Most of the men he knew back then were now dead. The Nazis were intolerant of homosexuals, whom they considered even more undesirable than Slavs and Jews. Krause had been smart enough to read the writing on the wall. He had shaved his head and beard and volunteered for military duty. For a time he flourished even there. He was provided for, given three meals a day, and expected to do little more than train and march in parades.
Krause wasn’t the only homosexual soldier. There were thousands of them, many even high-ranking officers. So long as he kept his romantic interests discreet, he found almost as many admirers in the Wehrmacht barracks as he had in Berlin’s cabarets.
But then Hitler decided to invade Germany’s neighbors, and the real fighting began. Now Krause’s friends and lovers were either dead or in convalescent hospitals. Krause was bounced from unit to unit until he landed here, in a platoon of straight men and under the command of a squad leader who evidently hated him. Krause wasn’t just romantically frustrated, and he wasn’t just scared—he was also bored. He fought that boredom by playing mental games of survival.
Unteroffizier Oster clearly judged Krause to be an unfit soldier. He would prefer Krause dead, because that would open a spot in the squad for a more competent replacement. But Krause wanted to survive. So he played a mental game with the Unteroffizier, a game of subterfuge. It was a delicate game, and one in which Krause couldn’t be too obvious. The Unteroffizier would force Krause into a dangerous situation, and Krause would figure out some way of avoiding the duty.
Take his current mission, by way of example. The Second Squad and Corporal Greifer were probing troop strength near the front. It would stand to reason that wherever they were, Red Army refugees would be nearby. But such refugees were far more dangerous to a single runner like Krause than to a full rifle squad. It certainly didn’t behoove Krause to expose himself to such a danger by getting anywhere near the Second Squad.
For that reason, Krause had no intention of actually finding the corporal. To do so would have been an unnecessary risk. Instead, Krause planned to stomp through the snow for a few hours, turn around, and report back to Oster that he was unable to locate the Second Squad. No one knew exactly where the squad was, after all. It didn’t have a radio. All anyone knew was the path it was supposed to patrol.
Krause’s plan wasn’t without risk. When the Second Squad returned, and Greifer gave his report, Oster would know that the squad had followed its mission path and that Krause was lying. But he would never be able to prove it. Krause would claim he must have gotten disoriented in the mud, or perhaps it was Greifer and the Second Squad who’d gotten disoriented—perhaps they hadn’t followed the route they thought they had.
These were the games Krause played and the thoughts occupying his mind as he sloshed forward. He was testing a dozen scenarios and coming up with a dozen excuses. It was how he passed the time. Then, suddenly, all those thoughts fled from his brain.
Curled up on the edge of the woods before him, not twenty-five yards away, lay a dog, staring at him. And not just any dog, but the very dog that had caused so much trouble.
Krause stopped moving, and his boots sank a few inches deeper into the snow. He didn’t fully understand the significance of the dog. He didn’t know whom it belonged to or why it behaved the way it did. But he did sense, deep down in his heart, that this dog had somehow been responsible for Leutnant Schaefer’s death. Krause didn’t like the Leutnant and was actually happy that Schaefer was dead. If only Oster, too, were killed, perhaps the platoon could be a safer and happier place. Enough of these Nazi true believers! What Krause wanted was a platoon leader who cared about only one thing—survival. He would happily follow that type of leader.
As Krause stared at the hound, he realized that Oster would want the dog dead. If Krause killed the creature, Oster might revise his opinion of him. Perhaps he’d judge Krause a fit soldier and stop giving him all the most dangerous tasks.
Krause unslung his Kar98k rifle, shouldered it, and aimed. He was more accurate lying down, but even standing he was quite sure he could hit the dog at twenty-five paces. He peered at the hound through the rifle’s iron sights. Something was wrong with the animal. Its fur was matted and wet, and it was shivering. The canine stared at the rifle’s barrel with sad eyes.
It seemed to recognize the weapon; it must really be a military dog, then, trained to understand the threat that a gun represented. But it wasn’t doing anything about it. It just lay there, too weak to move, accepting its fate.
Krause hesitated. Even shivering and weak, the dog was a handsome creature. And suddenly he realized how it had injured itself and why it was wet. Krause had last seen the animal on the other side of the Neva river. It hadn’t crossed the river using the bridge because Krause’s squad would have seen it. Instead, it must have tried to cross upriver and fallen through the ice.
That meant the weather must be warming at last. Even though it was late March, the snow was still deep, but now Krause noticed that the icicles in the trees were wet. Perhaps spring was finally coming. The dog must have broken through the ice into the cold water. That was why the animal was weak: it had hypothermia.
Krause reconsidered the scenario. Killing the dog would be no great achievement; it would soon die of hypothermia, anyway. But what if Krause were to capture it? Didn’t the Leutnant want that all along? Here was Krause’s chance. The animal could barely move; Krause could likely approach it easily.
He lowered the gun and cautiously approached. The dog whimpered. Krause held out his hand. The dog sniffed and then licked it. It appeared that the hound recognized Krause as the one who had cut it loose earlier. In fact, the rope Krause had cut still dangled from its neck.
Krause crouched next to the dog and took hold of the lanyard. Retrieving a length of line from his bag, he twined it to the rope with an eight knot and secured the dog to a tree. He then unfolded his Zeltbahn, an ingenious army camouflage blanket that could also be used as a poncho or strung up as a pup tent.
Krause draped his Zeltbahn over the shivering dog. He then proceeded to collect wood and start a fire.
By the time Krause had a good blaze going, he realized he’d lost track of time. The dim gray of twilight was already creeping across the sky. He should have been back to the village by now. Krause didn’t care. Oster wouldn’t send anyone looking for him. He’d just assume Krause was lost or dead. That’s what Oster wanted anyway, wasn’t it? Well, he’d be in for a surprise when Krause returned with the captive canine. Even Oster would be forced to recognize such a great achievement.
The dog was responding well to the heat of the fire. It had stopped shivering and had begun to drool. Krause remembered hearing somewhere this was how dogs sweated—through their tongues. If so, the dog’s core temperature was back to normal. Krause was no doctor or veterinarian and had never even been a medic. But he’d already been around enough wounded men in his short military career to recognize the look of death. This dog didn’t have it, not anymore. It would survive the night.
So Krause gave the dog a tablet of his Erbswurst, a sort of sausage made with dried peas that had been part of Germany’s military rations since the Franco-Prussian War. Krause hated the stuff, but the dog loved it. It was still licking its chops as Krause lay down beside it, pulled over a length of his Zeltbahn, and slept beneath the stars. Between the warmth of the fire’s embers and the dog’s thick fur, he felt cozier than in their drafty cottage back in the village.