The marching men sang:
At the point of the column, the tip of the spear, Brasche marched followed by Krueger — personally, then the 501st Heavy Tank Battalion’s headquarters, and the rest of the battalion. Behind the battalion came the first elements of the foundation of Wiking Division, followed themselves by Hohenstauffen, Frundsberg, and the rest.
Mühlenkampf still remained at his office, though he had gone outside to stand on a stone porch to review the passing ranks. The command, “Augen… Rechts” — Eyes, Right — rang out as each company passed its Korps commander.
Dieter’s eyes snapped back to the front on command. Up ahead, past the Nazi — Krueger — he saw Brasche walking erect and, seemingly, proud. Unlike his followers, Brasche strode unarmed; his fists would do well enough. From the subtle twisting of his commander’s mask, Dieter was certain Brasche was singing along with the rest. Past the battalion commander the last of the local police could be seen, falling, bloody and bruised, under the smashing signs of the pacifists, and — less incongruously — of the Reds and Greens.
Schüler stood, mesmerized, while watching the very first man leading the field-gray-clad mass of troops smash into the protestors. That man had marched alone and out front. Though that soldier went down fairly quickly — a matter of less than a minute, the boy could not help but be impressed by the sheer ferocity with which he had fought.
More than the courage of that first soldier — Oberstleutnant Brasche, though the boy didn’t know that, Schüler was amazed — or perhaps better said, shocked — at the reaction of the men following.
Krueger didn’t like Brasche, not one bit. To the old Nazi, his commander seemed ambivalent, perhaps even weak. It was not anything Brasche had said, actually. Rather, Krueger had sensed an undertone of deep disapproval whenever he had regaled the new boys with tales of the old days.
But, affection or not, when Krueger saw his commander fall to the ground beneath the flailing fists and lashing feet of the long-haired rabble at the gate, he saw not a weak or even a non-Nazi. He saw a comrade in danger. Krueger raised his club overhead, turned over a shoulder and shouted:
“At ’em, boys!”
Muscle and bone augmented by the same process that had returned the octogenarian Brasche to full youth, Hans’ fists leapt and flew like twin lightning bolts. Wading into the crowd, he strode over a medley of bleeding, tooth-spitting, choking, bruised and gagging leftists. Behind him, the singing grew louder and closer.
He hoped it would grow very loud, very close… and very soon.
A woman, tall even by German standards, stood before him, defiantly. Defiantly, too, the woman lifted her chin and tore open her shirt, baring her breasts and daring the colonel to shame himself by striking a woman. Brasche drew back a fist to strike… and stopped. He couldn’t do it.
Sadly for him, neither that woman, nor the shorter one who threw her arms about his legs, felt the same sort of restraint. Legs fouled, Brasche lost his balance and fell. He neither saw nor felt the booted foot that connected with his skull, sending him, briefly, out of this vale of tears and into another.
The wind was from the west, carrying with it a stench that Leutnant Brasche at first could not identify. The young officer walked gingerly, even after a long hospital convalescence. The burn scars on his legs were still stiff and tender, cracking and opening on the slightest pretext to ooze a clearish crud. His concussion, also, continued to plague him with nausea and fuzzy mindedness.
The sign at the train station had said “Birkenau.” The name meant little to Hans, except insofar as it might mean a break from the endless horrors and deprivations of the Russian Front. Even those men he had spoken to at the front had had little comment other than that this camp, along with the others, were places where badly wounded SS men might have a few months or weeks of peace serving as guards before being fed back into the cauldron.
To the southeast of the station platform Hans saw a camp that seemed, somehow, and even at a distance, a little neater, a little daintier perhaps.
“What is that?” he asked of the SS man who met him on the platform, likewise a comrade sent — though earlier — for a healing break.
“The women’s camp,” that man answered. “There is another one much like it just past. Decent places to get laid if you can afford the price of a bar of soap, a toothbrush, or a scrap of food. Or you can just order them to perform… so I am told.”
“Who are we holding there?”
The other man shrugged, “Jews mostly. Also Poles and Gypsies. Some others. All enemies of the Reich… so they say. In any case, come along Leutnant Brasche. I’ll introduce you to the commander, Höss.”
Silently the two walked north to the comfortable SS barracks, Hans’ meager baggage ported by an impossibly slender, shaven-headed Jew. The stench grew worse, much worse, as they drew nearer the SS compound.
Hans still could not identify the smell. And then he felt a cold shiver run up his spine. It smelled like his tank… after he had been blown clear. In a brief moment of relative lucidity before he was evacuated he had smelled something much like that, albeit heavier in diesel fumes.
“What is that?” he asked. “That godawful stench?”
“Jews, Leutnant Brasche,” his newfound comrade and guide answered, ignoring, as did most SS, the arcane system of ranks inherited from the Stürm Abteilung. “Jews. We round them up. We starve them. We work them half to death. We gas them and then we cremate the bodies just west of here.”
“Mein Gott!”
“There is no God, here, Brasche,” said the other man. “And being here makes me think there is no God anywhere.”
Hans grew desperately silent then, remaining that way until he was ushered into the presence of his new, temporary, commander. Hans knew little of Höss. That little, however, included that the commander was, despite current duties, a highly decorated hero of the Great War, a veteran of the Freikorps and, at heart, a combat soldier. This knowledge informed Brasche’s actions.
Standing at the front of Höss’ desk, Hans thrust out a stiff-armed salute, “Heil Hitler, Leut’… Oberstürmführer Hans Brasche reports.”
Höss ignored the slip, his eyes taking in the new Iron Cross, 1st Class, glittering at Brasche’s throat. “We can certainly use you, Brasche. I am short officers and — ”
Hans interrupted. Desperation to see and learn no more than he already had lent him boldness. “Sir, the front needs me more. I am healed enough. I wish to be returned to my old unit, the Wiking Division, to serve our Fatherland and Führer there.”