the boy’s baby-face, soaked with moonlight. Clean shot, straight into the forehead. He didn’t even understand what hit him. Harald considered something for a moment and started undressing the corpse. The uniform was good, clean, no bloodstains whatsoever. Just what he needed. He wrapped the boy in a tablecloth and left him near the window, which he left open for the night, with the same white handkerchief hanging off of it. This way, no one would bother him till tomorrow.
At dawn, the fog rolled in and obscured the crypt of a city from sight, consuming it, hanging in heavy clouds over the ruins. The trees, protruding from the ravaged ground, were missing their budding tops now and it was impossible for one to see if they were only shrouded in fog or torn off with a passing shell a day ago. Moist air smelled of explosives and rotting dead; the streets were littered with them. A small Hitlerjugend squad was singing the Horst Wessel song somewhere in the distance. Harald was awoken by the familiar marching tune and sprung from his bed◦– a habit formed over the years. Only after his gaze roved around the apartment taking in the unfamiliar surroundings and stopped on the corpse on the floor, did he spring to his feet, march over to the window and shut it closed, in silent fury.
The hospital was in Charlottenburg, which was still unoccupied◦– at least as of yesterday. Harald headed there first thing in the morning; again, around the Soviet “frontline,” through more rubble and barricades, through the digging brigades, through his own defense troops, who were so drunk that they paid him no heed whatsoever.
The ghostly silhouette of the hospital rose out of the dense mist. It still stood, even though it was overflowing with wounded to such an extent that many of them were laid out outside and the doctors and nurses tended to them right there, in the street. A teenager who was manning a narrow makeshift barricade in front of it sprung to attention and offered Harald a snappy salute. Staring straight ahead of himself, Harald marched forward, passing him and his roadblock without acknowledging the boy. For the first time in his life, he didn’t shout Heil Hitler back at someone.
“Excuse me, where can I find Wilhelmina Brandt?” he asked the first nurse he saw. A BDM girl, his age perhaps, with two long braids under her white cap. “She’s a nurse here.”
“Are you wounded?”
“No…”
“Then don’t distract us from our work, please.”
With that, she turned back to the stretchers in front of which they stood, threw a cover over a soldier’s face and shouted, “this one too,” to a couple of corpse carriers.
Harald waddled through the sea that was pleading and moaning and calling for help around him; swiftly moved away from the doctors who were shouting frantically to each other and finally found her◦– by her golden hair, which still shone like a sun in this chloroform-soaked communal grave◦– his brother’s wife, Mina.
Bending over a soldier, she was smiling and patting his hand◦– the only one that he had left. Both his legs below the knees were gone too.
“Mina!” Harald cried out, navigating his way to her among the stretchers.